Ron Sing has a headache. And it's so bad he doesn't expect the pain to go away until 2001.

Director of transportation for the Jordan School District, Sing has construction on the brain.It's bad enough that the summer road-improvement season trickled - make that flooded - into fall. It's bad enough that traffic keeps getting worse in southwestern Salt Lake Valley where Jordan's 72,000 students are trying to get to and from school.

Sing has bigger problems. He spends all his time and energy on a plan to get the students in the state's second-largest district carted around when the Utah Department of Transportation tears I-15 to kingdom come beginning in April.

It's a monumental transportation project that will lock up valley traffic until the project is finished four years later. UDOT will widen I-15 from six to 10 lanes from Sandy to Salt Lake City at a cost of $1.3 billion.

Consequently, traffic on the already crowded thoroughfare will be squeezed or rerouted. Travelwise, "It's going to be like a snow day every day," Sing said.

Some of the first sites on UDOT's list are improvements to 9000 South and 10600 South, located smack dab in the middle of Jordan's bus routes.

Here are the facts as Sing knows them:

- UDOT warns motorists that a 30-minute commute will become a 21/2-hour travel crawl.

- Trucking companies report they'll move rigs off I-15 onto main arterials through town. This will effectively clog State Street, 700 East, Redwood Road and I-215.

- Sing has to design routes off the streets big trucks will use. "They're going to cause major gridlock."- He has to train and prepare bus drivers to deal with increased tension between other drivers on the road. He expects more drivers to cut in front of buses and fewer drivers to let buses merge into traffic.

UDOT updates construction sites and schedules on its Internet home page each week.

The answer, Sing says, may be simpler than that.

"I think it's going to mean eliminating travel as much as possible. I think lifestyles are going to change for many people." It will be interesting to see if businesses do more telecommuting or if residents along the Wasatch Front alter their travel voluntarily.

For the school district, the opposite pattern will emerge as traffic gets worse. More buses, instead of fewer, will be dispatched from the headquarters at 9300 South and 300 East. Where one bus can serve three schools now, congestion will allow that bus to get to only two schools, Sing said.

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Buses are barely making it on time now, so he predicts more parents are going to complain. "Everybody already hates me," said Sing. One parent says his child's route to school is hazardous, another says her child should be bused and isn't. Parents grumble that the buses that do come are late.

The situation, likely, will get worse.

"For the next four years, it's going to be tough."

Sing is trying to stay calm as he ponders the next few years, but jokes in an interview about a BIG raise, retiring or moving on to less-stressful environs. "You guys have any openings down there?"

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