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Just a few months ago, state highway officials assumed it would take until 2004 to complete the proposed reconstruction of Interstate 15 in the Salt Lake Valley -- well after the 2002 Winter Olympics Games.
Now, the Utah Department of Transportation believes three years can be cut from that schedule, opening the new lanes and ramps to motorists in the fall of 2001.
But agency representatives speaking at a Downtown Alliance forum in Salt Lake City on Wednesday morning said there is bad news in the offing: Utah has not yet received a dollar of federal money for the $1 billion project, so Utah taxpayers may have to foot a substantial portion of the cost.
``We don't know how much federal funding we will get,'' said David Miles of UDOT, noting that parts of the freeway now are 30 years old and crumbling. ``We hope there is a chance we'll get about 50% of it. But we may get none.''
Regardless of who pays the bill, the state hopes to save time by hiring one contractor to oversee the design and construction, said John Leonard, UDOT's I-15 project engineer.
``What we will tell the designer-builder in general terms is what we want done with I-15,'' he said. ``We will tell them, for example, that we...