This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Does this bus stop at the river? If it doesn't there will be a very big splash.

This year, Utah skiers reveled in late-season powder. Shirtless kids tore down the slopes. Families spent weekends vertical on skis and boards, eating fries, drinking hot chocolate and waiting. In their cars. For hours. Trying to get up, and down, the mountain.

It's not much better during summer months when bikers and hikers cram the roads.

Winter or summer, our canyon roads are busy, and dangerous.

Almost a year ago the U.S. Forest Service proposed a $6 fee on vehicles parked by popular trails in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons. The fee would help maintain trails, bathrooms and parking areas. That fee could be implemented this summer, but only applies to a few designated recreation areas.

There is also the Mountain Accord, which intends to bring multiple local governments and the Utah Department of Transportation together to create the Central Wasatch Commission. The commission is tasked with creating a management plan for the central Wasatch mountains for the next 50 years. And while the accord has done good work, it is another layer of bureaucracy in between ideas and an actual solution.

Even more to the point, the Mountain Accord process was supposed to have developed a transportation plan to address canyon congestion. It hasn't. Even if it does, the commission will have no regulatory authority, no taxing authority and no zoning authority. We need more.

The Big Cottonwood Canyon Community Council recently commissioned engineering students from the University of Utah to study the issue of canyon congestion and make recommendations. The students recommend a toll on every car driving up the canyon. The money would be used to redraw bike lanes and parking lots, keep cars from blocking road traffic, build and maintain more bathrooms and expand bus service year-round.

The students hit the nail on the head. The answer, of course, is increased bus service. Lots of it. And a toll for individual cars. This theory was proved this past winter when the UTA saw a drastic increase in ridership due mostly to increasing bus frequency by 35 percent. But the program ended in April.

Nobody wants a toll restricting access to Utah's beautiful mountains, especially for those with lower incomes. But access is not restricted if bus service is easily available.

Perhaps benevolent Utahns can decide on their own to use the bus without threat of the toll, like they did this winter. And both a per-car toll and a Forest Service toll would be duplicative. But we need something.

We cannot yet figure out how to fix our air pollution. But we can clean up the pollution on our canyon roads.