The travelers on the annual City Tour are expected to be airborne at certain points of the trip to Colorado.
The destinations this year are Telluride and Durango, and it is likely the time in Telluride will be especially noteworthy. The City Tour involves dozens of people — government officials, business people, not-for-profit executives and the Leadership Park City class — traveling to destinations across the West to learn about the mechanics of the other places. There are typically meetings with their counterparts in the other communities, tours and socializing. The trip is slated to run from May 29 until June 2, with two nights planned in each of the southwestern Colorado communities.
The stop in Telluride could be significant with Park City residents for years talking about someday creating an aerial transit system — essentially a gondola network — as a traffic-fighting measure. The talks in Park City have not advanced to the point of any finalized routes or financial agreements that could ultimately include the public and private sectors, but the trip to Telluride could be revealing nonetheless.
Telluride in the 1990s debuted a gondola linking the historic district with the slopeside Mountain Village with several other stops, as well.
The Telluride gondola system, free for riders, has long been seen as a potential template for aerial transit in the Park City area even if not a precise model.
Leaders in Park City and Summit County are addressing traffic through a variety of measures as frustrations continue with the backups along the entryways and elsewhere. There has been limited progress on concepts for aerial transit over the decades in the Park City area. There have been questions about routes, the initial construction costs, ongoing operations and maintenance costs and the parties that would be involved. The creation of even a limited aerial network through cooperation between the public and private sectors would likely be seen as a defining transportation accomplishment after so many years.
The director of Leadership Park City and the organizer of the City Tour, Myles Rademan, said the travelers plan to stay in lodging in Mountain Village and take the gondola between the lodging and Telluride.
“The gondola is one of the reasons I selected Telluride,” Rademan said.
He said he wants the travelers to learn about the costs associated with the operations and maintenance of the gondola system, the funding of the route, the history, pitfalls and the ease of its use. He also wants the group from Park City to learn about the impacts of the gondola on parking.
“How convenient is it? Is it really going to solve any traffic problem or is it a tourist attraction. … It could be both,” Rademan said.
The Durango stop could provide opportunities to learn about the downtown, the relationship between the community and Fort Lewis College as well as the tourism industry, which draws people headed to the nearby slopes of Purgatory Resort and other outdoor recreation.
The trip typically costs the travelers $1,000 or more per person. Government officials generally travel at taxpayer expense. The trip in 2023 stopped in the Colorado cities of Fort Collins and Estes Park. The City Tour most recently visited Telluride in 2007 and Durango in 2001.