The early winter schedule for transit in Park City and the Basin starts up this Friday, November 16th. Representatives from Park City visited KPCW with the details.
Kenzie Coulson whose job title for the city is now ‘Transit Quality Manager’ told us that on Friday, the Ecker Hill park n ride on Kilby Road will be open.
“The Ecker hill Park n Ride is a 400-stall lot located on Kilby Road across the street from the Ecker Hill Middle School. This is really exciting because it’s going to offer great parking options for commuters and for skiers and employees. Summit County in conjunction with Park City Transit will be offering really frequent bus service at approximately 10-minute intervals.”
She said the electric bus will not directly serve the Ecker Hill lot. It will be accessed by the Pink Bus Route and the Lime Route.
“That’s primarily where some of our changes are this year. The Pink will now travel from Jeremy Ranch to the Ecker Hill Park n Ride to the Kimball Junction Transit Center. Then it will penetrate all the way up to the Canyons Village up to Grand Summit. The Lime bus this year, if you’re familiar with these routes, the Lime will be streamlined to run from the Ecker Hill Park n Ride all the way into town to the Park City Mountain Base. This means the Lime will no longer into Prospector area. So, to compensate for that we’ll be running additional Yellow buses over in Prospector that will go all the way up to Deer Valley. For those who know the Yellow is kind of an express route from Prospector up to Main Street.
She added that a rider can take the Electric bus, either from the Kimball Junction Transit Center or the Canyons hub.
We asked her, though, if one can easily get transit from Ecker Hill to Deer Valley.
“Well they can and in fact it’s a quick transfer by using the Pink and the Lime routes to service this lot we’ve increased the frequency to the point that while it involves a transfer people can make such a quick connection to the Electric Express or to other routes. This is kind of the direction we’re headed. In the past our routes have been resort focused but have made large loops through town. They’ve been extremely long and that makes it difficult for a lot of folks to use certain buses. For the Park City Mountain base and for the Canyons skier and the employees this lot is going to be as quick as it gets.”
She said the Ecker Hill lot has plenty of space—although officially 100 of the spaces are blocked out for Vail Resorts.
Meanwhile, she also updated us on bus service in Prospector Square. It will include the yellow express bus, which comes down Comstock and winds its way to Main Street and Deer Valley.
“That stays and in fact it’ll have more frequency than last year. In this case I think the entire neighborhood is going to have the convenience of the Red that they strongly requested last year as well as more Yellow frequency all the way to Deer Valley. We have a lot of employees for Deer Valley in that area who are going to enjoy that Yellow Bus. The Red in a sense will be more frequent because it will terminate at the Old Town Transit Center. It’s a shorter loop this year it’ll be great service if you’re going to the Park City Base or Old Town. Before it was looping up to Deer Valley last year.”
The full-winter transit schedule begins in early December.
“Typically, early winter is an enhanced version of our fall service. As we know a lot of employees are coming into town and we’re kind of ramping up for the full deal. This year our full winter starts December 7th and that day we’ll start running our Blue route which serves Thaynes Canyon. That’s a standard fare, right now Thaynes is served by a long Green route basically. As well as we’ll have enhanced hours to Empire Pass and Silver Lake on the Orange and Purple.”
Coulson and City Transit Manager Alfred Knotts added that they’re hosting some Open Houses on Wednesday the 14th to talk to residents. The first is 8:00 to 10:00 am at the Park City Library, followed by a session at the Kimball Junction Transit Center, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm.
