Park City Council approves transportation plan, moves forward with new housing developments and reduced speed limits

Photo: TownLift // Bailey Edelstein

PARK CITY, Utah — TownLift reported on the topics of discussion for the Park City’s Council meeting on September 15. Here’s what readers need to know regarding the Council’s ruling on some of the important issues facing the Park City community.

Early in the meeting, the Council reviewed a staff report on the plan to develop affordable housing in the Mine Bench area of Park City. The report mostly recommended staying the course the city started on in 2021, with a goal of adding 800 new affordable housing units to Park City by 2026. The proposed housing in Mine Bench would be a new development, adding more units to bring the City closer to its 800 unit goal. This would help bring the count up from the current total of 156 new units. The development is still planned to be done in partnership with private sectors, mostly via subsidies from the city.

Council reviewed answers from the staff report in regards to past questions about the proposed development, such as timeline, environmental, and zoning issues. Concluding comments on the subject revealed a mostly positive attitude towards the staff report’s recommendations, namely to continue planning the proposed development in conjunction with possible private sector partners. TownLift also recently wrote on a potential private developer’s plan to replace the local DoubleTree hotel, The Yarrow, with mixed use housing units.

The Park City Forward long range transportation plan was also discussed in the meeting with a final staff report for its approval. PC Forward was first put before the Council in 2018 in response to the public’s input about the lack of long range public transportation in and around Park City. The plan is designed to “supersede” the goals of the 2011 Traffic and Transportation Master Plan, which included developing dedicated bus shoulder lanes, transit to SLC, and transit signal improvements.

Council Members concluded their discussion before their unanimous vote approving the plan by emphasizing the benefit of the plan as a “living document”. The goal of this is to allow the plan to be amended as new problems arise and also provide potential solutions to what council-member Max Doilney called Park City’s “transit crisis.”

Finally, the City Council discussed the three options for amending Park City’s speed limit as reported on September 15 and opened the discussion to public input. Public comment revealed that the Park City community hopes that the Council will prioritize “safety and consistency” when considering implementing new speed limits. Council then directed staff to pursue the third classification plan they presented, namely setting speed limits around Park City through a robust system that classifies roads as local, collector, and arterial as an example. The Council also expressed the desire to set a 15 mph “blanket” speed limit for the whole city, meaning that if a speed limit is not listed on a road it should be assumed to be set to 15 mph.