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Old Posted Nov 19, 2010, 7:27 AM
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i-215 i-215 is offline
Exit 298
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Greater Los Angeles
Posts: 3,335
Met the developer of the proposed Utah Lake Crossing bridge at the open house tonight. Nutty old guy. I like him.

Looking at the renderings, I'd say the bridge actually makes Utah Lake look ... well, kind of awesome, actually. At full build out, it kind of reminds me of the Bay Area a little bit.

Cool features, too. No cobraheads. All the lighting is built in next to the roadway down low. All the utilities will be inside the concrete. The pylons end at the water surface level and only a set of seven pipes continue into the water. Really, compared to the nasty causeway on GSL, this thing really is pretty cool.

Anyway, I know the bridge is a pretty unpopular idea on here, but I really got better vibes after going to the open house tonight. The only think that ticks me off is the pedestrian path has been bumped to phase two. The old coot said something like, "Bikes can ride on the shoulder. We don't have to give pedestrians a place to walk. Why would they want to walk on a bridge anyway?" Nut.

He had lots of cool renderings, but when I asked to take pictures he said I should just download them from his web site. But now I can't remember what it is.

Edit: I managed to find one rendering. This is the one that kind of reminds me of the Bay Area:



I asked him too if there was going to be some icky ramp getting up onto the bridge. He says there's a 20-30 foot elevation change right near the water's edge, which will allow the road to go seamlessly from Vineyard (or Saratoga) right onto the bridge.

According to the posters, his thinking is that after paying off the financing on the bridge, each toll will generate $0.025 cents of revenue per trip, which could translate into millions of dollars per year during the financing stage of the bridge. And he was very out-in-the-open in admitting this is all about increasing property values on the west side of the lake, of which he owns quite a bit.
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