Accelerating on roads
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s the Legislature was divvying up its embarrassment of tax-surplus riches during this year's session, it left an extra $100 million to be spent on unspecified transportation projects. And since there's nothing like some extra food left on the ground to excite the wildlife, the scavengers are circling, hoping to tear off a piece of the cash pile for projects in their corner of Utah.
It won't exactly be a free-for-all when it comes to doling out the funding, though. This month, the Utah Department of Transportation and the Utah Transportation Commission will sit down to decide who gets what, and that list could be finalized by May.
Obviously, we'd like to see most of that $100 million come to the Top of Utah, which has a host of worthy projects for increased and/or early funding, including:
l Corridor preservation for the northern segments of the Legacy Highway that are being threatened by residential or commercial development. Locking up the land now will save more in the future.
l Work on widening and improving State Road 108 in western Davis and Weber counties. We've written about this subject in this space too many times to remember. Known locally as 2000 West in Davis County, and 3500 West/Midland Drive in Weber County, the two-lane roadway long ago became a drive-time headache due to exploding growth throughout the western reaches of the counties. It gets noticeably worse every month.
l I-15 needs widening between Roy and Farmington. That stretch of road during morning and afternoon commutes is a carbon copy of the stretch between Farmington and North Salt Lake before work to widen that segment was undertaken in the late 1990s. Commuter rail will help, but not enough to remove the need for more lanes.
l A solution to congestion along Riverdale Road between I-15 and Washington Boulevard in Ogden must come soon. The road's a nightmare.
l Layton needs -- or, more correctly, has needed -- a full I-15 interchange at Main Street's south end for years, now. Some money to hurry that process along would relieve traffic at the city's Hill Field Road and Antelope Drive interchanges.
l And, finally, a host of east-west corridors throughout Davis and Weber counties need attention. They include, but probably are not limited to, 500 South in Bountiful; Antelope Drive in east Layton needs to be punched through to U.S. 89; 300 North in Clearfield and West Point should be widened; and the conflict between slow-moving trains and automobile traffic on Ogden's 12th Street deserves immediate study. (If you have additional suggestions, e-mail them to letters@standard.net and we'll post them online next week.)
Our hope is that UDOT and transportation commissioners will not forget these and other critical transportation projects in the Top of Utah before deciding where to spend that extra $100 million.
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