Burma Road fix still under microscope
By Martin Reed
Staff Writer

County commissioners and HKM Engineering continue to discuss plans for improvements to Burma Road that include keeping it along its current alignment.
The engineering firm met with commissioners late last month to review public comments and other observations from previous meetings.
“The main thing that came out of that hearing as far as something to fix is that hill,” Commission chairman Doug Thompson said about a public meeting conducted earlier in the month.
What exactly will happen remains to be seen as HKM continues to revise plans for the road north of Riverton. Plans for improving Burma come as traffic continues to increase on the stretch of road.
Jeff Young, HKM’s senior staff engineer, told commissioners his firm has received much input from the public and other agencies such as Wyoming Highway Patrol that use the road.
“We’ve had overwhelming response,” Young said. “Almost everybody that we’ve contacted has participated in one way or another.”
Comments received included suggestions to ensure the road does not become a fast-paced highway. But they also suggested widening the roadway and improving safety along switchbacks in a section of Burma.
“We didn’t have overwhelming support for moving the existing alignment,” Young told commissioners. “We did have overwhelming support for getting rid of the switchbacks.”
Concerning safe speeds, Young said: “You get the comment ‘we don’t want a super highway. We don’t want to see speed limits increased.’”
However, a speed survey conducted by HKM revealed most motorists traveling at high rates of speed that included 45 mph approaching an intersection at one point and 33 mph to navigate the switchbacks.
“We had somebody hit one of those tubes and it registered over 100 mph,” Young said. “The speeds are relatively high, and there are some alarming things going on out there.”
He added: “While we’d like to be able to design it for 103 or 108 mph, we can’t.”
Commissioners seemed to agree on not significantly changing the road’s alignment.
“I didn’t have anybody come up and say ‘let’s come up with a new alignment,’” commissioner Keja Whiteman said.
“I’d like to see the road stay fairly close to the original alignment as well,” commissioner Pat Hickerson said. “I don’t think we’re going to do a major realignment on any of the changes.”
Hickerson said he wanted to see cost figures for various plans before deciding.
“I would be curious as to maybe see a little bit of (cost) analysis,” he said.
Concerning the road’s hilly portion, Hickerson suggested to “figure out the easiest way to get up that hill without moving millions of pounds of dirt.”
He added: “Just try to keep the impacts to those property owners as small as they can be.”