Are Utah's best ideas coming from outside the House (and Senate)? 

• Derek Carlisle

Change is in the air, everywhere—it seems—but at the Utah Legislature.

In Salt Lake City and its environs, thirsty lawns are being replaced with water-wise landscaping; multi-acre McMansions are making way for apartments, condominiums and townhomes; e-bike sales are surging; green power is proliferating; and citizens are increasingly mobilizing to push action on issues from health care reform to economic modernization to the preservation of democracy itself.

How about on Capitol Hill? Only time will tell, but the annual 45-day legislative session that begins next week looks to be more of the same old thing, with lawmakers' priorities so repetitive, a robot could write the preview article for City Weekly. (No really, we had a robot do it! )

In recent years, the voting population made its wishes known on Medicaid expansion, medical marijuana and political redistricting—plus fairly definitive shows of opposition to food taxes and support for liquor deregulation. The Legislature's Republican supermajority dismissed all of the above, preferring to engage in snipe hunts on critical race theory, transgender athletes and ballot fraud, things that exist only in isolated, anecdotal incidents and the fever dreams of far-right conservatives.

On one hand, Utah's population is concentrated in urban and suburban areas along the Wasatch Front. On the other, lawmakers adopted a partisan gerrymander that intentionally dilutes urban political power and that succeeded in making the Utah House a deeper shade of red, with an expanded membership in the unofficial "Crazies Caucus" (they know who they are).

On one hand, legislative leadership used its muscle last year to fund restorative efforts at the Great Salt Lake and to take critical steps toward water efficiency. On the other, those efforts were much too little and far too late, maintaining outsize leniency for agricultural and industrial uses.

On one hand, cities are experimenting with road diets, paved trails and high-frequency transit connections. On the other, the Utah Department of Transportation is sharpening its knives to cut a bigger freeway through west-side neighborhoods and to effectively extend the private ski lifts at Alta and Snowbird to a massive car-parking structure, to be built at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, at taxpayer expense.

In the following pages, you'll find an overview of the debates to come, as well as examples of regular Utahns who see the writing on the wall and are pushing broader conversations around transportation and environmental policy that get louder with each new participant. Who knows, maybe if Utahns get loud enough—about what they really want, about what actually works—their ostensible representatives might just one day hear them up on the north end of Main Street.

—Benjamin Wood, City Weekly news editor

• Courtesy Photo
• Students and climate activists participate in a weekly climate strike outside the Utah State Capitol.

Future Tense
Young climate activists are at the Utah Capitol, whether lawmakers see them or not.
By Katharine Biele

Every Friday, every week, for the past three years, young climate activists have staged a silent protest in front of the Utah State Capitol. No matter the weather, they are there—on the off chance that someone in power might take notice.

They never do.

In 2018, Raquel Juarez heard about a growing climate movement that started around the work of Greta Thunberg. Holding a "school strike for climate" sign, Thunberg began weekly sit-ins outside Stockholm's Parliament House. She was just one kid, but by the next year, 25,000 people had turned out to chant and hear Thunberg's message.

That was the beginning of Fridays for the Future, a global movement in which students skipped school on Fridays to demand climate action, including Juarez, who at the time was attending Ben Lomond High School in Ogden. But after a strong start, Juarez said the energy dwindled.

"I was kind of confused," she said. "I kept striking weekly and during the last seven weeks of high school, it was only me."

But slowly, people started to join in again. Then came a big, global demonstration in 2019. Locally, major organizations like the Sierra Club and the Southern Utah Wilderness Society participated, part of the roughly 2,000 people who marched to the Utah Capitol.

The so-called "Extinction Rebellion"—or XR—was a thing, particularly for young people. It still is. But lawmakers seem to have forgotten it or ignored it. Started in London, XR was a cry of desperation, taking a page from other grassroots movements like Occupy, the suffragettes and even the civil rights movement.

"While we were taking the reins in organizing climate strikes, we had less and less help from other organizations. It was mostly the youth," Juarez said.

