Legacy puts focus on park in parkway
For the past nine months, engineers at the Utah Department of Transportation have been learning a new vocabulary of sorts — using words and phrases previously unrelated to road building in Utah.
The reason for this expanded lexicon?
The Legacy Parkway.
As part of a settlement reached last November to get the much-contested road built, state officials agreed to redesign Legacy with several provisions, including a ban on truck traffic, reduced speed limits and "parkway" features. The first provisions proved easy to manage, but the latter proved a challenge since there are few examples of modern parkways within the United States.
"We haven't done a parkway before," said John Thomas, UDOT project director for the Legacy Parkway.
But after months of work and input from a national team of experts, Thomas feels confident that UDOT has designed a unique road.
It's a highway that now fits with its name, he said. It's "balanced" and is integrated with surrounding communities. It will provide for a "pastoral," nature-oriented driving experience.
It's not another Bangerter Highway.
What will make Legacy unique is a combination of things, according to Thomas. First is that diverging interest groups were brought together to discuss the road and plan its design. Second is a focus on municipalities and the opportunity to "mesh communities" with the road. Third is a focus on environment and placing the road within the "context" of its environment.
It's a theory of road-building loosely defined as "context sensitive solutions."
"This is about transportation," said Angelo Papastamos, context sensitive solutions director for UDOT. "We're just really trying to fit in with the natural community."
If successful, state officials hope the experience on Legacy will be something soothing, relaxing and unique. Something that allows motorists and pedestrians to focus on the environment.
Changes to the roadway's design are simple and subtle, as seen in plans unveiled Thursday. Instead of concrete, the road will be a softer asphalt. Traffic lanes will have a slight curvature, or "meander," to assist in directing the sight line of motorists and also to avoid some Great Salt Lake wetlands.
Design elements have also been added to interchanges and entrances. And surrounding cities and developers have been involved in planning for an extensive trail system and 2,225-acre nature preserve on the west side of the road.
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