SALT LAKE CITY – Residents, business owners and drivers in the area near 900 East in Salt Lake City have been dealing with delays caused by road construction, which has been going on for about three weeks.
Portions of 900 East between 1300 South and 1700 South have been torn up so city workers can remove old streetcar ties.
The ties are slabs of wood that have been rotting under the road and causing problems. City Engineer Jeff Snelling said such ties are underneath miles of road in Salt Lake City, but he said they usually leave them in place because they don’t cause problems and their removal is expensive.
He said in this case he believes water in the soil caused the ties to rot. He said they decided to remove them rather than deal with the ongoing problems they could cause.
“We’ve had some frustrated citizens, and we completely understand that,” he said. “Again, it’s something that we’d like to avoid, but we do make these judgments and typically this has worked out. In this case it hasn’t, and we do apologize.”
Snelling said the tie removal should be finished up early next week, and traffic should return to normal.
