TAYLORSVILLE, Utah — If you live, work or travel in Salt Lake County and use Bangerter Highway, you may be impacted by a year-long closure that begins Friday night.
The latest intersection planned to get a massive upgrade is 4700 South at Bangerter Highway, on the border of West Valley City and Taylorsville.
During the closure, Bangerter Highway will remain open in both directions but only right-hand turns will be allowed on 4700 South.
Life Church Utah is trying to be optimistic about all the construction happening outside their doors, said Rich Wooten, Lead Pastor.
“We have the long-term view and know that this is best for this area of the Salt Lake Valley,” he said. “For sure we're worried about attendance and things like that, but we've also prepared our community and talked about it very openly and even have had messages dealing with it so that we can let our people know.”
The Utah Department of Transportation emphasized that there will be absolutely no east-west through access for drivers or pedestrians during the closure.
“Once they're complete, you're going to be looking at more free flow travel on Bangerter Highway without a lot of interruptions,” said John Gleason, Public Relations Director for UDOT. “That means getting people to where they're going safer, and more efficiently, faster.”
Officials recommended that those needing to get through the closure use the 4100 South or 5400 South intersections.
Utah Transit Authority buses will also be impacted for the next year during the construction, with one stop relocating and three others closing completely.
The closure comes as UDOT removes a traffic light, converting the intersection to "freeway-style."
It's not the first time UDOT has made the switch along the highway, as the department reported it has been working on similar projects for more than a decade, eliminating stoplights along the highway one at a time.
“We're seeing 60,000 vehicles every day travel Bangerter, and that's growing,” said Gleason. “We're the fastest growing state in the country, and so we have to plan for that growth.”
“Anybody that travels on Bangereter right now knows the choke points that you get at 98th and 47th really backs up traffic in the evening commute and in the morning, and so we're going to eliminate those backups,” said Gleason.
When the project is done, Bangerter Highway will flow underneath 4700 South, meaning drivers won't have to stop at the intersection when traveling on the freeway.
Construction zones have already been established in the area, but drivers have been permitted to travel through the intersection as crews worked.
Crews are trying to stay safe while working in the heat, said Zane Smith, Project Manager.
“They are coming in an hour to two hours earlier to get the bulk of their work done before that high peak exposure,” he said. “Also with 230 employees on a project we go through about five pallets of water per week.”
Smith is hoping summer heat waves won’t delay the project’s end date goal.
“With this high heat, this heat dome, over us, we know our production rates will be a little bit lower, and we are understanding of that, but also at the same time we know we have a schedule to meet,” he said.
It’ll be a long year of detours, but Wooten is keeping the faith.
“Ultimately we're excited about the changes that are coming.”
The intersection closure begins at 9 p.m. Friday and continues through July 2025.
