The Rail Trail Master Plan is beginning to take shape with a little help from some of its regular users.
The process to update Park City’s portion of the Rail Trail between Bonanza Drive and Highway 40 began late last year and the city has made it clear that the public would be in the driver’s seat as far as the future of the trail is concerned.
City staff hosted an introductory open house last November, conducted a community survey over the winter, and held its second open house Wednesday evening at Park City’s Prospector hotel.
Community members got to look at trail plans and ask questions about proposed improvements, as well as provide feedback on the plans by leaving sticky notes with their suggestions.
Based on Wednesday’s feedback, residents looked to be strongly in favor of things like winter maintenance, trail crossing improvements, and enhanced safety infrastructure like stop signs and other signage at road crossings.
Things people weren’t so enthusiastic about included trail lights and electronic signs. One note read “less is more.”
Shannon O’Neal lives on the Rail Trail and said although some small improvements could go a long way to improve the trail experience, he’s not convinced more extensive work is necessary.
“There are a whole lot of people that like the Rail Trail the way it is, and there are things that you can do to make it better," he said. "I don’t think the town, right now, has an appetite to spend the kind of money to do some of these projects they’re talking about.”
One improvement that is dividing opinions is the suggestion of widening the trail to accommodate more walkers and bikers. The trail could be widened to 25 feet and would fully separate walking and biking traffic.
Although about twice as many people indicated Wednesday they wanted the trail to get wider than not, a sizable portion of people still said that was low on their list of priorities.
Sue Rosenberg uses the Rail Trail for both walking and biking and said she sees the need for a wider trail in some places, but thinks a lot of the tension between walkers and bikers could be solved with a little education and more communication out on the trail.
“I guess I don’t really think it’s necessary, but I understand the issue with people not liking bikers," said Rosenberg. "I must say, when I’m walking, I don’t like bikers who zoom past me either, but the problem is in many places, the trail isn’t wide enough. There’s not enough space on either side and [widening it is] going to take up wetlands and it’s going to fill in ditches and in many places it’s really pretty narrow. I’m not sure how feasible that’s going to be.”
City staff and outside transportation consulting firm Fehr & Peers will use the feedback gathered since last fall to refine their plans and formulate additional ideas this spring.
City Trails and Open Space Manager Heinrich Deters said it’s been a balancing act trying to address concerns from all of the different Rail Trail users.
“Trails, you know, are very personal experiences," Deters said. "There’s these anecdotal experiences that people focus on, like ‘my issues is x,’ right? The speeding bikes. Then you’ll talk to the next person who is a biker and [they’ll say], ‘my issue is there’s always people walking five abreast and you can’t ride your bike.’ They’re very personal, which is important input, and it’s trying to decipher where you can sort of mitigate, maybe, those for both users would be the goal.”
Deters said city staff hopes to have decided on which improvement projects to pursue in the coming weeks. He said he wants to have proposals in front of the planning commission and city council by early summer.
More information on the Rail Trail Master Plan can be found here.
