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Show igtau iiistretooira Springville leaders, county men discuss highway traffic dangers Mayor Paul Haymond organized an impressive delegation from Springville to join other officials from throughout the county who met the State Road Commission Monday afternoon in regards to the highway improvement im-provement project between this city and Provo. Accompanying him were the members of the city council streets committee, Dave Friel, Murray Peay, and Omar Hansen; President of the Chamber of Commerce, LaMar Miner; member of the Chamber of Commerce roads committee, Al Thorpe; Chief of Police Ashley Ash-ley Graham; and citizen W. W. Clyde, also Mayor Douglas Bills j of Mapleton. Mayor speaks County Commissioner, Sterling Ster-ling Jones, who acted as chairman chair-man of the various county groups, introduced Springville's mayor. Mr. Haymond made a Editor's note-Jim note-Jim West, district engineer for the Utah State Road Commission, said Wednesday that bids will be let this year on widening the Provo end of the Springville road on U.S. 91, even though there may not be sufficient funds to carry car-ry construction past the old county informary. strong case for the proposed improvement, and each of the others then spoke in support of the project. They cited numerous numer-ous fatal and body breaking accidents ac-cidents on Ironton hill, the dangers dan-gers at the industrial entrances all along the entire stretch including in-cluding Strong Co., W. W. Clyde Co., Park Ro-She recreation (Continued on Page 2, Col. 3) First North in SpringviHe to Third South in Provo. All four lanes would be widened from 10 to 12 feet, with additional apron space provided on the sides. County .surveyor Vern Green said that existing right of way would be adequate for the project. Provo's Mayor Verl Dixon stated that he supported the project and that trees east of the Provo cemetery had already al-ready been removed to provide for the project and urged its early completion. Luke Clegg, Provo City Commissioner, also supported the project and cited needs of 1230 North Street in Provo too. Commissioner favors highway construction (Continued from Page One) area, Ironton, Sunset Manor and the Youth Home, Thorn's Ready Mix, and the dangerous intersection at the 9th East artery ar-tery to the highway near Provo cemetery used by many BYU students. Chief Graham made an especially strong and convincing con-vincing plea as he described the numerous terrible accidents which he has personally attended attend-ed in order to give assistance to highway patrolmen reporting report-ing to the scenes. He clinched the point dramatically by relating re-lating that just five days before his own wife spun out near the infirmary, entered the opposite line of traffic and collided. This resulted in a skull fracture, all of her ribs being broken but three, and several other serious ser-ious fractures. He stated she had not gained full consciousness conscious-ness yet. Widen road The project as proposed would widen the road to allow for a center dividing strip and protected left lane exits from Heartening support for the project was evidenced by State Road Commissioner E 1 i a s Strong, who represents Utah, Salt Lake, and Tooele counties. He cited figures showing an accident ac-cident index of 9.6 for the section sec-tion as compared to the state average of only 1.9. He mentioned men-tioned that a beautiful boulevard boule-vard in Ogden had already been completed with lights, center strips, and turnout lanes, but that the traffic load was only 12,000 cars per day there, as compared to an average of 16,000 cars per day between Provo and SpringviHe. He pledged pled-ged his whole-hearted support to the project and recommended to the road commission that the necessary funds be aHocat-ed. aHocat-ed. A decision was to be reached reach-ed in the near future. In the course of the meeting James West, state road engineer engin-eer for this district, made it clear that the project as proposed pro-posed did not hinge on SpringviHe Spring-viHe City's decision regarding parallel parking has been said in the past. As planned the project would terminate at First North. He did, however, request an early meeting with the city council to explain a separate project which would involve parallel parking. A preliminary meeting was arranged for Wednesday Wed-nesday night (Jan. 31) for this purpose. The matter will be further discussed in the next regular Monday night council meeting, Feb. 5. |