Get ready, S.L. Valley, for summer road projects

If you're one of those people who can't see the forest for the trees, you could be a little overwhelmed by what the Utah Department of Transportation has planned for the summer construction season.

But if you're the type who can see beyond a jungle of orange cones to the added lanes, wider roads and uncongested travel that lie ahead, you should get through it just fine.

"We have a heavy workload this season," cautioned Randy Park, director of UDOT's region 2, which covers Tooele, Salt Lake and Summit counties.

And that busy season is about to begin. But Park is the kind who sees the glass — although it might be a windshield — as half full. The good news is, he says, "I think most of these projects are built with enough limitations to limit travel impacts."

This, he reassures, will not be a summer akin to the four years of I-15 reconstruction. But the regional office does have a full slate of projects — about 65 of them — that will be in some form of construction in those three counties this summer.

That number includes two major undertakings on I-15 — the widening of the freeway from 10600 South to Alpine; and a continuation of the joint repairs on the I-15 reconstruction corridor which UDOT began last summer.

The so-called "I-15 South" project will add two lanes of travel — one of them a carpool lane — to both sides of the freeway between 10600 South and the interchange with the Bangerter Highway at roughly 13500 South. That will expand the freeway from three lanes in each direction to five, and should alleviate the daily post work rush-hour bottleneck at 10600 South. That is where the 17-mile segment of I-15 that was widened to five lanes in 2001 merges with the old, three-lane freeway.

The freeway will shrink back to four lanes in each direction under the Bangerter Interchange. Then, from the Bangerter Highway to the Point of the Mountain and on to Alpine, southbound I-15 also will be widened to five lanes — including a carpool lane and a climbing lane. But on the northbound side, only one extra lane — for carpools — will be added.

The 8.5-mile, $38 million project, to be completed by the end of the 2004 construction season, was made possible by the Legislature two years ago when it permitted some of the quarter-cent local tax for transportation to be used for the project. The I-15 South project will not involve full reconstruction — one reason the traffic restrictions will not be as severe as when mainline I-15 was rebuilt. Crews will simply be restriping and widening the shoulders, then adding pavement.