During the busy holiday periods and weekends, skier traffic exiting the resorts can cause a standstill, especially when cars try to turn at some of the key intersections.
Park City Traffic Operations Manager Andrew Leatham says this new plan includes placing traffic control devices on roads. It’s weather dependent and will not be executed during winter storm conditions or in the event of an accident or signal malfunction.
“We've designated our maximum peak days, we've looked at the calendar and said focus these operations around the holiday periods and our busiest weekends,” Leatham said. “We feel that we've developed a good plan to ease, to keep traffic flowing. We're not going to be reducing the amount of traffic on the roadway. But we feel like these measures that we're putting into place can keep the traffic flowing.”
One of the pinch points is where Kearns Boulevard narrows to one lane between Bonanza Drive and Sidewinder for traffic heading out of town.
“Our plan would move that merge to the west side of the intersection,” he said. “So, traffic would be merging into the left through travel lane, prior to that intersection with Bonanza kind of back near the Boneyard,” he said. “As you clear the intersection, the intention is that you're already going to be in the lefthand through lane. And then if you're coming off of Bonanza, the devices will also push you out when you make the right turn into the through lane. So, we're eliminating that abrupt merge at Sidewinder and kind of making it a smoother transition west of the intersection.”
Another big change will be vehicles coming from Park City Mountain or Park Avenue will not be able to turn left from Deer Valley Drive onto Bonanza Drive. Leatham says this left turn lane will only be open to buses.
With two left turn lanes from Empire to Park Avenue he says that street is better suited to handle the additional cars. Vehicles wanting to get to Prospector from the resort will be forced to turn at Park Avenue and then turn right onto Kearns.
“Regular traffic will be encouraged to turn left on Park Avenue rather than coming across and then getting in that left hand turn lane for Kearns,” he said. “We've seen that as probably our most problematic intersection during egress. And with the left turns a lot of time, you'll see backing on Bonanza that comes close to that Deer Valley Drive intersection and then those vehicles attempting to make that left turn or getting stuck in the intersection. And then that, in turn, is backing up Deer Valley Drive, you know, backup to this roundabout at Marsac.”
In making these changes, he says the city’s goal is to prioritize transit, reduce blocking of intersections and keep traffic moving so drivers are discouraged from cutting through neighborhoods.
If the changes don’t show positive results, he says the plan may be altered or even discontinued.
