Construction crews work on building a traffic circle just south of the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The near misses at the intersection of 300 North and State Street aren’t regularly documented, since they’re not official crashes. But those who go up the hill from downtown Salt Lake City to the state Capitol know them well.
The ubiquitous photos carefully framing the full main Capitol building, with its dome and a wall that reads “State of Utah” are a demonstration of other dangers of the road, as the photographer often needs to step into the street to get the perfect shot.
And heavy traffic at the three-way intersection plagues the 45 days of the legislative session each year, then resumes once the cherry blossoms form a dusty pink path around the Capitol complex.
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But now, transportation planners hope replacing the confusing intersection with a roundabout will resolve those problems in time for the 2025 session.
“It will enhance the safety of the intersection by reducing conflict points,” said Jessica Rice, project manager at the Utah Department of Transportation.
The current system gives priority to northbound-to-westbound traffic, which makes motorists prone to more severe accidents, such as T-bone and head-on crashes. A roundabout would limit those, Rice said.
The roundabout itself is expected to be transformative for those commuting to and from the Capitol Hill neighborhood each day. Meanwhile, some other design changes are expected to make things safer for those who come to the Capitol as visitors.
Construction crews work on building a traffic circle just south of the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The perimeter of the new curb will be covered in bollards (heavy concrete safety cylinders) and stairs to the building will be pushed back, along with the currently curbside “State of Utah” sign.
“With a regular cellphone you’ll still be able to stand at the State of Utah wall and get the entire Capitol building in the frame,” Rice said. “So the experience should be safer, because it is taking visitors and people away from the level of the street, getting them up onto that other level, so they are not inadvertently walking back into traffic, or purposely walking into the middle of traffic to take a picture.”
Though there has been a lot of design and planning for the intersection, don’t expect another piece of iconic art, like the 9th and 9th whale, to land in the middle of the roundabout.
Because it’s planned to be a smaller road, the center will be used as sort of a buffer for bigger vehicles. Keeping it void also intentionally leaves the focus on the “State of Utah” wall and the Capitol building, not the roundabout, Rice said.
There are also plans for enhanced crosswalks — with shorter paths and a distinct color to improve their visibility.
Construction work is underway and the majority of it is scheduled to be done by Dec. 17. However, some striping and asphalt work may have to wait until next spring because they are temperature sensitive, Rice said.
Since late summer this year, UDOT has also been working on a Capitol Hill solutions study, gathering feedback from the community about traffic solutions in the neighborhood. That is set to close by the summer of 2025.
Construction crews work on building a traffic circle just south of the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
Community concerns
Salt Lake City Democratic Rep. Jennifer Dailey-Provost, who represents the Capitol Hill neighborhood in the House, has struggled with the intersection. The connection was so personal, it made it to the list of reasons why her family decided to move away to The Avenues.
“We loved our house and our neighbors in Capitol Hill, and it’s a wonderful neighborhood and a great place to live,” Dailey-Provost said. “But honestly, one of the things that we didn’t love, just from a personal perspective, was that intersection in front of the Capitol and the challenges of the traffic around the Capitol.”
For her and her husband, it was “logical” to get a roundabout that would let traffic flow better instead of the current system, she said. After all of those conversations, she assumed her neighbors shared her opinion.
“It’s a really strange intersection. It doesn’t stop going uphill. And if you don’t navigate that intersection often, and you’re coming in, you expect people coming uphill to stop, and so there’s a lot of risk for miscommunication and misunderstanding,” she said.
However, some neighbors see how having better traffic flow would lead to more cars on the corridor, especially from those commuting downtown through Capitol Hill streets, crowding the roads during rush hours even when the legislative session is not in progress.
“There is definitely a fundamental problem in making a residential neighborhood more efficient for a transportation corridor. And so there is a lot of validity in the argument that what we should not be doing is making it easier for more cars to move through that neighborhood,” Dailey-Provost said. “Now, there’s also the very real fact that it is the State Capitol, it is the people’s house, and we do need to make it accessible to people accessing their government.”
While she appreciates the project and its safety features, Dailey-Provost thinks that UDOT can also incorporate solutions to move motorists away from Capitol Hill, filtering them to places like 600 North, which has a bigger capacity than the two-lane roads past the Capitol.
Work continues on the North Capitol Building in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The 300 North and State Street intersection will be closed until mid-December, as construction crews work on the project. Simultaneously, on the Capitol grounds, construction of the North Capitol Building, which will include the Museum of Utah, is also in progress and scheduled for completion in 2026.
According to a September update, roofing of the building has begun and will continue for the next few months. Same with the central plaza. Walkways on the south, east and west sides of it have been reduced while that work is being done.
Dailey-Provost, who sits on the Capitol Preservation board, said that this new building will match the rest of the campus, with a plaza that’s more useful to the public than the “old, energy-inefficient” building that was on the site before.
Putting the museum of Utah there, creating a storage facility for the state’s artistic treasures, is also valuable for her.
“I think we’ve built something that is really going to enhance the experience for people at the Capitol,” Dailey-Provost said. “And, I am excited about that.”
One of the biggest pieces of that project is a garage that would help improve the lack of available parking that surfaces during every legislative session, an accessibility issue in Dailey-Provost’s view.
“We also will have 396 underground parking spaces … several hundred of which will be for the public to use,” she said. “Because, anybody will tell you, the only thing worse than navigating that intersection at the top of State Street is finding parking during the session.”
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