March 30, 2026
What BRT Projects Taught Me About Respecting Simple Scopes
Article by Maverick Gibbons, Project Manager | Maverick’s perspective first published in Utah Design + Construction Magazine
I've described bus rapid transit to people outside the industry as road jobs with fancy bus stops. It's an accurate description and one that can get a project into trouble if taken too literally.
Essentially, BRT projects allow for platform-level boarding, ADA-compliant grading, weather protection, lighting, and the fiber-optic networks that allow buses to move through intersections with signal priority.
Managing BRT projects across Utah has taught me that straightforward scopes deserve just as much planning rigor as complex ones – and sometimes more.
The Utilities Will Surprise You
The first place that lesson showed up was underground.
Established road corridors carry decades of accumulated infrastructure, including water lines, sewer systems, electrical conduits, telecommunications cables, and they're rarely where the as-built drawings say they should be.
The preconstruction phase is where you earn the right to a predictable schedule, and utility identification is at the top of that list. The more straightforward a scope appears on the surface, the more that underground picture matters.
On the SR-224 BRT through Park City, design began in January 2025 with the main contract starting in April 2026. Rather than waiting until contract start to think about what's underground, the team began pre-staging work early, installing five miles of fiber-optic cable along the route and removing landscaped islands near Canyons Resort.
We've learned it's far better to find the conflicts than have them find you.
The Cross-Boundary Consistency
Multi-jurisdictional coordination shapes the work.
The Midvalley Express line runs from West Valley City through Taylorsville to Murray, and managing that cross-boundary coordination turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons the project had to offer.
Three cities means three sets of public works expectations. Curb details, traffic control requirements, and inspection processes each carry their own standards depending on which side of a boundary line you're on. Every city has a legitimate interest in infrastructure that serves its residents, and that input is worth building into the schedule.
The opportunity is in how the industry approaches that coordination: a unified standard, whether State specifications or an agreed-upon approach across jurisdictions, keeps the focus on moving the project forward rather than reconciling differences at each boundary.
This kind of standardization becomes more valuable for timelines, budgets.
What the Numbers Reflect
Utah's BRT results speak for themselves.
The Utah Valley Express in Provo has been UTA's most popular bus route since 2018, carrying over 5,000 daily riders. The Ogden Express moved nearly one million riders in its first year. The Midvalley Express is on track to open in spring 2026, ahead of its original schedule — and not because the work was easier than expected, but because the preconstruction was thorough enough to avoid the delays that come from skipping it.
Decisions made months before ground breaks set the cadence for everything that follows.
The Lesson I Keep Coming Back To
Straightforward scopes reward thorough planning.
The preconstruction phase is where the real work of a BRT project gets done: utilities identified, jurisdictions aligned, systems sequenced. That upfront investment is what makes the construction phase run the way it should.
The utilities get located because someone made the time to find them. The municipalities align because the coordination happens early and often. The bus stops come together because the trades are sequenced and the conflicts are resolved before boots hit the ground.
The planning is the project. Everything else is just executing it.