Understanding where in our Region Wasatch Front residents will live and work in the future is key to the long-range transportation planning work of WFRC, and other planning work conducted by local, regional, and state-level agencies and other stakeholders. WFRC’s Analytics Group updates its traffic analysis zone (TAZ) scale population, households, and jobs forecast every four years in conjunction with the RTP process. 

To support the population and employment forecasting process, WFRC collaborates with the Mountainland Association of Governments to develop and maintain the Wasatch Front Real Estate Market Model (REMM). REMM is a development simulation tool, built on the UrbanSim software platform, that distributes future county-level growth projections developed by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute (GPI) to each of the Wasatch Front’s 3,500 TAZs, which average about one square mile in size. REMM produces a projected count of the number of people, households, and jobs (by major economic sector) for each TAZ, for each future planning year through 2050. The final results from REMM are reviewed and, in limited cases, professional judgment is used to make adjustments, prior to releasing the final regional forecast results.

In addition to the county-level control totals provided by GPI, REMM relies on extensive data inputs specific to the Wasatch Front region to inform its simulation including:

• Local land use plans, standardized and aggregated into a region-wide Generalized Future Land Use GIS layer;
• Wasatch Choice Vision land use centers, updated in collaboration with local government staff and adopted into the 2019-2050 RTP under Amendment 4; 
• Parcel-level valuation and other characteristics from County Assessors offices;
• Job counts and locations from the Utah Department of Workforce Services;
• Commercial lease summary information from local commercial real estate brokerages;
• City and industry provided input about near-term real estate development projects and other economic development opportunities moving forward in the approval and permitting processes; and
• Feedback collected from stakeholders in an interactive web map of a preliminary draft version of the forecast.

The most current version of the official RTP population and employment forecast can be viewed at the TAZ and ‘city area’ level in the WFRC Household and Job Forecast web map. The map allows users to explore any year of the forecast as well as the projected change between any two years at both geographic levels.

In addition, data from four of the REMM-related inputs summarized above are also available as publicly available interactive maps – designed to support planning work and general understanding of the regional landscape – and downloadable datasets.

The WFRC created project selection criteria for roadway, transit, and active transportation projects, in close collaboration with transportation partners and local communities, to craft a preferred regional vision. These methods used the adopted goals, as well as a variety of performance factors, to evaluate which improvements should be included as part of the Wasatch Choice Vision. WFRC crafted the 2023-2050 RTP project selection criteria in partnership with UDOT and UTA, local planners and engineers, the Active Transportation Committee, and the Regional Growth Committee.

The following criteria were developed for roadway, active transportation, and transit projects: 

In an effort to refine the preferred scenario, WFRC invited stakeholders to explore the draft preferred scenario and provide feedback for various projects via an interactive map.

For additional information regarding the RTP, please contact Jory Johner.