Greg Bunce: Welcome to another episode of the Utah Geospatial Podcast. This is Greg Bunce.
Matt Peters: And I’m Matt Peters.
Greg Bunce: And we’re from the Utah Geospatial Resource Center. This podcast will be bringing you Geospatial news from across Utah.
In this episode of the podcast, we interview Bert Granberg, the Analytics Director at Wasatch Front Regional Council, which is commonly known as WFRC. WFRC is a Metropolitan Planning Organization, or MPO, here in Utah, and they play a major role in transportation planning along the Wasatch Front. Because of this, on the episode you’ll hear about a variety of topics including housing, biking, growth, and development. Jake Adams from UGRC also joins in on the episode to talk about the housing inventory map that WFRC created and what his role was in the project.
As an aside, this episode was fun for me because it was actually Bert and Matt who hired me back in the day when the office was known as AGRC. At that time, Bert was the director and Matt was the GIS manager. I was coming from the Elections Department in Maricopa County, Arizona, where I was a GIS developer for a little over 10 years. So there’s a little footnote for you. And now on with the show.
I think a good place to start out is have you introduce yourself, Bert, to let us know who you are and what you do over at WFRC.
Bert Granberg: All right, Greg. Well, you’ve probably forgotten who I am, but I’m Bert Granberg and I manage the Analytics Group at Wasatch Front Regional Council, or WFRC for short. We’ve got seven others in the Analytics Group and WFRC has about 30 staff. And our main mission is that of a Metropolitan Planning Organization for the Salt Lake, Layton, Ogden, Brigham City metro area.
Greg Bunce: That’s excellent. And I have not forgotten who you are. In fact, you are one of the people responsible for getting me up here to Utah. So maybe we can kind of dive into what an MPO is in Utah and what they do.
Bert Granberg: Yeah. So there are four Metropolitan Planning Organizations in Utah. WFRC is one of them. There’s also one for the Provo-Orem area at Mountainland Association of Governments, one for Washington County, that’s the Dixie MPO, and one for the Logan area, which is the Cache MPO. And they are all federally mandated and federally funded regional transportation policy making organizations.
So our council is sort of like a board that makes transportation policy decisions and recommends funding and it’s made up of representatives from local government, from cities and counties, and also from the transportation authorities, so UTA and UDOT.
A little fun fact, MPOs were introduced as a concept in the Federal Highway Act in 1962. It basically required an MPO be formed in any urbanized area with a population over 50,000 people. There’s a lot of freeway building in particular in that time and MPOs were seen as a way to have local control over federally funded transportation projects and make sure that everyone had input on what was built, where the alignments went, what was a priority, that kind of thing.
Greg Bunce: So currently you got, I mean I think we’ve had a conversation at one point, but UDOT, in order for UDOT to get certain funding, they have to fulfill certain things with WFRC or whatever MPO. Is that correct?
Bert Granberg: Yeah, so I would put it slightly differently. UDOT’s really great at building roads and they do the construction and the engineering and the design and things like that. But the concept for any transportation project, and that would include the transit projects, so whether it’s a freeway or FrontRunner, the concept for those projects initially is something that gets developed and included in what’s called the Long Range Transportation Plan, which is sort of a 20 to 30 year long range plan for what can be built with the funding that’s available.
And then as the project gets sort of moved up the list over time, it gets put into something called the Transportation Improvement Program. And that’s where funding is actually identified to fund the project and and reserved exclusively for the projects when they make the list and get included in that Transportation Improvement Program or TIP for short.
So you’ve got the long range plan or for WFRC and the other MPOs, that’s also referred to as the Regional Transportation Plan. That’s looking out 20 to 30 years and trying to figure out how much funding is going to be available and prioritizing the projects that we can afford. That’s a primary mission at WFRC. And then our board, our council of mayors and commissioners and transportation agency heads, votes to adopt that plan.
We also do the public input process, so trying to get comments from stakeholders and the general public on those plans before they get put up for adoption by the council.
So Regional Transportation Plan, RTP, the long range 20, 30 years, and then this four to six year TIP or Transportation Improvement Program. And that’s where specific funding is identified for a project and you know that it’s going to take off.
