Commanding the wheel of a sixty foot, twenty plus ton, articulated BRT (bus rapid transit), locally known as the Utah Valley Express (UVX) bus, may at first not appear to have anything to do with active transportation. But when one first considers that public transportation can be included (albeit loosely) in the definition of active transportation, if one is walking, biking or using other such means for a significant portion of their trip, and additionally that the UVX driver himself is committed to biking to work in all kinds of weather, then we just might have a story.
One such driver is Harrison Carr, a Utah Transit Authority (UTA) employee who I sat down with recently to learn why he’s biking five and a half miles along a difficult stretch of heavily trafficked road to the UTA Mount Timpanogos Garage. Harrison moved to Provo from Santaquin after “starting a new job in 2021, finding an apartment on Center Street” to reduce the hour and a half daily drive he had been making to the UTA Central Garage in Salt Lake City. A job transfer later to Provo made his commute even better, cutting the time from an hour to 20-25 minutes, but still Harrison’s shift ended in the wee hours, allowing him no options for public transportation.
Harrison had always biked while growing up in Santaquin and this soon gave him the idea of purchasing “something to get [him] to and from work,” besides using his car. He chose a RadRunner Plus that he bought for $1,800 in March of 2023 from a not too distant shop, Rad Power Bikes in Sugar House, “and then added some accessories” that included a rear (basket) rack. “I can put my sister on the back!” At the time of our chat in early May Harrison told me he already had clocked around “250 miles on it” in doing errands, commuting to work and grocery shopping. “Really like the bike racks at Smith’s” here in Provo, he enriches the conversation.
Often Harrison uses his Rad Bike for photography, a serious hobby of his with a subject focus on trains and buses. The bike allows him better access to his subjects, to “park up close and then move on” to the next location. “I love the idea of a bike that I can customize for what I want to do.” As for commuting to work, other than Geneva Road not being bike friendly, Harrison has been very satisfied with his experiment. He’s allowed to park his bike inside the UTA yard “next to the dispatch building” and head for home at the end of his shift without depending on public transport or his car. “My mood is a lot better; [biking] gives me flexibility.”
When he heard about the new Overhead Pedestrian Bridge at Provo Station, Harrison decided to get involved with BikeWalk Provo. He had seen the BikeWalk Provo stickers on bike parking racks around town, and after talking with one of the group’s members while attending “FrontRunner’s 15th Birthday Ride” led by Logan Millsap he began interacting with the group online to express his thoughts on active transportation. Harrison, being a proponent himself, hopes to add to the momentum of active transport here in Utah, especially in Provo.
“I’m one of two [Provo UTA] drivers that ride to work… that’s really cool that you can do that,” other drivers have told Harrison.
“I’m exploring parts of Provo that I would have never explored.”
