Wasatch County leaders have been discussing plans for a bypass to pull traffic away from Heber’s Main Street for decades.
In 2022, UDOT announced five possible routes west of Heber. Since then, its final decision has been delayed and then delayed again.
And on Wednesday night, Oct. 9, UDOT leaders told the Wasatch County Council and a room of about 40 residents the agency had waited too long. Now none of the five routes will be enough to meet the valley’s needs.
UDOT Executive Director Carlos Braceras admitted the agency “wasn’t forward-thinking enough.” Now, he says, any solutions to the county’s traffic problems will be “much more painful.”
Braceras said UDOT needs to come up with new routes altogether and tweak the existing proposals. As he told the council a path through the North Fields is still being considered, many people in the crowded room yelled out, “No!”
He described a grade-separated road as a possibility, with a widened U.S. 40 and frontage roads on the sides for local traffic. He said that would provide a more direct path for traffic.
“We need to look at something that's grade-separated, that provides what I call ‘less friction’ for those cars that are passing through,” he said. “If you’re going to drive more miles, it’d better be faster, easier. And I’m guessing it’s going to require more of a highway feel.”
Councilmember Kendall Crittenden commented he doubted Heber City would be supportive of that idea.
The council called for more communication from UDOT moving forward, and Braceras pledged to regain the community’s confidence.
“We will do what needs to be done to build back the trust of this council, of this community, to do the right thing in the right way,” he said.
But some in the room met that promise with skepticism.
“It's one thing to say it, but let's see how it moves forward,” Tracy Taylor, a member of the Wasatch Open Lands Board, said. “And everybody in this room can agree on one thing: the options are closing the more we wait. But to hear UDOT say, ‘Oh, we should have known better 10, 20 years ago,’ – that's your job to plan ahead.”
She said the delays divide the community.
And while UDOT drafts new routes, with no timeline set, other community stakeholders are being affected.
The county council voted to conserve over 200 acres of the North Fields in March, but on Wednesday, Utah Open Lands Executive Director Wendy Fisher said that easement can’t receive federal funding until UDOT makes its plans clear.
“We tried to find ways that we could keep the application alive,” she said. “At the end of the day, there wasn't any resolution that could come, and so funding for the Gertsch property has been denied at this point, which means that the other funding sources are not going to come forward. So that's going to be a total loss of about $10 million.”
She said funding couldn’t be delayed, so Utah Open Lands and the landowners will need to restart the process from the beginning after UDOT announces the bypass route.
“It is unfortunate when something like this happens, because maybe there could have been a different outcome had we all been brought to the table,” she said.
Braceras said he doesn’t know how soon UDOT can settle on a route. And even if the agency makes a quick decision, it’s already planned how to spend its anticipated revenue from now until 2031.
Braceras said UDOT is setting up more meetings with local governments to discuss possible paths forward. But as before, the timeline is unclear.
