Drivers on US 89 in Davis County have a brand new ride
Jun 30, 2023, 5:00 PM
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Department of Transportation is celebrating, but it’s Utah drivers who will benefit from the completion of a 10-year, $500 million construction project on U.S. 89 in Davis County. Probably the biggest impact will come from an extra lane in both directions between Main Street in Farmington to S.R. 193 in Layton.
“We’ve also added four new interchanges and we took out all the stoplights,” UDOT’s Mitch Shaw told Utah’s Noon News. Drivers will see the interchanges, with on- and off-ramps at 400 North in Fruit Heights, at Oak Hills Drive, at Gordon Avenue and on Antelope Drive in Layton.
UDOT provided the video above to showcase the before and after of the highway.
“People remember what the old version of this section of Highway 89 looked like,” Shaw said. “You could encounter a lot of stop-and-go traffic. Now we’ve removed all the stop lights, replaced them with interchanges.”
Shaw said that drivers can now think about that stretch of 89 as a freeway, similar to I-15.
Construction started right before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in January 2020. Since that time, UDOT crews have torn up 9 miles of pavement and replaced it with new asphalt, added the interchanges and removed the stoplights.
Residents in Layton have an extra bonus with the expansion of Gordon Avenue that creates a new east-west connection that, according to UDOT, will accommodate Layton expansion plans.
“That was kind of lacking during the last couple of years,” Shaw said.
Drivers aren’t the only ones to benefit from the new construction. There’s a new frontage road that parallels the highway.
“So people can ride their bikes on that system. And we’ve added some pedestrian tunnels,” Shaw said.
In a statement, UDOT said the pedestrian tunnels “enable future city and county trail expansions, and built a new multi-use trail to connect the South Weber frontage road to Valley View Drive.”
Related reading: UDOT announces major 2023 construction projects
