OREM — After 18 months of maneuvering through orange cones and barrels, Provo Canyon visitors, BYU fans and Orem residents will now have a much smoother ride as improvements and widening of 800 North have officially been completed.
The Utah Department of Transportation and Orem City held a ribbon cutting ceremony Tuesday to celebrate the completion of the project that's been talked about for many years.
"It takes leadership on a lot of levels in order to bring about good things like this kind of a roadway," Transportation Commissioner Kent Millington said. "It is not the easiest thing to sit down in the middle of a community the size of Orem and disrupt its traffic flow, even for a short period of time."
The corridor is now a seven-lane roadway from 400 West to 1000 East and consists of three lanes in each direction with a median lane. Right turn lanes were added and an effort to focus left turns was fostered in order to increase safety.
All of the elected officials that were in attendance at the ceremony thanked the local residents and business owners for their cooperation and understanding during the construction period that inconvenienced many.
Lieutenant Gov. Gary Herbert, State Senate President John Valentine and Orem Mayor Jerry Washburn, all of which reside in Orem, expressed their initial worries about such a large road coming through their own city. But after years of not supporting such a grand scale parkway, they eventually understood the importance of it.
"If we hadn't done this, the impact locally would have been unacceptable," Washburn said. "I think that is one of the reasons why Senator Valentine, I and others realized that we must increase capacity here or our other roads in our neighborhoods would be clogged and congested to an unacceptable level."
The project cost just under $63 million to complete. Along with the widening of the road which required several residences and businesses to be purchased, street lighting was improved and landscaped pedestrian-friendly walking areas were also incorporated.
Herbert said that because of the support and vision of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., transportation has and will continue to improve over the coming years.
"We understand and believe that transportation is something that needs to have a high priority," he said. "It has not always been a high priority in our state, but right now we have over 200 projects going on across the state thanks to the good work of UDOT, the funding by our state legislature and the leadership of a good governor who understands that it is not just a quality of life issue, but an issue of economic survival."
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