Well after ninety days of court-ordered no drive days, I am finally able to again get behind the wheel of my car (we don’t need to get into the details of that one but it is not really relevant to this post).

There is one thing I have really noticed about Salt Lake, it is both amazingly easy and difficult to get around at the same time.

Have a car? No problem! Streets are wide so traffic is almost non existent in the city aside from absolutely peak hours. Don’t have a car? Well my friend, you are screwed.

I live in the Rose Park area and had to depend on UTA for my transportation; needless to say the bus was less than ideal. Buses would run every half-hour during the weekday, every hour on Saturdays, and did not run on Sundays. Furthermore, had I not possessed a bus pass I would have easily been out $120 a month for three months. The bus is not practical for the vast majority of people and city planning does not support the system.

But all is not lost. I look at the changes UTA is making and see progress. TRAX expansion, coupled with improved bus service and a greater emphasis on walkable communities can only benefit our city. We must do all we can to encourage large scale projects to promote small changes in peoples daily pattern.

Walkable cities are only a positive: People save money by not driving, live healthier, more active lifestyles, have a greater investment in their community and actually know their neighbors, and protect the environment. The real question is not so much why, but how.

How do we convert a 1950′s era suburb into a walkable community? How do we invest in mass transit to make movement easier throughout the metro area? How do we make walking more beneficial to the average person in general? All of these, and many more, questions need to be answered in order to actually create a livable, walkable, city.

Of course I have to get my plug in, I feel that Ralph Becker, a city planner and candidate for Salt Lake City mayor, has some great ideas about how to achieve this goal. I encourage you to check out Ralph’s issues page to find out more.