Utah State Bill Could Force Removal of SLC Bike Lanes

A proposed Utah state bill would require Salt Lake City to remove traffic calming infrastructure including bike lanes on three specific corridors.

According to reporting by Kea Wilson in Streetsblog USA, the bill would also bar local officials from implementing “highway reduction” efforts on many streets. “The hyper-specificity of S.B. 242 … would be a particularly stunning example of a state squashing a city's traffic violence prevention efforts, forcing Salt Lake to adhere to 11-foot minimum car lane widths on many roads and mandating onerous ‘stakeholder engagement’ requirements to remove as few as three parking spaces on specific categories of roads.”

Wilson notes that a previous Utah bill cited a debunked study that claims that traffic calming features can decrease air quality and endanger road users. “S.B. 242 could weaponize that pseudoscience even further by allowing the state to interfere in traffic safety in an even wider subset of Salt Lake City roads.”