Transportation
Transportation is at the heart of my campaign.
Here is what conscious connection to transportation looks like in relation to our community:
Solving our transportation and parking issues before we venture into city-initiated projects that don't solve or complement transportation and parking solutions. Every time we remove a parking spot from town we need to show the community how that car has now been replaced by an alternate mode of transportation.
Understanding the math of how many people move in and out of town daily, what their behavioral patterns are, whether it be commuting or visiting, and how it correlates to buses/cars/ bikes /carpool. When we remove the parking from PCMR and ask people to take a bus, how do we account for the 2.5K + people living south of the resorts who are not on bus routes and or will decide an Uber or Shuttle are the best options. In the June 16th planning commission meeting PEG presented a Hales Engineering survey based on the results of how people arrive at 9 similar resorts.
57% drove a vehicle to the resort
18% rode in a shuttle
15% rode in an Uber / Lyft vehicle
9.4% rode in a black car or other transport vehicle
0.6% rode in transit
How are you going to convince the other 99.4% of people to change their behaviors and now take public transit?
The PEG report states that the ski resorts’ transportation/parking numbers are based on Average Vehicle Occupancy and they calculate this at 2.7-3.1. With the removal of parking, we will have a large increase in shuttles and Ubers. They increase our traffic by taking multiple trips to and from the resort without ever parking- The result is overall decreased Average Vehicle Occupancy.
1 person Shuttle/Uber drop-offs will result in decreasing our AVO to .5 (1 person = 4 auto trips to and from the resort).
2 person drop-offs equal 1 Average Vehicle Occupancy etc.
To reach the resort’s 2.7-3.1 AVO using 1 person drop-offs it would take 10 trips to and from the resort increasing traffic at least 5 fold.
Thinking bigger than 84060. Let’s hire a consulting company or person who has worked for Disney or a large airport, and understands the dynamics of moving thousands of people per day, and can look at our overall transportation problems vs hiring for one-off projects.
Having a transparent and honest conversation with the community by answering these commonly asked questions around Transportation - I call it the A-Z of Transportation:
a. After we said no to the 65 million from UDOT we were told there would be an alternative transportation plan that would solve our issues - what is the BRT plan?
b. When will there be a plan to incorporate the traffic circles that were outlined years ago for the Deer Valley/ParkAve/Empire, Kearns, and 224?
c. How do we connect to 224 riders - where do they park?
d. How many buses does it take to get thousands of visitors to the resorts each day?
e. Besides Quinns (300 parking spots) where are the additional park and ride locations?
f. How many parking spots will be at each of these park and rides?
g. How often do the buses pass through the park and ride?
h. How many people can ride on a bus with their ski gear?
i. What is the plan for employing enough bus drivers with competitive salaries?
j. Where do people park once the park and ride is full?
k. Where do the thousands of people who work in our small businesses, outside of the resorts, park?
l. On average, how long will it take a rider to get to their destination?
m. How many stops between park and ride and the main districts in town?
n. What are the plans for our side streets and arteries that become “shortcuts” and disrupt residential areas?
o. What do employees do when they go to the park and ride and it is full?
p. What is the solution for the residents who don't live on bus lines?
q. What is the plan for messaging the behavioral change of using your own car vs. riding a bus?
r. How late do the buses run, and do they accommodate late-night businesses employees?
s. How many buses have the City purchased for the new 248 restriping project?
t. How do we connect with High Valley Transit/Summit County?
u. Where is the plan for buses to go directly to DV vs. having to go through PCMR?
v. How do the new bus lanes from 248 avoid the choke points in our city?
w. Why are we not looking at changing direction lights during peak times for 248?
x. How much does it cost to run the buses each day? What do the resorts pay for this service?
y. What other solutions do we have to transit besides having everyone ride a bus?
z. What happens if there is another pandemic and we are not able to ride buses?