Hosting the 2002 Winter Olympics allowed Utah to smash down the accelerator on growth in both its population and its economy. With the 2034 Games just over eight years away, the state again has the opportunity to harness the international event as a vehicle to propel it toward a more prosperous future.
To maximize the economic benefits of hosting the 2034 Olympics, Utah needs to address seven specific issues, according to a report released Tuesday by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
Hosting the 2002 Winter Olympics allowed Utah to smash down the accelerator on growth in both its population and its economy. With the 2034 Games just over eight years away, the state again has the opportunity to harness the international event as a vehicle to propel it toward a more prosperous future.
One route to such success, according to a report released Tuesday by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, may be to let autonomous vehicles take the wheel.
In the report — the second in its “Keepers of the Flame” series that examines the potential impacts of the 2034 Games on the state — the institute lays out seven advantages Utah will enjoy in the coming decade. It also highlights seven pitfalls that could prevent the state from making the most of the Olympic window, such as deteriorating mental health and traffic congestion.
Then, in a rare step, the report’s authors suggest actionable remedies.
“We wanted to make this Olympic-sized opportunity feel very real to the people of Utah,” said Natalie Gochnour, the institute’s director who coauthored the monograph with Phil Dean and Jennifer Robinson. “And part of that was not just saying, ‘Hey, we’re starting at a good place, but we’re changing and here’s the problems.’ But to also say, ‘What if we did some of these things?’”
That’s where the network of connected, self-driving cars or air taxis comes in. Or creating a state land trust as the basis for more affordable housing.
Utah’s primary advantage heading into the next decade, according to the report, is a strong economy, which in large part is a product of the 2002 Olympics. Dubbing them the “Magnificent Seven,” the report highlighted the state’s achievements in economic diversity, low poverty levels and upward mobility as well as its young, community-driven and educated workforce.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Housing under construction in Eagle Mountain on Friday, May 2, 2025.
Yet, if Utahns want to continue to enjoy their current quality of life, or perhaps improve upon it, several issues will need to be tended to. The report singled out seven factors that its authors identified as having the potential to put the brakes on future growth. The “Troubling Seven,” as the report calls them, include:
“In the Troubling Seven, could there be eight, nine, 10 [issues]? Yes,” Gochnour said. “But really, the spirit of this monograph is to convey to Utahns: We have an opportunity to get better in every way. Go find it.”
To solve for the educational deficits, the report suggested leaning into programs and standards state leaders have already established.
For example, in 2022, the Legislature set a statewide goal of having 70% of third graders proficient in reading — a strong indicator of future educational success — by 2027. Last year, though, the Readiness, Improvement, Success, Empowerment (RISE) tests indicated only 46.7% were proficient, an improvement of 1% since 2021. The institute’s report suggested adding paraprofessionals to every underperforming classroom as a way to break through. Similarly, its potential remedy for low graduation rates among Utah students was to expand “catalyst centers” — industry-aligned career and technical programs that have taken root in Davis, Utah, Cache and other counties — into Salt Lake City.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Natalie Gochnour, the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute’s director helped author a report looking at how Utah can capitalize on the Olympic window to ensure growth beyond the 2034 Winter Games.
Energy supply, meanwhile, is considered troublesome by the authors of the institute’s report only in that Utah needs to manage its resources. Energy demands have increased, but the report said the state’s potential in that sector is even greater considering its ability to tap into fossil fuels as well as renewable and nuclear energy.
“Our state is in this privileged position of having this full portfolio and now a willingness to go into nuclear,” Gochnour said. “So there’s a really good chance that Utah becomes part of the solution moving forward.”
Utah may have an internal remedy to the high cost of housing as well. The report noted a correlation between housing costs and homelessness — which this year is the highest it has ever been in the state — and suggests the state look to create community land trusts on donated parcels.
Community land trusts are a quick and effective way to lower housing costs, according to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
Per the report’s plan, the state would retain possession of the land, allowing the homes atop it to be sold at a reduced price. The state could also attach deed restrictions to keep the homes affordable in perpetuity.
The report is less concerned with how to create the best Olympics than how to use the Games to create the best Utah. Still, the report said one issue poses a “reputational risk” to the state and the Olympics: the demise of the Great Salt Lake.
Gochnour called it a “hemispheric issue.” As the lake dries up, it creates air and health problems well beyond the Salt Lake Valley and takes away one of the state’s most important economic drivers.
Additionally, it puts into jeopardy the “lake effect” that bestows the fluffy snow upon which many of Utah’s ski areas have built their reputations — the same reputations that helped bring the Winter Games to the state.
The 2034 Olympic committee plans to champion the lake’s revival, CEO Brad Wilson said earlier this month, but actually bringing it back to previous levels is outside the group’s scope.
“We’re not going to save the Great Salt Lake because the Games are coming for 17 days,” Wilson said, “but if that helps us bring people to the table to talk about some hard things, we want to be all over it.”
The authors of the “Keepers of the Flame” report set out to stoke that conversation with a few suggestions. They wrote that Utah could find an additional 250,000 to 500,000 acre-feet for the Great Salt Lake through such actions as creating temporary agricultural water leases and raising residential water rates.
The most outside-the-box thinking in the report, however, can be found under the discussion about how to unsnarl traffic congestion.
Utah’s roads saw an average of 661,278 hours in the six months ending in January. With an increase of 5.9% per year, the report said, delays are growing almost four times as fast as the state’s population.
On a powder day, the 8.3-mile trip up or down Little Cottonwood Canyon can take three hours or more.
To counter that, the report’s authors advocated for Utah to prioritize connected autonomous vehicles. Fitting cars — or even aircraft — with computers and allowing them to talk to each other and decide what route to take and even when to accelerate can, the report states, make roads safer and more efficient. And Utah is uniquely positioned to lead the way, it said, because fiber conduit has been placed under nearly every new roadway since the 1990s.
Gochnour said even she struggles to “put on my futuristic hat” and imagine what an interconnected transportation system would look like. But, she said, the state has a history of pioneering new approaches to obstacles. And that’s what it’s going to take to make the most of this Olympic window.
“The greatest legacy of the Games for Utahns,” she said, “is that it compels us to get better.”
Discover more from World Byte News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
