Provo Canyon construction to end next week

If you spend much time in Provo Canyon, you're probably sick and tired of the construction that has turned the highway into a maze of barricades and orange cones. But don't worry. It will all be over soon.

The Utah Department of Transportation will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday to celebrate the end of the project that has widened U.S. Highway 189 from two to four lanes from near the Sundance turnoff to the Deer Creek Dam. All four lanes should be open by Friday, according to UDOT spokesman Geoff Dupaix.

"There's still some minor work that will be going on, but for the most part the lanes will be opened. All four lanes will be opened," Dupaix said.

Tuesday's ribbon cutting is almost three years in the making. The project began in February 2005 and was expected to be finished around the end of last year. But complications such as loose rock formations, differing soil types and the logistic complications of doing construction in a canyon lengthened the project by about a year.

UDOT plans to widen Highway 189 to four lanes all the way up to Heber City. Dupaix said that phase of the project will be less complicated because construction crews will not have to work in the heart of the canyon on a road that runs alongside the Provo River.

"We're not anticipating the type of construction challenges that we've had within the canyon," Dupaix said. "Building a highway in a canyon presents its own unique set of challenges."

UDOT widened the road in response to heavier traffic caused by the rising populations of Utah and Wasatch counties, Dupaix said. The highway is heavily traveled by people going to recreational areas, he said, and is also a major conduit to eastern Utah and the Uinta Basin.

According to UDOT's Web site, the project will accommodate projected traffic demands for the next 20 years.

"There's so many different uses and types of users within the canyon that as those types of users continue to increase, it creates more demand for improvements to the roadway," Dupaix said.

Dupaix said the project also will make driving in Provo Canyon safer. Two sharp turns have been removed from a bridge near the Deer Creek Dam, and a median and guardrail have been added to the length of the four-lane highway to keep drivers from drifting into oncoming traffic.

"Reducing those two sharp turns at Deer Creek Dam will create a tremendous improvement to the project because you will be able to take it at a ... more constant speed than you had to previously," Dupaix said.

All four lanes will likely be open by the end of this week, but the project will not be 100 percent completed. Dupaix said there are minor improvements still to be made, such as guardrails, painting, landscaping and the anti-icing system at the dam's spillway bridge area. That work could close sections of some lanes for short periods of time.

• Jeremy Duda can be reached at 344-2561 or jduda@heraldextra.com.