I went to the County Transportation open house the other day
and pleasantly discovered that it was standing room only. Traffic and water seem to be the major issues
for the future of Park City and Summit County.
In a sense they are the same
problem since traffic flows like water with pressures and friction, laminar and
turbulent flow, supply and demand. Water, however, flows towards money and we
have plenty of that. Unfortunately you
can’t buy your way out of a traffic jam.
With exponential population growth predicted for the state
and the county, it is good to see that the county has several creative ideas for
the inevitable future traffic jam, rather than trying to pave our way out of
it. Much of these ideas involved fewer cars in Old
Town and more bus, train and gondola usage by visitors, locals and day skiers
alike. Some of them even involved ameliorating
general Old Town congestion and air pollution as well. When Vail builds their model, walkable villages in the
parking lots at PCMR and Canyons and charges 30 dollars a day for parking
there, we will all be scrambling for the bus or the satellite and intercept
parking lots. Economics is the noxious planning
stick here and the carrot incentive. Look
to Colorado if you want to see the future of Park City, with tons of busses, satellite
lots, paid parking and endless roundabouts
The first step, however, is to take advantage of the existing
infrastructure we have now. Highway 224
is the critical collector artery for this area and should be fully actualized
and computerized to coordinate and maximize traffic flow, in real time, for
cars, busses, bikes and pedestrians. Either
UDOT is ignoring us or they are totally incompetent or malicious. They have not put the money, time or effort into
maximizing this highway despite the economic activity that depends on it and
the taxes paid by its users.
Consider a hypothetical example; The north bound left turn
lane actuator from 224 to Payday Drive, has been broken for most of this
year. This is usually because of water
infiltration into the actuator in the pavement and/or freeze thaw damage. The broken presence detector therefore defaults
to switching on the left turn light every cycle when no one is there and
everyone heading south to Park City has to wait, for nothing. If an average of 5 people, paid 50 dollars an hour (these
are plumbers and real estate agents damn it), and they wait unnecessarily for
half a minute per 2 minute cycle, it amounts to over sixty dollars an hour,
1500 dollars per day and over half a million dollars per year of lost
productivity and wasted time. Now
multiply that by the 10 lights between and I-80 and Deer Valley and you have
some serious waste and incentive to invest to make this system the best it can
possibly be.
This is not rocket science.
I worked on a computerized traffic system for roads like this in New
York in the mid 70’s with rooms full of large computers that have since been replaced
with a chip the size of your phone. California currently does the best job at signal
timing and real time actualization in the world, because they have to. Their methods and technology should be adopted
here to maximize our infrastructure before we start building bus lanes, parking
lots, trams and trains to solve this problem.
Let’s go for the low hanging fruit first.
Finally, the most important component of a traffic system is
the nut behind the wheel. Let’s start proactively modifying our behavior
as well, to cut waste and costs and to maintain our quality of life. Let’s get on the busses, let’s put our kids
on their busses. Let’s carpool and
consolidate trips, let’s walk and ride our bikes when we can. Let’s reduce access to Old Town, and limit
the events there. Let’s give financial incentives
to car pools and ride the busses to the resort and events. Let’s all be our own traffic reduction and calming example with minimal, kinder, gentler usage and be an alternative model to our car crazy culture. If we cannot solve this problem here, in our progressive microcosm with unlimited funding, what are the chances for Salt Lake, California and the entire country? The future you save may be your own.
