The county and UDOT have been studying the issue since 2022 and have come up with three alternative options.
There’s a pedestrian-friendly option, a car-friendly option and a budget-friendly option. County and state transportation planners used specific criteria to whittle down the 30 original ideas.
“[Those] screening criteria looks at traffic congestion, looks at safety, it looks at bicycle and pedestrian mobility, and then transit travel times. And any of those that don't qualify or serve the community needs better than the ‘no-build alternative’ are automatically rejected,” Summit County Transportation Planning Director Carl Miller said.
UDOT and the county summarized each option at the Dec. 13 Summit County Council meeting.
Alternative A, which adds a way to get off Interstate 80 onto Landmark Drive, is seen as the best option for pedestrian circulation in Kimball Junction but the worst for cars.
Alternative B circulates cars the best: it adds a new lane to I-80 eastbound and undergrounds state Route 224 to bypass the stoplights at Olympic Parkway and Ute Boulevard. But it’s the most expensive.
Alternative C is the cheapest, sacrificing car and bus circulation but retaining I-80 improvements that could prevent highway backups.
All three require widening 224’s footprint.
Originally, sinking 224 was going to involve capping it, which could create an above-ground plaza. That’s been axed in the latest plans to cut costs, but Councilmember Chris Robinson has expressed interest in reviving it.
“I think the reason that alternative B is attractive to me is because we're creating a Kimball Junction neighborhood that is not crossed by however many lanes of high speed traffic,” he said. “And it gets to how areas on both sides of 224 redevelop.”
It would make the car-friendly plan as good for pedestrians as alternative A. But Miller says UDOT doesn’t think it’s feasible engineering-wise to cap 224 if it’s widened.
His team is looking at how the footprint of the road could be made smaller in the plans.
UDOT returns to the council in February to present its final conclusions based on the screening process. Then, the public can give input until mid-March.
Summit County and UDOT aim to decide on a plan by the end of 2024.
