The traffic was bad in the Park City area early in January with the holiday crowds.
Parkites should not expect much of a respite from the lines of cars through the rest of the month as the tourism industry is expected to remain hopping. The three-day weekend marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day, typically strong for tourism, is upcoming, and the opening of the Sundance Film Festival follows just days later.
City Hall toward the beginning of the ski season released a calendar covering the winter that highlights the days officials expect will be especially busy. There are more days marked on the calendar in January than in any other month, meaning Park City is essentially forecast to be crowded nearly every day.
The calendar delineates maximum peak days, peak days and days that are not projected to be either category of peak. According to the calendar, Jan. 10 and Jan. 11, a Tuesday and a Wednesday, are the only days in the month that are not expected to reach one of the peak categories. Of the 31 days in the month, 21 are labeled maximum peak days while eight days are identified as peak days. The 21 days in the maximum peak category are, by a wide margin, the most in any single month.
The four days of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend from Jan. 13 until Jan. 16 lead directly into the final preparations for Sundance and then the festival itself. During the festival, the Tuesday, the Wednesday and the second Sunday of Sundance are expected to be peak days while the rest of the run is projected to involve maximum peak days.
Park City crafted the calendar after reviewing four years of data, including an analysis after the 2021-2022 ski season that looked at sales-tax numbers. A peak day is considered to be one when the traffic exceeds the road capacity. A maximum peak day accounts for even more traffic beyond the capacity.
The calendar appears to jibe well with the traditional festival flow of the pre-pandemic era. The opening days are normally especially jammed, followed by a noticeable midweek slowdown before crowds return for the second Friday and Saturday. The second Sunday also is normally slower.
Sundance is usually one of the busiest stretches on the Park City calendar in the tourism industry, only challenged by the period between Christmas and New Year’s. The festival draws large crowds of film lovers, Hollywood executives, journalists and celebrity gawkers. The Main Street sidewalks are shoulder-to-shoulder at many points, particularly during the opening days, and traffic can be nightmarish.
City Hall and festival organizers annually craft plans for the Sundance operations that emphasize public transit as a way to combat traffic. One of the keys is running the municipal bus system in conjunction with a bus loop that stops at Sundance theaters. The buses during the pre-pandemic festivals were packed, but traffic jams were commonplace anyway. The municipal government also further restricts parking in the Main Street core and increases prices for the spots that remain available as part of the overall blueprint for reducing traffic during Sundance.
A variety of municipal departments use the calendar as they prepare for the busy stretches of the ski season. The Park City Police Department, parking managers and snowplow crews, as examples, could see the projections during Sundance as useful while they prepare staffing levels.
It is not clear what sort of crowds Sundance will draw as it returns after the pandemic-forced cancellations of the in-person events in 2022 and 2021, when the festivals were held online. Park City’s tourism industry continues to enjoy a strong comeback since the early months of the pandemic and the current economic jitters have seemed to have little impact locally.
A high-ranking Sundance official in the middle of December said organizers are preparing the festival logistics as if the 2023 event will resemble the one in 2020, which was held shortly before the coronavirus-forced shutdowns two months later. Betsy Wallace, who is the Sundance managing director, said at the time the 2023 event, though, could be slightly smaller in size than the pre-pandemic festivals. The festival in 2020 drew nearly 117,000 people, a Sundance-funded economic analysis found. Of the total, 62% were estimated to be Utah residents.
The Park City Chamber/Bureau, meanwhile, recently reported lodging occupancy in the city during Sundance, as of Dec. 15, was predicted at 64%. The number will likely move prior to the festival as bookings are made or canceled. Occupancy during the 2020 film festival was 78%, while the number was 81% in 2019.