Drivers accustomed to turning left while pulling out of a few parking lots along the Bonanza Drive business corridor should either break those habits or risk breaking equipment on the underside of their car.
As part of the overall redo of Bonanza Drive this year, the work crews installed a raised median on part of road, restricting left turns as Bonanza Drive approaches the Kearns Boulevard intersection.
The median was recently unveiled, and the workers have posted signs facing into parking lots restricting left turns. The median did not receive widespread publicity during the months of the roadwork, but it impacts the driving habits of people visiting a diverse group of businesses situated just off the high-traffic intersection.
Matt Cassel, the Park City engineer and the City Hall staffer who is overseeing the roadwork, said the raised median stretches for approximately 250 feet. It runs from the intersection southward to just north of the Bonanza Drive-Prospector Avenue intersection.
That section of Bonanza Drive for years has been clogged with traffic, particularly during the afternoon and evening commute. Bonanza Drive is widely traveled by people heading to and from work in Old Town, Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley Resort. It is the most direct route to those destinations from Prospector and points east like the East Side of Summit County, Wasatch County.
Cassel said the section of Bonanza Drive just south of the Kearns Boulevard intersection has the highest accident rate of any street inside Park City. The raised median is an effort to cut the accident rate by stopping people from making the left turns across the traffic. He expects drivers will become accustomed to the median. The installation of the median was not readily apparent to many who had watched the roadwork this year.
“It was just never a safe setup,” Cassel said, adding, “People are just not good at judging space and when they should go and shouldn’t go.”
The median was scaled back from one that had been discussed in the early stages of designing the redone road. At that time, there was an idea to install a median from the Kearns Boulevard intersection south to a point past Iron Horse Loop, with openings at a few intersections. There was resistance, though, from people with businesses along the Bonanza Drive corridor worrying that it would become too difficult for customers to drive to their places.
The left turns are now prohibited into and out of two parking lots. One of the lots serves businesses like Subway, The Taco Maker and The Park Record. That lot has one driveway that is impacted. Meanwhile, two driveways in and out of the parking lot that serves the Maverick gas station and convenience store are also affected.
Making turns out of those parking lots, particularly left turns, has been notoriously difficult. It was common for vehicles to back up several deep inside the lots as the one in front waits to exit the parking lot. The situation was especially bad in the afternoon as the drivers waited for a break in the traffic on Bonanza Drive.
City Hall is nearing the end of the second of two phases of construction on Bonanza Drive, with the work this year being staged along the business corridor. The work also included the construction of a pedestrian-bicyclist tunnel underneath Bonanza Drive. The tunnel’s debut has been delayed until the spring as the crews deal with underground boulders that required a redesign of the retaining walls that will be built alongside the ramps into the tunnel.