What We Heard

Throughout the project there was an extensive community involvement effort. This effort included building a project website, creating community surveys, meeting with bike shops and stakeholders, and hosting booths at three community events. The team talked to dozens of people and received over 200 completed surveys. The comments, observations, criticisms, opinions, and discussions provided the team with invaluable information that contributed greatly to the planning process. The variety of outreach methods enabled feedback from a broad spectrum of the community. What we heard from these groups is provided in this chapter.

Project Website

The project website can be accessed at: www.jordanatp.com.

The website contains project maps and information. There are videos of the community events and a presentation of the survey results, and downloadable PDF files of the project lists and maps. Over 2,400 visitors have viewed the project website.

Figure 3-1: Community event in 2019

Figure 3-2: Landing page for the project website

Community Events

The project team hosted booths at three community events: The Salt Lake County Safe Kids Fair held in West Jordan City Park on May 18th, 2019, the SoJo Summerfest held in South Jordan City Park on May 31st and June 1st, 2019, and the West Jordan Western Stam- pede held in West Jordan City Park on July 4th, 2019. Two in West Jordan and one in South Jordan. At the three events we had visitors from both cities and others (Taylorsville, Riverton, Sandy, etc.).

Complete event videos can be found on the project website www. jordanatp.com.

Figure 3-3: Safe Kids Fair, May 2019

Figure 3-4: SoJo Summerfest, June 2019

Figure 3-5: Western Stampede, July 2019

These community events were chosen because of their popularity and the opportunity to talk to the most people about the project. All events were well attended, and the team spoke to dozens of people at each event and received comments on the active transportation network. Some of the most notable take-aways from the events were:

∙   Safety concerns on arterials like Redwood Road, 7800 South and Bangerter Highway. The safety concerns were mainly regarding the difficult pedestrian and bicycle crossings.

∙   A desire for more east-west trails crossing West Jordan and South Jordan.

∙   Requests for a new bike trail along the existing UTA Trax Red Line rail corridor.

∙   The potential for placing new trails along existing canals running north-south in the cities.

∙   A preference for riding on slower speed roads for new bike lanes instead of along arterial streets.

Many location-specific comments were gathered at events as stickers on a map. Each one was then geocoded and is now available on the project website.

Figure 3-6: Public comments from community event

Figure 3-7: Public comments converted and displayed in GIS

Community Survey

The team sought to reach all members of the community, includ- ing those that may not have attended one of the events. A community survey was created and posted on each city's web page. The survey was available beginning in May and available through July 2019. Over 200 respondents completed the survey, including 114 in West Jordan and 99 in South Jordan. The following graphs summarize the results of the West Jordan portion of the survey.

Figure 3-8

Half of those taking the survey stated that they never bike anywhere in the community, while 13% stated that they bike everyday. The Jordan River Trail seemed like the favorite biking route with 49% of respondents saying they ride on it between once a day to once a year.

Figure 3-9

Figure 3-10

Figure 3-11: Pedestrian on the Jordan River Trail

Figure 3-12

Respondents indicated that their top priority would be to extend the trail system in West Jordan (72%). Adding buffered bike lanes was another priority for respondents (45%).

Figure 3-13

The survey was helpful not only for evaluating potential projects, but also for determining facility types and priority given to the ranking on the projects.