Active transportation committee presents bike/pedestrian crash data and asks council to fund striping, parking and trail standards
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Summary
At the March 25 Cedar City Council meeting, the Active Transportation Committee presented crash trends showing a rise in bicycle incidents in 2025 and asked the city to prioritize separated bike lanes, bike parking and trail standards to boost safety and ridership.
Ben Cousins, a volunteer with the Cedar City Active Transportation Committee, told the council the committee’s 2025 review and local surveys point to strong public interest in walking and biking and a worrying uptick in collisions. "Two thirds of all people will ride a bike when you create a separation," Cousins said, summarizing research on how protected facilities increase participation.
Cousins said city survey work from the 2022 general/master plan showed 67% of residents consider walking or biking important and that bicycle crashes averaged three to four per year from 2020–2024 before rising to about 12 in 2025. He and committee members highlighted that driver failure to yield and collisions at unmarked crosswalks and shoulders were common contributing factors.
Committee members reviewed recent accomplishments — securing a Get Healthy Utah designation for the city, hosting "slow roll" rides, assisting the Fort Cedar Trail and applying for an IMBA (Intermountain Mountain Biking Association) Trail Town designation. A committee representative said the IMBA trail-town application and supporting maps demonstrated more than 100 miles of local mountain-bike trails within a 30-minute drive.
Councilmembers pressed staff and the presenter on data sources and seasonality; staff said crash counts were compiled from police reports and that pedestrian incidents did not show the same September spike seen for bicycles. Members emphasized that an adopted active-transportation plan helped secure outside funding: when UDOT saw requested active-transportation elements in the city plan, the agency incorporated those elements into the South Interchange design.
The committee asked the council for practical support: prioritize bike-lane striping when roads are resealed, adopt trail standards and consider minimum bike-parking requirements or incentives at destinations such as grocery stores. Ben Cousins said the city lacks consistent bike parking at some retail sites and that modest interventions could meaningfully increase safety and participation.
Mayor and council members thanked the volunteers and staff for their work and asked staff to follow up with additional data and implementation steps. The council did not take a formal vote on the presentation but approved consent items and continued with the agenda.
