What it does, what it almost did, and what it doesn’t do.

On March 7, the Utah Legislature voted to end Salt Lake City’s control of its own streets. Specifically, the capital can not move forward on any “highway reduction strategy” on a city-owned collector or arterial until they get approval from the Utah Department of Transportation.

It’s important to understand that Salt Lake City already has no authority over state-owned roads that pass through its borders. These include surface highways that are often misunderstood by both residents and visitors—roads like State Street/Highway 89, Redwood Road/Highway 68, and 700 East/Highway 71, among many, many others in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County and throughout the state.

What SB195 targets are the streets that are fully owned, designed, operated and maintained by Salt Lake City. And until now, it has been a bedrock principle that the city is free to do with its streets as it pleases, from closing it off to vehicle access completely—like Open Streets on Main—to installing a humble speed bump in a cash-strapped attempt to save lives.

After SB195, the City only has authority on those streets insofar as the city’s plans satisfy the car-centric administrators of the state’s highway department, and only after a time-consuming and performative effort to hash out a new “mobility plan” (fun fact: Salt Lake City *just* updated its transportation plan, Connect SLC, but that doesn’t count). And until that plan is prepared and secures UDOT’s blessing, the city can make no change to its streets that inconvenience drivers in any way.

Here is that portion of the bill, in the Legislature’s own words:

SB195 Lines 3048-3056
"Highway reduction strategy" means any strategy that has the potential to permanently decrease the number of vehicles that can travel on an arterial or a collector highway per hour, including:
(A)reducing the number of motorized vehicle travel lanes on an arterial or collector highway;
(B)narrowing existing motorized vehicle travel lanes on an arterial or collector highway; or
(C)any other strategy that when implemented may increase congestion or impede traffic flow for motor vehicles driving on an arterial or collector highway.

Sweet Streets opposed this bill, and believes it will harm the work of improving streets not just in the state capitol, but throughout the Wasatch Front. But it also includes critical concessions that were won only because of the efforts of our community of supporters, and that will allow for momentum on critical projects to continue.

Keep reading for our best attempt at a summary of where the bill started, the twists and turns it took along the way, and where it landed. And to everyone who joined us on Capitol Hill for the House Transportation Committee Hearing, and to everyone who contacted their Representatives, Senators and other elected officials, your time, efforts and support truly Saved our Streets.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This fight made us stronger, and we’ll be ready for the next one, and the next one, and the next one, until every Utahn can safely thrive in their city, no matter how they choose to get around.

—The Sweet Streets Board of Directors

Sweet Streets board member Julian Jurkoic testifies against SB195 before the House Transportation Committee on Feb. 27, 2025.

The Long Road to 7th Substitute SB195

SB195—Versions 1 and 2

Every year, various small tweaks to the state’s transportation code are thrown together in a bundle, which the House and Senate Transportation committee chairpersons co-sponsor. This is called the “omnibus” bill, and for the first half of the 2025 session, that’s all SB195 was.

It has sections dealing with air ambulance dispatch, one-wheels and electric unicycles and, until the 3rd substitute (more on that later) the most interesting portion was a requirement for all Utah cities to study whether and how to bridge streets that are dead-ended by canals.

SB195—Version 3

But then, out of nowhere, Taylorsville Republican Sen. Wayne Harper moved the “3rd Substitute” during a sleepy, late-night debate on the Senate floor. And when asked what his new substitute did, Harper responded only that it requires a traffic study in Salt Lake County.

That was, in simple terms, a lie. The 3rd Substitute instituted a blanket “moratorium” on street safety work on “highways” in any city of the first class in any county of the first class that has an international airport within its boundaries.

How many cities fit that description? Only one—Salt Lake City. And under the definition of “highway”— the legal, honest-to-god definition of “highway” just a couple paragraphs higher in the bill—what streets would be under moratorium?

All of them. Every single street in Salt Lake City. No more raised crosswalks. No more speed limit changes. No more traffic calming. Definitely no more bike lanes. No nothing.

The changes were so sweeping, members of the Utah Senate took the atypical step of recasting their votes as “no,” after the fact. And Sweet Streets issued a red alert, asking our friends and supporters to blot out the sun with their emails and texts, and to join us on the Hill for the House Transportation Committee—the only committee hearing and only chance for public comment on Harper’s changes, since he waited until after the Senate Committee heard SB195 to insert the language into the bill.

Sweet Streets Storms the Hill

And we packed the room! There were so many Sweet Streeters ready to testify against SB195, the chairperson had to limit us to just a handful of people with 1 minute each. Best of all, we kept our cool. Speakers were polite, thoughtful, and clear in their expectations of a safe, walkable, livable community where locally-elected leaders are trusted to make local decisions.

There was one person there to speak in favor of handcuffing Salt Lake City. We’ve poked a lot of fun already so we’ll leave that person unnamed here, suffice it to say that the stories we’ve heard about trying to get a certain east-side byway built make a lot more sense now. Sidenote: Remember to always participate in your neighborhood community council, if you can.

It’s a dirty business, legislatin’, but we gave as good as we got. And the House Transportation Committee will never forget the day the streets weirdos “found parking” and showed up. Visit our instagram account for a video recap, and one more “thank you!” to everyone who came out. Fingers crossed they don’t make us activate the red alert in 2026 but if they do, we’ll be twice as strong and half as patient.

