Salt Lake City County, Salt Lake City Slam UDOT’s Little Cottonwood Plan

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Of all the proposals to resolve the traffic jams at Little Cottonwood Canyons, an 8-mile gondola has garnered the most attention and buzz.

Now that the Utah Department of Transportation nears a final decision, the gondola proposal is also attracting the most criticism and reluctance, especially from elected leaders in the communities most at stake.

In a way it’s pretty cool I guess [but] I think this is absolutely wrong for this beautiful canyon. If you like to ride gondolas this could be fun, Salt Lake County Mayor Wilson said at a press conference Wednesday at the mouth of the canyon. But a gondola would only transport visitors to the two canyon ski areas, while costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, she argued, insisting that the UDOT return to the drawing board and redo. transport plan.

Wilson and County Council member Jim Bradley greeted the presser on Wednesday against the backdrop of the steep canyon walls as a flock of mountain goats lingered high above to announce the county’s official position on UDOTs , two options designated to relieve congestion in world-famous ski destination in Salt On the doorstep of Lake City.

This plan proposes either a gondola or a widening of the canyon road to accommodate an improved and fast bus service. Suspended from towers as tall as the Utah Capitol, the gondola would start from a terminal and buildable parking structure near the mouth of the canyon to Alta, with a stop at Snowbird.

Instead of pursuing a massive construction project in the canyon, county leaders would prefer a cheaper, phased approach to improved bus service. Their vision relies as much as possible on existing infrastructure and a network of transit hubs away from the Cottonwood Canyons, as well as tolls and other strategies to encourage carpooling and transit.

The gondola is a permanent feature. It’s a very expensive device and you can’t reuse it if you decide it was a mistake, Bradley said. You live with it. It’s here. You’re not going to take it off.

The UDOT recently published a draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of its transport plan and is accepting public comments until Friday. At least 8,000 comments were received. Agency officials praised Wilson and other mayors, whose official comments criticized the transport plan, for taking the time to review the draft EIA.

They understand the issues facing the canyon. They did a fantastic job. I really appreciate them for reviewing the project and providing feedback because that’s how we get the best document, said project manager Josh Van Jura. This is the goal of the project, to get the public’s opinion, to see what we may have missed, what we need to revise. We will narrow it down to a single preferred alternative and announce it when we issue a Decision Record.

For his part, Wilson praised UDOT’s efforts, but noted that the agency may not be the best equipped to address the myriad of environmental and social concerns of the canyons, which are doing well. beyond the entry and exit of people.

The Department of Transport has a job to do, but they are truck drivers. We have a larger need in this canyon to address other issues to deal with the impacts, said Wilson, who grew up skiing Alta and Snowbird and then took her own children to ski at legendary resorts. I don’t like either choice. And frankly, I think what we’ve been doing is chasing the bad stuff for years. It’s fiscally irresponsible to spend a billion dollars unless you’ve tried a cheaper, more manageable solution first, not to mention the impact on the canyon.

Bradley insists the transportation plan should take into account the carrying capacity of the canyons or how many people can use the canyon at a time. Utah State University is currently conducting such a study, but its conclusions are about a year away.

What is very important is the flexibility that either choice gives us to meet all the demands of this canyon, he said. These demands include ecological requirements such as air quality, water quality, but also the visitor experience. When does this canyon get so overcrowded that we lose the visitor experience and the canyon itself degrades due to overuse?

Meanwhile, officials in Salt Lake City said the large-scale development associated with the plan would result in unacceptable impacts on the watershed that supplies much of the county with culinary water. Mayor Erin Mendenhalls comments on the proposed solutions which are almost identical to Wilson’s.

This would provide the opportunity to study how these changes affect visitation patterns, impacts on natural resources, and canyon capacity, including whether these strategies would exacerbate or alleviate transportation and natural resource issues in Big Cottonwood Canyon. at the same time, Mendenhall wrote in town comments.

Mendenhall, Wilson and Alta Mayor Harris Sondak have all expressed dismay at the astronomical costs associated with the UDOT plan, be it road widening and air transit. Sondak calculated that the cost of $ 600 million to build and operate the gondola for 25 years would be $ 111 per cyclist, based on UDOT’s goal of reducing traffic by 30 % during the ski season.

Also, the vast majority of the costs are prepaid while the return is only realized over many years, so the actual cost will be higher in terms of current dollars, wrote Sondak, professor of management at the University of Utah, in a letter dated August 30. at UDOT.

He also said the UDOT traffic reduction target was far too modest.

The removal of many more cars throughout the year should be the target of this effort, assuming the population of Salt Lake Valley will continue to grow rapidly and that there continues to be increasing demand in the summer and in the winter to travel to Little Cottonwood Canyon, he wrote. The mayor of Alta noted that attendance at the canyon is skyrocketing outside of ski areas. In the summer, parked cars can stretch along the highway near the starting points of popular trails, especially white pine. A gondola would not serve these visitors, whereas a summer bus service could.

In the meantime, Sondak wants to see a rock-solid commitment from the state that no Olympic event would be staged in Little Cottonwood if Utah wins its bid to host the 2030 or 2034 Winter Games.

Alta and Snowbird are not candidates to host alpine ski races, but Sondak fears they may be if climate change makes Snowbasin inappropriate. The Weber County resort hosted the Olympic downhill and Super G races in 2002. These renowned events require top-to-bottom snow cover that Snowbasin may not be able to provide given its poor quality. Utah’s base elevation and warming climate, Sondak said.

Little Cottonwood with its heavy snowfall and high altitude would be a logical alternative in such a scenario and Sondak worries that a gondola will make Snowbird an even more attractive option for Olympic organizers. Sondak and Wilson both want to proactively avoid this possibility.

I oppose any Olympic event in the canyon, said Wilson, who serves on Utah’s Olympic bid committee. I think it’s good to ask UDOT to put it, as Mayor Sondak suggests, like a line in the sand. We shouldn’t have Olympic events in this canyon.

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