In the 2025 Utah legislative session, the state legislature passed SB195, an omnibus transportation bill. Hidden in the bill was language (Lines 3046 to 3129) that took away Salt Lake City’s autonomy to manage its own streets and instead gave the Utah Department of Transportation oversight and veto power over projects on collectors and arterials.
The bill has had serious impact to Salt Lake City’s streets already. It has killed the extension of the new 300 West bikeway from 400 S to 300 S, stopped bike lanes on overbuilt 700 E between S. Temple and 300 S, and caused UDOT to spend approximately $1 million on studying the impact of traffic calming projects and bike lanes in Salt Lake City. Spoiler: there was no impact on traffic.
Recently, Kyle Holland of The Red Line Podcast put together a great explainer on the impacts of the bill. Watch it on YouTube here:
See also our advocacy alert explaining many of the problems with the bill. Our alert refers to the 3rd version of the bill, which was later replaced with a similar but slightly changed language.
