State Route 224 — also known as Marsac Avenue — is the road that leads up to the Empire Pass development, Brighton Estates, and Guardsman Pass, which connects Park City, Midway and Big Cottonwood Canyon.
Marsac is steep, narrow and doesn’t have guardrails. And due to new growth and more people wanting to visit scenic Guardsmans Pass the road is seeing more traffic.
Marsac is steep, narrow and doesn’t have guardrails.
In a 30-day span, there were two commercial vehicle accidents. Duringthe most recent one, a truck fell over the hillside and closed the road in both directions for 4 hours.
Courtney Samuel is with Utah’s Department of Transportation. He said despite the accidents, right now there are no plans to improve the popular state road.
“At this time, we currently do not have the active projects for Empire Pass,” Samuel said. “I know anytime there is a crash, we always take a look into it and see if there's anything that can be done from an engineering perspective to improve safety.”
He said part of the reason is because there haven’t been enough serious accidents on the road in the past decade to justify the expense of road improvements.
“We have about 11 years of crash data there. And so fortunately, there haven't been a ton of serious crashes in the area,” he said. “There's been 119 crashes total. And out of 119, there's only been three suspected serious crash injuries there.”
And Samuel said it would also be difficult to get enough room on the road to implement safety measures.
“There's twists and turns and there's not a lot of shoulder,” he said. “There's sections where there isn't a place to put a guardrail, you would have to go in and widen the road and expand it to be able to put a guardrail there. And so we haven't had any projects at this time that are gonna do that.”
But there’s an alternative route that also leads to Guardsman Pass. Twisted Branch Road runs parallel to Marsac Ave, but the road isn’t publicly owned.
Joe Butterfield, a long time resident in Park City, spoke at Wednesday's, Park City planning commission meeting. He said Twisted Branch Road offers a safer alternative to Marsac.
“It's there, it goes to the exact same place. It is safe. It is year round. It's built to accommodate the traffic that is going up there,” Butterfield said. “But what it isn't, it isn't public. It's not being used by the public. Because the developer doesn't want the traffic, plain and simple.”
Butterfield said the city has encouraged traffic on the road, by continuing to approve development in the area, as well purchasing and improving Bonanza Flat, which has made it an even more popular area to drive to. Traffic on the road — he said — has nearly doubled.
But Park City Planning Director Bruce Erickson told KPCW that recent accidents and traffic aren’t the norm.
“I think you saw kind of a large anomaly when Parleys Summit was closed because of the Parleys fire on it,” according to Erickson.
Butterfield disagreed and said the problem isn’t that there are too many people on the road, it’s that no one will address the safety issues.
“This issue on the Empire pass road has been one that's been ignored for far too long. The road above the Montage is a public safety issue. It is not an access issue. It is not a backdoor issue, it is solely a public safety issue,” Butterfield said. “Sadly, our council and our mayor have neglected it and kicked it down the road and labeled it as an access issue.”
And he said if local officials don’t address the issue soon, it could lead to much more severe accidents.
“It is only a matter of time before someone's father, someone's mother, brother, sister, son or daughter dies on that road,” he said. “I hope that this commission, the mayor, and council, stop allowing developers to push their base, equalize the public safety for all of us. Stop any new development until Twisted Branch’s public.”
Erickson said the city doesn’t have plans to abandon 224 and open Twisted Brand Road to the public.
“I think the city is regrouping a little bit on what we want to do here,” he said.
The Park City Planning Commission is expected to discuss the Twisted Branch subdivision — which proposes even more development in the area — at its next meeting October 14.
