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Public meeting scheduled on plan to restripe Main Street through Manti

ByBrock Smith

This is an ongoing story that may be edited with future updates.

A diagram depicting proposed changes to the Manti main street road. On the left a standard four lane road is shown, while on the right a two lane road with a middle turning lane and bike paths is depicted.
An illustration shows before and after images of how Manti’s Main Street would look if city officials agree with the Utah Department of Transportation in putting the roadway on a “diet.”

MANTI—The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) has a proposal to put Manti’s Main Street on a diet.

Representatives from UDOT will join Manti City officials at a meeting Tuesday May 3 at 6:30 p.m. at the Manti City Building to explain just what that means.

The term UDOT is using for a proposed road re-striping plan is a “road diet.” In a nutshell, it means taking a four-lane road (two lanes in each direction) and turning it into a three-lane road: one travel lane in each direction with a shared left-turn lane between them.

UDOT representatives will explain the plan, as well as offer some of the pros and cons of the plan, after which residents will have a chance to weigh in.

“This is the kind of thing we want to hear specifically from the people who use it all the time,” Kevin Kitchen, spokesman for UDOT’s central Utah region, told the Messenger Friday.

Manti City officials felt the same way a few weeks ago, City Administrator Kent Barton said, after UDOT representatives met with him, Mayor Chuck Bigelow and a couple of city council members about the idea.

“I think the first impression for most people is negative,” Barton said. “That’s why the city wants everybody to come out and learn more about it.”

After hearing from residents, city leaders will make the decision to ask UDOT to go through with the new striping plan or keep things the way they are.

“We want the public to come out and tell us what they think about it,” Barton said.

The number one consideration coming from both Barton and Kitchen is safety.

“There’s some potential safety improvement with this, and usually cities are favorable to this kind of thing,” Kitchen said.

Both he and Barton pointed to situations where a pedestrian is trying to cross the road. A car in the outside lane is stopped waiting for them to cross, maybe even waving them on.

But what that driver doesn’t see—and, sometimes tragically, the pedestrian might not see either—is another car moving in the inside lane who doesn’t see the pedestrian or take notice of the other stopped car, producing what Barton called the worst kind of accidents.

And Barton pointed to the “traffic-calming” effect the change could have.

“What often happens is you’re on a two-lane highway and then you get into the city and your cities become your passing lanes,” he said.

A Main Street with a single lane in each direction would eliminate that.

But, Barton acknowledged, “There are some disadvantages to it.”

For instance, the whole point of a road is to keep traffic moving—and no one wants to get caught behind that 10-mile-an-hour driver with no way of passing them.

A solution that increases safety in one aspect might create greater risk in another, he said. “There’s balances and tradeoffs no matter what the reconfiguration.”

But in general, UDOT “typically … would not do this unless the volumes are low enough that it doesn’t create an overall traffic problem,” he added.

And the revised arrangement could allow for other improvements, such as bike lanes, which, with the emergence of bike paths and current plans for a major bike path throughout the county, could become more desired feature on the area’s roadways.

And though UDOT has jurisdiction over Main Street as an extension of U.S. 89, which is a state highway, Kitchen indicated UDOT would take the city’s direction on whether to put Main Street on a “diet” or not.