Carpooling lanes soon to expand southward

DRAPER — More carpool lanes are about to debut on I-15 in Salt Lake County.

Along with them comes a new push by the Utah Department of Transportation to encourage commuters to use them.

Beginning sometime this week, weather permitting, crews will complete their work near the 12300 South interchange and open new, continuous carpool lanes from 10600 South into Utah County near Alpine.

Utah's first carpool lanes opened in the spring of 2001 with the completion of the I-15 reconstruction project. With this week's finish of the $38 million project to widen 8.5 miles of I-15 south of the reconstruction corridor, the Wasatch Front will have:

• A 25-mile-long carpool lane on northbound I-15, from Alpine to 400 South in Salt Lake City.

• A 24-mile-long carpool lane on southbound I-15, from 400 South to just south of the Utah County line.

And it will have more commercials.

"We're going to be launching a campaign called 'carpooling, the travel decongestant,' with billboards and radio ads," said UDOT spokesman Nile Easton. "We're going to be starting a carpooling connection Web site to help people get connected with each other and commute into work, back and forth."

A study the department conducted last year showed use of the original high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes was "meeting expectations," but the lanes were somewhat underutilized.

"Our study showed if it was extended into Utah County it would be used a lot more," Easton said. "We get a lot of extra capacity. It's almost like adding a couple extra lanes if people are actually using it."

The widening project also has added a general-purpose lane on I-15 from 10600 South to the Bangerter Highway, making I-15 a 10-lane freeway — five lanes in each direction — from 600 North in Salt Lake City to the Bangerter interchange (13550 South) in Draper.

This latest project did not include a complete reconstruction of the freeway, however, and is designed to last only 10 years as a "temporary" fix for congestion. A full rebuild of the 8.5-mile stretch of I-15 is planned for the future.

The need for a wider freeway became apparent in 2001 when the I-15 reconstruction project was completed. A huge southbound evening rush-hour bottleneck was created at 10600 South, where five lands are reduced to three.

"When we did I-15, the original reconstruction, we had to end it somewhere and the logical terminus at that point was 10600 South," Easton said.