Mayor's plan for corridor: Head west

LEHI — As citizens groups and Utah's Department of Transportation haggle over Lehi's traffic problems, Lehi Mayor Howard Johnson says he has a few ideas that might make most folks happy — but probably not any time soon.

Last month, Johnson mailed a map with 17 different road projects to residents with their city utility bill. The map includes roads that have been proposed by mayors of nearby cities, UDOT and Mountainland Association of Governments, Utah County's transportation planning organization.

The map also includes two segments of the Mountain View Corridor that Johnson thinks could be a good solution to complaints that the road would sever the city and destroy neighborhoods.

"All I'm doing is taking this whole scenario (of proposed roads) one step further," Johnson said. "You've got the problem of (Mountain View Corridor) going through Lehi, you've got the problem of putting all of that traffic on I-15, which is overloaded. So let's take (Mountain View Corridor) and go south until we're past the traffic jam and then hook up with I-15 ... down to the west of Nephi."

Johnson is proposing making a Mountain View Alternate Corridor that would split off of the main corridor in Bluffdale, travel down the west side of the valley — through Camp Williams and past Cedar Fort — then rejoin I-15 in Nephi.

For convenience, Johnson suggested making the corridor a tunnel as it travels through Camp Williams, similar to a tunnel MAG is considering through West Moun- tain.

But he is quick to point out that the idea is merely "hopeful" and "visionary."

Although the west side of the valley is growing rapidly, MAG planning director Andrew Jackson says there aren't enough people to justify such a remote road — yet.

"We're going to have to grow in that area and see that area growing first," Jackson said. "We really haven't done any modeling there because we're looking at a 2030 time frame, and it's not anything we're seeing in a 2030 time frame."

Jackson says such a road on the west side of the valley probably couldn't be built until about 2040, but that doesn't mean it's too early to start talking about the possibility.

"I'm not discounting what (Johnson) is doing," Jackson said. "There's definitely going to be needs out there in the future, and we know the population is going to continue to grow ... but we're not sure what that time frame is."

Johnson says he doesn't expect UDOT to immediately build an alternate corridor, but he thinks the number of trucks that currently use I-15 could justify a west-side route in the near future.

"Utah has an abnormal amount of interstate trucking going through it because of I-80 and I-15," said Utah Trucking Association executive director David Creer.