The Utah Department of Transportation has just released its 25-year plan. It focuses mainly on the needs of rural travelers.Jeff Harris is the planning director for UDOT. He says planning open stretches of freeways and back roads in the state is more different than developing plans for the metro areas along the Wasatch Front.
“It’s really more about connecting communities, it’s about recreation, it’s about tourism, it’s about energy development and interstate commerce,"says Harris. "So those are really the things that drive how we assess needs of the rural areas of the state.”
Harris says there will likely be continued challenges related to getting energy resources from the Uintah Basin to the Wasatch Front.
“Right now energy is mostly being brought out by truck traffic," Harris says. "Having the facilities on US 40 to accommodate that in a safe way is very, very important.”
Harris says plans include dealing with seasonal congestion issues around Bear Lake as well as Moab, where US 191 connects 10 major recreation areas. He says Utah is one of the few states in the nation that unifies metro and rural long range transportation plans in one document every four years.