What is the Unified Transportation Plan?
Transportation projects in Utah are identified, compiled, and prioritized for the Unified Transportation Plan (UTP) by Utah’s four urban metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) – Cache, Wasatch Front Regional Council (WFRC), Mountainland Association of Governments (MAG), and Dixie – along with the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) and Utah Transit Authority (UTA). Utah’s MPOs each create an individual Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) and UDOT works on the Long Range Plan (LRP), which covers non-urban MPO areas statewide. After desired projects are identified, each MPO and transit organization, as well as UDOT, prioritizes projects into roughly three 10-year phases. The identification and prioritization process happens in close consultation with local governments and includes public input over the course of a four-year process.
Local Planning Meets Statewide Collaboration
Once these groups complete their four-year planning process, they come together to create the UTP, a uniquely collaborative effort in which all the individual entities agree on a shared time horizon and a statewide revenue estimate to inform their individual planning efforts. This ensures that local-level planning is generally guided by the same set of assumptions statewide, reducing redundancies and ensuring the efficient allocation of resources.
Funding decisions are then made through each individual organization, and projects are financed by fuel taxes, vehicle registration fees, auto-related sales taxes, federal funding and grants, and more. Utah legislators traditionally prioritize statewide transportation system efficiency and their support provides important and reliable funding.
