Walking around Park City might have been faster than driving at times this week, as holiday tourism season hits its peak.
One Deer Valley Resort employee told KPCW that they chose to walk home from Snow Park to their home on Daly Avenue Wednesday evening due to the traffic gridlock.
City government advised residents via social media this week to stay off the roads during morning and evening rush hours.
The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) maintains a traffic dashboard for roads in Summit County. On Thursday evening many routes had what UDOT called a “significant delay.”
Park City Traffic Operations Manager Andrew Leatham said evening rush hour Wednesday and Thursday was likely the largest traffic load of the winter so far.
The city ran new traffic patterns at several intersections earlier this month to test new ways to combat the gridlock. Leatham said the most positive thing they saw in the pilot program was a traffic split along Deer Valley Drive heading towards Bonanza Drive. He said they plan to implement it again on January 5 and 6. The city will also continue to experiment with longer green lights on eastbound Kearns Boulevard to alleviate traffic leaving the resorts.
The city is abandoning part of the plan that restricted left turns onto Bonanza Drive after hearing concerns from Prospector residents and businesses.
Leatham added that the visitor behavior this winter is unique given the thinner snowpack at the resorts.
“[Thursday] night and the night before were really where it went back to kind of a normal egress where everyone left the ski resorts at about the time, like four o’clock in the afternoon,” Leatham said. “But prior to that, like over Christmas, what we were seeing is people were leaving the resorts at different times, but they were all bound for Main Street in Old Town. So we were seeing parking on Main Street and in China Bridge at 95% full by like 3 p.m.”
He recommends that people skiing or riding leave their cars at the resort bases and take free Park City Transit to Main Street.
Park City Transit Manager Kim Fjeldsted said they’re seeing around 500 riders per day on the new bus routes from the free Richardson Flat parking lot. The 7 Grey Express runs to Deer Valley’s Snow Park base, while the 8 Brown Express goes to Park City Mountain Village.
“That’s not like our higher ridership routes by any means, like the Red or the Yellow,” Fjeldsted said. “But it is a decent amount for a fairly new route that we’re still trying to get the word out there that it exists. So I think it’s a pretty promising start.”
People can explore Park City bus routes online, and track buses in real time on the myStop app. Microtransit, which operates as a free ride-hailing service similar to Uber, is also available to the public within city limits. Microtransit is accessible via the High Valley Transit mobile app.