Center Street and I-15, Provo

[JKRhodes]

When I drove to Utah last month, I navigated this interchange a number of times:

http://goo.gl/maps/eaFWR

From a roadgeek's perspective, it has a little bit of everything: A Texas U-turn, weaving, merging, flyover ramps, etc. It's certainly fun.

But from a practical perspective I wonder if such a reconfiguration was necessary. The 45 degree aerial shows what appears to have been a parclo (or at least a large diamond) that was reconfigured into the current disjointed monstrosity.

Is the new interchange well liked among locals? Has it helped? It seems to me that a DDI or SPUI with a RIRO or 3/4 intersection for Draper Ln would have met the needs for the small industrial area adjacent to the freeway, without disrupting the continuity of Center Street.

It just seems like a mess, and I'm interested in knowing how it came to be.

[nexus73]

If you think the modern layout is a mess, you should have seen the old setup.  It looked ready to crumble onto I-15 at any moment!  Only two lanes on Center as it crossed over the freeway and I-15 was just a 4-lane freeway.  Holiday traffic jammed up like crazy. 

I do hope the new layout addressed those issues!

Rick

[NE2]

You want 114 to be at surface level just to the west but above grade to cross the railroad. Assuming the old configuration was rather steep, this might have been the best choice without totally rebuilding I-15 below ground level. Note that the old configuration included a flyover from I-15 south to 114 east in practically the same location that 114 east now occupies.

[JKRhodes]

OK, that explains the swing and dogleg on the east side of the interstate. I also found old aerial views on Bing later on yesterday which shed some light on the old setup. Wow.

A similar setup in Tucson might have the surface street running below grade and underneath the tracks, but I see that can't be done in this case without seriously re-configuring the access to the Hostess bakery there.

Very interesting. The width of the little stub road between I-15 and Draper Lane seems to suggest that some redevelopment of that strip of land may be in the works.

[authenticroadgeek]

There were businesses out there that didn't have any roads connecting to them. So the local road engineers built Draper Lane, an adorable little road meant to serve those businesses. But it interfered with the old interchange so they got rid of it.

Also, as far as I'm concerned, I-15's exit 265 wasn't there when I first went to Provo. I think we had to take the University Ave exit and drive all the way to Center without the freeway.

The interchange added this new exit 265 thing, which added an extra purpose to take down the old interchange. This and Draper Lane are both the reasons why this interchange was an improvement.