As our Region grows, funding transportation is key to keeping communities connected and thriving. The Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) includes a financial plan to demonstrate how roadway, transit, and active transportation facilities will presumably be funded over the life of the plan. Long-range plans must also be “fiscally constrained,” meaning that only those new facilities and recommended improvements which could be funded using existing and reasonably anticipated revenue streams are included in the Plan. This practice enables WFRC and its transportation partners to develop plans that are tied to realistic funding mechanisms and also to identify a financial path forward to project implementation.

The roadway, transit, and active transportation costs and revenue projections for the 2027-2055 RTP will be analyzed by Wasatch Front Regional Council (WFRC), Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT), Utah Transit Authority (UTA), and the three other Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) in the state. A financial model is being developed to help distribute funding, for planning purposes, between the MPOs and the state for the development of their long-range transportation plans. Consistent growth factors, project costs, and new revenue assumptions are being coordinated at this level.

Revenue sources and assumptions for the 2027-2055 RTP are based on coordination between the Utah MPOs (WFRC, Cache MPO, Dixie MPO, and Mountainland Association of Governments (MAG)), UDOT, and UTA. This coordination leads to the joint Utah’s Unified Transportation Plan financial model that includes estimates of potential revenues based on projected sources for transportation improvements through the year 2055. This financial model is used by each agency when fiscally constraining their respective plans. Assumptions of new funding sources for transportation projects include additional local option sales taxes and increased vehicle registration fees, or their equivalent.

All roadway, transit, and active transportation projects in the 2027-2055 RTP will be selected and phased based on need and fiscal constraints. Costs are being estimated for new construction, operations, and maintenance for each mode in order to determine which projects could be included in each of the 2027-2055 RTP’s three funded phases. Similar to revenues, the four MPOs, UDOT, and UTA are working together to determine planning-level unit costs by facility type for each transportation mode.

In comparing necessary transportation costs to revenues, there will be more needed projects than anticipated revenues can fund. To balance costs with revenues, some projects will be moved to future phases later than when the project is needed or will be placed into the “unfunded” time frame of the RTP, meaning it is not anticipated these projects would be built between now and 2055.

Active transportation facilities will be ranked, phased based on need, and fiscally constrained. There is no federal requirement for active transportation projects to be fiscally constrained or to identify a funding source. However, Utah’s Unified Transportation Plan Financial Model will project potential available revenues based on historic trends sourced from federal, state, and local funds, such as the Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP), the Utah Safe Routes to School Program, and the WFRC-administered Surface Transportation Program (STP), Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Program, and the Carbon Reduction Program (CRP) and also projections based on new state funding sources such as the Transportation Investment Fund – Active (TIF Active), Transit Transportation Investment Fund – First-/Last-Mile (TTIF FLM), and Active Transportation Investment Fund (ATIF). Assumptions to maintain active transportation projects have been identified for the existing system and the future enhancements.