There are almost certainly Parkites who see the bus system as the best transportation option.
But how many people in Park City would view some sort of toll in the community as a preferred strategy?
As City Hall continues to gather input in the efforts to update the municipal General Plan, leaders want to learn about opinions regarding the future of transportation. The topic is one of Park City’s most difficult challenges, with Parkites, visitors and commuters seeming to be increasingly frustrated with the lines of cars along the entryways and the traffic jams elsewhere. Park City has made progress over time, including the expansion of the bus lines, but the displeasure continues.
The municipal government has posted a questionnaire that delves into a variety of transportation-related topics, as well as other issues covered in the General Plan, that provides another opportunity to provide input. The questionnaire closes Monday. The General Plan is an overarching document that guides growth.
“Park City’s growing traffic volumes, especially during peak seasons, are a top community concern. With continued regional growth and the upcoming Winter Olympics, congestion will worsen,” the questionnaire says in an introduction to the section regarding transportation.
It also says an expansion of the capacity of roads is not supported as a solution and Park City would rather “prioritize transit and active transportation to manage visitor and workforce travel while minimizing disruptions for residents.”
The questionnaire presents three scenarios for the future of transportation ranging from what officials see as easier to most difficult.
The first scenario, described as easier, includes:
- Moderately adjusting the price of parking.
- Increasing the frequency of transit.
- Making pedestrian and bicyclist improvements, such as creating additional sidewalks and increasing snow removal.
- Altering the configuration of streets, including creating one-way routes.
The second scenario, described as more difficult, includes:
- Raising the price of parking in areas deemed to be congested.
- Expanding the use of parking passes in neighborhoods.
- Making modifications to the operations of streets, such as turning Main Street into a car-free zone on a seasonal basis.
The third scenario, labeled most difficult, includes:
- Raising parking prices by a significant amount while cutting the supply of parking.
- Charging tolls in combination with congestion pricing on unspecified roads deemed to be major.
- Amending municipal codes to reduce the amount of parking substantially.
The third scenario involves some of the most dramatic alterations. One of the other possibilities calls for the evaluation of “high-capacity regional options such as regional buses, gondolas, or rail.”
The mentions of gondolas — a type of aerial transit — and rail are widely seen as ambitious possibilities. Either of them would require an extensive approval process before any groundbreaking. Routes would need to be studied and then selected, a robust process for public input would be expected and funding mechanisms would need to be agreed upon and then secured. The process would include government institutions at the local, state and federal levels. There has been discussion about the possibilities of tapping any transportation-related monies that may become available from Washington as the region prepares for the 2034 Winter Olympics, which would be a similar strategy to the one that was employed in the region in the 2002 Winter Olympic era.
The concept of raising the price of parking would be sensitive in the Main Street core, where the municipal government has long attempted to find a balance between the price of parking and the willingness of Parkites and visitors to pay to park at that price point. Tolls and congestion pricing, meanwhile, would be a dramatic change in a community where they are not currently charged.
The closely related issues of transportation and traffic have perplexed Park City, Summit County and state leaders for decades, as population growth and growth in the tourism industry continued at rapid paces. There are few options for the widening of the entryway routes to increase road capacity and the improvements to the bus system have seemed, to many, to result in just modest progress.
“Our outreach throughout the General Plan project has clearly shown that residents identify traffic as a top challenge. Updating our General Plan is an opportunity to, as a community, comprehensively plan ways to improve our transportation network while preserving our quality of life,” Park City Planning Director Rebecca Ward said in a statement.
The questionnaire also covers issues like growth scenarios, historic preservation and sustainability.
The questionnaire is available on the municipal government’s public-engagement website, engageparkcity.org/generalplan. More information about the General Plan updating process is also available on the website.
The next decade
One of the other questions inquiries about the broad actions someone wants Park City to pursue over the next decade. The answer options:
- “We will preserve our open space and conservation areas.”
- “We will not increase our road network and will look at creative multimodal solutions to address traffic and mobility.”
- “We will offer housing options to a variety of demographics.”
- “We will offer housing options for a variety of age groups (young families, seniors, etc.).”