Additional inside lanes will be added to I-15 in south Davis County beginning Aug. 1, Utah Department of Transportation executive director Tom Warne said this week.
The $50 million project will take about 12 months to complete but will not affect motorists' use of the existing freeway lanes, at least not during the day, Warne said.Crews will add one asphalt lane in each direction in the existing median, from Bountiful to Farmington. The lanes will be reconstructed using concrete pavement when that stretch of I-15 is completely rebuilt beginning sometime in the next decade.
The Band-Aid measure has been promoted by the department and Gov. Mike Leavitt as a way to bring congestion relief to the heavily used corridor, where traffic volumes increased about 10 percent in 1998 alone.
The department had hoped to provide a traffic alternative in the form of the 13-mile Legacy Parkway, but environmental concerns over UDOT's preferred alignment have delayed that project.
The full reconstruction of that segment of I-15 has been delayed as well, from 2003 to as late as 2008, while issues over the parkway are resolved.
"We buy about five years of capacity by doing this," Warne said of adding the additional center lanes. "So we'll be about where we are today six years from now. This is just an interim solution."
UDOT's plan, as previously announced, is as follows:
-- From 2600 South to the U.S. 89 interchange in Farmington, crews would add an additional paved lane, creating four lanes in each direction where three now exist.
-- Between I-215 and 2600 South in Bountiful, crews would re-stripe the recently widened roadway to create five lanes in each direction where there are now four.
The department will place concrete barriers on either side of the median, and probably a visual screen as well to cut down on rubber-necking.
Warne said while there may be some nighttime closures of the freeway, he doesn't expect weekday traffic will be restricted or even slowed by the construction work.