Legislators and citizens sent a clear message to South Jordan in a legislative hearing Tuesday: Don't mix issues.
Amid emotional testimony from the families of train accident victims, legislators and people who attended the late-afternoon hearing urged the city to take one step at a time, and to make the first step one that closes a deadly railroad crossing "poste haste."Via HB428, South Jordan has packaged closing the railroad crossing at 10200 S. 300 West with its request for $2 million to finish its part of a frontage road between 9000 South and 10600 South.
The short-term goal is to get the crossing closed, city administrator Dave Millheim told a group gathered at the Utah State Capitol. The long-term goal, and solution to congealed traffic during future Interstate-15 construction, is to get the road finished.
Because of the I-15 construction and inconvenience to motorists from Sandy Business Park to the north and other area businesses, Millheim said the issues are interlocked. The city must have a game plan to finish the road, for which the city has committed about half of the nearly $5 million cost.
"In a way, we're coming up here begging, but we're also coming up here with a $2 million commitment," Millheim said.
Those in attendance wanted to distinguish the issues.
"What is holding up South Jordan City from just closing the crossing?" asked Sen. Alma Man-sell, R-Midvale.
The father of a teenager killed at the site on New Year's Eve said he's been down to the unprotected crossing several times since the accident and noted its hazardous conditions. The crossing has no cross-bucks or flashing red lights, and trains travel through at an average 68 miles per hour, he said.
"Close that thing down," Ross Larabee said, "before other people have to experience that knock on the door by the South Jordan police to tell you your son has been killed by a train."
The crossing has been the site of numerous accidents and deaths through the years. In 1938, 23 schoolchildren were killed when the bus in which they were riding was hit by a train.
Calvin Webb told people gathered at the hearing Tuesday he and six brothers and sisters were on the school bus that stormy, snowy morning in 1938. He encouraged the city to close the crossing and for legislators to help pay for the road: "This is very serious."