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Residents of Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain have limited access to their communities, but the Utah Department of Transportation is planning a brand new road.
Redwood Road and Lehi's Main Street are the two main routes to Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs. Now UDOT is gearing up to start building what will be known as "Pioneer Crossing", a new road giving a direct route between I-15 and Redwood Road.
With dramatic growth in the past decade, traffic is an issue in Lehi along Main Street as residents living there, along with those in Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain, travel to and from I-15. Bryan Adams, program manager for Access Utah County, said, "This facility will actually give another alternative, which give them easier access to I-15."
The road will connect to Redwood Road, south of the crossroads and will travel east six miles, to the American Fork Main Street exit.
The project will also mean a complete rebuild of that interchange with a new design called a diverging diamond interchange.
"It operates a lot better than most interchanges, but it also allows us to maintain traffic better to try to alleviate any impacts on the traveling public," Adams said. "It's a lot smaller interchange, it requires less right of way, and we also feel it's a much safer interchange as well."
Pioneer Crossing has a price tag of $380 million and is just one of four major road projects underway, or in the works, to provide some alternate routes before I-15 in Utah County is completely rebuilt in the next few years.
UDOT hopes construction will begin in the new few weeks.
While the new interchange will take two full years to complete, the interchange will reopen during all of the work.
The new Pioneer Crossing road should be open by this time next year.
E-mail: spenrod@ksl.com
