After gridlock was seen throughout Park City on several weekends this winter as thousands of people came to visit Main Street and the city’s two ski resorts, the city implemented increased traffic measures with more police officers monitoring traffic and directing drivers away from residential neighborhoods.
According to data presented at last week’s city council meeting, the measures did help. Now, the Park City Police Department is asking to create a dedicated traffic division within the department to handle year-round traffic issues in the city.
Police Lieutenant Rob McKinney said the division would be responsible for all traffic-related calls in Park City, from monitoring ski resort traffic to manning the brake-check station on Marsac Avenue in the summers, both of which require significant time and resources.
“Why we recommend that is right now our patrol division is responsible for responding to all traffic related incidents in the city, whether it’s a traffic accident, parking problem, or anything else, and this is on top of responding to regular calls for service," he said. "When they’re not tied to the radio and they’re not chasing calls, that’s when they can do these proactive and targeted enforcement efforts. Adding a dedicated traffic unit would allow us to separate these officers from the patrol schedule, and they could be responsive in real time to traffic incidents throughout the city.”
According to city staff, if the city went all in, the cost of a traffic division would be around $3 million a year. Most of that money would go toward hiring eight additional staff. The funding could also go toward making the winter traffic mitigation efforts around the base of Park City Mountain Resort permanent. Full implementation would likely take a couple of years.
Councilors were largely receptive of the idea, with many people in the community voicing their displeasure with the city’s traffic this winter.
Councilor Becca Gerber said she’d like to see PCMR and Deer Valley come to the table and offer to share costs if the city does create a traffic division.
“I’m happy to support the police department if that’s what they feel like they need to do, but I also feel like we should be receiving additional support from the resorts before we take that role on ourselves,” said Gerber.
PCMR did help pay for the efforts around its base area this winter.
Mayor Nann Worel told KPCW the community was clear: the city needs to ramp up its traffic efforts. She said the police department needs a little help to make that a reality.
“Right now we’re just pulling from wherever we can, we’re pulling from outside resources, other departments come up and help us with our traffic management, so we feel like we need to, obviously, and our residents are asking us to increase enforcement,” Worel said.
The details of a traffic division in Park City are expected to be discussed as the city continues its budgeting process this spring.
