What to do?
Turn I-15 through Salt Lake County into a 10-lane freeway? Pave its current six lanes and fix some bridges? Adopt a middle-of-the-road compromise?"I have no idea," said Scott Summerhays, one of scores of curious citizens who wandered through an open house Thursday that the Utah Department of Transportation hosted on its proposals to improve the state's most crowded stretch of highway.
Summerhays was like many browsers poring over schematics, maps and diagrams: uncertain but certainly interested.
Owner of an 18-year-old retail music business just off the interstate in Murray, he said he has watched with growing concern as traffic along I-15 has increased - and slowed to a crawl much of the time - in recent years.
"It's horrible in that area," said Summerhays. "It's hard for our customers to get to us."
Across the room, Edie Trimmer, a member of the Salt Lake inner-city Poplar Grove Community Council, acknowledged the trouble but said she doesn't want UDOT going overboard on freeway renovations.
Trimmer noted the conspicuous absence among UDOT drawings on display of downtown details such as where new ramps might be built. That issue has been a political hot potato kicked around for some time, but UDOT seems prepared, among other things, to put a freeway interchange at 400 North, through the Poplar Grove area.
"It's probably a done deal," frowned Trimmer. "But we still want it done in a way that respects our neighborhoods."
Similarly, Pat Struhs, owner of a downtown business near Pioneer Park, said engineers need to keep the locals in mind when redesigning I-15's downtown configuration.
"How they do it concerns me," said Struhs, who said UDOT should avoid massive structures that sever neighborhoods from one another and add to the blight that already plagues much of the area surrounding the interstate in central Salt Lake.
"There's something wrong with their approach," said Roly Pearson, another Salt Lake resident who seemed apprehensive about UDOT's I-15 ambitions.
Pearson, who usually rides his bike eight miles to and from work, said his skepticism is rooted partly in reports that the I-15 project will barely keep pace with population growth and ultimately might do little to alleviate traffic jams.
"Then they're spending all this money for what," said Pearson.
Others had different views.
LeAnne Sarver of Sandy, who commutes daily to her job in Salt Lake City, said the solution is simple: "not enough lanes."
"If you're going to do something, you might as well fix the problem," agreed Dan Kitchen, a resident of an unincorporated area of south-central Salt Lake County.
A formal public hearing later in the afternoon drew barely 100 people and lasted little more than an hour.
Don Poulsen, the mayor of Midvale, urged UDOT to do as much as possible and to do it soon.
"We need final design now!" said an impatient Poulsen. He was told that the department will likely choose a designer before the end of this year, even though hard construction - to be preceded by frontage road relocation - likely won't begin before 1998.
Richard Perschon of Murray suggested I-15 be turned into a toll road, a move he said would cut down drastically on traffic.
Another critic said the freeway is wide enough already and that Utahns ought to start finding more efficient ways to get around, following the model set by post World War II Europe.
Among the last speakers was Sam Taylor, the Utah Transit Authority board member who has preached bus transit as the antidote to gridlock.
Taylor, who arrived a little after 5 p.m., said he'd taken a UTA bus to the hearing and was dismayed by the fact that the vehicle was nearly empty.
"It had four passengers on it at this hour," said Taylor. "That's criminal."
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
2nd open house scheduled today
UDOT's second open house on I-15 improvement is today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., in Sandy at Mount Jordan Middle School, 9360 S. 300 East. It is followed by a formal public hearing a 4 p.m. Citizens unable to attend but interested in offering written testimony should submit it to: James E. Johnston, Community Involvement Officer, Environmental Division, Utah Department of Transportation, 4501 S. 2700 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84119-5998.