The Ecker Hill park n ride lot on Kilby Road has been underway for a couple of weeks now. We checked in with County Transportation Manager Caroline Rodriguez for an update.
Rodriguez said in its first two weeks, the Ecker Hill lot saw about 250 boarding’s on transit.
She said it is normal for such uses to start off slowly.
“I’m not surprised by that.” Rodriguez said, “It’ll take a while for people to catch on and people need to see that the service is in place and it’s dependable and quick and efficient before they’ll give it a try. Once they give it a try, I’m sure that people will start to use it more and more. We’re working with UDOT to try and get an electronic sign closer to I-80 so that people have enough lead time to make the decision to get off at Jeremy and use that Park n Ride.”
The lot receives six buses an hour, feeding the Pink or Lime line. She talked further about access from the Pink line.
“The Pink line goes Silver Springs and then up to the Canyons and then up to the Grand Summit.” Rodriguez explained, “In those first two weeks of the restructure we had about 4,000 boarding’s between the Pink and the Lime at the canyons area. So people are definitely taking that route as well. The important thing is don’t think of the Pink as the quickest way to get from the Kimball Junction area into the Canyons area. It’s really meant to operate almost like a feeder service. You can use it to get for example from Echo to Kimball Junction. If it’s important to you that you don’t want to get out of your seat and you want to get to the Canyons, then you could stay on the route. But you also could transfer to either the Lime or the White and maybe get into the Canyons area a little quicker.”
The Pink line also allows residents in Silver Springs to access to the Canyons or Kimball Junction.
Meanwhile, the Kamas City Council recently approved a zone change allowing use of a park n ride lot in that city. Rodriguez talked about where they will go from here.
“They’re looking to close on that property, so the county will own the parcel that the current Park n Ride is on.” Rodriguez continued, “We were using it under permit to Kamas City and its just more efficient for the county to own it. Then we can put permanent improvements in, eventually once demand requires, we could convert the building that’s existing there to a transit center or mixed-use transit/commercial. Really, we had improved it temporarily and once we own the property, we will be able to do those permeant improvements to legitimize the Park n Ride usage.”
