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West Jordan • Taylor Burton just finished giving a hand to construction crews in painting a recycled pedestrian bridge. Actually, she estimates providing about 50 tiny painted child handprints scattered across the span.
"I did some in blue, green, purple, black, red and a little yellow," she said as she tried to scrub remnants of those colors off her hands, hair and clothes. "I put a little 'T' [for Taylor] next to some so I can tell they are mine" when she uses the footbridge in the future.
She joined hundreds of children Thursday to put their mark on the bridge that in three weeks will be placed at the intersection of 8200 South and Utah Highway 111. Crews recently removed it from Bangerter Highway near 7800 South to make way for a new freeway-like interchange there.
"So we had this leftover bridge. The question was whether the state should just dismantle it, or if we could recycle a structure that the state already invested in and find another intersection in West Jordan that needed it," said state Rep. Jim Bird, R-West Jordan, who pushed for reusing the bridge.
"They needed it for the busy road at U-111," Bird said. "They wouldn't have a pedestrian bridge there for another 30 years if we didn't do this. Usually it takes someone getting killed before they put up a bridge. I'm glad that didn't happen this time."
Jason Davis, director of the Utah Department of Transportation's Region Two, said some residents initially questioned "why they were getting an old bridge. We told them it would be safe, and we would make it look nice." He said officials then came up with the idea of letting area children help decorate it with painted handprints.
"What better way could there be for kids to take ownership of the bridge? They are the reasons for the bridge in the first place," Davis said. "These handprints may last for 50 years. They can point them out to their children someday, and maybe even their grandchildren."
It may even increase safety.
"They might be more likely to actually walk up the bridge and look for their handprints to cross the street," Davis said. "One of our big worries is that children won't use a bridge, and will still try to cross the busy street. That is especially dangerous because when we put up a bridge, drivers aren't looking for pedestrians there anymore."
Davis said new foundations and approaches for the bridge are currently under construction. "If all goes well, we should move this into place in about three weeks" from its temporary storage area on 6200 South at about 3300 West. He said the span itself would have cost $500,000 to $750,000 to build new. Moving it to its new home was included in the bid for work on the new interchange on Bangerter.
The bridge will have one end in the schoolyard of Sunset Ridge Middle School, and will also help children who attend nearby Oakcrest Elementary to cross the road.
On Thursday, the bridge in the storage area became a playground for children and parents to paint handprints. UDOT provided the paint, and moved a flatbed semi-truck along the sides for children to stand in to more easily reach high outside spots. Older teenagers jumped on the interior of the bridge to slap painted handprints on overhead crossbeams.
Diane Patterson of West Jordan brought four children. She was holding one-year-old Adelia, who was covered with paint, after helping to put some of her baby handprints on the bridge.
"I saw a post online about this by a friend, and thought, 'What a cool thing.' So we came," she said.
Her 12-year-old daughter, Liberty, was mixing different colors of paint on her hands to come up with a color that would be different from others and easier to find later. "It's turquoise," she said. How many handprints had she put on the bridge? "More than 10." Then thinking about it, she said, "Maybe more than 50."