SALT LAKE CITY — Living on Capitol Hill for the last two years, Salt Lake City resident Sam Adams has seen the number of commuters and tourists grow. Because of the increase, more traffic clogs the roads.
A new roundabout is being built at the Utah State Capitol to ease the traffic, but many don't believe that's the answer.
“There is more demand through this area than there is capacity, and without doing things throughout the network to solve that problem, putting in a roundabout that might have a lower capacity here won't fix any of the network issues that there are," said Adams.
The Utah Department of Transportation never showed residents what the intersection will look like when there’s traffic, Adams claimed.
“This does look a lot worse than what we have right now,” he said. “What makes you say that it's a good solution and that isn't exacerbating the problem?”
The old traffic pattern required drivers going east on 300 North to stop, while those going west were not required to stop, and drivers coming from both directions turning south onto State Street had to stop. Drivers coming north up State Street were not required to stop.
“This intersection is confusing, and they've seen a lot of near misses,” said Jessica Rice, UDOT Project Manager.
The purpose of the roundabout is to improve safety for all users: drivers, pedestrians and people on scooters and bikes. UDOT is currently doing a Capitol Hill solutions development study to evaluate traffic issues.
“It slows down traffic,” Rice said. “It also reduces the conflict points, and a conflict point is when someone wants to make a left turn through the intersection, somebody could hit them going through, and that's one conflict point that we are eliminating with a roundabout.”
Neighbors like Adams wish UDOT would’ve evaluated the traffic first before moving forward with construction.
“We care about our community, and we want to make it a better place,” he said. “But there's people above us who are making decisions without involving us or taking us seriously.”
UDOT aims to finish building the roundabout by December 17. In the meantime, they’re asking drivers to take detours to avoid the intersection.
