Legacy Parkway is an 11.5 mile roadway that winds along the edge of the Great Salt Lake wetlands in Northern Utah. The sustainable design of the roadway, as well as the schools, homes, parks and bike trails that line it, have become beloved and highly utilized by local residents as well as commuters and trail users from all over Utah. The Parkway has incredible views of Antelope Island and the Northern Wasatch Mountain Range as well as the Oquirrh's to the south.  As a registered Scenic Byway there are NO billboards and minimal lights to protect the sky from light pollution. Wetlands, a nature preserve, and dozens of miles of bike and hiking trails wind around the parkway and pass by numerous parks, and residential neighborhoods that were build right up to within 150 feet of the Parkway.

Over 1,000,000 state-registered automobiles as well as small trucks have had access to the roadway since it opened in 2008. Citizens have come to value the features as a valuable asset worth protecting.

Due to a Settlement Agreement that was reached between the Utah Legislature and environmental groups that sued the state over the original planning and building of the roadway, heavy trucks, 5 axels or more were restricted from driving on the roadway. This ban was put into place to protect the environmentally sensitive and unique landscape from noise pollution, air pollution, run off into streams and wetlands, disturbance of waterfowl and migrating and nesting birds. However, the terms of the settlement limited the legislature's ban to just 15 years, scheduled to end in January 1, 2020. Citizens groups, city councils, businesses, and state leaders believe it is critical that we take immediate action to attempt to stop this change from happening. Once #UTAHSLegacy is gone, we won't be able to get it back.

Since that time, the beautiful, quiet, and scenic roadway that was created by the Utah Department of Transportation TRULY lived up to being an example of  "Context Sensitive Design."

Projects designed using this model:

--Optimize safety of the facility for both the user and the community.
--Are in harmony with the community, and preserve the environmental, scenic, aesthetic, historic, and natural resource values of the area.
--Are designed and built with minimal disruption to the community.
--Involve efficient and effective use of the resources (time, budget, community) of all involved parties.

The public has come to love this roadway, the parks and the trails that line it. Thousands of homes have been built since 2005 along the Parkway Corridor and most residents had no knowledge of the long history of the Parkway or the Limitation on the Truck Ban. The majority of which would be impacted by numerous negative effects should the Ban be allowed to expire with no other options explored. 

We believe there are better precedents for us to set, given that the air quality in the counties around the Parkway have been failing to meet federal EPA standards for PM2.5 air pollution--in Davis County, they have been in Non-Attainment status for nearly ten years--as long as the roadway has been open. We believe we can use Legacy parkway as an example of a successful project that met the needs of commuters (auto and bike) as well as smaller trucks and transport vehicles, without having major negative impacts on the natural surroundings, and actually creating a wonderful community in which to live, work and play.