I am concerned with the inevitable direction the Legacy Highway will pave through Utah's future if UDOT succeeds. For one thing, I know that its name, "Legacy," will come to haunt us as a sardonic, concrete reminder of our shortsightedness.
Yes, we will leave a legacy, but is this the legacy we have in mind: opaque mud skies, automobile-dependent telecommunities, irreparable harm to globally significant wetlands and, of course, the $500 million hole in the pocketbooks of taxpayers (not to mention the ongoing millions in maintenance costs).
UDOT can't be expected to tell it like it is, (as a competing government agency, it's primarily interested in expanding its projects and funding) so it's no surprise that UDOT scorns the Environmental Protection Agency's own conclusion that a great deal of research "suggests that a large fraction of [traffic] is directly attributed to increases in road capacity."
This "induced travel" phenomenon is as real as air pollution, and laying a road through a vast open space is also an invitation for further sprawl development.
A convenient high-speed mass transit system will serve as a legacy we won't regret.
Please write the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA and the governor with your vision of our shared legacy, not UDOT's.
Giles Larsen
Salt Lake City