A revised contract to design a pedestrian overpass spanning I-15 in Farmington was approved Monday by the Davis County commissioners at the request of the county's public works director.
Director Sid Smith described the revised agreement as "an exercise in confusion, bureaucracy and red tape with a little legal mumbo-jumbo thrown in."Copies of the original agreement signed in January were unclear about whether the county or Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) would pay an outside consulting engineer to design the walkway, which will be built adjacent to the State Street overpass.
The new agreement makes it clear that UDOT pays most of that bill, Smith said.
The contract is a three-way agreement among the county, UDOT and the federal government because federal highway aid funds are involved, according to Smith.
The county is paying $6,000 of the total $66,000 cost of designing the walkway.
Construction of a pedestrian walkway along State Street is one of the conditions Farmington City placed on construction of the county's new $20 million judicial complex in West Farmington. Portions of the complex are scheduled to open this month, but the 400-bed jail probably won't be operational until June.
The county first looked at rebuilding the two-lane overpass over I-15 to widen it to four lanes and a sidewalk to handle the heavy traffic the complex is expected to generate.
But that proposal would be too expensive, county officials decided, opting instead to build the pedestrian walkway adjacent to the existing overpass.
Smith said the design work on the overpass will probably be finished shortly but there are several levels of review required by UDOT and federal agencies. Construction probably won't start until the summer of 1992.
Construction could begin this fall, he said, but the project will require periodic closings of lanes of I-15 under it, and other traffic interruptions. Those are best done in the summer rather than the winter, Smith said, so the project will probably be delayed until next year.