Matt Peters: You know, kind of looking at that stuff Bert, so what are some of the exciting projects that have kind of come out of that?
Bert Granberg: I mean you just think about what’s been built in our region in the past, I don’t know, say 30 years that I’ve been here. All the light rail lines. So there’s many, many miles of light rail. There’s the commuter rail. There are freeways like Legacy and Mountain View Corridor and Bangerter. You know, those are all things that have opened in my time in Utah. And all of them went through that process of being born as a concept and prioritized into a sort of a general timeframe in the Regional Transportation Plan. And then as they got closer to being reality, real money was set aside to construct them in the TIP. And then UDOT and UTA went on to build those.
So I would say like in any given year, there’s probably now close to a billion dollars in transportation funding along the Wasatch Front that has been prioritized and gone through those long range and short range processes that WFRC and our council of local officials have reviewed and adopted.
Matt Peters: So when you look at that, how does you being the analytics manager or leading that group, what are some of the things that you do to support that?
Bert Granberg: Yeah, good question. So I think about the primary functions of our group. We’re here to sort of support the work of others in the organization. So the long range planning team, the short range funding and programming team, and then our economic development group. And we do, I would say we do about a third of our work in developing and care and feeding and running the Regional Travel Demand Model, which tries to look out into the future and predict how well the transportation system, both road and transit, are going to function, especially in peak periods, right? Where we’ve got the possibility for congestion. They also look at transit ridership, the total number of miles that were traveling in the region, how long it’s taking people to get to work, and some other sort of general regional quality of life factors. So that travel modeling, near term and long term years, maintaining that model and running that model is about a third of the work that we do in the group roughly.
Another third is trying to figure out how we’re going to grow with regard to how we’re using the land up and down the Wasatch Front. So land use modeling. We use something called the Real Estate Market Model, which is a parcel-based simulation of where future commercial and residential development is going to happen. So where we’re going to find spaces for all the newcomers to a region to work and live. And I think that all add everything up, that land use modeling effort is another third of what the analytics group does at WFRC.
And then the last third I would just say is kind of miscellaneous geographic information system support work and other analysis. Just helping people to understand better the landscape of the Wasatch Front region.
Greg Bunce: As you remember, we are essentially data providers and I know we coordinate with you on a few layers, particularly active transportation in the road centerlines data. But that kind of gets me thinking on where does a lot of the data that you guys use come from for these models?
Bert Granberg: Yeah, I mean we try to be data users first and data creators and data stewards second and maybe only as a last resort. So we beg and borrow and otherwise use data from a lot of different folks. But we’re also fast friends with UDOT and UTA in particular. And because we do our travel modeling and land use modeling to include our jurisdiction, but also the Provo-Orem area and MPO in Utah County, we’re sharing data actively with Mountainland Association of Governments. And really interested in and trying to make sure that whatever we develop works across all the county boundaries and across both the MPO boundaries. We also use data from the Census Bureau and Division of Water Resources, like their water related land use data set is really good. Probably the county assessors deserve special mention. Just our land use model requires parcel level data and things like assessed values and land use types and number of units for condo and apartment buildings, square footage for commercial buildings. So like the data they keep is amazing. And I think while we currently get that data through the land information record parcel data sets that UGRC collects and processes from the assessors, you guys deserve credit but they certainly are the are the are doing all the heavy work and would be wrong not to call out some appreciation for them.
Matt Peters: Yeah, definitely they’re, yeah, yeah, without them we don’t exist in a sense. You know, there was one thing not to jump too far ahead, but I read in the paper today about there was a real uptick of cyclists being killed in Utah. I think 10 in the last year. And what can you tell us about how those things influence your bike safety map?
Bert Granberg: Yeah. Right. So we have a sort of part of that general GIS effort, that last third of what we do, we have a series that we’ve called Map of the Month. And I think it was in May we did a Bike Safety Map and we were just looking at a way of taking in all the roads and their characteristics, number of lanes, speeds, and then whether they had on-street bike facilities, what types of facilities they had. Was it just a bike route or was it a lane with paint or was it some kind of a traffic separated route? And we tried to make a map of of roads that were safest, safer, and then roads that were maybe more suitable for for a cyclist that were more comfortable in on less sort of protected facilities. So that was our May Map of the Month. And those maps are are fun to put together. We just pick any topic. And May is National Bike Month so I think that’s that was an influence in the topic for that month.
