At a forum July 22, the eight candidates running for the two open seats on the Park City Council were asked what steps they would take to manage traffic flow on area roads.
In order, here are their responses:
Diego Zegarra said he’d like to find cheaper solutions, and suggested the possibility of having reversible flex lanes.
“Some cities have lanes that change direction in the morning so that more cars can come in freely, and then in the afternoon, reverse them,” Zegarra said. “I’d love to try something like that or see how far that can go.”
Beth Armstrong said Park City needs to reduce the amount of single-occupancy vehicles.
“The best way to do that would be working with private, public partnerships, with the major employers in town, to do van pools,” Armstrong said. “Stopping at Richardson Flat, loading them up and bringing them in in vans. There’s only one real way to get people out of their cars, and that’s to give them a better choice.”
Danny Glasser said he’d like to test the reversible-lane concept before making a major investment.
“I think we also have to allow for Vail [Resorts] to develop the base of [Park City Mountain], because the truth is, there’s traffic that’s coming internally because people are staying in Bear Hollow and driving across,” Glasser said. “If we can allow more people to stay at the mountain, that’ll diminish that. I think we also have to look at incentivizing people to not drive in.”
Ian Hartley said public transit should be the focus.
“There comes a breaking point at which transit is more effective and it’s more convenient than driving your car,” Hartley said. “I don’t think we’re there yet. I think it’s on the horizon, especially with the Olympics. In the meantime, we can try some scalable solutions, see what works and grow that.”
John Kenworthy said he’d like to expand park-and-ride options in the Quinn’s Junction area to keep vehicles out of the city core on powder days.
“We are one of maybe two of the ski resorts between Alterra and Vail [Resorts] that have 1.2 million people within an hour drive from our ski resorts,” Kenworthy said. “This is going to continue to grow exponentially, and we have to address the massive amounts of people that buy those all-you-can-eat ski passes.”
Molly Miller is looking forward to seeing the impact of bus rapid transit on state Route 224, and said she also supports exploring the flex lane concept.
“I think a really critical piece of anything that we are able to move forward on is strengthening partnerships that have been weakened in recent years — regionally, with [the Utah Department of Transportation] and even federally,” Miller said. “I think there are many options that we can take advantage of.”
Incumbent councilmember Jeremy Rubell said he’d like to build off the success of the Richardson Flat park-and-ride, which has seen bus ridership growth in recent years.
“We need to follow the pattern of things that work, and we need to continue trying other things that we haven’t tried yet,” Rubell said. “We’ve been moving forward with the Re-create [state Route] 248 study, and our staff, especially in that department, has been doing an outstanding job coming forward with creative options. Some of those include flex lanes. Some of it’s flex lanes just for transit, so you don’t really have to worry about reversing it too much — you can do it through other patterns.”
Incumbent councilmember Tana Toly said she’d like to move forward with building a parking and transit hub on the Gordo property, located along state Route 248 across from Richardson Flat Road.
“I did bring up flex lanes, but I think we need to go back to this ‘park once’ philosophy that we’ve talked about on council for the last few years, and it’s ensuring that people can park in town or outside of town, and they can circulate through town without feeling like they are missing something,” Toly said.
A recording of the full candidate forum, where candidates answered a variety of questions for over two hours, can be found below.
