8.5-mile stretch of I-15 is ready for widening

On April 13, the Utah Department of Transportation will officially begin the $38 million widening of an 8.5-mile stretch of I-15 from 10600 South to Alpine.

The existing median will be paved over to create travel lanes as a temporary (10-year) fix to the congestion problems in the area.

At the same time, UDOT will begin an environmental assessment (EA) to see if a similar median/widening project would provide temporary relief to an equally congested segment of I-15 between Alpine and University Parkway in Provo.

UDOT spokesman Tom Hudachko said the study could recommend widening the freeway in northern Utah County to two or perhaps four lanes, or some other solution. It could also result in no recommended action.

"We're just doing an EA to determine what it is we need to do," Hudachko said. "We are going to look at all the options that are out there to provide immediate relief, and one of the options we might look at would be filling in the median" with new travel lanes.

The Utah Transportation Commission recently approved a $1.5 million request to pay for the study, which will take about a year to complete. Any future work would need additional state and federal funds.

A larger environmental impact statement, which is considering the full reconstruction of I-15 in Utah County, is ongoing but will take about three or four more years to complete.

"That's a long-term type of thing and we recognize that there has got to be something done in the more immediate future to provide some relief," Hudachko said.

The so-called "I-15 South" project in southern Salt Lake County 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 13500 South.

That will expand I-15 from three lanes in each direction to five and should alleviate the afternoon 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 plans for I-15 South call for the freeway to shrink back to four lanes in each direction under the Bangerter interchange. But from the Bangerter Highway to the Point of the Mountain and on to Alpine, southbound I-15 also will be widened to five lanes — with a carpool lane and a climbing lane. On the northbound side, only one extra lane — for carpools — will be added.