Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Semi trucks are normally a no-no on Legacy Parkway, but for a short time this morning, they were a go.
You won't see any semis driving on Legacy Parkway now, but earlier today the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) opened the road to semis for the first time because of an accident on I-15.
UDOT spokesman Nile Easton said, "We don't want trucks sitting idle for hours. In this case, the incident was cleared pretty quickly, but because it did block everything, those are the kind of incidents we look at to get it open to truck traffic."
That's the reasoning behind opening Legacy Parkway to semi traffic. It had to be done today after a motorcyclist hit the tire of a Union Pacific truck and slid off the road.
Utah Highway Patrol trooper Jeff Washburn said, "We had all lanes blocked until we could get the injured person out of the way and take care of the motorcycle. The truck lost a driveline and didn't have any power. He was just coasting off the freeway to get out of the way of traffic."
Surprisingly, the motorcyclist is fine, but it took a while to get the freeway cleaned up.
"It caused a blockage of both U.S. 89 and I-15. And that was kind of our arrangement, if we had something that blocked all movements of traffic of I-15 or 89, we could explore opening up Legacy," Easton said.
Easton says it's really just a judgment call, but that they do consult authorities on the scene. They also consider what time it is and how many cars are on the road, and it depends on how many lanes are closed by the accident.
"The whole point of getting Legacy open was for incidents like this, to give people, including trucks, an alternative route. Fortunately you can see it worked out better than two months ago, people would have been stuck for hours in an incident like this," Easton said.
UDOT says everything went smoothly today and that Legacy Parkway is working the way it was intended to, especially during the afternoon commute.
E-mail: corton@ksl.com
E-mail: tcallan@ksl.com
