The City Council will implement a short-term action plan that is focused on managing the overflow parking and mitigating neighborhood impacts. Photo: TownLift

PARK CITY, Utah — The Park City Council briefly discussed traffic and parking issues on Thaynes Canyon Dr. at their meeting last week.

“There is some informal overflow parking, probably more so than informal over the past couple of years, along Thaynes Canyon Dr,” Park City Trails and Open Space Manager Heinrich Deters told the Park City Council last week.

“This is an area that the city as a user isn’t in compliance with their own land management code,” Deters said of the golf course that abuts the road, which is owned by Park City Municipal.

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He said the space is “critical to the operations of the golf course,” and noted that it’s been used for decades.

Park City Golf Club Manager Vaughn Robinson told the council that visitation has increased sharply in the last two to three years, and said nearby Ruth’s Chris and Hotel Park City have followed suit.

Robinson said looking back at the history of the course, the highest number of rounds in a year he could find was 32,400. He said during the first pandemic-era golf season, there were 40,600 rounds played. In 2021, there were 36,500 rounds.

“So these last two years it’s really exploded,” Robinson said.

“It actually started when the golf course wasn’t even open,” said Councilor Jeremy Rubell, who lives on Thaynes Canyon Dr. Rubell said that when White Pine Touring shut down because of the pandemic, people started camping in RVs on the street. “There were some other uses that weren’t supposed to happen when no one was looking,” he said.

Rubell emphasized that the area is served by four bus routes in the winter and three in the summer. He brought up the idea of an overflow permit tied to the area businesses and was confluent with the rest of the council in wanting to hear public input.

City staff were directed to look into both immediate and long-term solutions.