The world will be watching in 2002, but transportation engineers and planners from around the country already have their attention focused on the Salt Lake Valley.
The Utah Department of Transportation's complex $1.59 billion rebuilding of I-15 through Salt Lake County is the Olympic event of the decade to many in the transportation field.What has been billed as the largest design-build highway reconstruction project in U.S. history was the topic of the day here Thursday at the annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America.
Conference-goers were particularly keen on UDOT's $70 million plan to install an advanced traffic-management system as part of the reconstruction project. An overview of those plans was presented by officials from the Utah division of the Federal Highway Administration, UDOT and Wasatch Constructors, the consortium hired to do the bulk of the I-15 work.
The system, known in the acronym-happy world of transportation engineering as ATMS, will be used to keep traffic flowing smoothly in the valley both during and after 17 miles of I-15 are rebuilt.
UDOT's ATMS will include three control centers from which a variety of traffic management tools will be coordinated to help maintain traffic flow, in part by finding and removing accidents quickly and communicating to the motoring public.
ATMS involves the use of variable message signs, traffic signal coordination, ramp metering, electronic detection of traffic congestion, video surveillance cameras and a travelers' advisory radio station.
Such systems are not new. Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Antonio and Houston have them and Denver is getting one. The concept has become increasingly popular in the 1990s.
But the Salt Lake Valley ATMS will be one of the largest and most sophisticated traffic-management systems in the country, experts said Thursday.
"Traffic management is a critical aspect of minimizing delay to the motorist," said Tom Urbanik, assistant director of the Texas Transportation Institute, which last year ranked the Salt Lake metro area as having the country's highest growth in traffic congestion (31 percent) from 1987 to 1993.
"It appears they've done a fairly comprehensive job of analysis ahead of time, which I would commend them for doing."
John Merritt, transportation engineer for the city of Colorado Springs, said he will follow UDOT's progress as his department slowly implements its own ATMS system.
"My problem is, they are starting to rebuild I-25 through my city," Merritt said. "It's a complete tear-down and rebuild, an interchange at a time, that will impact our area with construction delays well into the next century - for 10 to 15 years. So, we're spending at least $3 million on ATMS. We will have cameras and detection equipment up by the end of the summer."
The Intelligent Transportation Society was formed by Congress in 1991 as a clearinghouse for cutting-edge transportation technology, particularly ideas that can help government get more productivity from existing roadways. It collects and distributes information on the latest advances in communications, engineering and computer technology to transportation-related agencies and businesses throughout the country.
"The goal of ITS is to maximize the use of the existing surface transportation infrastructure," said Greg Krueger, a Denver-based engineering consultant and president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter. "ITS is different from the typical transportation organization. It's a paradigm shift."
Even though the group's focus is to improve travel on roads that already exist, UDOT's use of the design-build method also interests some guests at the two-day conference, which ends Friday. Other states are watching the Utah project to see how the fast-track method works here.
"The biggest concern about design-build is it takes a lot of the design review away from the DOTs (departments of transportation)," said Krueger, who said design-build is more frequently used on small public projects. "With design-build, you know what you're going to get but there are still little details that are unknown and that's where there can be problems."
On Tuesday, UDOT is expected to give Wasatch Constructors the go-ahead to begin the 41/2-year reconstruction project.