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Highway hearings: Now's your chance to sound off on Mountain View
This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

What document comprises five volumes, 34 chapters, 2,238 pages and weighs 18 pounds?

Is it:

(A) Rocky Anderson's memoirs, titled Song of Myself;

(B) Patrick Byrne's new IQ test;

(C) Mitt Romney's answer to "the Mormon question";

(D) Mountain View Corridor's Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

If you chose (D), you would be correct. You also would be a certifiable transportation policy wonk.

However, if you plan on living on the Wasatch Front for the next 20 years, you might want to crack the Mountain View document's pages, if only to see where the Salt Lake Valley's proposed west-side freeway and mass transit corridor might be located and where it might cut through Lehi to join I-15 in northern Utah County. There's also the question of whether it would be a toll road. What's more, you may actually influence those decisions.

The Utah Department of Transportation will convene hearings this week to hear public comment. The schedule is:

* Today, 4-8 p.m., Hunter High School, 4200 S. 5600 West, West Valley City;

* Thursday, 4-8 p.m., Willow Creek Middle School, Lehi;

* Saturday, 2-6 p.m., Copper Hills High School, 5445 W. New Bingham Highway, West Jordan.

If you can't make the hearings, you still can file comments before Jan. 24, 2008, via e-mail to mountainview@utah.gov or by mail to Mountain View Corridor, care of Parsons Brinckerhoff, 488 E. Winchester St., Suite 400, Murray, Utah 84107.

UDOT has done a decent job of summarizing the information and making it digestible on the project Web site www.udot.utah.gov/mountainview. The complete study also is there. Hard copies are accessible at selected local libraries.

In Salt Lake County, the highway corridor will be located near either 5800 West (the preferred alternative) or 7200 West. A dedicated mass transit corridor is anticipated near 5600 West.

Opponents of the highway in Salt Lake County have identified several concerns, among them the proximity to existing schools.

In Lehi, UDOT's preferred route of a connector freeway at 2100 North has sparked intense opposition from the city government, which proposes an alternative alignment at 4800 North in the Jordan River Narrows. In fact, there are several alternatives on the boards in Lehi, some involving freeways and another using arterial streets.

If you want to have a voice, now's the time to sound off.

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