In 2020, Ava Curtis and Melanie Van Hook joined the movement. Curtis, now at the University of Utah, was attending Taylorsville High when she was asked to set up a booth urging Granite School District to convert to clean energy. She never looked back. Van Hook, now at West High School, was in 8th grade at Salt Lake Arts Academy when she began striking every week.

While the weekly demonstrations were composed entirely of youth during 2020, the number of participants was growing. Then COVID hit. But teenagers are not easily thwarted.

"I got in contact with Raquel, then we got Instagram," Van Hook says.

By maintaining a presence at the Capitol, people began to notice. The Sierra Club helped organize and social media played a big hand in getting the message out to what Juarez now calls a "leaderless movement" that has taken on a life of its own. "There are so many moving parts," Juarez said.

Curtis said consistently showing up each week makes the urgency of climate activism visible for both lawmakers and the general public.

"This is an issue on the front of everyone's mind, and it's something young people really do care about," Curtis said.

But do legislators see them—or do they care? Juarez says she can't remember any elected officials talking to them, although former Democratic Rep. Patrice Arent says she did stop by. "Maybe I didn't introduce myself as a legislator," Arent said.

Arent was one of the few legislators who consistently focused on clean air and the environment. While public health is among the top concerns of Utahns, it doesn't often make the list of priorities for lawmakers.

"The Legislature is dominated by people from rural areas who really don't care about urban air pollution," says Brian Moench, M.D., of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE). "They have a conservative ideological aspect and a baseline skepticism of various things that scientists have long established."

• Courtesy Photo
• Brian Moench, M.D., of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment

The skepticism over climate change is baked into Utah, where Republicans have a vice grip on policy. Climate change is among the most partisan issues in the United States, reports the data-driven organization Fivethirtyeight: "Those on the left care a great deal about climate change, while those on the right are more likely to identify immigration and border security as an important issue."

Better late than never, the fate of the Great Salt Lake may now be grabbing lawmakers' attention. Like everyone else, they are seeing reservoirs drying up and how Utah's fondness for fossil fuels has shrunk the lake to a third of the size it once was.

"There are various environmental issues about the disappearing Great Salt Lake that are getting more traction because they can see [it] with their own eyes," Moench said.

In a prepared statement, Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, said that remarkable things happen when the people of Utah come together. And doing so, he said, is the foundation of the so-called "Utah Way."

"This session, we will look to enact policies that address Utah's most pressing issues—from safeguarding our natural resources, to keeping Utah affordable, to investing in our future."

That aridification is a looming health disaster is obvious, but legislators may get serious now as the lake's environmental fate is becoming an economic and financial catastrophe. Gov. Spencer Cox has taken a band-aid approach to the lake, although he sees it as a dire issue. He suspended new water appropriations for the Great Salt Lake Basin and, of course, encourages conservation (and prayer).

The Legislature, on the other hand, has funded conservation efforts, but often with an eye to their own interests. Former Rep. Joel Ferry—now executive director of the Department of Natural Resources—added a provision to legislation for holders of water rights, like him and his wheat farm, to lease water for up to 10 years without losing their rights, according to the Deseret News.

Then there was what Wilson has called a "pipe dream:" the notion of building a saltwater pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to the Great Salt Lake—at a cost of maybe $100 billion.

"We look forward to debating and crafting policies that will ensure our state continues to be the best place to live, work, learn and play—not only now, but for generations to come," Wilson said.

But beyond conservation and some updates to water infrastructure, there doesn't seem to be much of an appetite to call out broader climate change-accelerating behavior, or to address its long-term consequences ... yet.

"They may start to pay more attention if frequent dust storms start blowing over the Wasatch Front, if real estate values fall, if in-migration and overall growth suffer and we can't attract good workers," Moench says.

And let's not forget the Utah inland port and the air pollution it promises for the valley. UPHE recently financed a report evaluating the commercial potential of the port's transloading facility.

"We totally dismantled the whole economic viability—the heart of the port," Moench said. "But they're still trying to resurrect some economic nirvana they tried to sell someone on several years ago."

