Well, with midsummer heat wave redefining the word drought, the Colorado River running dry, and the Great Salt Lake losing a half-inch a day with nobody seeming to care, it is time to address our other summer fascination: road construction. With orange cones everywhere, why should Tom Clyde have all the fun?
I have no explanation for the things UDOT does other than they are tied to their outdated standards. They insist that they need a 15-foot-wide shoulder everywhere they go, even though no one ever uses it. Who breaks down that can’t pull over safely in the gravel for a few minutes? But can we really afford all these shoulders?
It’s like building a dam for a million-year flood while all the grammar schools will flood from a 100-year flood. Let’s have some risk design consistency. Is there a highway benefit-cost analysis or risk assessment or are they just using UDOT’s West Valley City Road template everywhere? Let’s have some site-specific consideration and sensitivity.
Case in point 1
The I-80 east exit to U.S. 40 south backs up to Kimball Junction, not just on holidays but all day, every day because it is a one-lane exit going up a hill with oil trucks.
During the last Olympics, they painted that as a two-lane exit, and it worked fine with half shoulders. Not any more. And it was just repaved in perpetuity.
Case in point 2
S.R. 248 is an abomination, an embarrassment and a disgrace that is always backed up with two empty shoulders and a center divider, left-hand turn lane to nowhere. It drives me nuts and I never drive on it at 8 a.m. or 5 p.m. And it is redone every year.
There is ample room on each side for four free-flowing lanes with gravel shoulders and a movable center divider with a No Left Turn sign. If someone has a problem, once in a blue moon we can all slow down and go around but not suffer gridlock every day for the luxury of the ubiquitous empty breakdown lanes.
And now we have added a monster Maverick at the Quinn’s frontage road death intersection, but with a new traffic light, before S.R. 248 inexplicably shrinks to two lanes again for 500 feet with two huge shoulders. What are you thinking? You don’t need another study. You need common sense.
Case in point 3
Is S.R. 224 going to be nine lanes wide, wider than most aircraft carriers or runways, to accommodate empty bus lanes, shoulders and random left hand turns. Stop the insanity.
And my last pet peeve is the sidewalk in the middle at the I-80 junction by the car wash so left hand turns to Smith’s can back up cars to Jeremy Ranch. It’s a road, not a sidewalk, garden or parking lane. Even with the smart new double turn lanes now to reduce the cycle split time dedication, it is still a bottleneck.
What’s your point?
And that brings us to my final comment. These are major arterial roads, not collectors, made to move people safely and efficiently from point A to point B. Forget the frills and national templates, shoulders and turn lanes, bike lanes and byways. Make them work for us. Time the lights, restrict access, paint the lanes, build them for peak flows. At least until we all get our own personal computer Olympic drones and traffic becomes AI 3D by 2034.
I know bigger roads lead to more traffic, but we are beyond that here with already failing levels of service.
In New York and New England, they stopped building roads and told people to live with it. In many places like Boston, people drive on the shoulders unrestrained when traffic gets bad. Will it take that kind of revolution here?
We are not rural and quaint anymore. We are a metro, urban, crowded, world-class destination resort. Live with it.
I wish you luck with the new bus lanes and paid parking with day skiers and resort workers hopefully parking at the junctions. I like the idea of fewer day skiers in town, unless they pay.
The Canyons should make $5 million a year in parking fees from their new parking lot. They should chip in and pay their employees for an extra hour if they take the bus. Why should they make all the money, and we pay for all their roads, buses and satellite lots?
The resorts need more skin in the game for housing, traffic and paying a living wage. I asked the boss at Deer Valley how he would find enough employees and get them to work at Deer Valley East Village, and he said he would give them a cookie or coffee if they carpooled or took the bus. Good idea. We need the carrot and the stick to make the buses work.
Nutcase in point
But so much of our traffic is contractors who need their tools and materials for building, fixing and cleaning more of our trophy homes every day. The rest is single-occupancy vehicles.
We are still the car-culture problem. Water and traffic flow towards money but you can’t buy or build your way out of gridlock. You have to be smarter and make sacrifices. You can’t have it all.
In the psychology of traffic, the most important component is the nut behind the wheel. Can we be the solution?
Matthew Lindon lives in Snyderville. See his website: Waterandwhatever.com