But yeah, we you know we’re interested in all modes of transportation. They’re all important to us. And cycling and pedestrian modes and the new micromobility like the scooters and even things like e-bikes and new transit modes like the UTA micro transit service, kind of on-demand ride hailing service that they have. We’ve got to stay on top of all that. But I think bike the bike data sort of has a special place in my heart as a as a daily bike commuter and recreational biker. And you know that map we set some rules to kind of analyze all the roads and we can again we can only do that with the information that’s available from the road centerlines including the presence of bike facilities and how many lanes and what the traffic speeds are and then also the trails and pathways data set that UGRC also hosts. So you know that data is there and it’s I think it’s a really good example of the unheralded value that some of the data sets that that UGRC and other public entities are maintaining. Like there’s there’s obvious value and immediate value but there’s some some some hidden hidden value that you can derive if you know the data sets, know what’s available, know what’s in them. And I think that bike safety data set is a good example of that.
Greg Bunce: I think one of the things that intrigues me with WFRC when I look at what you guys do is that you do do analytics and do do modeling. And I’m speaking from a shop where we serve data, were stewards of data. But do you kind of have a typical workflow when you enter into how you would begin to model something? I’m looking at the Housing Inventory Explorer and obviously there’s a bunch of analytics that goes into that. Is each project kind of a whole different monster as you approach it? Or each map? And you know, what is the process for figuring out, okay, what analytic tools are we going to use and the end goal is typically a map, I’m guessing?
Bert Granberg: I mean, yeah, sometimes. Sometimes the end goal is a map and it’s a simple map and that’s that’s exactly what’s needed. And sometimes we’ll feature those in in our Map of the Month series. Or maybe it’s just a map that we need to get to a mayor who’s got a question about what a future project design looks like and how that’s going to perform congestion-wise in the future.
So, I mean I think you got to know your audience and design maps for for the abilities of those audiences and then also just try and make them relevant to some issue at hand. I think too often as GIS professionals we have an inclination to just put information into the map to store it so that someone can look at the map, look at the legend, look at the map, look at the legend, do that a few more times and they’re like, “Oh, oh now I see it, right? Yeah, it’s on the on the map.” And I think that we when we’re doing analytics, I think the idea is like how do we quickly tell a story? And tell a story and try to exclude things that you could park in the map for future reference or for someone to make use of but maybe they might get in the way also.
So yeah, I think I think we’re always trying to tell a story with the map and we’ve got a concept in mind and it might change a little bit. But we try to stay true to that and then not mess it up by adding too much to it along the way.
Matt Peters: Yeah, and you know, one thing when you talk about the issues at the moment, you know, we’ve been kind of jointly working on some housing issues. And we have Jake Adams with us. And your colleague Josh. And those two have been working on this housing inventory and you guys kind of come up with a little explorer. But there seem to be some definite challenges at the start.
Bert Granberg: So I think that the housing unit inventory web map is really cool for a number of reasons. But my favorite concept about it is when we created that web map and the data set behind it, we were really fulfilling a need that we had internally within the analytics group. Our land use models got to understand where people live today and it’s got to understand trends in terms of how we are adding to housing stock currently because that most recent pattern is probably most likely to align with what we’re going to see in the near term future versus looking across all the houses that are on the ground. Like what has been built in the last couple years?
So we had a need to learn, to analyze and learn a bunch of information about the housing market from recent conditions. And that information is largely ready to go in the parcel data set if you if you know what to look for. So we weren’t just creating that out of the blue because we thought it would be useful to the region. We were doing it anyway and basically deciding making the decision that if we put maybe 10% more effort into the project, we could spin out what we needed into something that had general general interest to stakeholders and people in housing experts that we’re not connected to and then also just to the general public.
And I think it’s really true that as residents of any area, but certainly the Wasatch Front, we’re familiar with the area around where we live. We’re familiar with the neighborhood around where we work. Maybe a little bit between the two. And then some of the other spots that we might go to often. Like maybe where our parents lived or an area that we go to to walk our dog or something like that. So like we’re experts on our own areas. But it’s really hard to be an expert on the region as a whole. And you know, even if you’re an employee in a city, you might be an expert on the city generally, but more more of your knowledge might be based on on your own experience with projects or where you live or that kind of thing.
