This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The Mountain View Corridor on the west side of Salt Lake County is about to become a little longer — and safer.
The Utah Department of Transportation says construction on the next segment of the highway from 5400 South to 4100 South should begin early next year, and UDOT expects to select a contractor for the design-build project by the end of next month. If all goes according to plan, that section will be finished in 2017.
The 2.2-mile section is expected to cost $180 million. It will have two lanes in each direction and will include 14 roadway bridges, seven trail bridges and a 12-foot-wide trail for pedestrians and bicyclists, Nathan Lee, director of UDOT Region 2, recently told the Utah Transportation Commission.
A $1 billion section of that highway (and future freeway) already has been completed between Porter Rockwell Drive in Bluffdale and 5400 South in Kearns. Much of the highway is aligned at about 5800 West.
Current sections are mostly two-lane frontage roads in each direction for a future freeway, which will be built later between the widely separated lanes.
UDOT also reports that it plans to build an additional section of Mountain View from 4100 South to State Road 201 between 2018 and 2020. That 3.2-mile section is expected to cost $500 million — and also will likely rework the interchange of S.R. 201 and 5600 West.
Joe Kammerer, project manager for Mountain View, said connecting the new highway with the S.R. 201 freeway will be "a game changer," and will likely make Mountain View a much more popular route for commuters by connecting directly into the area's freeway system instead of just its surface streets.
Lee also said several safety enhancements are being made on the corridor.
They include adding flashing signs to warn high-speed traffic on Mountain View when it is approaching signals that are about to change from green to red.
Also, UDOT is installing specially designed traffic signals on east-west crossroads that intersect Mountain View to help reduce confusion caused by signals that are close together, often only a block or so apart.
UDOT spokesman John Gleason said some motorists have ignored a nearby red light by instead focusing on a more distant green light, so that they run a red light and cause an accident.
The newer lights are designed so that motorists can see the color of the next light only after passing through the first.