History
Planning for the West Valley Highway began in the 1960s as a local federal-aid project. The proposed alignment began at the curve in SR-68 near 15300 South and proceeded north-northwesterly and northerly, following a path much like the present alignment to I-80. It continued north along what was then the west boundary of the then Salt Lake City Municipal Airport No. 1 (now Salt Lake City International Airport) into 4000 West, curving east onto 2200 North and ending at I-215. A drainage canal was moved to make room for a loop from 2200 North onto northbound I-215, but when the Interstate was finished south of 2200 North (where it had ended for many years) in the mid-1980s, a diamond interchange was built instead. Later the north segment was rerouted to continue north-northeasterly from the airport into Davis County; parts of this are now the Legacy Parkway. Salt Lake County was able to build the highway between SR-201 (2100 South) and I-80 with federal funding, but it took the state to finish it.
In 1989, the Utah Transportation Commission added a portion of the proposed West Valley Highway to the state highway system as State Route 154. A newly-proposed corridor ran west from I-15 near 13400 South to near 3200 West, where it joined the older proposal and headed north to I-80. With the help of Governor Norman H. Bangerter, longtime resident of West Valley City, the project received needed money from the state's general fund, and was opened between SR-201 (2100 South) and SR-171 (3500 South) on November 26, 1991. The Transportation Commission renamed the highway after Bangerter in May 1993. It was finally completed to I-15 on 17 November 1998.
In 2007, a continuous flow intersection was constructed at the junction of SR-154 and SR-171 (3500 South), one of a very few such intersections in the United States. The intersection is one of the busiest in the state and handles 100,000 vehicles on a typical weekday. Over the next five years six more intersections were modified to become continuous flow intersections. In 2012 the first interchange (a single-point urban interchange) was completed at a non-freeway junction at 7800 South (SR-48).
Read more about this topic: Utah State Route 154
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“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
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“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)