Metropolitan Area Travel Diary and Regional Design

We were asked in our Urban Environmental Theory and Practice class to track our travel patterns over a five day period, then design the metropolitan area in which we live to better fit the needs of us and other residents.

1.       Start with a travel log or journal. Record all trips for five days (Saturday and Sunday and three weekdays).  Place the information in a table.

Friday	Origin	Destination*	Distance	Mode
Trip 1	Home	Work	12.1 miles	Car
Trip 2	Home	Bed Bath & Beyond, Walmart, Target	14.6 miles	Car
Trip 3	Home	Home	.7 miles	Walk
Saturday
Trip 1	Home	Church	1 mile	Car
Trip 2	Home	Sister-in-laws	15.2 miles	Car
Sunday
Trip 1	Home	Church	1 mile	Car
Trip 2	Home	Sisters	13.4 miles	Car
Trip 3	Home	Sisters	13.4 miles	Car
Monday
Trip 1	Home	Work	12.1 miles	Car
Trip 2	Home	Walmart	13.9 miles	Car
Tuesday
Trip 1	Home	AF Station	10.1 miles	Car
Trip 2	AF Station	Murray Central	24.4 miles	Frontrunner
Trip 3	Murray Central	Stadium Station	10.2 miles	TRAX
Trip 4	Stadium Station	Classes	3.1 miles	Walking
Trip 5	Murray Central	Stadium Station	10.2 miles	TRAX
Trip 6	AF Station	Murray Central	24.4 miles	Frontrunner
Trip 7	Home	AF Station	10.1 miles	Car
*All destinations ended at home except for Tuesday (Figure 1)

Map of my Home to Work Route by Car (Figure 2)

Map of my Home to School Route by Car, Frontrunner, and TRAX (Figure 3)

 2.       Reflect on why you chose the modes of travel that you did.  What factors weighed into your decision (either consciously or not).

I have broken this section into three paragraphs, one for each of the figures listed above and a brief paragraph of clarification. To explain figure 1, I live in Orem and public transportation is less than desirable for convenience, reliability, and time. With public transportation, biking, and walking, which I will get into later, being less than desirable I use a car to get around. I would love to ride public transportation more frequently, but Orem is set up in a way that doesn’t allow me to use it with any amount of ease. Looking at Utah Valley’s public transportation and the popular nodes makes it seem like it wasn’t actually designed with the needs of its residents in mind, which as you will see in answer to question four is the exact opposite of how it should be created. The closest public transportation stop for me is over two miles from my work, and half a mile from my house. This leaves me two potential modes of transportation from my hose to the stop, and the stop to my work. I can either walk the 3 miles or bike the miles. I used to bike, but the streets from the stop to my work are very car-centric; as the roads were developed for cars only with the safety of any other mode on those roads being questionable. Furthermore, it takes two different buses and over an hour to make it 6 miles. I could bike the distance faster, but the issue of safety comes into play. This is why public transportation is not a viable option for most residents of Orem and Utah Valley.

Now for my commute to the University of Utah, I choose a mixture of public transportation and car. (The American Fork Frontrunner Station is 10.5 miles from my home, and the similar factors come into play for this leg of my trip making car the only viable option to the station.) From the American Fork Frontrunner station to the University of Utah, I choose public transportation as it allows me to do homework, relax, save money on gas, and avoid the traffic of I-15 during rush hour. The University of Utah also provides me with free transportation on Frontrunner and TRAX helping sway my decision towards public transportation. The trip usually takes 15 minutes longer than driving but allows me to do more on the trip, and drops me off closer to campus. If I were to drive, I would have to find/pay for parking or walk a mile plus from free parking areas, (which I do on Thursdays because of the time it takes me to get home using public transportation systems later at night.) If the Frontrunner ran more frequently throughout the day, as it does in the busier times of the day, I would use public transportation every time I made the trip to Salt Lake City with few exceptions.

Before I attended the University of Utah I never would have taken public transportation as the overall stigma of public transportation is highly negative in Utah Valley, and people are so habitual and car prone in this valley that it will take greater access, reliability, and exposure to positive opinions of public transportation for any significant shift to be made. Habits are hard to break, and a habit of riding public transportation would be harder to keep if reliability decreases. It is a cultural shift that will need to happen, as there is a highly negative stigma to riding the bus in Utah Valley, and that is the only public transportation available to Utah Valley citizens.

3.       Outline physical changes to the location and design of places in the metropolitan area that lead/help your travel decisions improve.  Draw upon lessons from lectures and readings.

I stared at a map of Orem, and its major pathways for what seemed like hours racking my brain on how I would make physical changes to the design of the place in order to help my travel decisions improve. The a few things continued to come to my mind were the following thoughts; residents of Utah Valley have become auto dependent due to the design of the Valley. Huge single family residential areas are clumped together with strips of business districts strewn along a few main roads. There is little to no mixed use in the majority of the areas. Even where it can be found the cost is such as to dissuade most income levels from living there and being far enough from all necessities to merit the need to drive the majority of the time. The main roads have been widened to allow for greater traffic to use them, which has increased the speed of traffic and as discussed in class allowed for a greater amount of individuals to use those sources over other modes of transportation. In the next several paragraphs I will dig into these thoughts and create physical changes to Orem and Utah Valley to improve my travel decisions.