SB195—Versions 4 and 5

One lawmaker did the easy thing and codified a new 4th version of SB195 that was identical to the 2nd version, stripping the moratorium on SLC and restoring the neutral “omnibus” bill. That version was dead on arrival, as these things often are at the Legislature.

Instead, Harper and his House co-sponsor Rep. Kay Christofferson, R-Lehi, put forward Substitute 5, which softened the moratorium to a “pause” on collector and arterial projects, pending creation of a mobility plan and review by UDOT.

This meant that traffic calming and byways work could continue on the smallest category of local city streets, essentially those that were included in the initial “20 is Plenty” rollout. These are the streets many residents directly interface with outside their homes, so removing the red tape here is a meaningful change.

But the problem becomes quite obvious once you consider the ramifications—Salt Lakers often can’t go more than one block or so without having to cross a local collector, a local arterial, or a state highway. Building Sweet streets is as much about building Sweet crossings as it is the streets themselves, and many of our most critical gaps occur where smaller streets interact with larger ones.

Worse, two huge projects are on deck for this year that directly reduce lanes on collectors and arterials—the 300 West bikeway and the 400 South Viaduct Trail. Simply put, we can’t afford to delay these projects.

Sweet Streets opposed Substitute 5. But we had suggestions for how to improve it: remove “lane narrowing” from the naughty list and change “collector” and “arterials” to only pause work on streets with more than 15,000 average daily trips, or AADT.

These were scientifically sound suggestions. The *U.S. Department of Transportation* says that streets below 15,000 AADT are ripe for road diets. And “lane narrowing” is just a smart thing that shouldn’t be banned—Utah street lanes are already too wide, for no good reason, and narrowing them frees up space for more efficient uses without decreasing vehicle capacity. With lane narrowing, truly, everyone wins.

Lawmakers didn’t take our advice. They did the exact opposite instead.

SB195—Version 5.1

Another late night of sleepy debates, this time in the House. Without any warning to anyone involved in negotiations on Sub 5, Rep. Christofferson moved new amendments into SB195. When asked what the amendments did, he said he focused the bill on larger roads.

That was, put simply, a lie. The amendments tore up the Sub 5 compromise and reverted “collectors” and “arterials” back to “highway,” which—according to the legal language in state law noted above—would have gone back to meaning that Salt Lake City could not touch any of its streets, in any way, until UDOT gives the green light to proceed.

The bill passed the House that night but required a “concurrence” vote in the Senate. Sweet Streets rang the alarm and once again, everyone did incredible work getting the word out. The next day, Harper hit the brakes and a conference committee was formed to figure out the final version.

SB195—Version 7

We never did find out what Substitute 6 would have done, it’s online if anyone cares to read through it. Instead, Harper and Christofferson settled on Substitute 7, which is a slightly retooled version of Substitute 5, before the amendments tore it to pieces.

Salt Lake City is still blocked from working on “collector” and “arterial” streets, but small local streets are fair game for traffic calming, CIP projects, liveable streets and byways. In fact, work recently launched on the Kensington Byway, and we’ll be watching how that comes together.

300 West and 400 South are technically paused, but the city can apply for “expedited review” from UDOT, which had already signed off on those projects. In fact, most of the big projects on Salt Laker’s radar, things like the Green Loop and different byways, are alreadly on the Unified Transportation Plan, which UDOT has a say in as a member (and, arguably, driving force) of the Wasatch Front Regional Council.

To UDOT’s credit, they have shown no indication that they plan to impede any planned SLC projects, and their representatives were clear that they had not requested SB195. By all accounts, the request for SLC’s street moratorium came from wealthy, influential residents of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods, who prefer the convenience of fast driving to the overall vibrancy and quality of life in Salt Lake.

Presumably, the 600/700 North project can continue, because it’s located on the west side and outside of the formal “study” area. And presumably, 2100 South can continue, because that project was duly underway before this law passed.

But we don’t yet know what this means for resurfacing and restriping projects that were on the horizon, like a plan to paint a consistent bike lane on 1700 South, or a plan to narrow the car lanes and buffer the bike lane on northernmost blocks of 700 East, which are city-owned.

And we don’t know what this means for so many planned traffic calming and byways projects that, while located on local streets, touch larger collectors and arterials. These projects rely on bulbouts at intersection corners, median refuge islands and high-visibility crossing signals to facilitate connection between points, and there is only so much that can be done within the confines of a single block.

Sweet Streets will be watching every step of the process in this new mobility plan and UDOT’s mandated review of Salt Lake City’s “highway reduction strategies” We’ll also be looking for any and all opportunities for our community of supporters to provide input and review plans, including where seemingly finalized projects might be reopened for adjustments as a result of the pause.

But it’s also important that we reject any framing of SB195 as a “compromise.” This law was ill-conceived, pushed by bad-faith actors citing erroneous justifications, who then reneged on promises and misrepresented their actions and intent. The city’s residents, through their elected representation, have lost power, and are now subject to new levels of formal supremacy held by their suburban counterparts.

We’re in this fight for the long term. And thanks to SB195, we have a clearer picture than ever who we’re fighting, who our friends are, and how we can win.

Stay safe out their friends. See you on the Streets!

Utah Legislature targets SLC street improvements with passage of SB195