Eric Rasband is the planning manager for the Utah Department of Transportation’s Wasatch County region.
On Tuesday, Nov. 19, he told the Heber City Council that U.S. 40 urgently needs safety improvements on the stretch from 900 North to River Road.
“Between 2019 and 2022, there have been 11 serious injuries, with one of those being a fatality,” he said. “Those serious injuries are injuries that change people’s quality of life.”
The danger on the road is significant enough that UDOT qualifies for federal funding to improve safety there.
All of those serious injuries were caused by head-on collisions, so UDOT is proposing a 42-inch concrete barrier to separate northbound and southbound traffic. Rasband said it would all but prevent future head-on crashes.
“This raised barrier would reduce the serious and fatal crashes by up to 80%, [versus] what we would expect without the barrier,” he said.
It would be similar to the divider in sections of Provo Canyon.
UDOT would also install traffic lights at a few key intersections along U.S. 40.
The Wasatch County Council didn’t support the changes when Rasband pitched the barrier earlier this fall, in part because he gave councilors the wrong numbers. The council falsely thought the barriers would reduce crashes by just 20%, not the actual 80%. They also worried about easy access to Heber for residents who currently turn left onto U.S. 40 to head into town.
But those are the drivers most at risk, according to Rasband.
“Three of the accidents have been at intersections where vehicles are waiting to turn left, and the oncoming traffic comes in and hits that vehicle that’s waiting to turn left,” he said. “There was one where a vehicle was in the left turn lane, turning left – it got rear-ended and spun that vehicle into the oncoming traffic.”
Heber City councilmembers said they support making the changes to U.S. 40. Next, UDOT will return to the Wasatch County Council with the corrected statistics. If the county agrees, UDOT will be able to move forward with the proposed safety improvements.
