Wasatch Choice update: WFRC outlines timeline for preferred scenario, adds 'exploratory' layer for transportation concepts

The Wasatch Front Regional Council's Regional Growth Committee on Jan. 16, 2025, heard an update on work to develop a preferred scenario for the Wasatch Choice Vision and the related 2027 Regional Transportation Plan, including a new process for capturing transportation ideas that are not yet ready for formal plan inclusion.

The preferred scenario is the draft blueprint staff will use to model where growth, jobs and housing could be located through 2055, and it will feed the transportation project testing that follows. Ted Knowlton, Deputy Director at the Wasatch Front Regional Council, told the committee the process runs through 2027 and that the Regional Growth Committee (RGC) acts as a steering committee for the work.

"In spring of 2025...we'll say, 'look, we've heard from the communities. This is the land use they want to work towards,'" Knowlton said, describing a work plan that locks a land-use aspiration to enable more meaningful transportation testing.

Why it matters: the land-use framework determines travel patterns used in modeling, so locking in a preferred scenario before rigorous transportation testing helps staff and partners evaluate which multimodal projects perform under the region's stated goals.

WFRC staff emphasized two parallel streams: engagement with local governments, stakeholders and the public to refine land‑use ideas gathered in 2024 workshops, and a technical evaluation of proposed transportation concepts. Andrew Gruber, Wasatch Front Regional Council, summarized the tension the region is trying to manage: "Explore aspirational concepts for multimodal transportation choices...balanced with pragmatic consideration of context and costs." He said the agencies will attempt to be both forward‑looking and fiscally prudent.

To address concepts that may not meet current technical or funding thresholds but still warrant tracking, WFRC staff proposed an "exploratory transportation concepts" layer. Jory Johnner, Long Range Planning Director at WFRC, said the idea is to capture and map projects and concepts that have some viability but do not yet satisfy the criteria required for formal plan inclusion: "rather than a concept being brought forward and then just sort of being pushed aside...we would capture and reflect them in some way."

Staff described a two-stage review process. First, projects go through a preliminary screening that asks where concepts advance shared goals, whether they have cross‑community support, and whether they raise immediate environmental or community harms. For transit and road concepts the preliminary screen will be broad; active‑transportation screening is aimed at separating regional from local projects.

Second, projects that pass the preliminary screen will face mode‑specific technical criteria. Jory Johnner listed examples: roadway evaluations will use congestion management thresholds and safety data; transit evaluations will examine ridership thresholds, access to opportunity and local buy‑in; active‑transportation reviews will emphasize network gaps, barrier crossings and regional connections.

Committee members and other participants raised common themes: the interaction between transportation and land use, the "chicken‑and‑egg" problem where transit may not get funded until ridership exists while ridership may not materialize until higher‑density land uses occur; corridor preservation for both road and transit; and whether projects that spur economic development should be weighed differently than projects that meet ridership tests.

Several members said the exploratory bucket could help by keeping ideas visible while communities pursue complementary land‑use changes or new funding sources. Ari Breuning of Envision Utah and Laura Hanson, senior adviser to Governor Cox for long‑range planning, urged continued collaboration among jurisdictions and agencies. Carlton Christensen of the Utah Transit Authority emphasized coordinating corridor preservation across modes.

WFRC staff gave a timeline: land‑use feedback will be refined and returned to local staff in spring 2025, technical testing will occur through the summer of 2025, and a transportation‑focused round of workshops is planned for fall 2025. Staff said they will return interim packages to RGC for review throughout the process and will revise project phasing criteria in 2025 for use in 2026 phasing work.

Committee members asked for continued transparency and for staff to document why projects move forward or are archived. "We want to make a list of projects, all the concepts reviewed, more readily accessible to people to see," Johnner said. Staff said the RGC technical advisory committee, UDOT and UTA will be engaged in detailed reviews and that communities can request one‑on‑one briefings.

The committee did not take formal action on the preferred scenario at the Jan. 16 meeting; the presentation was an informational status update and discussion of process and schedule.