And in May 2022, UPHE released a stunning report on the health consequences of air pollution, one of many such papers from around the world that found virtually every type of lung disease is caused or made worse by bad air, and that polluted areas correspond with higher rates of breast, lung, prostate, cervical, brain and stomach cancers, as well as childhood leukemia.

The report also noted that even the lowest measurable exposure to pollution corresponds to an increase in mortality.

"[Air pollution] has detrimental effects in concentrations even well below the EPA's national standards," the report states. "In other words, in the same way there is no safe number of cigarettes a person can smoke, there is no safe level of air pollution a person can breathe."

Regardless of what specific disease air pollution may cause, the common denominator is inflammation, which is like "tissue barbecuing," Moench said.

Some life stages have more of an impact. A pregnant mother's placenta will suck up pollutants and transfer them to the fetus. "It's not much of a leap that everybody's health is affected," Moench said. "We only get one shot at normal brain development"

Thunberg was warning the world—a world that wouldn't listen. In her famous speech at the 2018 United Nations Climate Action Summit, she said that younger generations see the betrayal of their government leaders. "We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"

Juarez heard that call, but she was a kid, and her father was less than enthusiastic. He didn't want her missing school and told her not to go protest.

"I went anyway," she said. "He became more supportive when I kept up my grades. It just sounded odd to him, like, why should I be missing school?"

Juarez is 21 now and studying political science. She said the issue of climate change is highly political, and that it's important to understand how and why the people in positions of power make the decisions that they do.

"There's so much misinformation out there, and so much to learn," she said. "It will equip me to be a person who can lobby. I mean, why not me? People don't generally grow up to be politicians."

Maybe not generally, but some do. This year, Maxwell Alejandro Frost became the first member of Generation Z to be elected to Congress, at age 25. He won in his Florida district after running on two issues—gun violence and climate change.

Curtis just entered the University of Utah in environmental sustainability studies, with an eye to nonprofit work. "When you get hundreds of young people together chanting and singing, you know this is important," she said.

She, Van Hook and Juarez are just three of the countless youths nationwide who have been drawn together through Instagram and a powerful network of activists. They are part of a long line of climate activists who are likely to be at the Capitol every Friday—every single Friday—waiting for the older generations to pay attention and act.

"It's not going to be possible without coordinated efforts with the younger and older generations," Juarez said.

• Courtesy Photo

Grande Slam
Two Salt Lakers have a next-generation plan for transit that, just maybe, could save downtown.
By Benjamin Wood

When Christian Lenhart's family visited Salt Lake City from out of state last month, he planned an evening of riding Trax through downtown to see the Christmas lights and decorations.

But because of the limitations of Utah's transit services, Lenhart's family first drove to and parked at Salt Lake Central Station. When they arrived, they found a crowd of people who had missed their connection with Frontrunner.

"There was nothing for them—Frontrunner runs every hour," Lenhart said. "So there were a bunch of people standing out in the cold, in the snow, in the wind."

He said his mother was upset by the predicament of her fellow travelers, nearly offering to drive them to Provo herself. But arriving Trax trains just delivered more and more people to the spartan slab of exposed concrete in a derelict corner of town that serves as Salt Lake's primary train station.

"There is that sense of outrage that our city is really presenting itself very poorly if you come here by transit," Lenhart said. "It's just jarring that we have such high transit ridership but such a terrible Central Station that does not do our city any favors."

The experience was the latest in a long line of frustrations that in 2020 prompted Lenhart, an engineer, to dream up what a proper SLC train station could be. And after studying successful rail rehabilitation projects around the country, he prepared a 60-page draft proposal calling for a so-called "train box" along 500 West that would move freight and passenger lines underground and reactivate the historic Rio Grande Depot as a bonafide transportation hub.

"The more I thought about it and looked at the grades going into the structure and going out, and how much land would actually be opened up and the way you could reduce the freeway impacts downtown, it started to seem so obvious that yes, this is the right thing to do," he said.

Lenhart posted his idea to a message board for urban planning enthusiasts, where it caught the eye Cameron Blakely, a designer. They teamed up—with Lenhart providing the engineering technicality and Blakely the visual renderings—resulting in a slick, thorough concept known as the Rio Grande Plan that is increasingly gaining steam among local residents, advocates and even city officials.

