Roadways to Less Traffic in Dixie's Future

 By Peter Stempel

Few topics stir more passion in Washington County than traffic and roads.  Longtime residents and newcomers alike share strong feelings about traffic on local roads and in many intersections.  St. George Mayor Dan MacArthur has actively solicited citizen concerns about traffic and roadways and we are fortunate that many of our local officials are responsive to our concerns. Our local governments deserve a great deal of credit in this regard and they deserve even more recognition for promoting and supporting public transit in the form of SunTran, the local bus service that has been increasing its ridership since it began.   

Roads, specifically new roads, enjoy broad popular support.  As growth continues, however, it is important that we all take a step back and look at the way in which we are growing, and how roads play a critical part in our quality of life.  Anyone who has lived in Southern California can tell you that building roads is not a path to a traffic free future; rather, to loosely paraphrase the movie Field of Dreams, "if you build it, cars will come".

When we build new roads, we build them with the future in mind, which means that they have excess capacity.  Usually, the land surrounding them is yet to be developed, further reducing the traffic load.  These new and underutilized roads are a joy to use, since we can cover great distances in a short time.  Under these circumstances, people choose to live farther away from centers of activity. After all, the commute is easy and free from traffic. 

As more people make that decision, however, the traffic burden and travel time increases.  Before too many years pass, the intervening land is developed, and the quality of life that attracted so many people decreases.  Put simply, new roads make it temporarily desirable to live further away from where we work.  Building new roads is always a temporary solution to congestion because it engenders behavior that ultimately increases congestion by encouraging people to travel greater distances to work. 

Some people will say that this is just a natural progression of growth, and there is little or nothing we can do about it.  But I say that it is neither the most natural way to grow, nor the most cost effective.  I also say that it isn't inevitable and that we don't have to go along with it. Building too many roads encourages our communities to spread widely, to "sprawl," increasing the amount of infrastructure we pay to maintain to service fewer people.  After impact fees from development are exhausted, maintenance falls to an inadequate residential tax base.  

Although roads will always be an important part of our transportation system, the key to improving our quality of life and reducing traffic is to decrease the distances we need to travel on a daily basis.  Planners use the term "Vehicle Miles Traveled" often abbreviated VMT.

It may seem counter intuitive, but one big step toward decreasing traffic and congestion is to encourage more development in existing areas that are easily served by infrastructure.   

Creating additional housing opportunities near existing main streets, for instance, could reinforce existing businesses by bringing people closer.  It also would create centers of activity that would be easily served by SunTran, St George's clean and efficient bus system.  Doing this would make life easier for those too young to drive or those unable to drive.  It means people can be more active in the community, even when their health might prevent them from driving.  Moreover, it would renew our historic town centers, and help them to continue to be vibrant and active places.   

We can also begin to make bicycle lanes and pedestrian ways a higher priority in our transportation planning.  That means more than just including sidewalks, it means paying attention to the factors that will make bicycling and pedestrian travel easy and efficient.  Simple design changes - such as locating a parking lot behind commercial development instead of on the side - can make pedestrian travel easier and more attractive. 

These approaches will work in communities as diverse as St. George and in my own town of Virgin.  The key is giving people an alternative to driving by making it possible to live, work and shop within walking and bicycling distances.  If we as a community begin to recognize the implications of our decisions we can take steps to reduce VMT, and improve our quality of life. Taking steps to reduce the distances we need to travel will save us time and taxes in the long run.  We might also get a little more exercise, and that won't hurt any of us.