Road for N. Utah County Gets $30M

None by KCPW

(KCPW News) One of the road projects approved for transportation funding last week came as a small surprise to state officials. The "Vineyard Connector" never cracked the top ten road recommendations according to a UDOT spokesman.

Utah County officials lobbied hard for 30-million dollars to begin preliminary plans on the Vineyard Connector because it will be a west-side alternate to growing congestion on I-15. The road would run parallel to the freeway from American Fork to Orem through what was formerly Geneva Steel.

Mountainland Association of Governments Executive Director Darrell Cook says now is the perfect time to start the road because the Geneva Steel land is undeveloped and cheaper to acquire. Furthermore, owners of the Geneva Steel property are planning a twenty or thirty-thousand person community that will need access to the rest of the valley.

Thirty-million dollars from the Transportation Commission will only be enough to begin land acquisition and start an environmental impact study. The total project will cost many times that and it will be years before construction actually begins.

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