• Courtesy Photo

"It was fun taking his initial idea and the engineering side of it, and then laying on additional layers and how it starts to look in real life," Blakely said.

Under the Rio Grande Plan, much of the hostile infrastructure dividing the east and west sides of the city could be eliminated between North Temple and 900 South. That land could then be redeveloped, creating new opportunities for affordable housing and greenspace, adding to the growth of the Granary District, rejuvenating the area around The Gateway and Pioneer Park and likely recouping the cost of the project within a few years through taxes, development fees and economic impact.

Then there's the effect on transit itself, which could be rendered leagues more welcoming to riders by placing an attractive urban train station within comfortable walking distance of destinations like Vivint Arena and the Downtown Farmers Market, and allowing for better TRAX connections into the city (ironically, the currently-closed Rio Grande is an impediment to efficient transit, requiring trains to take a meandering 180-degree curve out and around the historic station).

If it all sounds too good to be true—it really isn't. Train boxes in Reno, Nevada, and Alameda, California, are larger than what the Rio Grande Plan calls for. Denver, Colorado, completed a similar project restoring its Union Station, which has reshaped the downtown experience of that city.

"$500 million in public investment at Union Station has transformed what was once a decommissioned rail yard into a vibrant, mixed-use area, with more than $3.5 billion in private development projects in the surrounding area as well as more than $2 billion in economic impact annually," Denver's Regional Transportation District (RTD) states on its website.

Lenhart said the Rio Grande Plan involves more complexity than Denver's Union Station project, meaning its cost and construction timeline can offer only a rough approximation of what Utah would be facing. But he added that Salt Lake City has advantages that Denver, Reno and others did not, namely an ultra-wide street grid and the fact that 500 West functioned for decades as a rail corridor. And because the Rio Grande Plan bypasses the existing lines, the bulk of construction could be achieved without disruption to rail services.

"We're not squeezing something in like a foot that's too big for the shoe," Lenhart said. "The infrastructure was built around the tracks, and it still fits, there's been little modification to it."

None of the above is to suggest the Rio Grande Plan would be easy. Rail projects are a jurisdictional quagmire, requiring the coordination of the city, state and potentially federal governments, as well as private freight operators like Union Pacific. There's also the political reality that Utah does not value transit, with current facilities reflective of the state's bare-minimum approach and with transportation officials overtly prioritizing highways—even at the expense of existing neighborhoods—with only incremental improvements to the passenger rail network since it was first built in the lead-up to the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) is in the early stages of an Interstate 15 expansion through Salt Lake and Davis Counties, estimated at $1.6 billion. In December, Gov. Spencer Cox said that while he hopes displacement can be minimized, some expansion is required. At a similar press conference in October, Cox said he was unfamiliar with the Rio Grande Plan.

"If we do have to move some of those families, they will be very well compensated for that," Cox said. "We try to avoid that at any cost."

In a statement, Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said traffic planning is a key issue for Utah, one of the nation's fastest-growing states.

"Keeping Utah's high quality of life includes ensuring commute times are as short as possible for hard-working Utahns," he said.

Over the past year, Lenhart and Blakely have focused on meeting with local officials and stakeholder groups. And while the Salt Lake City Council hasn't formally supported the plan, the city has twice applied for grant funding to study the proposal, most recently in a "Reconnecting Communities" application that would explore various ways to mitigate the division between the city's east and west sides. Without buy-in at the local level, Lenhart said, there would be little point pushing the issue up to the state.

A spokesman for the Utah Transit Authority said he was familiar with the proposal but not authorized to comment on it. UDOT representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Salt Lake City Transportation director Jon Larsen said there are serious technical challenges that would need to be worked out with Union Pacific. But, he added, the Rio Grande Plan is among the proposals being "thoroughly" explored by planners.

"If we could pull it off, it would be an amazing benefit for the city in terms of healing the east/west divide and unlocking the potential of that area," Larsen said.

