Transportation/Land use
LINDON, Utah — One city planner has suggested the future development of autonomous vehicles may help alleviate the growing traffic burden in Utah County.
Lindon Planning Director Hugh Van Wagenen speculated during the Sept. 26, 2017 Planning Commission meeting that self-driving vehicles could help improve traffic flow.
Indeed, two days later a promoted Tweet by Bloomberg Media pushed the CA Technologies podcast series “The Last Adopter,” Episode 1, “The Computer in the Driveway.” Promo taglines included “Today’s Cars are Computers with Four Wheels,” “It’s all about the software” and “Driving has become the distraction …”
Driving, not mobile device use, is becoming the distraction in today’s personal transportation and digital-media nexus. According to a licensed agent I spoke with this week, auto insurance rates are rising because distracted driving is contributing heavily to more accidents and collisions that result in worse damage than before — due to no braking.
Evidently people’s digital connections are assuming priority over their need to drive somewhere safely. In the past, it was impressed on student drivers that their time spent driving was a “full-time job,” demanding their undivided attention.
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Topics on the Planning Commission’s agenda this week actually focused on future development within the Lindon Village Commercial Zone along 700 North, west of State Street. The commission voted to regulate by target percentage the maximum acreage any given land use can occupy within the zone.
(The 700 North roadway is also called North County Boulevard and designated as a section of Highway 129. With Utah Department of Transportation involvement, it will be developed as a major corridor to and from Interstate 15, Van Wagenen said.)
A highly desired outcome of development in the Lindon Village Commercial Zone will be to enhance sales-tax revenue for the city.
The meeting also included a general discussion of land use and density applying to Lindon’s residential development.
The city is approaching build-out of moderate-income housing, the planner said, but construction of properly permitted accessory apartments remains a means of achieving state guidelines for Lindon’s housing affordability mix, he said.
The Lindon Planning Commission is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. on the second and fourth Tuesdays monthly at the Lindon City Center’s City Council Chambers, 100 N. State St. in Lindon.
—Gary Brodeur
Fire Poppy 