City Hall intends to further research several radical transportation ideas to reduce or better manage traffic in the community, including an aerial route along the S.R. 248 entryway.

Officials provided limited information about the possibilities in an update drafted in anticipation of a Park City Council meeting scheduled on Thursday, slated to be held approximately 10 months after some of the ideas were presented to the elected officials.

The municipal government in the time since the March 2022 meeting secured $80,000 in grant monies from the Utah Department of Transportation to study emerging technologies.

---

---

The state funding is expected to be put toward research into transportation ideas such as:

• assessing whether a tunnel underneath the S.R. 248 entryway or parallel to the state highway is viable.

---

---

• examining whether it is viable to expand the Rail Trail to enable an aerial route, likely using a gondola, along the S.R. 248 entryway.

• exploring the possibility of tolls and pricing based on congestion on the entryways. The work will include research into the electronic collection of tolls and so-called dynamic pricing, which changes the dollar amount based on traffic conditions.

• considering the implementation of dynamic pricing and reservations for parking on unspecified public streets.

Some of the possibilities were included in a list dating to March 2022 that identified what City Hall labeled “disruptive ideas” to address traffic and transportation.

The tunnel and aerial ideas along S.R. 248 would run into the tens of millions of dollars and, with near certainty, become controversial as Parkites weigh the traffic backups of today against the cost and significant re-imagining of the entryway that the ideas would produce. Introducing tolls and dynamic pricing on the entryways would not be expected to cost at the same level, but they would also likely be controversial since they would be such a change to the operations of the routes in and out of Park City. Dynamic pricing and reservations for parking on certain public streets would be expected to draw similar attention.

The closely related issues of traffic and transportation have long been a challenge for City Hall, as leaders over the decades have attempted to reduce the congestion by nudging people onto the bus system and using other measures like paid parking in the Main Street core. Traffic, though, remains one of the chief complaints in the community. There are regular rush-hour backups throughout the year on the S.R. 224 and S.R. 248 entryways, and other important streets like Bonanza Drive suffer long lines of vehicles. S.R. 248 is heavily used by people who live in parts of the Snyderville Basin, the East Side of Summit County and Wasatch County.  

City Hall’s consideration of what are seen as disruptive ideas is another acknowledgment of the concern about traffic both inside the municipal government and in the community. But pursuing the most ambitious of the ideas may thrust leaders into controversies that could involve neighborhoods, commuters, the environmental community, the County Courthouse, state transportation officials and, if funds are sought from Washington, the congressional delegation and the wider federal government.

The concept of aerial transit via a gondola or a network of gondolas has been repeatedly broached since at least the 1990s without significant progress by the municipal government or the private sector.

The City Council on Thursday is not scheduled to make decisions about the transportation possibilities, but the elected officials could signal support or concern with the overall work or the individual ideas. The meeting is scheduled to start at 4:15 p.m. at the Marsac Building. It will also be broadcast on the municipal website, http://www.parkcity.org.