UDOT Adds New Alternatives to Little Cottonwood Canyon EIS
Utah’s SR-210, the road connecting Salt Lake City to Alta and Snowbird, during a decidedly non-peak hour. Photo by Greg Rakozy.
After releasing an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) for traffic flow improvements through Little Cottonwood Canyon this June, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) has released a set of new alternatives in an addendum to the plan.
The organization has proposed two new options:
These alternatives will be considered along with the three previous finalists:
Enhanced bus service with roadway widening and a dedicated peak bus lane
A gondola from the existing Little Cottonwood Canyon Park-and-Ride, with a bus from a mobility hub
Compared to the originally proposed gondola, which would be set to begin at what’s currently the Little Cottonwood Canyon Park-and-Ride, the La Caille gondola would start lower down in the canyon. Notably, this newer option would provide some parking at the base of the gondola, allowing thousands of visitors a day to avoid taking the mobility-hub bus mandated in the first proposal. Both gondolas would run cars on 2-minute headways.
The cog rail, which is now under consideration again after its initial elimination in June, would start in the same place as the La Caille gondola, have the same stations, and take the same amount of time. However, railcars would have a larger capacity and run on 15-minute headways. As with the gondola, the cog’s La Caille base would offer 1,500 parking stalls.
Total La Caille travel time would be 45-49 minutes to Snowbird—the gondola/cog ride itself would take 27 minutes, the drive time up to La Caille would take 18 minutes, and the bus from the mobility hub would take 22 minutes. The ride from Snowbird to Alta would take an additional 10 minutes, for a total of 55-59 minutes. This would be faster than the original gondola proposal, which would take 53 minutes to Snowbird and 63 minutes to Alta, and about comparable to bus service with no roadway widening, which would take 50 minutes to Snowbird but just 54 minutes to Alta. However, bus service with roadway widening, estimated to take just 32 minutes to Snowbird and 36 minutes to Alta, would still provide the fastest service.
The goal of each option is to get 30% of crowds into public transportation options during peak hours. More information on these alternatives can be found here.
Our Take
We previously wrote that while each of UDOT’s three original proposals seemed effective, the faster one-stop bus options and snowshed improvements looked more appealing than the original gondola proposal. These new La Caille alternatives offer the weather resiliency of the original gondola option without the forced inconvenient parking. We don’t expect travelers to see many practical differences between the gondola and cog options, although it looks like the cog would run less frequently. However, we presume the much more expensive cog would have less of an impact on Little Cottonwood Canyon’s footprint.
With these new options, it seems that the original gondola proposal is all but obsolete now. The bus proposals still have some merits—while they might not provide the same resiliency as the La Caille alternatives, they’re both significantly cheaper (especially without road widening). In addition, of all these proposals, only the enhanced bus service with roadway widening would provide a travel time comparable to driving.
While this plan is designed to address traffic concerns expected in 2050, we think UDOT should just consider implementing additional bus service now. Most of these projects would take years or decades to materialize, and if nothing is addressed in the short term, we may well see the canyon’s traffic situation continue to deteriorate. It’s clear that residents and visitors would value at least some sort of relief now, and more public transportation in the near-term could provide that.
