An aerial transit system, perhaps via a gondola, could someday soar across Park City.
But the route should probably not be too close to the drones that may eventually be delivering goods in the community.
Aerial transit and drone deliveries are two concepts that are expected to be researched as City Hall presses ahead with discussions about the future of transportation. The Park City Council recently authorized an agreement with a consultant, valued at a maximum of $130,000, to study emerging technologies. It is essentially a wide-ranging list of ideas that could ultimately assist as the municipal government combats traffic. A state grant is funding more than half of the total.
City Hall staffers in a report drafted in anticipation of the recent meeting acknowledged the upcoming research involves “several controversial ideas.” The consultant will work with an advisory committee and will forward recommendations that will include locations, timelines and estimates of costs. The recommendations are tentatively scheduled to be brought to the elected officials in the summer.
One of the key tasks will be generating what the report describes as a “robust list of potential technologies that may be applicable to Park City.” One of the technologies noted in the report is an aerial route along S.R. 248. Another is a tunnel underneath or paralleling the same state highway.
The S.R. 248 corridor has been especially challenging over the years. The backups are some of the worst in the community, as skiers and commuters from parts of the Snyderville Basin, the East Side of Summit County and Wasatch County enter and leave Park City using the state highway. Steps have been taken in an effort to address the S.R. 248 congestion with limited success.
Either of the concepts would be costly, likely soaring into the tens of millions of dollars. The funding of options like aerial transit or a tunnel would almost certainly rely heavily on grant monies from the federal government, with the likelihood of some sort of involvement by local governments and the state.
Some of the other ideas that could be explored as part of the research include:
• parking reservations and dynamic pricing for parking, which adjusts the cost based on demand.
• tolls with congestion pricing along the entryways
The upcoming work will be the latest to consider aerial transportation possibilities in Park City. Previous efforts made limited progress and did not reach the stage of serious consideration. Aerial transit, likely via a gondola system, would require intense research into routes, costs and equipment before City Hall or other government bodies could bring a formal proposal to the public.
It has seemed over the years that a gondola system could ultimately be designed to serve a park-and-ride lot along the S.R. 248 entryway, perhaps a location in the area of Bonanza Drive and Kearns Boulevard as well as Park City Mountain, Old Town and the Snow Park base of Deer Valley Resort. Those sorts of details, though, would be crafted later. Maintenance and operations responsibilities and costs would also need to be addressed between the various parties that would be involved in the system.