The Utah Department of Transportation had received "multiple citizen requests to reduce the speed limit" on that road, according to a recent email from Doug Bassett, a traffic engineer with UDOT, to Heber City engineer Russell Funk.
For John Phelan, the change is a welcome one. He’s the yard manager of Wasatch Timber Products, which is just south of the intersection at U.S. 40 and Airport Rd.
"I'm always diligently looking in my rearview mirror to make sure nobody rear ends me as I'm turning into our parking lot," he said.
Phelan said many drivers are going at least 60 mph as they pass his business.
When customers pull out from his lot, they're "basically just having cars scream up on top of them, 10 over the speed limit, honking their horn," he said. "So it really doesn't allow our customers or us to pull out safely a lot of times just because people are going so fast."
Heber City Police Sgt. Joshua Weishar said he’s hopeful the speed limit reduction will result in fewer accidents in that area. One happened Thursday as a car was pulling out from a gas station onto that stretch of road.
"And we have had several accidents, rollovers, T-bones, from people turning into the sheriff's office or turning onto the roads," he said. "So I would say that 1200 South and 189, that intersection usually is a pretty bad one because of the high rate of speed coming into town. And most people continue that high rate of speed through town."
Geoff Dupaix, a planning manager with UDOT, said the change is designed, in part, to prevent exactly that.
"What that does is that signals to the driver, that, hey, you're coming into a more urban area, where there's a lot more people, a lot more traffic and a lot more access points. So we really need you to start slowing down,” he said.
Dupaix noted there has been — and continues to be — a significant amount of housing development in the area, which brings more traffic onto the road. And that led the community to request the change.
"The community themselves had asked us to take a look at it," he said. "So our engineers did, and as we looked at it and discussed it, we felt that it made sense to make those changes."
In the email, Bassett said the signs should be changed within a few weeks.
