This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The Utah Transit Authority, by eliminating direct bus services from downtown Salt Lake City to our ski areas, has taken away one of the unique claims that Envision Utah and Ski Utah could make, while attracting skiers to visit from out of state. With the 2014 completion of the TRAX line from the airport to downtown, Salt Lake City became perhaps the only U.S. ski destination where visitors could fly in, take public transit to their hotel, walk each night to numerous eating venues and commute daily to the slopes without ever having to deal with renting a car or to nervously face driving unfamiliar canyons during bad snowstorms.
In what appears to be the polar opposite of the missions of both Envision Utah and the UTA itself, this move will add several hundred dollars in car rental costs for visitors to Utah, while increasing both the pollution and the number of cars clogging up the canyons each morning.
UTA states that by increasing service from the base of the canyons to 15 minute intervals, they will more than offset the revenue generated by hotel to resort direct service. I can only hope that they have noticed that the parking lots at the mouth of the two most popular canyons are already full, and that the morning traffic jams back up well beyond those already full lots.
The announcement to accelerate implementation of this plan appears as though UTA is once again motivated to avoid further discussion of what is described by The Tribune as a "somewhat controversial change."
Rich Sanders
Salt Lake City