So you know, we made this decision like let’s put a little bit of extra work into this data set and turn this into a public facing information resource and a web map. And we’ve gotten really good feedback on it. And to the extent that the legislature was went on to include language in a bill I think it was a couple sessions ago that that basically said every metro area in Utah should do this. And they they somehow magically thought of UGRC as the place to coordinate the effort between the assessors and the data that they keep and the MPOs to to put together this kind of a inventory that tells the story of the housing stock and and how it’s evolved over time for for the St. George area, for Logan, and then up and down the Wasatch Front.
Matt Peters: Yeah and and Jake, you you had a hand in that working with with Josh from WFRC. And what was your experience and where you at now with it?
Jake Adams: Yeah, so I kind of stepped in and reviewed, reviewed, took what Josh had built. He’d done all the groundwork and the legwork on it. And he had come up with the tool to do what Bert was saying, just kind of pulling that data out of the data sets that are that are already existing and make some sort of Python script that can take that data and output the the values that are needed. And right now we’re working on kind of, I’m working on better understanding all the different pieces that go into it so that we can take it and work with Washington County and start building something out for them in terms of this this analysis. And then as as we get more experience with it and build it out we can take it to even more places. We’ve also taken the data that Josh and Bert have created for their regions, for the Wasatch Front Regional Council regions, and put that into the SGID to make it more easily available and discoverable by anyone who wants to dig into the info.
Bert Granberg: Yeah, it’s it’s a really cool data set. Again like lots of props to the assessors and their staff for keeping the information to make that possible. But I just had a little lightning bolt brief or flash reminder of what inspired that idea. And it was it was being in meetings where decision makers were quoting the number of new houses that were developing within a certain distance of the transit rail lines in in Salt Lake City. And I can’t remember what the exact number was but I’ll just make one up. It was something like 80% of new housing units were going in within a third of a mile of the light rail lines and commuter rail stations in Salt Lake City. And you know, someone had done that analysis one time. It was a really great factoid. But you want I wanted to see it visually. I also wanted to make sure that we had the right number. And and then it seemed like something that you’d want to watch over time. And that you know that little quip of of information is and hearing that a couple of times is is what allowed us to make a connection to the work we were doing with our land use model and preparing the residential information to go forward in the model and and the possibilities to create an information resource that would be valuable to the policy discussion.
Jake Adams: If I can jump in, I remember when Josh first showed the model off me showing some of the data graphs that they’ve created from the housing unit inventory like I come from a planning background and my first thought was, “Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I would have liked to have seen as a planner to know how is my city growing, how is it developing, what are the trends.” My second thought was I feel like I’m playing Sim City here. I just click a button I’ve got all the data that I want to make a decision right in front of me. Like it was amazing the the data that comes out of that data set.
Bert Granberg: One of the region, it’s it’s really sometimes it’s really satisfying just to hear like a little reaction and um and that you know what you just said warms my little heart. But um one of the UDOT region directors, so there’re four regions for the Department of Transportation in Utah, um for a couple of maps that we’ve we’ve made and sent his way after doing you know the the data processing and the analysis work and building a web map and thinking about you know an audience of sort of generally interested but maybe not super technical people. Although he’s you know arguably a pretty technical person. But this region director was like, “You know thanks for this map Bert. I’m pretty much writing off the whole rest of the day to to explore it,” right? And I’m like, I think you’re welcome. I think he was kind of complaining a little bit too but he yeah you you kind of when you hit it on the head and hear something like that as a result it’s it’s really satisfying.
Greg Bunce: One of the things I look forward to is the monthly newsletter from WFRC because it often does have a Map of the Month. And I and I kind of go right to that and I do end up spending actually a decent amount of time on those. And looking at your website right now, just kind of scrolling through some of them, there are a lot of interesting maps on here that you could lose significant time in exploring.
How about the horizon? What’s what’s next? I know you talked about possibly a transportation survey. Any any stuff coming up?
