Park City leaders on Thursday signaled their interest in learning more about the prospects of creating an aerial transit system, but it appears a significant amount of work would need to be accomplished before they would formally entertain a proposal for what would likely be designed as a network of gondolas.
Mayor Nann Worel and the Park City Council held a discussion about aerial transit during a broader talk about the future of public spaces in the Main Street core. The elected officials are considering a series of conceptual improvements designed to ensure the shopping, dining and entertainment strip remains competitive. The idea of aerial transit is one of the possibilities since such a system could have citywide ramifications.
An aerial transit system would be seen as a traffic-fighting measure as the community continues to struggle to find solutions to the lines of cars along the entryways and elsewhere. The thinking is people would opt for aerial transit as a means to avoid the backups on the roads if a gondola system someday connects key locales in Park City. There has been talk for years, at least since the 1990s, about aerial transit, but there was only limited progress in the past.
The elected officials, meeting at the Park Avenue police station as part of a two-day series of discussions, were not prepared to address aerial transit in any depth on Thursday. They instead requested staffers engage Park City Mountain and Deer Valley Resort about the topic.
The mayor and City Council also wanted staffers to review the municipal government’s past efforts regarding aerial transit and begin to research locations for a potential aerial link between Deer Valley and the Main Street core. It was not clear when the topic would return to the City Council.
City Councilor Tana Toly, whose family has a pizza restaurant on Main Street, provided some of the notable comments as she spoke about the eventual users of aerial transit. She questioned whether a gondola connection would turn Main Street into another base area for skiers. She also said she did not want the China Bridge garage to become a favored spot for skiers to park if there was a gondola terminal nearby. That, she indicated, could leave fewer parking spots for people headed to Main Street businesses. The consulting team assisting City Hall with the Main Street talks, though, said people skiing at Deer Valley also spend on Main Street.
An aerial transit system would likely involve Main Street as one of the key destinations, but crafting the details would require extensive study. A connection to Park City Mountain could be modeled after the existing route of the Town Lift, but link to Deer Valley would be more complicated. Possibilities that could eventually be studied may include a route that follows Deer Valley Drive between the resort’s Snow Park base and the vicinity of the Old Town transit center. It also seems likely a different connection involving a terminal at the Brew Pub lot and another one in an unspecified area of Deer Valley could be part of any early studies.
The latest discussions about aerial transit are occurring in the months after the 2034 Winter Olympics were awarded to Salt Lake City, with the Park City area having large role in the plans for a second Games in the state. Officials in Park City see the possibility of tapping Games-related funding in coming years for transportation upgrades, as was the case in the period before the 2002 Winter Olympics. Timelines, though, are not clear.