In March, 400 Lehi residents rallied to protest the proposed Mountain View Corridor highway.

Since then, the grass-roots group that organized the protest, Citizens Organized for Smarter Transportation, has been silent but busy.

The group now claims to have 2,000 members and is planning another mass protest against bringing the proposed highway through 2100 North in Lehi. The protest will be held at 7 p.m. on May 23 at the Lehi Legacy Center. The group would like to see the new highway tied into Interstate 15 closer to Point of the Mountain. It also plans to suggest an alternative to the routes proposed for the highway.

The Utah Department of Transportation has proposed that the highway connect Interstate 80 in Salt Lake County to I-15 in Utah County.

Lehi officials recently asked UDOT to tie the highway into I-15 near the county line, using a large bridge to cross the valley west of I-15.

Before the protest, volunteers from the group plan to visit 3,000 homes in Lehi to encourage attendance at the meeting and give residents information about the Mountain View Corridor, said David Klock, one of the group's organizers.

Volunteers for the group have been gathering hundreds of signatures from Lehi residents on petitions against the proposed highway, he said. The petitions will be given to UDOT.

UDOT spokesman Geoff Dupaix said the department has never been approached by the group with an alternative to UDOT's proposals. Klock said that will change soon.

Using donations, the group has hired a traffic engineering firm to review UDOT's proposals for the highway. Representatives plan to meet soon with UDOT officials to propose their own alternative that would significantly decrease the size of a proposed highway on 2100 North in Lehi. Klock declined to say how much money the group has raised.

Lehi should not have to bear the brunt of traffic from areas outside the city, and I-15 already divides the city in half, Klock said. Residents will demand the proposed highway be scrapped in favor of a much smaller boulevard to avoid dividing the city again.

"We are deciding what kind of state we want to be," said Judith Baker, a Salem resident and Lehi property owner who is one of five founders of the group. "For me it is more than this road we are trying to influence. I would like to see a state that is designed so that we wouldn't have to have as many cars and roads. We could have smart transportation so that people could go where they want to go without having to get into cars."

Now is the time to plan for bus and train service and design carefully so that Utah residents don't have regrets about roads and highways later, she said.

"I moved here from Salt Lake Valley and did not like what was happening in Salt Lake Valley and I do not want the same thing to happen in Utah Valley," said Rita Speirs, a Lehi resident and co-founder of the group. "I have a granddaughter that lives with us and it is really important that we don't have this huge freeway going through our community.

"It seems ridiculous to cut our community in half again with a freeway and its pollution. It will take away the beauty we have down here."

Traffic congestion in north Utah County has proven the failure of UDOT and the state, she said.

"We have Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs and Harvest Hills that are growing so fast and there was not enough consideration in the beginning on how to handle that and now everyone from there is trying to dump onto the freeway here," she said. "I agree we have a problem but I don't agree a new freeway is the answer. I think our focus should be on mass transit.

"Everyone you talk to is concerned about what to do. Everyone wants consideration and wants the state not to act too fast and not to destroy homes."

Even after the issues surrounding the Mountain View Corridor highway have been settled, the group will not disappear, said both Baker and Speirs.

"We are planning to stay around," Baker said. "We would really like to make Utah a good place to live. There is lots to do with transportation here in this state."

Caleb Warnock can be reached at 443-3263 or cwarnock@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.