Kanab, Utah — Utah Department of Transportation Region 4 staff gave the Utah Transportation Commission a regional update Wednesday detailing roughly a decade of investment in Kane and neighboring counties and previewing several current projects, including a wildlife-crossing package the department says produced measurable crash reductions in an earlier phase.

UDOT Region 4 program manager Cameron Gage said the department has delivered dozens of projects in Kane and Garfield counties over the past 10 years, ranging from corridor widenings and structure repairs to trails and pavement preservation. "In Kane County, just shy of $124,000,000 and 40 projects have been completed in the last 10 years," Gage said, and he gave comparable totals for surrounding counties and recent multi‑year spending that the region is managing.

Gage described several recent and ongoing projects the commission saw on a prior-day tour. Those included US‑89 passing lanes at Buckskin Wash (a TIF-funded project he said cost about $7.2 million) and a hot-in-place asphalt recycle at Bucktank Draw, a preservation technique he walked the commission through during the presentation. He described hot-in-place recycling as a process that heats and scarifies existing asphalt, mixes it with new binder and relays it as a new mat, enabling structural rehabilitation without full-depth replacement.

The region also reviewed a planned Mount Carmel Junction–Muddy Creek passing lane and an associated multi‑use trail. Gage said the passing-lane element will add roughly 1.5 miles of passing opportunity north of Mount Carmel Junction, and the trail — planned for a roughly seven‑mile connection between Mount Carmel and Orderville — would provide separated space for biking and walking.

Wildlife crossings: outcomes, partners

UDOT staff emphasized a separate wildlife-crossings project as a safety and ecological investment. Gage said a first phase finished in 2013 and that a five‑year camera study (2013–2018) using 26 motion-activated cameras at seven crossing points recorded animal approaches and crash data. According to the presentation, the study recorded 102,512 deer approaches to the monitored crossings in that five‑year span and found a 53% decrease in vehicle crashes for wildlife after the phase‑1 improvements.

For the new package (described in the briefing as a $10.4 million project), staff said the plan is to install three new crossings and improve one existing crossing. Applying the phase‑1 study’s crash‑reduction percentage to an estimated baseline for the most recent five‑year period (staff estimated roughly 453 vehicle crashes without new mitigation), the region projected a potential reduction of about 203 crashes — a reduction the department described as benefiting both wildlife and public safety.

Gage identified federal and private grant partners for the wildlife work and noted the department has worked with state wildlife agencies: "We’ve had an awesome partnership with our wildlife partners down here," he said, naming awards from the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and partnerships with national conservation groups and state wildlife agencies.

Local projects and funding

Gage also summarized locally funded projects using region-director contingency and local match, including rehabilitation, drainage, sidewalk and trail studies. He said those locally led efforts total roughly $15 million in the area and include a mix of planning, design and construction work.

Discussion vs. formal action

The region’s presentation was informational; the commission did not take a formal vote on the Region 4 briefing itself. However, later in the meeting the commission approved a related programming change that combines a portion of the Mount Carmel passing lane with an overlapping Utah Trail Network (UTN) segment and moved funding between the two project pins to streamline construction and reduce travel impacts (agenda item 6a12, approved during the meeting). The commission voted on that programming motion; it was presented to the commission as producing schedule efficiencies and construction‑impact reductions.