Bike Lanes

This question was called in to the Town Meeting Hotline:

Can the Legislature look into creating safe, designated bike lanes for commuters to ride their bikes to and from work safely between Davis County and Salt Lake County?

Alex Pashley
Bountiful

Mr. Pashley, thanks for your participation and your interest in the topic of biking as a part of commuting. As you may know the Legacy Parkway has an exceptional trail for both bikers and pedestrians, which will link up with the bike paths along the Jordan River. However, that will not help commuters from the east side of Davis County to get to downtown. Getting through the Beck Street area is, as you surely know, very difficult. I will pass your concern on to UDOT, and in the long term, as I-15 is rebuilt in several years I will push to see that this will be addressed.

In the short term, I will ask UDOT what they suggest, but my guess is there is no funding for this and even identifying a safe route will be difficult. I suggest that you have any biking organizations contact me so we can arrange a meeting with UDOT to discuss what routes and safety protections are necessary to protect biking commuters and bikers generally along this corridor. It will be necessary to show that there are sufficient numbers to justify the expense.

Best,

Greg Bell
Utah State Senate, District 22

Note: we received this E-mail from UDOT (thanks for the quick response!):

>>> Carlos Braceras 8/16/2007 11:22 AM >>>
Senator Bell and Ric, we are actually under construction of a bike lane on Beck street that should be completed this summer. The Cities are also working to tie their east-west trails into the Legacy trail system, so the future looks bright for bikers. The web site (UDOT.utah.gov), if you go to the "public" tab, has additional information on biking.