As someone who agreed with former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and the environmental organizations who sued to stop the initial alignment of the Legacy Highway, I view the new parkway that is scheduled to open this week as a victory for the art of compromise. That’s all too rare these days. And it’s a lesson politicians, citizens, planners and decision makers ought to follow in the future. The sad part of this legacy is that it took a lawsuit that ended up costing the state millions of dollars for planners to do the right thing. See link to the Trib's A-1 package Sunday here.

There was no doubt that, even with commuter rail, a highway was needed and was going to be built. The question was where and how. The first alignment that resulted in the contentious lawsuit the environmentalists ultimately one would have contributed to urban sprawl and destroyed wetlands. To coin a phrase, highway planners and Davis County leaders basically said “our way AND the highway” instead of looking at more reasonable alternatives.

When the environmental groups won the lawsuit, they sat down and came up with a plan that destroyed fewer wetlands, reduced the speed limit, kept big trucks off the new highway, helped push commuter rail forward, reduced and eliminated some development options and created a new trail system. Everyone won a little and lost some in the compromise which was a good one.

Let’s hope that the legacy of this project is that planners, politicians and environmentalists can learn to work together and
compromise in the early stages of any project rather than end up in an expensive court fight.

As for myself, I can’t wait to go bicycling on the new trail system.
Tom