Fantastic news for Ogden activists who worked feverishly to notify the Wasatch Front Regional Council concerning your strong opposition to the widening of Harrison Boulevard. The Standard-Examiner's Mitch Shaw reports this morning that the WFRC has revised its Regional Transportation Plan and is "no longer planning to widen Harrison Boulevard from 20th Street to Highway 89." From this morning's SE story:
Now, the plan calls for only operational improvements on the road from 20th Street to Country Hill Drive, and widening the road from four lanes to six from Country Hills Drive to Highway 89.Read this morning's entire encouraging SE story here:
"We had some concerns from citizens and the city council and the mayor asked us to take it off," [WFRC spokesman Sam] Klemm said.
• Legacy to stop at 12th; Harrison won't be widerNot only does this plan revision relieve the East Ogden neighborhood from the threat of being crudely bisected by "a potentially 7-lane 'regional arterial;'" it also removes one more obstacle to the selection of a 25th Street east-west corridor streetcar route.
Nice work, Emerald City citizens. This is more evidence that robust citizen involvement in regional transportation planning pays big dividends.
6 comments:
Even widening Harrison south of Country Hills Drive is a bad idea. It would require taking property from existing businesses, and who would be served? WSU isn't going to add more parking, and southeast Ogden is built out.
Regarding Legacy Highway, I think everyone agrees that west Weber County will eventually need more roads. But does it need a freeway heading south? That would only promote the development of bedroom subdivisions for commuters working in Salt Lake. Instead we should be promoting businesses here in Weber County. A sensible and affordable approach would be to preserve a narrow corridor for an arterial road, but not a 300-foot corridor for a freeway.
Safe east-west routes are needed more than north-south.
Other than 12th street, there are none.
They should have made all 30th cross streets into Cul-de-sacs years ago.
This is great news. I read about it while waiting for a windshield chip repair at Technaglass this morning.
I was one of those who wrote to the "powers that be", suggesting reasons why Harrison should not be widened.
Widening this residential collector into a regional highway would have been a disaster for much of Ogden.
Once again, we find they did listen.
Government gets done by those who show up.
(But I agree with Dan that I would rather not see south of Country Hills widened either. And I use that road all the time. It's built out and doesn't need it.)
I've written this before - UTA is one of the most inept and incompetently run agencies and now we all know that UDOT is giving them a run for their money.
Well, I didn't know that it only took the mayor asking them to take the widening of Harrison off the list and a few citizens and the city council expressing some concerns - what a colossal waste of time, money and effort by these agencies.
Bureaucrats at agencies like UTA and UDOT absolutely love to defer to elected officials. That way the blame gets shifted off of themselves.
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