Poor intersection | The Salt Lake Tribune

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Re the July 29 Tribune article "Newfangled intersections can be bad for business":

Utah Department of Transportation spokesman says the intersections solve a safety concern. If traffic is backing up on the freeway, wouldn't it be possible to simply extend the timing of the lights for the traffic exiting the freeway only during afternoon rush hour, say 4 to 7 p.m.? I believe this is an example of "filling a tea cup with a fire hose." I was surprised to see the cost quote of $5 million. How much would it have cost to have an engineer adjust the lights?

The article also quotes a study by Avenue Consultants that an estimated $1.25 million was saved in the first year in time and gasoline. How do they figure the cost of time? That had to be some complicated process to determine a 30-second savings. When you go south through the intersection and want to turn left on 12300 South you have to negotiate four lights instead of one. Do I save 30 seconds? I doubt it.

Businesses around this intersection already faced difficulty with ingress and egress and this design obviously has increased that difficulty. Where is the common sense?

Pete Schobert

Draper