A federal judge has rejected a lawsuit by residents in southern Salt Lake County seeking to block a new I-15 interchange at 11400 South and a road-widening project on 10400 South.

The 56-page decision was issued Friday and confirmed Tuesday by the Utah Department of Transportation. The plaintiffs have 60 days to decide whether to appeal the decision, but for now, it means UDOT can move forward to build the interchange and expand 10400 South between Bangerter Highway and Redwood Road.

Work on the two projects was stopped early last year after residents filed the suit.

"We're very pleased with the decision," UDOT spokesman Nile Easton said Tuesday. "We're excited at the opportunity to move forward on this very needed project, but we're still reviewing the decision with our attorneys to determine what our next course of action will be."

Brad Davis, a plaintiff who lives near the proposed projects, said he was disappointed in the ruling by U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins and felt the judge did not review the case thoroughly. He worries the road projects will turn neighborhoods into "little ghettos" surrounded by roads and commercial developments.

"In initially looking at it, I feel the judge really didn't do his responsibility in re-evaluating whether the agencies did their responsibility," Davis said in an interview Tuesday. "He basically took their position."

Davis was one of several plaintiffs in the 2006 suit against UDOT, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration. The plaintiffs alleged UDOT did not take a "hard look" at the impact of the road projects to neighborhoods and did not sufficiently study alternative projects.

The suit asked the judge to invalidate all federal approvals of the two road projects and also requested that UDOT do a regional study of congestion-relief projects in all of southern Salt Lake County, not just along 11400 South and 10400 South.

Jenkins denied all the requests in his ruling, saying UDOT sufficiently studied the impact of the two projects and also looked at numerous alternatives.

"The arduous public process undertaken with reference to these projects over a period of several years took the requisite hard look," he wrote.

About five years ago, Davis and his wife, Nicole, filed a similar suit to stop construction of the 11400 South interchange. The suit was dismissed because UDOT agreed to do a more expansive study of the project. That second study is the subject of the 2006 lawsuit.

For more information about the 11400 South interchange project and 10400 South widening project, log on to www.udot.utah.gov, and do a search for 11400 South under the search menu bar.

---

E-mail: nwarburton@desnews.com