Bert Granberg: Oh yeah. Yeah, never a dull moment. We’re just finishing up the third, no I guess we’re into the fourth year of the four year regional transportation plan cycle. So every four years the RTP gets updated and adopted and and there’s you know a lot of prep work that goes into that over the four years. We’ll adopt the next Regional Transportation Plan in May. And then you know in a lot of ways the the clock resets um in terms of the the things we have to do. We’ve got a list of things to explore and and do uh for the next period. And you know we’ll keep our land use model updated and our travel model updated. We’ve got some ambitious plans for making improvements there. But uh we’re as you mentioned um we’re also leading the uh statewide household travel survey which will take place in spring of next year, 2023. Wherein 10,000 households will be contacted and asked to, well we’ll probably ask a lot more, but we’ll get 10,000 households to participate in um a survey and then also uh week-long smartphone based diary of the trips that the household members make uh as they you know go through their typical week. And then we we take that information and you know we’ll be doing some analysis and some reports and you know maybe there’ll be an article in the newspaper with with some of the details uh and links to websites with more details and probably a PDF report. But that information will also get processed to to recalibrate our travel demand model um which you know needs to know things like you know how many trips are households taking in this area um of the county a day and where are they going and how many miles are they driving and how many people are in the car and what do they think about tolling. Um so yeah we’ve got a consultant on board. We won’t be doing the survey ourselves but we’ll be managing that project and um it’s a it’s a big undertaking. We do it with our transportation partners UDOT, UTA, the three other MPOs um about every 10 years um is our goal.
And then um the Map of the Month just turned two um and I it would it would really be wrong to not mention the original um Map of the Month concept. Uh and that was something that that uh we did with the broadband project at AGRC in partnership with the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and the Public Service Commission. Um I think we did about 65 Maps of the Month um during the broadband project year. So that’s 2011 forward. Um and you know that was that was a good experience. We presented them at the advisor council meeting every couple months and people people look forward to that and just I mean really I just brought that concept down here and copied it and so far it’s going well. And we’ll have to think of we’ve got a like a a whiteboard with new topic ideas and we’re probably thinking about three or four months ahead typically but um every once in a while that list gets short and we’ve got to do some more brainstorming. And we’re certainly open to including any maps about about our region um we don’t have to make them ourselves. So if you have ideas send them our way.
Matt Peters: Okay. We can do that. Yeah. You know Bert, there was one other thing that kind of makes me wonder. I live in the Liberty Wells area and uh I was visiting a local business and they had been there forever and they said, “Yep, we’re we’re closing up. They’re going to build apartments here.” And I guess I I’m seeing a variety of these little kind of these larger lots as you go from from 14th South or 17th South in towards the city that these kind of some of these larger lots that maybe have a business on them or have or are open that they’re being filled in with very various apartments and and and condos and things of that nature. And wondering is there some kind of what you might say preferred master plan about all this infill?
Bert Granberg: Matt, I’ve never seen you do anything with food quickly.
Matt Peters: That’s true.
Bert Granberg: Um yeah. God that’s a good question. Um yeah I mean each city has a master plan um and each city has zoning. And you know this is something I had to relearn when I came to work at WFRC. You know the a city’s zoning map is something that changes all the time and it’s basically what you can do without any additional permissions. You know you should be able to put together your plans, walk them into the city uh permitting desk and and they shouldn’t have too much to say you know additional to say about what you can and can’t do if you’re doing what’s allowed in the current zoning layer.
And then cities have a a general plan layer. And that’s more of a vision for what’s going to happen and um that’s maybe looking out maybe 20, 20 years to what the city might or could look like. And general plan maps get updated about every 10 years uh ideally. So um I mean I think if you’re asking about a specific city, um their general plan is probably online and is a good a good um probably as good depiction of what the future looks like as any. Um I mean they’re all sort of living documents and maps. But um you know if you want if you want to see what’s allowed and what’s envisioned check out the zoning map and the long uh sorry the land use plan, the general plan for the the longer term.