But as lawmakers convene this month, the idea may have gained enough momentum to jump the tracks, so to speak. And rather than being mutually exclusive, both Lenhart and Blakely said the Rio Grande Plan could work hand-in-glove with UDOT's I-15 project to achieve a more holistic solution that positions Utah for the future, improving mobility without the need for bulldozing homes.

"I really thought we were done with this in Salt Lake, as far as taking neighborhoods and paving them over. People are rightly outraged about that," Lenhart said. "The best way you can build back some public rapport is to spend some money on planning for transit—at least planning."

Lenhart and Blakely said they've sent informational materials to members of the state's committees over infrastructure and economic development. And the duo are hosting a public open house at the Main Library on Jan. 26, where they hope to connect both residents and decision makers with transit and urban planning experts.

"One thing the Rio Grande Plan does offer is a high-capacity central station that could accommodate not only the existing transit lines but also future expansions and future lines," Blakely said. "If UDOT were to ever consider—as an alternative to expanding I-15—maybe a light rail line up into Davis County, or expanded service on Frontrunner, the Rio Grande would be in a position to handle those new transit lines."

In the meantime, the word-of-mouth campaign continues, gaining allies and advocates with each new introduction.

"The plan is extremely grounded in what it's trying to do. It doesn't involve anything new, everything is based on what other cities have done," Lenhart said. "It's got legs because people who hear it, they understand how real it could be, and it goes from one person to the next person."

I am a Robot
An artificially intelligent primer on the 2023 legislative session.
By ChatGPT

• Dreamstime

We asked the groundbreaking chatbot ChatGPT for a 500-word preview of the upcoming Utah legislative session. It delivered the following report, on deadline, with almost no editing required. Watch out, humans!—Benjamin Wood, news editor

As the Utah Legislature begins its annual session, it's clear that there are many pressing issues on the state's political agenda. From education and health care to the economy and the environment, lawmakers will be tasked with tackling a wide range of complex and often controversial topics.

One of the most talked-about issues this year is the ongoing debate over Medicaid expansion. For years, Utah has resisted calls to expand Medicaid coverage to low-income residents, citing concerns about the cost and potential impacts on the state budget. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting the importance of accessible health care, many lawmakers and advocacy groups are pushing for change.

Another major issue on the legislative agenda is education. Utah consistently ranks near the bottom in terms of per-pupil spending, and many educators and parents are calling for increased funding to improve schools and provide students with the resources they need to succeed.

The environment is also expected to be a key topic of discussion, with lawmakers considering measures to address climate change and protect the state's natural resources. This could include legislation to promote renewable energy sources and reduce carbon emissions, as well as efforts to protect Utah's iconic public lands.

Of course, no legislative session would be complete without a few controversial issues. This year, there are several bills on the docket that have sparked heated debate, including measures related to gun control, abortion and LGBTQ rights.

Ultimately, the decisions made by the Utah Legislature will have far-reaching implications for the state and its residents. As the session progresses, it will be important for Utahns to stay informed and engaged in the political process, and to make their voices heard on the issues that matter most to them.

As Salt Lake City continues to grow and develop, one question that often comes up is how to address the city's transportation needs. One solution that has been proposed is expanding the city's freeways, with the idea being that by adding more lanes, we can alleviate congestion and improve mobility.

However, this approach is not without its critics. Many transportation experts argue that building more freeways can actually create more problems than it solves. This phenomenon, known as "induced demand," occurs when the construction of new roadways leads to an increase in the number of cars on the road, ultimately negating any improvements in traffic flow.

So what can be done to address this issue? One solution is to focus on alternative modes of transportation, such as public transit, biking and walking. By providing people with options for getting around, we can reduce the number of cars on the road and ease congestion.

Additionally, cities can implement strategies like congestion pricing, which charges a fee for driving on heavily trafficked roads during peak hours. This can discourage people from driving during peak times and encourage them to use alternative modes of transportation.

It's clear that addressing congestion and improving mobility is a complex issue, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, by considering a range of options and approaches, we can work towards a transportation system that meets the needs of our growing city.