The Lehi City Council met on May 13, 2025, starting with a pre-council session at 5:30 PM and the regular session at 7:00 PM. The meeting covered a range of topics including infrastructure planning, land use amendments, budget discussions, and code changes. Significant public comment was heard on the Salt Spring General Plan Amendment, and the council voted to deny it. Other items included approval of zone changes, annexations, and a preliminary subdivision, as well as discussions on sidewalk funding and home occupation regulations.
Which is what South South is. So there is still, you know, issue with those right and left hooks that you have to take care of in your design. But overall, it's far less conflict than if you're out on a typical bike lane in the roadway. And this just goes to show, you know, Ashton Boulevard and just all kinds of typical bike lanes. You have a lot more conflict and intersection. So these are the possible movements a bike could take and a car could take, so that whole pink area is where the conflict is. Whereas uh separated bike lanes, you just have that one point where the cars are turning on that to that leg of the roadway. So it's far less conflict. Um so then the key is just to slow those turning movements enough to make that a safer corner. So I just kind of want to show us quickly some of these uh uh possible conflicts. Uh so we have three potential designs. There's so many more designs you could do than this, just these, but I just do these out there. So you have uh one-way bike lanes just out on the road, like you see, pretty common. Um there's nothing stopping from that person being distracted and drifting into that bike lane and hitting someone. We had uh a couple of boys a couple of years ago in South Jordan riding in a bike lane, 114 South, and somebody looked down for a second and drifted over and killed one of the boys. So um not how paint is not protection, it requires and it's not as uh forgiving to human mistakes. Um so that's the the issue with typical bike lanes. Um and then you are still subject to those turn movements at intersections from other cars. And basically the whole bike lane is a conflict point. At any point cars could cross it to get into parking, or if they're make a mistake and drift into that. Now for a separated or protected bike lane, those are concrete curbs separating the bike lanes from the parking. This one's a one-way, so it's one way on both sides. There's islands or concrete protection, so you're gonna know it before you hit someone that you're going off the road. So it's better to damage someone's tire wheel than hit somebody. Um so there's the islands protect the people in the bike lane. Um so if somebody's riding a bike there, you have those left-turn movements still. But the overall conflict is just that little square overhead. Um for the two-way bikeway, similar to South South. Again, you still have the protection of those islands, so somebody couldn't just drift over. South South isn't quite as you know, robust protection as this, but you're gonna notice those delineators and want to move over before you hit somebody. Um same thing with that conflict, but the one difference is there is that contra flow movement of somebody coming down that side, so there's a little bit of additional risk with that versus the one-way style. Um the overall conflict point is just right there. Now, there are ways to mitigate those two-way bikeways, uh, which are bike signals at busy intersections, raising narrow awareness, like with striping at the crossing points, improved side lines to limiting parking from getting too close, and then uh slowing those vehicle turns. So, this is an example of a continuous crossing that slows people down across that bikeway rather than uh having a large turn right here or something. Now, South South pretty well does all of those. Um the bike signal is not there yet, but it's planned with 23rd West. Um it's done some with the the vehicle turns, but perhaps there's ways to improve that in the future. I'm not gonna spend too much time on this because I think Brad showed you some of this last week, but shows the possible evolution of what could happen to a roadway. This is I don't know if Brad had this, but this is what would happen if you were to move the curb on one side, you could put the bike bikeway just completely behind a curb. Or if the roadway were to be completely rebuilt. Um you could go to a one-way on both sides, which might be even a little bit better than the two-way. Um, but the two-way just works well for a retrofit type of project. Uh for the sake of time, I may not show too much, but we did have some uh footage from New Jersey when we went over to that training, and they had all sorts of bikeways and protection types, and it was interesting to see all the different ways that can be done. Now, just to kind of wrap it up, I like to ask this question. Ask not what your city can do for walking and cycling, but what your walking and cycling can do for your city. So we're not doing this for the sake of riding bikes and walking, it's for the benefits that they can bring us and the city. So basically to summarize some of that could be independence for and to kind of go in line with what our overall golf goal for the city is being cutting edge and family centric. You know, independence and safety for all ages and abilities would be super important with that. Improved public health, potential for reduced vehicle traffic. There's more to it than just this, which is why there's that asterisk there.