Park City and Summit County are installing a new pathfinding system for multi-use hard surface trails. For those who walk, run or roll, there will be large painted dots to help find your route throughout the City and the Basin trail system. Trail intersections will have signage and maps to help people orient themselves to the area.
Park City Trails and Open Space Coordinator, Logan Jones says the new system will help with visitors and locals alike. The City and County transit philosophy is to get people out of cars and onto the miles of multi-use trails that connect the City with the Basin. He says it’s surprising how many locals get disoriented when using the trails. They’ve installed 21 signs that will have color coded trail markings much like subway maps.
“On those signs, there’s a map, you are here. It’s really to kind of help people kind of get their bearings. It’s also destination above them that kind of have arrows, distances and estimated times on bicycles. The idea is to help people get oriented and get going in the right direction.”
Jones says by the time they are finished in mid-August they’ll have about 10 different color navigation dots in all the major trail intersections. They’re busy painting now and will put down about 260 of them over the next few weeks. He says the new system should be easy to figure out.
“These trails. They’re all, kind of, interconnected. And, kind of, put them into routes, almost. So, think about Poison Creek to Rail Trail to Silver Quinn Trail and hooking into the Field House. That’s like the yellow trial on the map.”
Jones says Basin Rec has contributed to the labor effort along with some funds the County Council pitched in. Park City Municipal has worked on the design and ordering of materials. Jones says it’s a work in progress and the objective is to make the city and basin trails feel like one system. They hope to get feedback from users on this first effort at wayfinding.
“You know, we’ve kind of taken what we wanted to learn from other communities and tried to add that in. But I don’t think I’ve really seen anything quite like what we’re trying to do. So, a lot of good ideas off of other communities and kind of put our spin on it.”
Jones says the 21 maps are installed as of Thursday. They’ll put in one more once the round-about project at Jeremy Ranch is finished. The pavement markings are taking all hands-on-deck to get the 260 thermo plastic pavement dots down. He says so far, they’ve received good feedback.
