Remember the big traffic jams after BYU home football games? Of course. How could anyone forget crawling along on Interstate 15 amid thousands of fans returning home?

Now, imagine that congestion happening twice a day, every day.

That is the future of I-15 in Utah County if the road does not get a serious overhaul soon.

Darrell Cook, executive director of Mountainland Association of Governments, said I-15 is within five years of failing as a transportation artery. In fact, Cook says you can see the signs of its failure already as traffic gets heavier.

Anyone who has lived here for any significant time has noticed that traffic on the freeway, especially in the northern Utah County area, has gotten heavier.

This is the result of a combination of factors:

* The freeway is more than 40 years old.

* Utah County's population is expanding (it is expected to double by 2030).

* I-15 is, as Cook said, "the biggest city street " in the county.

If you live in northern Utah County, I-15 is the main way to get from your home to Provo or Orem. State Street certainly cannot adequately handle the daily intercity load. Communities, such as Lehi, Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain, rely upon I-15 to connect to a variety of destinations.

MAG and Utah County officials have already prepared a proposal on how to fix the road. It's a 30-year plan that would widen the freeway and renovate interchanges to better handle traffic -- as the state did with the University Parkway interchange.

The question is not whether the project should be done, but how to pay for it. It could cost between $1.57 and $1.72 billion.

The state's Centennial Highway Fund, which finances transportation projects around the state, has been seriously depleted as a result of the state's budget crisis. There is barely enough money left to pay off the projects already under way. Utah County's stretch of I-15 isn't even on the list yet.

The Legislature recently authorized a task force to examine the state's transportation issues and look for funding sources. Senate Majority Whip John L. Valentine, R-Orem, and MAG director Cook said this presents an opportunity to get Utah County's I-15 project on the radar screen and include it in a second round of Centennial Highway Fund projects.

There are a couple options the state has for getting the money.

It could borrow the money for the project. With interest rates low, this is an attractive option since it would free cash up for other necessities and extend the payments over part of the lifetime of the freeway.

But bonding is not a popular option for Utah's fiscally conservative Legislature. Many lawmakers see bonding as putting a burden on future generations. Others worry that if Utah borrows too much money it may endanger the state's high credit rating.

The state has used gasoline taxes to pay for road improvements in the past. It imposed a 5-cent-per-gallon tax to cover the cost of rebuilding I-15 in Salt Lake County in time for the 2002 Winter Olympics. It's a tax approach that targets users of the road system.

But taxes are also politically unpopular, and imposing a gasoline tax when gas prices are high would create an uproar.

Another option is to have a sales tax. Gov. Mike Leavitt recently signed into law a bill allowing counties to impose a county-option tax for highways and rail systems. This could help raise funds for Utah County's freeway improvement.

Sales taxes are relatively painless compared to the other taxes we have to pay. Right now, we pay 6.25 cents on each dollar purchase, an amount many of us wouldn't even consider worth picking up if we found it in the parking lot. It is also a tax that is paid by visitors and residents alike.

Critics of sales taxes point out that they are regressive taxes, especially since Utah imposes a sales tax on groceries. Since the poor spend a greater percentage of their income on the necessities of life, they also pay a disproportionate share of the sales tax.

Rep. Stephen D. Clark, R-Provo, has suggested another option: toll lanes. A couple of lanes on the freeway could be designated for cash payment on the fly, with the proceeds going toward road construction. According to this play, when construction costs are paid off, the toll booths would be dismantled.

Clark said there may be people willing to pay a couple bucks to drive in a low-traffic lane from Provo to Salt Lake City. It also has the merit that those people who actually use the freeway are the ones who pay for it.

The fear that once a toll is created it will never go away is not without foundation. Just ask people in other states who were promised that a toll system would be removed once the road was paid for -- many throwing coins into collection baskets still, many years after the road bill was erased. Politics being what they are, there always seems to be another "necessary " use for the cash.

The state of Utah needs to decide how to pay for I-15 improvements, and it needs to move quickly, or else traffic here will not.

How should Utah pay for improvements on I-15? Tell us what you think, either on our call-in line, 344-2942, or on our Web site, www.HarkTheHerald.com. We'll take your comments until April 9 and publish them April 13.

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If you use the Internet, please keep your comments to 75 words or less and send them to dmeyers@heraldextra.com. If you call in, please limit your response to 30 seconds or less.

This editorial is a consensus opinion of The Daily Herald's editorial board, which consists of President and Publisher Albert J. Manzi, Executive Editor Randy Wright, Opinions Page Editor Donald W. Meyers and Provo resident Edwin Morrell.