"Public transportation benefits everyone, even if it's just clearing out the road for those who want to drive an SUV," Grow said, noting that during rush hour, Utah Transit Authority TRAX trains carry the equivalent of one lane of I-15 traffic.

Among the other tidbits Grow shared:

• In 2050, the now-relatively isolated, distant community of Herriman in the southwest Salt Lake Valley will be an "inner-ring suburb."

• By using urban land more intelligently, more rural land — farms and pastures — can be preserved because less land will be needed to support the same population.

• The capacity of the TRAX light rail system can be quadrupled, through adding more trains and additional cars to those trains, much more easily and inexpensively than I-15 can be further widened.

• By 2030, 500,000 Utahns will be senior citizens, many of them unable to drive and in need of public transit systems.

As part of its efforts to educate the public and their leaders, Envision Utah has been heavily involved in the planning process for the Western Transportation Corridor, a major north-south road the Utah Department of Transportation hopes to build near the 5600 West corridor. By coordinating zoning, affordable housing strategies, transit projects and transit-oriented development in an intelligent, cohesive manner, local leaders can significantly improve the quality of life along that corridor, Grow said.

Envision Utah is also encouraging Utahns to make better use of the public transit systems already available to them; providing local governments with a handbook on housing and development choices; and working with groups of cities on how to encourage development around transit nodes.

"It's how we grow, not whether or not we grow," Grow said. "This is actually about what people really want and getting them to connect the dots in their mind differently."

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E-mail: zman@desnews.com