We also engage with cities um under sort of a regional visioning process called Wasatch Choice and have invited them to to to think beyond their current general plan and identify urban centers that they would like to see develop between now and 2050. And and they can be at different levels. Neighborhood level centers like you know 9th and 9th to pick a neighborhood in in Salt Lake or um city centers or it’s more sort of like your Sugarhouse area you know and then a regional center and and a metro center which is like the central business district. And we’ve worked with them to define those, refine them so that they’re they match up with sort of what’s on the ground currently um and the parcel boundaries and and their latest thoughts. And that vision process is looking perhaps longer term than the current general plans. And so when we run our land use models and we’re telling the land use model what can happen you know in the future year say 2040, we’re having it consider not the zoning because that’s too immediate that’s too you know right now. We’re having it consider the general plans and then maybe upgrading the general plans to this vision for centers um and also employment districts that the cities have communicated to us that they will be looking to include in their general plans in the near future. And I think those three resources are are probably the best guide um to like from a geographic perspective of um you know what’s allowed, what’s what’s likely to happen, uh what’s permitted and and envisioned to happen in the future.
But um yeah I mean hopefully that infill um in a lot of places is mixed use and you know it it’s providing housing units to a market that’s a little bit short on them for sure and maybe mixing in some other commercial uses so that um people can find the things that that they need to do and want to do within walking distance or biking distance or just you know downstairs on the main level. And uh we’re gonna see more of that. Um I think you know it’s it’s it’s the game is full on in Salt Lake City uh especially near downtown. I think we’ll see more of it in some of the the outlying center areas that have been identified.
Matt Peters: Yeah I think for me what what perhaps is is you know I’m I’m starting to wake up to it is that you know I can jump on my bicycle and quite quickly be at 9th and 9th for breakfast. Uh I can go quickly not far to a bar. Uh it seems like I’m I can link up these small centers like 9th and 9th and other areas fairly quickly uh to get different goods and services and entertainment that I want. And I just I don’t know if I’m just waking up and realizing, “Oh, I live in a good place better than I expected.” Or you know like I didn’t fully realize the potential of the neighborhood. And now I’m I’m seeing that. So I’m always excited to see perhaps a new restaurant coming on or something of that sort.
Bert Granberg: Yeah. I mean change is exciting but it’s also hard for folks, right? Matt, you and I are old men. Um Greg and and Jake are on their way but they’ve got a ways to go. But uh yeah I mean the whole you know Utah’s growing and and what do we do about it um is is on the front pages of the papers and news sites pretty often. It’s definitely a current topic. And I think the one thing that’s I think that sometimes people lose touch with is that Utah has been growing for 150 plus years, right? And the growth curve is pretty steady. Um so the growth you know issues aren’t new but I almost think the older we get the more we expect things to stay stay the same and you know they never have really um in a growing urban area like like the Wasatch Front. Um so you know I think I think to the extent that we can help people to to see that um we can perhaps add some uh content to the conversation. Um and you know some people are going to be excited about it like you and uh some people are going to be ambivalent and some people are just going to hate it. And I don’t think that’ll change either.
Greg Bunce: I think that’s one of the cool things about the role of the MPO um is is kind of how you watch that growth and how you create these maps and plans and kind of predict things out and guide some of that. Um is is the best place to go for folks wanting to check out more of these maps it looks like it’s maps.wfrc.org?
Bert Granberg: Yeah that’s our map gallery. So um that’s not everything that we’ve got but it’s it’s most of it. Um uh and then we also you can also Google search WFRC Map of the Month and and get a list of the last you know 24, 25 maps that we we’ve done that way. Um with a little bit more description about each one. But yeah both are good starting points and both have links uh to the other.
Greg Bunce: Yeah that that this has been great information. I think I’ve definitely learned you know quite a bit here just today about MPOs and the valley and also you know thanks for your time on this.
Bert Granberg: Yeah, you’re welcome. It’s been fun. Um and I guess the last thing is just to add 2 plus 2 and see that it still equals four.
Matt Peters: Yes, I probably do.
Greg Bunce: All right, well I think that went well. There you go. Another one in the books. Almost.
Matt Peters: Yep almost. Yeah. You got it. I think that was great. I think we read the same page which was great. When you started off with Thomas Jefferson I said, “Ah, I think this is the page that I looked at.”
Matt Peters: Yeah, cuz I sure as hell don’t know that.