Legacy Highway will affect Cache Valley
City planners in Cache Valley communities are watching Davis County and the Legacy Highway closely, because the valley may be faced with a similar dilemma if things don’t change soon, said Leland Foster, in charge of the transportation corridor element of the Cache Initiative.
In November, a tanker spill on I-15 just beyond Kaysville blocked the north-bound freeway for a day, and motorists were stuck for hours waiting to exit and circumvent the accident on side-roads through a nearby community. North-bound travelers have no alternative to I-15 for travel through the Davis County area – they just have to accept whatever conditions come between them and their destination.
Cache Valley citizens face a similar problem with Hwy. 89, said Jay Nielsen, Logan City community development director.
Community leaders are working on a solution – local business leaders are raising money through the Cache Initiative to help with whatever they come up with, but nothing has been solved yet, said Leland Foster, in charge of the transportation corridor element of the Initiative.
“Originally the idea was to build another highway to the west of town,” Nielsen said. “But planning consultants were brought in, and at the end of it they said no way.”
A highway would attract development – not what Cache Valley communities want to see in their open spaces, Nielsen said.
The problems with a highway like the Legacy Highway are obvious, said John Bennet, a planner in the governor’s office and a staff member on the Utah Quality Growth Commission. Nobody is suggesting the environmentalists are wrong to protest the highway will damage northern Utah’s wetland and farmland.
“But Davis county is in a legitimate pickle,” Bennet said. “I think it’s a little arrogant for people to say the highway can’t be built when they don’t have to go through what Davis County residents go through every day.”
The Legacy Highway is exactly what critics say – a Band-Aid for the much larger problem of too many cars on the road, he said.
But the much larger problem developed over time and will take time to solve, and Davis County faces an immediate problem, he said. Those supporting the highway, including Governor Mike Leavitt, have weighed both sides of the issue – and the immediate problem carried the most weight.
Leavitt has been working on the larger problem, Bennet said.
The Quality Growth Commission, formed in 1999 with the passing of the Quality Growth Act, was formed to help communities all over the state avoid the pickle Davis County is in.
The commission is committed to helping Utah communities help themselves, offering funding and ideas for communities interested in solving their own congestion problems, he said.
The commission recently granted Logan City $15,000 to redesign downtown, Nielsen said.
The city has commissioned a 150-person team of 12 committees to generate a plan. The committees will come together in about 6 weeks with some of the best planners in the nation to come up with a final concept, and construction will begin this summer, Nielsen said.
The hope is to create a more pedestrian- and biker-friendly downtown, Nielsen said.
“Building more highways is never a solution to problems,” he said. “If we want to clear out the traffic on Main Street, we have to do it by offering alternatives to automobile transportation.”
Voters’ recent approval of a quarter-cent raise in sales tax to fund a bus route from Richmond to Hyrum is evidence of the community’s support for alternatives to cars.
This is the most important element of any community development plan, Nielsen said.
“People almost have to get into a crisis before they realize they have to do something,” he said. “We’re making progress here. It’s slow to get people to think differently and act differently. At least we’re placing those ideas in front of people.”
Cache Valley has a ways to go before it turns into another Davis County, where open spaces are being sacrificed for the immediate needs of a growing community, and he hopes the problem has been caught in time.