With apologies to my old roommates and City leaders, Bruce
and Candy Erickson, the roads leading to Park City are an embarrassment. They were of the school that said ‘if you do
not build big roads, people will
not drive here’. I’m a water-guy but
traffic flows like water, for politics and money. I’m here to tell you that they all still drive
here, in droves. Winter, spring, summer
and fall, morning noon and night, 224 and 248 are packed with service workers, skiers,
students, commuters, tourists and us. It
is time to abandon the old idea that these byways are gardens or parkways or
sidewalks or bike paths, they are roads that should move people from what
generates them to what attracts them. Roads
are not deterrents or tools, like water and housing, for politicians to limit growth,
development or desire. That is what political
spine is for.
It doesn’t take a half billion dollars of new infrastructure
to fix this. Let’s wisely use the roads
we have. We could do it now with two buckets
of paint and restripe the pinch points. Get
the 15-foot planters and islands out of the medians of these roads and get rid
of the 20-foot-wide bike lane - shoulders on both sides. These are highways and not botanical
gardens. Let bikers ride on the bike
paths. Put artistically painted and
architecturally aesthetic, flexible divider walls, taller than our oncoming
headlights, in the middle to separate traffic and maximize capacity. Then we can have 4 uninterrupted lanes from
Kamas to the Bonanza and Kimball Junction to Deer Valley and Main Street. From there traffic can split to the various
attractions.
There can be bus
lanes and shoulders or emergency access and snow storage as needed. Stop messing around with County Ubers and
Apps or traffic circles and competing bus systems and just repaint the damn
roads. We cannot afford the luxury of
all these unused lanes, medians and shoulders. In Boston, for example, during
rush hour everyone drives on the shoulders.
In Aspen they built a
mini-Glenwood Canyon to get people up-valley.
In New York they stopped building new roads in the 60’s and maximized
the roads they have. Sometimes, as Freud
said, ‘a cigar is a cigar’ and I say, ‘a road is a road’.
We have rebuilt 248 every year for 5 years where it shrinks
down to two lanes by the schools, for tunnels, crossings and pipes, but we have
not considered fitting four lanes through there, since UDOT proposed it in 2017
and we respectfully, but foolishly, declined.
Now we are at the bottom of their list and have a low priority. And 20-30 years ago, we told UDOT we were ‘not
fly over type people’ at 224 north onto 80 west and are still stuck with the back-up
from Kimball to The Canyons all winter.
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.
UDOT doesn’t often have time for ‘those people up there’ and they would rather
serve the conservatives from Utah County who vote for them and embrace their plans
and prejudice. It is political, and we
need to know what to kiss and when to kiss it, especially with Olympic money ostensibly
coming due. UDOT priorities can change
in the blink of an eye, depending on whose winking.
Our new UDOT representative is Commissioner Tom Jacobson who
is a lawyer who understands transportation and the political process and is a
good guy. Let’s lean on him for advice and
influence. Better yet we should take
over jurisdiction of 224 and 248 and do what we want, as creatively as we can,
with flex lane barriers and multi-use shoulders. The best way to control land is to buy it and
the best way to control roads is to own them.
I am embarrassed, we are embarrassed, UDOT should be embarrassed and
something must be done, soon. Let’s
work smarter with our representatives and elect sensible people like Diego,
Tana or Beth who can take action now for a transportation vision for the
Olympics and beyond. I’m sure both pragmatic
Bruce and aesthetic Candy Erickson would approve.
Matthew Lindon, PE
Hydrologist & Traffic Engineer
WaterandWhatever.blogspot.com
