OCR Text |
Show I . ' . Road Site Still A Puzzler J .Forgetting the principle of tho "greatest good for the greatest number" our i State Road Commission persists i n letting petty sectional and personal in-. terests dictate where that I. economically Important road to Glen Canyon dam will go. Having climbed out on I" a limb with their declara- . tlon that the road must run west to Kanab, they are very hesitant about ' ' admitting their error, and ;,, admitting that perhaps some other route might be ' f of more benefit to the peo- b plo of Utah. ' How warped is their thinking can be readily i seen from this map dla- gram of that part of Utah f1 . and Arizona which is in volved. Arizona already f . has built a road. running from "The Gap" at the &T C bottom of the picture to ll , f the dam at ".A". When the fcV- , bridge is built across the f. t ' canyon at the dam this r , ,. will cut off about 58 miles V ( if of north-south travel along ' U.S. Highway 89. Howev-L er, instead of bringing the h. lf . Utah road north through . Cottonwood and Bryce By Canyon National Park our Sr. ' muddle-headed. Roadcom- w(i mission insists it. must run westward to Kanab at 'B' $f '''; cancelling out the gain made by tho Arizona road fe ' to the dam. If the road to the dam P.' were brought up through 1 I'1 Cottonwood through Bryce . - . ' Park to connect with High- way' 8" 9 'at "C" seven miles t south of Panguitch, total ; mileage savings on a trip between Salt Lake City . and Phoenix w'ould amount to something like 80 miles. IT The proposed Cottonwood cutoff road would be easier to build and maintain than that "89" Kanab-Adairvllle dam road. Three major heights would be eliminated. That at the upper "X" on 89 where the motorist must pass over the 7513 foot height of the Long Valley divide, and at the lower "X" where the 6650 foot height of the divide south of Mt Carmel junction must be climbed. Substitute for these two big hills would be a climb at Red Canyon (the "X" between Bryce Park and Highway 89 junction). The third height elimlnat- ed would be the Cat-stairs and Coxcomb at "Y" on the map. A survey has been made of the proposed cutoff route. Whether or not the public is going to be invited to discuss the matter with the Road commission is open to question. It is hoped that the new administration will see to ' it that an atitude of "let the public be damned" of our outgoing road com-, mission is abandoned In favor of a policy of letting the greatest good of the greatest number influence future decisions of the commission. |