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Team coverageDrivers faced huge delays on Bangerter Highway yesterday when a traffic light went out at 6200 south. Now that incident is drawing attention to a bigger problem. At least four agencies have some sort of jurisdiction over the intersection, yet not one responded to the traffic tie-up.
One corner is the responsibility of West Jordan, but the one across the street is Taylorsville's responsibility. One driver stuck in yesterday's snarl says that led to massive confusion.
Think of the intersection as a puzzle. It's one driver Ross Howden says no one was willing to solve when the traffic light went out during rush hour, so he called West Jordan Police.
They said, ‘It's not us, it should be the county.' Transferred me over to county dispatch, said, ‘What's going on?' they say. ‘You're in charge,' they said. Of course they say that it's shared between West Jordan and Taylorsville."
And they're right. Taylorsville is responsible for one section, West Jordan for another. And while the traffic signals are owned by UDOT, the road is owned by the state, but they don't patrol it.
So in the end, communication between the managers of the traffic signals and all those responsible for the intersections ended up leaving drivers in the dark. Howden and others who called KSL News were concerned that while so many agencies work the intersection, not one law enforcement officer showed up to help direct traffic.
Today, Salt Lake County says it wasn't their responsibility, so does West Jordan. Taylorsville got a call from dispatch, but officers were busy with higher priority calls.
Lt. Rosie Rivera, with the Taylorsville Police Department, said, "It's a big intersection, and typically we wouldn't send one officer to try to direct traffic. It's too dangerous."
No accidents were reported as a result of the outage, but traffic was slowed anywhere from a half hour to an hour and a half. Officials say drivers handled things right, however, treating the puzzling intersection as a four-way stop.
Lt. Paul Jaroscak, with the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office, said, "When a lot of people stack up at those intersections, they really control themselves."
Of course, all agencies we talked to today say jurisdiction doesn't matter if it's an emergency, they'll help out wherever they can.
E-mail: sdallof@ksl.com
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