Topics about transit and transportation—from Silver Creek Junction to Kamas—came up during the Summit County Council’s meeting on Wednesday.
As we have reported, county council members are concerned over the impacts of UDOT’s planned big-rig parking lot near the Bell’s station at Silver Creek. While county officials want the spot to be just a chain-up area, the state reportedly sees it as more of a permanent rest stop at least in the winter.
Council member Doug Clyde said the state is cooperative, but they have different priorities, and they call the shots.
“One of our many concerns there is trucks that spend the night and idle all night and it’s an area of inherently bad air quality because of course it’s a local depression and there’s lots of residents in that area. We are looking probably at changing our idling ordinance so that it’s not a series of warnings but rather you get a ticket immediately if you idle. We’ve been attempting to work with UDOT to make that just a chain-up area. They’re insistent that trucks be allowed to park there for long periods of time. So now we’re going to be faced with some enforcement issues relative to anti-idling.”
Elsewhere, the county is planning to upgrade their bus service between Kamas, the Quinn’s Junction area and Park City. Clyde said the transit link has been doing well.
“The Kamas route has been very successful in its incipient stages which was last year we leased a parking lot, now we’re purchasing that and attempting to improve that as a transit facility. We’re also considering a couple of weekend routes to that as well. To try and make the whole system functional and better we’re going to put a permanent stop out at the hospital. So there will be a stop on the way in and a stop on the way out as you come in and out of Park City. Also maybe a slight increase in frequency, first of all to improve transit and to help knit together the east side of the county with the west side of the county.”
He added that the weekend service will likely start in November. Finally, Clyde said that the Ecker Hill park n ride lot on Kilby Road, currently under construction, will be served by an express bus.
“There will be express service from the Ecker Hill park n ride to the Kimball Junction express service. We looked at (electric). We’re not able to buy enough electric busses to make that all electric but certainly in our future plans. We’ve got a major electric bus program, one of the best in the country and we’re always looking to improve that.”
