The Utah Department of Transportation is studying how it could add lanes and upgrade interchanges on U.S. Highway 40 from Silver Creek to the Mayflower exit.
Mayflower has the most immediate need: the agency believes the exit will exceed its capacity within three to five years.
“Even on my way in tonight, I'm astounded as to how much traffic interacts between [Interstate] 80 and U.S. 40,” UDOT Region 2 Planning Manager Geoff Dupaix at a joint meeting of the Summit and Wasatch county councils Sept. 17. “And if things continue — it's not a negative, I mean, we're growing, you know, that's just the nature of how areas grow — but there are some things that we need to be looking at on a short-term as well as a long-term basis.”
The next bottleneck is Silver Summit. Exit 2 serving Trailside, Promontory and the Home Depot area will exceed capacity in the next five to 10 years.
Quinn’s Junction is expected to fill up within 10 to 15.
UDOT has a working list of potential solutions, which includes redesigning U.S. 40’s interchanges to resemble one like Kimball Junction, for example.
“I think a couple of things are driving this,” Summit County Councilmember Roger Armstrong said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Sept. 18. “Number one, the Olympics are obviously going to be upon us before we know it. That clock is ticking and starting to go a little faster.”
The other, he said, is Deer Valley Resort’s addition of a new base area, East Village, at the Mayflower exit. Deer Valley is more than doubling its available terrain this winter season.
UDOT says the Military Installation Development Authority, a state agency created to serve some military personnel that is also overseeing East Village development, plans to add roundabouts similar to those at the exit for Jeremy Ranch and Pinebrook.
But the transportation agency thinks those will fill up before 2050, so it’s looking at other options.
If UDOT wants to move forward with any of the ideas, the process will look much like the multi-year planning process in Kimball Junction. Starting from a field of 30 possibilities the state ultimately decided it will add lanes, especially turn lanes.
