Outside of driving a personal vehicle, people have the choice between a lengthy ride on public transit, rideshares, costly limousine service, or hotel shuttle.
In 2021, the Utah Department of Transportation awarded Park City an $80,000 grant to study innovative transportation solutions.
A city committee looked at various disruptive ideas, like gondolas, passenger rail, and a one-way loop concept in the center of town.
Committee members Hervé Lavenant and Casey Christ studied how to improve Park City’s connection to the airport and presented their findings to the Park City Council last week.
Lavenant said a consistent bus connection from the airport would help reduce traffic.
“A bus is not going to remove people," Lavenant said. "It’s going to displace people from a less dense mode of transportation to a denser mode of transportation. And so what it really does is you pull cars away from the roadways, and you replace them with something that’s actually more environmentally friendly than a car.”
He said similar bus connections have proven successful in other parts of the country.
Christ said a few components are necessary to ensure it’s a reliable service.
“You’ve got to be able to offer a service that is high frequency, and has extensive hours of operation," Christ said. "You can’t run a bus service where if somebody misses the bus by 10 minutes, they have to wait 2.5 hours before the next bus comes. Or it doesn’t operate on Saturdays.”
He said an airport bus connection could prove valuable to locals, not just tourists.
Lavenant, who works in logistics for United Airlines, challenged the council saying it’s only a matter of effort to make it happen.
“The key into all of this, at the end of the day, is that we have a name," Lavenant said. "That name is Park City. That name is extremely powerful. In fact, from my friends at Delta, what I hear is ‘If you nudge us a little bit more, Park City resonates really well with the executive team.’ We have the potential for a public-private partnership to execute on this.”
Park City Mayor Nann Worel said she was impressed with the concept.
“If I were to book a flight from Seattle to Park City, I could do that understanding that when I got to Salt Lake, my luggage would be taken up to Park City for me and I would be put on a bus up here," Worel said. "So when you book your flight you put in Park City as your final destination… it was really fascinating to see what other communities are doing and how that might possibly work here.”
The council was briefed on the idea; no decisions were made. It will revisit the transportation study results later this year.
