Pedestrian safety is a problem for many small and midsize cities across Utah, especially as they grow.
That’s the case in Moab, where a recent citizen report described Main Street as the most dangerous in the state.
A new analysis from the Utah Department of Transportation studied about two miles of State Route 191, which doubles as Main Street in Moab. It identified trouble spots and potential solutions.
It suggests things like repairing sections of damaged sidewalks, widening crosswalks and adding bulb-outs, where the curb extends into the parking lane to make crosswalk distances shorter. Another option would be adding raised medians, which have been shown to significantly reduce pedestrian crashes.
City leaders will discuss UDOT’s recommendations and decide on their priorities within the next couple of months.
“Some of these things are going to be really easy to do, and we'll be able to accomplish them in the really short term with budgets that already exist,” Moab Community Development Director Michael Black said.
Even with other options that will take more time and more investment, he thinks “there's a lot that we can do over the next five years to make the downtown closer to that vision that everybody has.”
Resident Kevin Dwyer was part of the group behind the citizen report. Based on a decade of crash data, it said Moab has a higher rate of serious injuries than other towns, such as Logan and Tooele.
He was disappointed that UDOT’s analysis focused more on traffic efficiency than preventing fatalities.
“I don’t think that the citizens of Moab are clamoring for efficiency around town. They’re not looking for faster commute times. Moab citizenry really wants to focus on safety.”
While repainting crosswalks and adding medians would be positive steps, Dwyer said UDOT missed an opportunity to highlight another potential solution: lowering speed limits.
“That’s what’s underlying the problem. People are having accidents at too high a rate of speed, which is causing excess fatalities,” Dwyer said.
Nationwide, pedestrian deaths are at their highest levels in four decades as drivers have become increasingly distracted by technology and vehicles have become larger and heavier. Fifty-three pedestrians died on Utah roads in 2022, according to UDOT data, up from 37 in 2018.
Lowering speeds by 5 or 10 mph across the Moab corridor might only increase drive times by a minute or two, Dwyer said, but it could have a big impact on reducing crashes and fatalities.
On top of that, he said it would be an option the state could implement quickly for relatively little cost.
“It’s the lowest hanging fruit next to the painting of crosswalks.”
Moving the location of speed limit transitions could also help Moab’s situation, he said. He noted one busy supermarket entrance with a crosswalk just south of downtown that could benefit from being included in the lower speed zone, for example.
A big part of the challenge for Moab is that Main Street is also a state highway, the primary north-south route across eastern Utah.
That creates a bottleneck since it’s the only direct way to get from one side of town to the other. Vehicles passing through or heading to nearby public lands, such as Arches and Canyonlands national parks, converge downtown along with the estimated 3 million people visiting Moab each year.
“With all the tourism and the people that come here to visit your city, they need to be safe as they're walking throughout the street,” said UDOT Traffic Operations Engineer Cody Marchant as he presented the report to the Moab City Council.
It also means drivers cruising along in the 65 mph zones on the outskirts of town often don’t slow down enough, fast enough as the speed limit drops in the city. Similar issues happen on the way out of town, too.
“People are speeding up as they notice the new speed limit is coming up,” Marchant said.
As part of its analysis, UDOT did a speed survey in one section of Moab, which found the biggest problem with speeding drivers occurs during the downtown transition between the 30 and 45 mph zones. The UDOT report, however, doesn’t directly suggest reducing speed limits. Rather, it recommends conducting another speed study on the entire Moab corridor.
The fact that Main Street is a state highway also makes it harder for the city to make changes that might improve safety on its own, which has frustrated advocates like Dwyer.
Even though Moab’s population, visitation and development have grown significantly over the past couple of decades, he said the speed limits haven’t changed to adjust to the town’s new reality. And he’s not convinced they ever will.
“I don’t know whether to be optimistic, like ‘Now’s the time’ … or to be depressed.”
