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1300 South Bridge Opens After Six-Month Construction Closure

Garrett via Creative Commons

The bridge on 1300 south between 500 and 700 west in Salt Lake City has reopened to traffic after undergoing major repairs.

The $11 million project included seismic upgrades, widening of the overpass, a full deck replacement and improved pedestrian and cyclist paths. Paul Dowler is an engineer for Salt Lake City and the project manager. He says it reopened two months ahead of schedule.

“We realized the inconvenience that this bridge closure caused the communities and the connectivity between the east side and the west side,” Dowler says. “Also the pedestrian detour was quite long, so we wanted to get that reopened as soon as possible.”

Dowler says some construction will continue but shouldn’t impact the traveling public.

“We will have intermittent lane closures, but we’ll try to keep those on off-duty hours and then we’ll also be working a little bit on the sidewalks so we might restrict pedestrian traffic to one side or the other but there will always be pedestrian access across the bridge now,” Dowler says.

The bridge has been closed since March.

The project was a joint effort between Salt Lake City and the Utah Department of Transportation and was paid for through the federal highway trust fund with some matching funds from Salt Lake City. 

Whittney Evans grew up southern Ohio and has worked in public radio since 2005. She has a communications degree from Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky, where she learned the ropes of reporting, producing and hosting. Whittney moved to Utah in 2009 where she became a reporter, producer and morning host at KCPW. Her reporting ranges from the hyper-local issues affecting Salt Lake City residents, to state-wide issues of national interest. Outside of work, she enjoys playing the guitar and getting to know the breathtaking landscape of the Mountain West.
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