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Jed Boal ReportingAs the population west of Lehi continues to boom police urge motorists to drive defensively while UDOT is working to ease traffic. But people who drive the road will have to be patient.
State Road 73 isn't the road it used to be. In the last four years traffic has quadrupled as new homes have lured residents by the thousands. Traffic jumped from around 26-hundred cars a day in 1999 to more than 11-thousand last year.
Lucinda Thorne, Eagle Mountain Resident: “I used to be able to drive this road with my bright lights at night. Now I can't because there's so much traffic."
All day long drivers have to compete with construction trucks and farm machinery. UDOT will first remedy the problem of cars stacking up.
Tom Hudachko, UDOT: “Folks are slowing down and getting impatient trying to get around gravel trucks. So we're adding a passing lane from Redwood Road to where the gravel pit is."
UDOT will spend 800 thousand dollars on this widening project and have it finished in about a year. And just Friday, it earmarked another one-point five million dollars for future improvements.
Tom Hudachko, UDOT: “We're not exactly sure what the scope of the project would be, what exactly it will look like, but we're definitely going to look at safety improvements."
Police still don't know exactly why one car veered into a head-on accident last night, but witnesses saw deer in the area, one hazard out of UDOT's reach.
Residents we spoke with say the positives outweigh the negatives.
Wade Sleater, Future Eagle Mountain Resident: “In building a home, I have hope that eventually it will get better in widening the highway and stuff like that."
Any major widening would be more than several years away. State Road 73 is under study as part of the Mountain View Corridor project. Transportation planners are trying to determine needs in the southwest part of Salt Lake County and in Northern Utah County.
