North Ogden Divide under review as county eyes upgrades to steep mountain road
Dustin Kimbrough, engineer at Talisman Civil Consultants, records problem areas on the North Ogden Divide on Tuesday, July 17, 2018. Weber County commissioners hired Talisman and another consultant to review conditions of the winding, mountainous road with an eye to upgrading it.
Dustin Kimbrough, engineer at Talisman Civil Consultants, records problem areas on the North Ogden Divide on Tuesday, July 17, 2018. Weber County commissioners hired Talisman and another consultant to review conditions of the winding, mountainous road with an eye to upgrading it.
Dustin Kimbrough, engineer at Talisman Civil Consultants, records problem areas on the North Ogden Divide on Tuesday, July 17, 2018. Weber County commissioners hired Talisman and another consultant to review conditions of the winding, mountainous road with an eye to upgrading it.
NORTH OGDEN — Converting the North Ogden Divide into a safe, easily traversable road — minimizing the risks — is no easy task, Greg Smith suspects.
“For it to be a good road, it’d probably be an insane amount of money,” said the North Ogden man, who regularly cycles the winding, mountainous roadway, which links North Ogden and the Ogden Valley six miles to the east.
Even so, he and others think less costly improvements — more guardrails in problem spots, new paving and additional measures, netting perhaps, to stop falling rocks — are in order.
“Wider paved shoulders (where possible), actual paving and maintenance and appropriate barriers are overdue,” Tim Crockford, who’s used the road nearly every day for 30 years traveling from his Liberty-area home to North Ogden for work, said in an email.
Weber County commissioners are mindful of the limitations and shortcomings of the North Ogden Divide, occasional site of dramatic crashes given the steep mountain drop-offs and tight spaces, and last month hired two firms to review the road. Talisman Civil Consultants, of Murray, is focusing on the conditions of the two-lane roadway, formally known as the North Ogden Canyon Road. Intermountain GeoEnvironmental Services (IGES), of Salt Lake City, is carrying out an analysis of the mountainside terrain that abuts it.
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“The North Ogden Divide is in need of a lot of work,” Braden Felix, project engineer in the Weber County Engineering Office, told county commissioners when the Talisman and IGES proposals — costing up to $150,000 — came up for consideration on June 19. He singled out poor pavement conditions and stability issues of the slope abutting the roadway as problems.
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Jared Andersen, the Weber County engineer, said the consultants will also evaluate the roadway’s shoulders, review areas where falling rocks are a regular issue and more, all with an eye to pinpointing problems and possible remedies.
“We’re telling them as professionals, ‘You tell us what we need to do,'” said Andersen, who expects the consultants to finish within two months.
He didn’t specify a dollar amount the county may be willing to spend on upgrading the road. But county commissioners seem inclined to do something, he said, and if they act, the county would likely tap funds generated by the 0.25 percent sales tax earmarked for transportation projects per Proposition 1, approved by Weber County voters in 2015.
Andy Lancaster, who works at Valley Market in Eden and regularly uses the road, isn’t expecting a major overhaul — widening of the road, for instance, to give autos more operating room. That would entail tearing into the mountainside. “Environmentally, it’d be a mess to deal with,” he said.
Likewise, a $100 million recommendation to straighten the road, Andersen said, would likely go unheeded. More realistically, he sees the addition of guardrails and concrete barriers to keep autos from veering off the road as potential recommendations from consultants. Falling rocks, drainage of stormwater and snowmelt, tight curves, and safety are key issues, in his view.
Though county roads crews handle routine maintenance on the roadway, the last major upgrades and safety improvements, Andersen thinks, were in the early 2010s, before he took his engineering post.
ROLE OF SPEEDING, CYCLISTS
The topic generates strong sentiments among those who use the road and the pressure for action won’t likely go away, particularly in light of the growing population in the area.
“In the last two years there has been a dramatic increase in use on this road,” Crockford said. “In previous years, I would drive to work and occasionally see another car. Now it is a steady stream of cars, bicycles and (utility vehicles).”
An average of 1,900 autos used the roadway each day in 2016, according to Utah Department of Transportation data, up from 1,680 in 2010.
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BEN DORGER/Standard-Examiner
A cyclist rides the North Ogden Divide on Tuesday, July 17, 2018. Weber County commissioners hired two consultants to review conditions of the winding, mountainous road with an eye to upgrading it.
But whatever shortcomings the North Ogden Divide may have, many seem to agree that one of the issues related to the roadway has more to do with motorists and their driving habits.
Weber County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Matt Jensen said a common denominator in most crashes on the roadway is excessive speed. Slowing down, heeding speed limits, he thinks, would go a long way in reducing accidents.
One of the more dramatic crashes occurred May 22, 2017, when a motorist took a curve too fast and crashed into an oncoming car. One vehicle plunged 40 feet down an embankment, resulting in injuries to six people, including five teens, though no one died.
RELATED: 6 people injured in Monday afternoon car crash on North Ogden Divide
“It’s typically a decent road as long as people treat it right,” Lancaster said. “The problem is when people don’t use common sense on it.”
At the same time, the presence of cyclists on the road is another heated point of contention, with some charging that bicycle riders contribute to the dangers on the roadway. Cyclists rebuff the criticism.
Stephanie Saffell-Wilkinson, for one, worries about cyclists delaying traffic as they go uphill or zooming at excessive speeds going down. Cyclists, she said in a Facebook post on the issue, “either slow traffic or speed past me on the bike. (M)eanwhile, I have white knuckles worried I’m going to have to call 911 because they get hit or fly off the pass or both.”
On the flip side, Alan Wheelwright, of Eden, said he’s experienced hostility from motorists while cycling the road. “They’ll come up behind you and honk. I’ve had people say, ‘You don’t belong there,'” he said.
Paul Lastayo thinks bikers deserve space on the North Ogden Divide and says any changes ought to include signage and road markings letting motorists know cyclists are allowed, thus legitimizing their presence on the roadway.
“Widening (the roadway) is a dream,” he said. But officials can at least implement measures “making it culturally OK to ride your bike without being killed.”
Contact reporter Tim Vandenack at tvandenack@standard.net, follow him on Twitter at @timvandenack or like him on Facebook at Facebook.com/timvandenackreporter.