The Park City School Board will vote on the Memorandum of Understanding with Park City Municipal to install a tunnel under Kearns Boulevard between the High School and the LDS Seminary Building. The school board meeting is Tuesday at 4 pm. Carolyn Murray has this.
The tunnel construction will begin in the spring of 2019. There are two phases to the project with the preliminary utility work starting this fall. Julia Collins is the Senior Transportation Planner for Park City. She says the initial work can’t start until the Memorandum of Understanding is signed by the School District. The City Council approved the agreement in last week’s council meeting.
“The memorandum of understanding really outlines how this agreement is going to work with the Park City School District, Park City Municipal and UDOT as well. The memorandum of understanding really outlines how that is going to take shape and move forward.”
Park City municipal will pay the $2.8 million dollars estimated for the total cost of the tunnel. Collins says the school district and the LDS Seminary are donating the land on both sides of Kearns Boulevard to access the tunnel. The LDS Church is not contributing monetarily but is allowing for the construction easement which Collins says is a significant land donation. She says the value of the land donated by the school district amounts to $437,000 dollars.
“With all of the easements that we are asking the school district to grant, there’s permanent easements and there’s construction easements. The total footprint of the impacted land is a little over an acre. Total land contribution in permanent easements is just under half an acre and if we assume costs to those permanent easements…is $25.00 per square foot, it ends up being $437,000 dollars in contributions from the school and that is about 16% of the total construction cost estimate.”
Traffic engineers from UDOT estimate a significant improvement to traffic delays and pedestrian safety because the current Hawk Beacon causes 40 second delays each time it is activated by someone crossing on Kearns.
“Horrock’s Engineering used Syncro ten which is a traffic modeling tool to determine the delay at the Hawk Signal. Each time a traffic signal activation occurred that indicates a 30 second crossing time. They calculated it during a four hour time period for 180 days which represents and entire school year, they found the total delay annually is 1464 hours over the course of a school year.”
They’ll start relocating utilities this fall and believe phasing the project will be more efficient in the long run.
“On the high school side, the sewar line, relocating that out of the Pathway of the tunnel. So what that will do it, it will streamline the time to put the box culvert tunnel in the spring.”
A rendering of the tunnel can be found on KPCW.
The School Board meets in the District Offices on Kearns Boulevard at 4pm on Tuesday, August 21st.