As I thought about this place and continued to try and brainstorm ideas of how I would physically change it to improve travel decisions, the start of a solution occurred to me. Keep the grid the way it is, grids allow for better connectivity for all modes of transportation and enhance connectivity with potential nodal areas. To further this idea I would widen 1600 N and leave the rest of the paths alone. The proper infrastructure, outside of 1600 N, exists currently in Orem and will work as a foundation on which I will improve the design of place, and enhance social, environmental, and economic equality for the city.

With this infrastructure in place I would wipe clean the current placement of all residential, public, and commercial structures and rearrange them to meet the needs of all areas of the city, and the same could be done for the entire valley. (See Figure 4 below)

Major Pathways of Orem, Utah (Figure 4)

Major Nodes of Orem, Utah (Figure 5)

After this thought occurred to me I developed a map focusing on the main pathways throughout Orem city. As the game went in class we placed schools, office buildings, and other community needs around transportation lines.  Figure 5 shows the main nodal sections marked in red to emphasis the main intersections of transportation routes.

With these maps in place we can now redevelop the area for its resident’s needs and equality of social, economic, and environmental needs. The businesses would now be focused around the red marked nodal sections in figure 5. Orem has the population to support three major high schools, one in the top left section in between the four nodes, a second in the bottom left section in between the four nodes, and the last in the right middle section between the four nodes. Grocery stores would be built around the major nodes and the 3 clinics would follow the same pattern as the schools with the major hospital being in the middle left section.

With this redevelopment in place, day to day transportation would be reduced in time and distance as amenities would be more centralized to their residents. The centralization of these amenities would allow for different modes of transportation to now be viable. This includes public transportation. I would establish a mixture of bus/TRAX lines down State Street, Geneva, 800 E, University Parkway, Center Street, 800 N, and 1600 N. These lines would not only allow for alternate reliable means of transportation throughout Orem, but could increase connectivity to all areas of Utah Valley. The streets are also significantly wide enough to adapt them all to complete streets sharing the width of the road safely with all forms of transportation.

These changes would break the death grip that the car-centric Orem has on its citizen’s lives. This same idea would be established in all of Utah Valley allowing everyone to commute between cities by other means of transportation other than the private vehicle.

As to the why I suggest these changes, it goes beyond the transportation reasons I stated above. These changes allow for all residents to have close access to public amenities including parks, hospitals and clinics, food/groceries (cutting down on the food deserts which currently exist in Orem), proximity to jobs, education, and entertainment. This also clears up confusion on navigation through the city as the grid will be the standard that all roads run off. This also allows those living in the city to breathe cleaner air as less emission intensive modes of transportation would now be available.

This would also develop a greater amount of mixed use areas and higher density areas yet still allow clumping of businesses to a certain degree. A mix between the two is still vastly important for the social sphere of the neighborhoods, and commercial districts.

I mentioned mixed use, and to further clarify the reasons behind why I would incorporate mixed use into the redesign of the city is to develop: a sense of place, a walkable community (which leads to economic equality), and shorter day to day commute times (which cuts down on carbon emissions and costs of travel).

The positives of mixed use would reverse the habitual need to drive long distances, and bring
architecture and urban design to the human scale. How will it accomplish this? If a city is walkable people will then think about their modes of transportation. If walking is now an option then design would have to adjust to meet the needs of pedestrians as well as the private vehicle. Outdoor seating which is almost nonexistent in the current Orem, would be more available as the number of pedestrians would rise. (Pedestrians in this context means citizens who walk.) A rise in pedestrians would also lead to Orem residents being more relaxed as they have more time to enjoy the outdoors. It would also lead to a reduction in obesity levels as walking is a form of exercise. This would also allow for past times as less travel distance and travel time converts to more time for other things.

4.       From this exercise, reflect upon what a transportation system ideally accomplishes and thus what it might look like.

A transportation system ideally accomplishes the needs and desires of the residents that are affected by it. In other words the transportation system is developed in a way that it allows its users to get from their point As to their point Bs in an efficient and timely manner. This includes proximity to homes, business districts, and public amenities. What it would look like depends on its users and geography. If planned with its users in mind, it would look like is a heat map of residents ideal transportation routes laid over a geographical map. “Nothing about us without us is for us.” Transportation should be developed with the economic, environmental, and social good of its stakeholders in mind, and its stakeholders are all those affected by it.

Skyscraper Farms and Edible Walls - Living Architecture

I have been looking for greater amounts of information verticle farms, and edible walls, and came across this image. The ideas of habitat take green roofs, and green walls a step further. See the video below: