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SALT LAKE CITY — As Utah grows, more people rely on public transit, forcing officials to add more routes and pedestrian safety features to the state's roads.
The 200 South reconstruction project in Salt Lake City has been a long time coming. According to transportation officials, it's the busiest transit street in Utah, and the upcoming changes are all to make travel more frequent, seamless and safe.
"200 South is an incredibly important bus transit corridor; it connects key anchors to the University of Utah, Salt Lake Central Station on the west, but there's a lot of routes that regionally use 2nd South at some point," said Kyle Cook, a transportation engineer with Salt Lake City Transportation Division.
When construction is in full swing, 34 busses travel on 200 South every hour, consisting of 12 different routes. Those numbers are only going to go up after construction finishes.
"It's reached the end of its useful life in terms of its pavement quality. We have sidewalk and curb ramp issues along (the road), so we knew we were going to rebuild it, and the question was how is it going to be rebuilt," Cook said.
As part of Salt Lake City's 2018 Funding our Future Street reconstruction bond, construction started on 2nd South in 2022.
The city also wanted to make the corridor more pedestrian and bike-friendly, so it added floating bus platforms, bike lanes that go behind bus islands for safety, curb extensions and flashing crosswalk lights.
"The buses basically travel in their own lane; they no longer have to pull to the curb and negotiate with cyclists and negotiate with traffic to get back into the flow. Soon you will see shelters and handrails, different amenities almost similar to a TRAX station," Cook said.
Cook said that even though the construction will be done by the end of 2023, the buses won't resume regular routes until spring 2024.
