Regional Boards > Mountain West
Bangerter Highway
US 89:
As anyone who drives in Salt Lake City with any regularity knows, Bangerter Highway (SR-154) is constantly under construction. There’s enough going on with it that I figured it needed its own thread.
First, some background: it was built in the 1980-1990s, but for whatever reason they didn’t want to build it as a freeway to begin with. So they built it as an expressway with at-grade intersections at major cross streets. Then when those intersections got very busy and dangerous, they turned a bunch of them into CFIs.
Then a few years ago, they finally decided to start converting the at-grade intersections into interchanges. The first to be completed was 7800 South (SR-48), in 2012. In 2015 Redwood Road/SR-68 was completed as well. The following year, a new interchange was built at 600 West, and the existing 200 West intersection was converted to RIRO-only.
The latest set of projects involves four new interchanges:
-5400 South
-7000 South
-9000 South
-11400 South
The 7000 South interchange is complete for the most part, and the other three are planned to be done by this fall.
Environmental studies are also being carried out for interchanges at:
-6200 South
-10400 South
As it turns out, there’s now a plan to upgrade all of the intersections between SR-201 and I-15:
Unfortunately, it appears UDOT has no plans as of yet to upgrade Bangerter north of Parkway Blvd, nor is there a plan to upgrade the junctions with SR-201 and I-15 into full system interchanges.
BigManFromAFRICA88:
Honestly, I don't think the people planning Bangerter expected such a large boom in population to the west, even though it was arguably starting during the build. Traffic demands are now such that I think Bangerter should be a full freeway from the airport to I-15, as well as being as efficient as possible in getting the MVC done and maybe studying an east-west freeway somewhere between 7800 South and 11400 South. The latter should take away a lot of demand on surface streets from Sandy to the Jordans and futher westward...
Rothman:
I still don't understand how there can be enough water to support the western growth towards the desert. :D
i-215:
--- Quote from: Rothman on June 05, 2018, 09:28:07 AM ---I still don't understand how there can be enough water to support the western growth towards the desert. :D
--- End quote ---
Utah isn't running out of water, per se. We're just running out of cheap water.
The Wasatch Front is a highland prairie (not a desert), and it's a semi-arid climate, not an arid one. Combined with significantly lower summertime temperatures, and I think the typical Vegas-like comparison water advocates make is not really a fair one. That being said, it would be nice to see developers install smaller front lawns, and use native drought-tolerant grasses. There's no point planting Kentucky Bluegrass in this state, yet everybody seems to like to.
US 89:
--- Quote from: i-215 on June 06, 2018, 04:42:07 PM ---
--- Quote from: Rothman on June 05, 2018, 09:28:07 AM ---I still don't understand how there can be enough water to support the western growth towards the desert. :D
--- End quote ---
Utah isn't running out of water, per se. We're just running out of cheap water.
The Wasatch Front is a highland prairie (not a desert), and it's a semi-arid climate, not an arid one. Combined with significantly lower summertime temperatures, and I think the typical Vegas-like comparison water advocates make is not really a fair one. That being said, it would be nice to see developers install smaller front lawns, and use native drought-tolerant grasses. There's no point planting Kentucky Bluegrass in this state, yet everybody seems to like to.
--- End quote ---
Salt Lake City gets 16 inches of rain a year on average, and most definitions of "desert" require less than 10 inches. It's worth noting that according to the Koppen climate classification system (the most common system that climatologists use, according to Wikipedia), Salt Lake City actually has too much rain to be classified as even semi-arid. They put Salt Lake in the hot-summer humid continental climate zone, which is the same zone as Chicago. That goes for the entire Wasatch Front, as well as the Cache and Tooele valleys.
The "west desert" refers to anything west of Tooele. Those areas get significantly less rain and are much more semi-arid to arid, although the urban area isn't going to expand in that direction any time soon.
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