The Park City Council will receive an update on how the city is working to reduce single-occupancy vehicle trips and vehicle miles traveled.
The city council adopted the transportation demand management plan in 2016, in an effort to address traffic congestion and its related environmental effects. Earlier this year, the council set a goal to reduce vehicle trips on the city’s main corridors by 25% by the year 2030. City transportation staff has employed a dozen different strategies to make progress on those goals, including increased bus service; instituting a parking management system; and participation in the Summit County bike share. The transportation demand management plan is funded by Summit County’s transportation sales tax.
The staff report also lists projects that are currently in progress, such as the evaluation of a Quinn’s Junction park and ride, as well as priorities for the upcoming year. Park City Assistant City Manager Matt Dias says the goal is to implement cost-effective strategies.
“Our obligation, and I think City Council has asked staff to be very very diligent that we literally exercise every single option we can before we throw money at capital infrastructure and investments," Dias said. "We're trying to do that, so for the benefit of the public, we're trying to walk the walk.”
In the same vein, the city council will also consider a three-year-long contract for $25,000 per year for Park City Municipal to use the RideAmigos app, in partnership with the area resorts. The staff report calls RideAmigos a “one-stop shop” for transit and trip planning. The city would share costs with Deer Valley Resort, Park City Mountain Resort and Canyons Village. Dias says other area employers could also sign on, with the goal of reducing single-occupant vehicle trips by staff.
"We hope to collaboratively shift demand of our workforce from driving into town every day to using other means," Dias said. "Incentivizing carpool—we can actually pay for people’s rides on Park City-SLC Connect through this application, so there's a lot of neat ways to incentivize carpooling and riding transit."
Transportation staff says it can be difficult to measure the success of these strategies, due to the impacts of growth on the town, but some tools like transit ridership, traffic, pedestrian and bicycle counts and parking utilization give a sense of the effects of the programs.
The two items aren't up for public input or council discussion Thursday—the transportation demand management plan was provided to council as a written report, and the RideAmigos contract is on the consent agenda.
