SALT LAKE CITY— The Utah Department of Transportation is working to finish its designs after announcing its plans to move forward with a massive I-15 expansion project last week.
UDOT plans to widen I-15 from 400 South in Salt Lake to the Park Lane interchange in Farmington, so the freeway has five lanes, plus an HOV lane on each side.
The agency also plans to add walking and biking paths in spots along the corridor, as well as make improvements to the 12 interchanges along that stretch.
But, in order to do this project, UDOT will have to buy and destroy some homes and businesses along the corridor.
What’s on the line for the I-15 expansion project?
UDOT Spokesperson Mitch Shaw told KSL NewsRadio that at this time, they plan to buy and remove four homes and 12 commercial properties. However, UDOT could possibly do the same to an additional 25 homes and nine commercial properties.
Shaw said they’re doing everything they can to avoid taking home and business properties, but don’t see a way around some.
“It’s not fun to have to do that but there’s that balancing of act of: we have to keep our transportation system humming, we have to keep it operating.”
Shaw said due to strong public input, none of the homes under consideration are in Salt Lake City. But, some of the businesses are.
“When we’re building a project, we do everything we can to avoid property acquisitions.”
Shaw said they do everything they can to avoid buying and destroying homes for two reasons:
“It’s just the right thing to do in terms of lessening the blow of our project for the public and people that live near a project site. But it also, just to be totally frank, makes the project more expensive.”
Shaw said the final project designs still need some time to complete, plus they also need to coordinate with some local governments on certain parts of the project.
This means it could take some time to know for sure how many homes and businesses will be acquired and destroyed.
At this time the project has an estimated price tag of $3.7 billion. UDOT said construction could start as early as 2027.