Southern Utah has plenty of wide open spaces. So, it can be easy for drivers cruising along at 65 mph to forget to slow down when they enter a community.
Recent speed limit reductions on Moab’s Main Street aim to change that.
New signs began going up in mid-February across a nearly 12-mile stretch of State Route 191. Speeds have been reduced by up to 15 mph on the outskirts of town and by 5 mph in areas adjacent to the downtown core. The limit is still 30 mph in downtown Moab.
For locals like Karen Guzman-Newton, it’s the culmination of months of work to make the corridor safer for both residents and visitors. The former Moab city council member helped compile a citizen report in 2024 drawing attention to the conflict between cars and people on Main Street.
“It's a great first step,” she said. “And I think it's going to be a telltale sign to see, is it effective? I hope it is.”
She also hopes this isn’t the last change to improve safety. With reduced speed limits alone, Guzman-Newton said it falls to already-overburdened law enforcement officers to make sure people follow the rules. Grand County has a population of fewer than 10,000 people but welcomes around 2.5 million visitors annually.
Pedestrian safety has become an increasing concern from St. George to Logan as Utah’s small cities grow and attract more visitation. Since many main streets — including Moab’s — double as state highways, it’s up to the Utah Department of Transportation to make changes.
“This is a challenge,” UDOT spokesperson Kevin Kitchen said. “It's a challenge in rural areas throughout the entire state to deal with the growth curve that is ahead of us.”
Because of the seasonal nature of tourism, he said communities like Moab deal with “some flash flood and then some drought” when it comes to vehicle and pedestrian traffic.
The ebb and flow of visitors is just one of the many ingredients that create a uniquely perilous recipe in Moab, said resident Kevin Dwyer, who co-authored the 2024 citizen report with Guzman-Newton.
For starters, drivers on Highway 191 are often unfamiliar with the area, he said. A heavily used biking path also runs parallel to the highway – and once the road gets downtown, there’s a large concentration of people walking between shops, hotels and restaurants.
“All of these factors combine to make the situation — for pedestrians, bicyclists and other vulnerable users — very dangerous,” Dwyer said.
He and Guzman-Newton would still like UDOT to take additional steps, such as making crosswalks more visible with eye-catching paint or flashing lights. Dwyer also pointed out two spots that he thinks could use new crossings, one north of downtown between Proper Brewing and Burger Company and Moab Springs Ranch hotel and another on the south end of town between Hidden Cuisine restaurant and Scenic View Inn.
UDOT is already testing additional ideas in Moab, Kitchen said, such as giving pedestrians more time at crosswalks before the traffic signal changes. The agency also plans to make an existing trail crossing more visible at 500 West and may paint some speed limit numbers on the highway pavement to give drivers an extra heads-up as they enter reduced speed zones.
Downtown Moab will likely get fitted with some trial bulb-outs in the next few months, too. That means temporary curbing that extends into the road, both signaling to drivers that they’re in an urbanized area and shortening the distance pedestrians need to walk between sidewalks. After those tests are completed, Kitchen said, UDOT will decide on whether or not to make them permanent.
The agency will continue working with local leaders to see which solutions can improve safety while still allowing traffic to flow.
“We realize this is their space, even though it's our jurisdiction,” Kitchen said. “So, we have to make that balancing choice in a lot of scenarios with a lot of cities, no matter where they're located in the state.”
It’s frustrating, however, to see any pedestrian fatalities or injuries in his community when relatively low-cost changes might help prevent them, Dwyer said.
Data UDOT shared with Dwyer in 2024 stated Moab has the highest rate of deadly crashes among peer communities in Utah. Of all crashes, 1.4% were fatal. That compares to 0.8% in Hurricane, 0.6% in Heber City and 0.4% in Logan.
“If [UDOT had] implemented the speed limits that we have now 10 years ago, half a dozen people might be alive,” he said.
In addition, 3.9% of Moab’s crashes resulted in either fatalities or serious injuries. That’s a lower rate than Hurricane (5.6%) and Heber City (4.2%), but higher than others. Logan, Tooele and Vernal each had a rate below 2.5%.
Still, Dwyer doesn’t want to gloss over what a significant step the reduced speed limits are for making Main Street safer.
He pointed to data from the World Health Organization that shows how pedestrian fatality risk rises rapidly as vehicles speed up from 30 mph to 40 mph. So, even small changes could reap vital benefits.
“It's huge,” he said. “It's amazing. We just need to take it a little further.”
