Transportation Planning
Transportation Planning is a crucial part of our community. As city leaders we need to always work towards smart transportation planning in our city. One unfortunate consequence to the needlessly lingering light rail controversy is it has made it politically toxic to talk thoroughly about transportation planning and stalled us from talking about some of our important transportation issues in a healthy, robust way. As a planner, I will be a strong voice on the council for thorough and continuous transportation planning.
The way we set up our roads defines our community. We all use our roads daily, and this strongly affects our quality of life. Considering this, and my strong belief that the public process works best as more citizens become involved, I would like to see a long-term transportation committee formed. A variety of citizen voices being heard in how they want to see our streets built and used will be very valuable to the process.
Centerville’s greatest feature is our unique geography. This feature, being surrounded so tightly by lake and mountains, allows us to always stay a “small town”. It also creates a unique challenge. Although Centerville will stay small, we are surrounded by larger and growing cities, and residents of those cities travel through us.
I-15 is full. Legacy is filling rapidly. There is no room in our narrow corridor for new thoroughfare roads. Main Street is a state owned highway. Main Street is one of my greatest concerns. If we don’t get creative in our solutions, then the future of our Main Street may look something like “Redwood Road North” or “Davis County’s State Street.” Protection against Main Street becoming another such multi-lane highway is another reason for the importance of implementing our Main Street plan.
As we actually tighten our corridor, improve our public space and property values, and make it more of a people friendly area, this will make it near impossible for the widening of our Main Street for use as another major multilane road. These concerns may not come to fruition for many years, but the PLANNING it takes to prevent them from happening would need to start in a focused way now.
I view streets as an integral part of our community. They serve multiple purposes and when done right can create a valuable sense of place. We don’t have to just accept the idea that “bigger is better” when it comes to our roads, but can instead explore ways to be smarter about how we move people in our city. I will be a brave voice for “complete streets” that get us where we need to go and at the same time enhance our sense of community and small town flavor.
Our Main Street is a 67′ right of way. We have a Main Street that is already plenty wide to have many options. We have yet to plan what we want the public space of our Main Street to look like. I will keep you updated on how to get involved early in this planning process! We would love to hear your voice on what you would like your Main Street to look like.)
