We’re Save Not Pave —

a community group in Cottonwood Heights trying to keep Wasatch Boulevard safe, scenic, and human-sized.
No one here is against roads; we’re just against turning them into racetracks. We like trees, slower speeds, and the radical idea that you should be able to walk your dog without fear of being drafted into traffic.

Here’s the latest…

Please take 3 minutes to help protect our canyons. Deadline Friday Jan 19.

Friends,

If you have ever sat in canyon traffic wondering how it got this bad, this is the moment where that future gets decided.

UDOT is in the middle of deciding what to build, where to build it, and how to manage access to Big Cottonwood Canyon for decades to come. Right now, they are asking for public input.

That window closes Friday, January 19, 2026.

If you do nothing, the default is that the plans move forward mostly unchanged.
If enough people speak up, the plans get shaped differently.

It really is that simple.

Submit a comment here: UDOT Big Cottonwood Canyon Study Portal
Deadline: Friday, January 19, 2026

What is being proposed

UDOT is evaluating a package of changes intended to reduce winter congestion on SR-190, including:

• Enhanced bus service every 10 to 20 minutes during peak winter periods
• A roughly 1,750 car parking and transit structure at the Gravel Pit near the canyon mouth
• A winter toll near Solitude Entry 1 to encourage carpooling and transit use
• Upgraded bus stops and crossings at resorts and trailheads

If UDOT determines there are no significant environmental impacts, a Finding of No Significant Impact could be issued, allowing construction to begin as early as 2027.

On the surface, that sounds reasonable.

But how these things are designed and combined will either help the problem or quietly make it worse.

These canyons are not normal roads

Big and Little Cottonwood are two narrow, steep, fragile corridors that carry traffic, wildlife, water, recreation, and our drinking supply through the same tight space.

They are not highways. They are not expandable. They are not forgiving.

When we build things that make it easier for more people to drive into them, more people do. That is not opinion. That is how human behavior works.

So if we build bigger parking structures, more lanes, or easier access at the bottom, we invite more cars into a place that physically cannot absorb them.

Then we are shocked when traffic comes back, parking fills up, air quality drops, wildlife gets squeezed, and the experience degrades for everyone.

That is what we are trying to avoid.

Save Not Pave’s perspective

We believe traffic congestion in the canyons is a real problem that needs to be addressed, but how we address it matters.

Our core principles are simple.

1. Do not induce more traffic into the canyons.
If we build large new parking structures and add more vehicle capacity at the canyon mouths, we risk pulling more cars into two narrow, boxed in canyons that are already ecological bottlenecks. This is classic induced demand. More infrastructure invites more driving, not less.

We support spreading access throughout the valley using distributed, well connected mobility hubs, not concentrating demand at a single choke point.

2. Big and Little Cottonwood are siblings. Plan them together.
What happens in one canyon affects the other. A solution that fixes Big by diverting traffic into Little is not a solution. It is displacement.

3. Transit must come first and be truly competitive.
We strongly support incentives to ride the bus. High quality transit is the only way to meaningfully reduce single occupancy vehicle trips.

That means frequent and reliable service, real travel time advantages, a safe and comfortable rider experience, and priority treatment in congestion.

We support a dedicated bus lane on Wasatch Boulevard if and only if it is actually used for buses and high occupancy vehicles.

We do not support a seven lane expansion of Wasatch Boulevard. We cannot keep widening roads and expect congestion to disappear. It has not worked anywhere else, and it will not work here.

4. Stewardship sometimes means limits.
These are not infinite landscapes. They are fragile, narrow, high value ecological systems that also serve as our watershed, wildlife habitat, and shared refuge.

Being good stewards sometimes means saying not everything can grow forever, not every demand can be met by expansion, and not every problem can be solved by building more.

There must be a point where we collectively choose the long term health of our mountains, air, water, and communities over unlimited growth, revenue, or recreation pressure.

Why your comment matters

Because agencies respond to pressure.
Because silence gets interpreted as agreement.
Because the official record is built from public comments.
And because this is one of those rare moments where your three minutes actually affects a ten year outcome.

You do not need to be an expert. You do not need the perfect words.

You just need to say what you care about.

Here is a sample you can copy, paste, and tweak

I support a transit first approach to Big Cottonwood Canyon that gives people a real alternative to driving.

Please plan Big and Little Cottonwood together so solutions in one do not just push traffic and impacts into the other.

I am concerned that concentrating parking and access at the canyon mouth will invite more cars into a fragile and limited system instead of reducing pressure on it.

Please prioritize solutions that reduce single occupancy vehicle trips, protect nearby neighborhoods, and treat environmental health as a real constraint, not a side note.

Thank you for considering my comment.

Submit here: UDOT Big Cottonwood Canyon Study Portal
Deadline: Friday, January 19, 2026

This is not about being against anything.

It is about being for something.

For mountains that still feel like mountains.
For canyons that still function ecologically.
For communities that are not turned into traffic bypasses.
For solutions that actually solve the problem instead of postponing it.

Please comment. Please share. Please help shape this.

Micki Harris
Save Not Pave