Work will begin next year on a tunnel beneath Lehi Main Street that will give people using the nine-mile Jordan River Parkway Trail a safer way to cross.

"This is a good thing," said Geoff Dupaix, spokesman for the Utah Department of Transportation. "It's a crazy situation for a user to cross on such a busy highway."

The tunnel under Main Street, which is also State Road 73, will cost about $1 million to build, but it is one UDOT project the agency has funding for. Those funds are quickly shrinking, however.

"It's getting tight because of the escalation of construction prices," said Scott Hendricks of RB&G Engineering, a company working on the project.

With an 88-foot culvert and 69 feet of asphalt, UDOT staff anticipated the project would be done on one side of the road at a time and completed within four to five months. One lane of traffic in each direction would remain open, as the road is now, but the lanes would be shifted to the side of construction.

The other option is for the entire road to be shut down and traffic diverted either over the bridge near Inlet Park in Saratoga Springs or the Jordan River bridge on 9600 North out of Lehi.

This option would allow the work to be completed in about 10 weeks.

"It would easily accommodate a scrunched five lanes," Hendricks said of the S.R. 73 site just west of Willow Estates across from the Utah County Willow Park.

A 5 percent drop in elevation will lead into and out of the proposed 14-foot-wide and 10-foot-high underpass. A pump will be installed to handle drainage. Some of the land surrounding the area is classified as wetlands, so engineers had to jog the trail a bit to the east to avoid affecting the environmentally sensitive area.

An open house regarding the project was poorly attended, which UDOT representatives said they took to mean residents had no qualms about the plans and approved the project.

The speed limit for construction was set at 35 mph, a speed UDOT staff admit may be a little high considering rush hour traffic sometimes runs at a crawl.

While usually speeds run 45-60 mph during off hours, trail users find it difficult to cross the very busy highway. The state has put up neon orange flags to flag down drivers to stop and have painted a crosswalk on the street to help give bikers, hikers and others a safer means to get across, but drivers don't always stop for the outdoor enthusiasts.

"You can see the bikers waiting and waiting and waiting to cross," said Heather Jordan of Lehi, one of a few residents who attended the meeting. "People are going so fast they can't stop. I think it's a great idea."

Dupaix said he anticipates the project will begin in March 2008 or, at the earliest, this October.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.