This week, the Summit County Council and Park City Council both approved an updated Interlocal Agreement for transit service, which adds a new partner, the High Valley Service District.
The new document replaces a 2006 Agreement between the county and the city. Summit County Council Member Chris Robinson considers it an amicable divorce.
Meanwhile, Park City Council Member Tim Henney says it’s a transformative improvement in a relationship that had some problems.
Robinson told KPCW that under a new evolved relationship, Park City is focused on transit service within its boundaries. The County and the High Valley District will move to a more regional service.
“We had talked about this taking many years, and thanks to the great work from both Park City and Summit County, and finding a good third party operator in Via, we were able to accelerate that, so that by the end of the month, High Valley will be fully operational.”
He said Park City and Summit County didn’t have much of a problem determining how to divide the physical assets of the transit system, because the 2006 Agreement detailed how to do that.
Robinson said a separate agreement also determined how the revenues from Mass Transit Sales Tax will be divided between the two entities. Basically, he said, the revenues are divided by point of sale.
Meanwhile, Park City Council Member Tim Henney said that during seven years on the Joint Transportation Advisory Board, he never really thought the two governments had a partnership. The city was a service provider.
“We were the sole service provider. So we were a monopoly providing a service to somebody that had a long list of frustrations and grievances. And that’s not healthy. That was somewhat around the edges. It created friction and a little bit toxicity. And so we’ve addressed it. And what we have now is much more of a partnership in a regional transit system. So this is much closer to what the intention was, and what the narrative was, that we want a partnership. We both decided that this is the way to achieve an actual partnership for regional transit. And I’m thrilled about it. I couldn’t be any more thrilled. The work that went into this is monumental.”
Two years ago, Henney said he didn’t trust the county to be competent or functional enough to be the kind of partner they needed, which he said is what he felt at the time.
“I was just looking at the reality of what was in the moment. And I had real questions. And I think I would say that my assessment of the situation, in my mind, raised legitimate issues about the competency, and whether we could have a true partnership. I now look at it, and a lot of work has gone into it, and a lot of views have changed on both sides, the city and the county. We’re both culpable to some degree for the toxicity that existed. And we’re both partners in looking at this through a new lens and deciding that the best path forward.”
Under the new agreement, bus service to Salt Lake, in cooperation with the Utah Transit Authority, will still operate. But Robinson said that Park City will not be involved.
“It calls for Park City, as of July 1, no longer having any responsibility for that Salt Lake-P.C. connect agreement with UTA. It’ll be up to High Valley to renegotiate that. We wanna look under the hood and make sure that that’s the best system that we have. It costs about $700,000 for—each up to now paying half, the city and the county. And now it will be 100 percent High Valley. We need to decide to what degree we want to change it, or modify it, or terminate it.”
Robinson said that ridership has increased on the Salt Lake line, but so has the cost.
The High Valley District has hired the firm Via as its service provider. Robinson said he thinks that Via won’t cost any more than the county was spending before.
He said Via has brought some important changes, such as the move to micro-transit.
“We had a lot of fixed routes that were really not very efficient. And we’ve replaced them with micro-transit. Our micro-transit’s been up for almost a month, and we have 2-300 riders a day. And the average walk distance is 80 feet to pick one up. And the average wait is a minute and a half. And the average ride time is like nine minutes. And instead of running these fixed routes with virtually empty buses, full sized buses, round and round, we’ve more strategically located the fixed routes with faster headways, where they really gonna move people and then put micro-transit in the periphery.”
Summit County Council member Chris Robinson.
