The West Davis Corridor (SR-177) is a freeway through western Davis County, Utah, United States currently under construction. The preferred alternative begins at Interstate 15 and the Legacy Parkway in Farmington, proceeding northwest through the communities of Kaysville, Layton, and Syracuse, before coming to an end at SR-193 in West Point.
Route description
The highway will begin at an interchange with I-15/US-89 and Legacy Parkway just south of Glovers Lane in Farmington, proceeding to the northwest as a four-lane freeway. It will swing to the north, following the shoreline of the Great Salt Lake, before turning northwest at an interchange with a proposed connection to Shepard Lane. The freeway will then continue northwest through the cities of Kaysville and Layton, with interchanges at 200 North and 2700 West. Entering Syracuse, the route will shift onto the alignment of Bluff Road, with interchanges at 2000 West and Antelope Drive (SR-127). Past Antelope Drive, the highway will narrow to two lanes. As the route continues into West Point, it will turn to the north, ending at the extension of SR-193.
History
Initial proposals
The idea for a new corridor connecting Ogden and Salt Lake City existed as early as the 1960s. However, it was not officially studied until 1995, when state representative Marda Dillree pushed the Utah State Legislature to allocate $600,000 for a corridor planning study. The idea was included in Governor Mike Leavitt's ambitious Legacy Highway proposal in 1996; Leavitt envisioned a new highway running from Brigham City to Nephi through the western portions of the Wasatch Front, though no route had been selected at that time. Other portions of this proposal would become today's Legacy Parkway and Mountain View Corridor.
Almost from the beginning, the planned routing of what was then known as the Western Transportation Corridor was filled with disputes. In particular, a dispute over the routing north of Gentile Street in Layton came to a head in April 1997, when the committee tasked with selecting a route could not come to an agreement. Officials from West Point had identified a corridor along Bluff Road and had been preserving land along it since 1986. However, Syracuse preferred a western alignment that would not split the city, citing hazards to schools and other city facilities. Two western routes were being studied: one that ran roughly between 4200 and 4500 West, and another just east of the Great Salt Lake marshes. The 4500 West corridor ran through 1,000 acres of productive farmland and was deeply opposed by farmers and the state agricultural department, while the Great Salt Lake corridor would negatively impact wetlands protected under federal law. While Davis County cities and residents mostly supported the proposal, reception in Weber County was much more mixed. Some officials from that county opposed reserving land for a highway that might not ever be built, while others worried about the agricultural lifestyle of northwestern portions of the county. They also stated that the new corridor was not near the top of their priority list, instead favoring improvements on I-15 and existing arterials. Farr West opposed any route coming close to the Weber County line, while Hooper residents would support a highway provided it would only carry local traffic.
However, most of these disputes had been resolved by July of that year, when the committee was finally able to select a route through northern Davis and southern Weber counties. Under the agreement, it would follow Bluff Road from Gentile north to 300 North in West Point, where it would go north into Weber County to the intersection of 4900 West and 5500 South. From this point it would continue to 4000 South along an alignment just west of 4700 West, before moving east to 3500 West and continuing north to end at 1200 South. This corridor was identified as the preferred alternative in a 2001 study. A route through the rest of Weber County would not be identified until a 2009 supplemental study.
Possible connections between the proposed corridor (then referred to as Legacy North) and Legacy Parkway were identified in a 2007 UDOT study, which identified a preferred alignment beginning at a combined interchange with I-15/Legacy Parkway and roughly following the old Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad alignment northward. However, Farmington was unhappy with this result and commissioned its own study, which recommended waiting to adopt an alignment until a full environmental analysis could be conducted.