It’s cheaper than a train, more expensive than a bus. Is it the solution to canyon gridlock? 
It’s a snow day — with canyon roads closed for avalanche control. While drivers wait for the canyon road to reopen, you’re sitting and waiting with more than a dozen others clad in snow gear, skis in hand, ready to step out to the ski resort. Then the slopes.
It’s a gondola system so large, it’s the first of its kind in Utah. Think Snowbird’s Ariel Tram — but cables five times as long and with 30 seated gondolas. Think way bigger — like the gondolas in Switzerland or Austria...
...It’s competing with at least two other options to tackle a problem that’s troubled Metro Salt Lake City’s Wasatch mountains for more than 30 years — but made much worse by the sheer amount of people that head to those mountains for the “greatest snow on earth.”
It’s up against a train — or a cog railway — or enhanced bus service with avalanche sheds. All three solutions have their supporters and their detractors, whether it’s because of environmental impact, cost, or debate around whether they’d actually help the traffic problems or just enable more and more people to crowd up through the canyon and onto the mountains.
Even though Govenor Cox said he’s “leaning” toward a gondola, that doesn’t mean the decision’s been made. He was quick to add that the public process needs to play out first — including the work of the Central Wasatch Commission and a separate study underway by the Utah Department of Transportation — before picking a solution. “Ultimately,” he said, “this is a decision that we’ll be making in conjunction with the Legislature because it’s a really big one.”...
- Enhanced bus service with no road widening (with 24 buses at six buses per hour to each resort) would cost $334 million to put into place and $10.3 million in annual winter operation costs, according to according to UDOT’s environmental impact study. Widening the road as well would bring the upfront costs to $481 million.
Explaining an early preference toward a gondola, it would be “cheaper than the train solution, but more expensive than the bus solution.”
...It would be more “weather immune.” Snowstorms as well as avalanches and avalanche control add to traffic jams in the canyons, pushing traffic into neighborhoods as skiers line up in their cars and wait for the roads to open.
“The way the gondola works, we wouldn’t have to worry about that...
... A 30-gondola base station at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon with bus service from two hubs would cost an estimated $576 million plus about $8.3 million to operate, UDOT estimated. A gondola with a base station built east of the La Caille restaurant at 9565 S. Wasatch Blvd, which would also have 30 cars, would cost an estimated $576 million to build and $6.9 million to operate.
- A cog rail with four train cars — with a station also based near the La Caille restaurant — would cost an estimated $1.05 billion and $6.3 million to operate, according to UDOT estimates...
...a gondola could also enhance canyon recreation in the summer months as it could become a “tourist attraction in and of itself.”
“Just the ability to move people at such a high rate of speed and get people up and down very quickly — it’s much more efficient than the bus system would be. And it also has the support of the partners and the ski resorts. There’s a willingness there for them to participate on the private side to reduce the cost to taxpayers, so there’s an opportunity to bring those costs down as they pay for some of that as well.”...
...Dave Fields, president and general manager of Snowbird, said the gondola is the “solution that truly checks all of the boxes.”
“It’s the safest and most economical and efficient way to move people in the mountains,” Fields said. “I’ve spent my whole life coming up and down this canyon, and really the problem has not changed in decades. ... The problem is not being helped by having more vehicles on the road. We need to look at different ideas that work in all weather conditions and take cars off the highways.”
Asked whether a gondola would only bring more people up the canyons if it wasn’t paired with some sort of disincentive to get people off the road, Fields said he’s been supportive of a toll on the canyon road.
“We think tolling may end up being an important part of the equation,” he said.
The La Caille gondola has especially garnered support of ski industry stakeholders, including Snowbird, Alta, Ski Utah and other organizations. They’ve created a website called Gondolaworks.com, which lobbies for the La Caille base station gondola as a more environmentally friendly alternative to a train and one that would not be impacted by canyon closures for avalanche control.
A 3S gondola is pictured in Ischgl, Austria. A similar gondola has been proposed to service skiers in Little Cottonwood Canyon, with a base station at either the park-and-ride at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon or a base station east of the La Caille restaurant at 9565 S. Wasatch Blvd., in Sandy It’s one of five proposals included as viable options for transportation solutions in Little Cottonwood Canyon, according to a Utah Department of Transportation environmental impact study. Dave Fields, Snowbird.
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Last edited by delts145; Mar 9, 2021 at 4:08 PM.
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