Pub 3 2020-2021 Issue 1

4 What are UDOT’s long-term plans regarding our state’s infrastructure? As opposed to the what, I like to start with the why. It’s UDOT, sure —but there’s so much more to the equation, which includes our suppliers, our vendors and our affiliates. Why do we all exist? The focus is on quality of life. We exist to enhance the quality of life through transportation. Better mobility improves health, reduces air pollution, and connects people to places and to each other. Better mobility strength- ens our economy. When all this works, it allows the economy to thrive. That’s our goal, every day. That’s the why of our existence. Now for the what. What do we need to do to accomplish the big why? Just recently, we’re eyeing a $1.5 billion national legislature appropriation bill to improve our nation’s infrastructure, preserve our roads and optimize mobil- ity. As a state and as a country, these are the three things: improve, preserve and optimize. While all three things are important, we are very focused on maintaining our roads and keeping our pavement in good condition. We need to take care of our stuff — it costs less in the long run. As a state, we need to be wise stewards of taxpayer funds and their allocation. Roads are the arteries through which our economy pulses and they are vital to any community development agenda. Utah is growing — a lot. What are your thoughts on how best to manage our transportation needs? A lot of people look at growth in two ways: a problem or a challenge. Given what we do here at UDOT and what I personally have done for my entire career, I look at growth as an opportunity. Where we are as a state in regards to growth is a great place to be. Imagine the problems we would have if we were not growing. However, we need to think about how we grow. We think of ourselves as westerners. We like space, but with growth comes urban problems. Interestingly, 65% of Utah is owned by our government — state and federal. We have roughly 25% of our state available for growth, and 90% of Utahns live in an urban area. When it comes to growth planning, I think it’s important to recognize that we are an urban state with a large recreation area, so we are densely populated. Thirty-five years ago, when I started my career with UDOT, we had less than 1 million people living in Utah, and now we have 3 million. We can’t double the mileage use of our roads. It’s not feasible. Our land-use decisions need to be informed. How many homes per acre? What’s the density? Should we build higher? Should we be building closer to high-capacity corridors? We need to be thinking about truly multi-modal transit. Here in Utah, it’s still one car and one person for the majority of the ways we travel. We need more people using active trans- portation, such as walking and biking. I believe that we need to have more Utahns use public transit for commuting. We are actively building new roads and widening existing roads. We have ongoing plans to design, construct and maintain our roads, but I also believe we need to be more active in optimiz- ing the existing structures. We are also focused on managing traffic better and more efficiently. Because of our investment in fiber optics at our traffic operations center in our Region 2 office, we know in real time how many vehicles are stopped on red at various locations, which means that we can more effectively handle signal man- agement. Or crash management, which means that we can inform people and divert them to other routes. Additionally, we’re going to have to embrace technology, which for our state, is probably not a concern. For instance, a Utah company is working on inductive chargers in pavement. That would mean charging EV batter- ies while driving. This is pretty exciting technology that involves smart tech- nology and pavement. It’s a ways out, of course, but Utah is at the forefront of finding solutions to the problems that we will face in the near future as we grow. continued on page 6 UAPA TALKS ROADS WITH UDOT’S EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CARLOS BRACERAS