A new state law asks city leaders to pinpoint physical obstacles for travelers by 2027, and Midvale is hitting the ground running.

On Oct. 21, the Midvale City Council unanimously approved a plan for 11 projects aimed at reducing barriers that walkers, bikers and drivers face when traveling to community hubs.

“We decided to get ahead of this as quickly as we can because it can potentially give the city a leg up in applications for funding,” Midvale’s Planning Director Wendelin Knobloch said at a Planning Commission meeting on Oct. 8.

Utah passed Senate Bill 195 in the 2025 legislative session, requiring cities to include a transportation connectivity plan in their master plans. The new law will provide higher funding priority to transportation projects highlighted in connectivity plans. Municipalities have until July 2027 to submit their plans.

“We do appreciate the speed at which this was done, but also in qualitative and quantitative measures,” Mayor Dustin Gettel said moments before the council approved the plan.

   Map outlining Midvale’s priority transportation projects. (Giovanni Radtke/City Journals)

The priority projects selected in the connectivity blueprint crisscross 10 miles throughout Midvale. The projects include installing bike lanes, crosswalks and multiuse bridges. The plan also proposes creating trail links and entirely new trail networks.

SB 195 mandates that cities identify and fix physical obstacles to travel. 

Tyler Smithson, a transportation planner and architect from the consulting company Parametrix, is the project manager for the connectivity plan. He told the commission that the planners built on the state legislature’s requirement to address physical barriers by adding additional impediment categories to their analysis.

Path along Jordan River Parkway. The connectivity plan lists building a bridge connection between Jordan Parkway and Brigham Junction Parkway. (Giovanni Radtke/City Journals)

“We took what [the legislature] recommended and expanded upon it to include a couple more categories that I thought would be more of a holistic analysis to be more comprehensive of the full community and the needs that the citizens here face,” Smithson said.

Along with physical constraints, the plan identified five other impediments to travel: infrastructure barriers, gaps in active transportation, safety and performance issues, land-use conflicts, and equity and access barriers.

Some of the physical impediments lawmakers singled out were floodplains and canals. However, Smithson sees Midvale’s waterways as an asset, not an obstacle.

“I see these waterways not as impediments but as opportunities because of their preserved right of way; they do have a designated use, but that use may be able to change to adapt and allow for additional uses like active transportation,” he said.

To capitalize on Midvale’s waterways, the plan prioritizes the development of the Midvale Canal Trail and a pedestrian bridge linking Bingham Junction Park to the Jordan River Parkway.

The priority projects vary in cost, construction duration and planning complexity. Smithson noted that one project selected in the plan – a 12-foot roadside trail on Fort Union stretching from the western city limits to Ramanee Street – was highly complex and required a significant investment in both cost and duration. 

The Fort Union to Ramanee connection would also include a 14-foot safety island for pedestrians, replacing a center turn lane. The planner’s analysis estimates the project’s price tag at $15 million.

“You could kind of lay the bricks for the future planning commission, council [and] leaders of the city to realize, but [the project] has a huge impact on health, safety and welfare,” Smithson said.