The Draper City Council held a study session beginning at 12:45 PM followed by a regular meeting at 7:00 PM on July 7, 2026. The study session covered presentations on the River to Range Trail, solid waste service options, and capital improvement projects. The regular meeting included public hearings on zoning amendments and a resolution to contract with a private solid waste hauler. All votes were unanimous (4-0) with Councilmember Dalin absent.
During public hearings (5A, 5B, 5C), no public comment was offered.
Since we're a little behind. Um, first item on our agenda is the a discussion on the river to range trail from design workshop. You guys want to come up? And for the record, the river to range trail is a trail at the point that will connect both with the Jordan River and ultimately Porter Rockwell in Draper. Go ahead, sir. Thank you. Um, thanks for having me tonight. I'm Chris Geddes with Design Workshop. Um, good to see many of you again. We were here uh year and a half ago or so for station area planning. Um so the river to range trail is is the idea of this is is the purpose is to connect the city um from the Porter Rockwell Trail to the uh the Jordan River Parkway. Um obviously we have some um important infrastructural elements that have prevented that from happening um to date. So this project really looks at what are the opportunities to do that. Um, what is feasible? Um, what are the corridor opportunities that we can connect to, and then importantly, how do we support future funding and implementation as opportunities arise. Um the project study area is basically from 123rd south to 146 south, um, and then Porter Rock Whale Trail to the Jordan River Parkway. You can see the outline in your map. Um, it includes a lot of your your core residential areas that includes the emerging point development at Vista Station. Um, so there's a lot going on, and the opportunity to really help connect the city east to west is something that's been really important to um to staff. Um so from a process standpoint, um the first thing we did was we came and we actually walked on the ground, looked at opportunities, used um aerial views just to identify what uh potential um locations could be for trail a trail connection. Uh we walked with city staff, we had the opportunity to go up and down the corridor, really uh primarily identifying what parks and and um uh existing trails we could connect from, uh, and then where were the real feasible opportunities to actually cross I-15 and the railroad tracks. Um from there we don't do a pretty detailed analysis about cost and benefit and the amount the number of uh draper residents that in um the uh uh potential trail connections uh could serve, and from that we shortlisted it to four different um opportunities, which I'll talk through here in just a minute. I want to point out that this is this does not designate a a preferred trail connection. There are a lot of unknowns, there are a lot of um heavy infrastructure projects that are that are planned in the future. There's the point development that um is is occurring as as we speak. So what we wanted to do is provide options so that as opportunities for partnerships, opportunities for funding came up, you can respond to those in a way that makes sense for the city. Um so opportunities and constraints um really there are opportunities to connect to existing trail corridors really throughout both east and west uh uh draper. Um so really thinking about where are those opportunities, specifically off-street connections. What we try to do in this plan was avoid um putting um bikes next to vehicles. So in in most cases here, we we do completely avoid um uh those those bike vehicle interfaces with a few um exceptions. Um lots of coordination with regional partners, UDOT, UTA, WFRC is here today, uh POMSLA, which is the point development group, uh really trying to leverage the opportunity that is there, but also make sure that we're thinking about your existing residents and what makes sense um for them from a kind of geographic standpoint. Uh the Vista uh Vistin area or sorry, VIST and Vista Station area plan was was considered in here. Uh you'll see that. Um, and and if you don't know, there is also an I an I-15 northbound study being done by UDOT today that is looking to expand um the the width of the highway north of Bangarder um through the study area. So that's something to consider in the future. Um so we talked about I-15, we talked about the rail tracks. Spangler Highway is obviously uh a constraint. Topography, especially on the south uh east side of the site as you um as you head up on the point itself and go to the rock port of Rockwell uh trail can be a challenge. So there's a big great change there, um, and thinking about existing land uses and development patterns. Um so what we learned through the study, um there are really limited um crossing opportunities uh at I-15 in particular. Again, we went up and down the corridor to see what the opportunities um could be, and we really landed on four um three and a half, if you will, um, real opportunities to cross the to cross the highway and connect to existing trail systems. Uh again, existing infrastructure important to really leverage that. Um we've looked a lot at at drainage easements um and uh and city-owned uh properties to consider where trails might be appropriate, um, and then excuse me, implementation is gonna be critical. This can be a phased approach, but it's obviously those big ticket pieces of crossing a highway or crossing the tracks that really require us to think long term about how we implement the full trail system. So the short listed quarter options. Again, 123 south on the north there, 146 on the south. We had uh six options to begin with. We really paired it down to three or four, um, which one is a 1A and 1B. Um so I'll go through each of those individually. Um option one, northern option um A, uh which is 2.1.