The lines are blurred between what is Park City and what is the Snyderville Basin Recreation District. And both entities have different rules about where e-bikes can be ridden.
Park City allows e-bikes on single-track trails for those 65 and older or with a mobility disability. Basin Rec only allows e-bikes on paved paths.
A survey was launched in February and Basin Rec Director Dana Jones says the preliminary results show this issue is important to the community.
“We did hire a contractor for that,” Jones said. “They did do a statistically valid survey. It was sent to all residents in those two areas. And then they also did an open survey. And I think that our contractor was shocked at the number of responses that we had, I believe we had over 2,000 responses between the two surveys, which is huge.”
The survey closed at the end of March and the data is being compiled. Jones says the results will be presented to the Park City Council at their May 2 meeting.
“The time hasn't been formalized yet,” she said. “But if the public is interested in coming to hear that and maybe making any comments on that, that will be May 2. Keep an eye on that.”
An abbreviated version will be presented to the Basin Recreation board at their board meeting May 9.
Following that, Jones says the board will spend the next month deciding if anything will change.
“I have already been talking to the county council and [deputy county attorney] Dave Thomas is going to be helping us with that - if we're going to be writing an ordinance,” she said. “So that would allow us to be able to enforce it and the sheriff's department to be able to enforce it if we needed to. That will probably come in June at the June board meeting and that would allow us to get something in place before the summer hits.”
Jones didn’t have much in the way of preliminary results other than to note that the highest percentage of surveys came from those who hike the trails.
“We need to make sure we are focusing on and making sure that those folks, the hikers are able to have a good experience. But otherwise, a lot of a lot of the data, they're still compiling and we're taking a look at it.”
She says they’ll also be looking at where the survey respondents live. Since the survey was open to anyone willing to fill it out, the results are being broken down by zip code and age. That way, she says, the decision makers will know what their constituents want.
