Wasatch 21/22 - We're All Here 'Cause We're Not All There!

[Buzzworthy]

Is there an install date for the new Red tram?
taking the wife & kid there in the spring to show them where it all began for this guy in 84 & def dont want to deal with a single running Tram.

It looks to be in its way!

[beaterdit]

Anyone catch that Salt Lake County just voted 5-4 to condemn the gondola. While they don't have direct control of the decision, they do have control over zoning in the jurisdiction. So the county can eventually make life for the gondola untenable by blocking parking garages and other supporting infrastructure.

I wonder if Salt Lake County could ultimately be a strong force in blocking an eventual gondola by basically signaling if they try and build it they will try every avenue of blocking any needed supportive related zoning for it.

This is really good news. Hopefully they can fully quash it.

[Todds]

Just get the One Wasatch, or whatever it will be called, done. It will cost less than the Gondola and will be the final solution at some point. Keep the tourist access from the Park City side. Locals will know to access from the big/little canyon sides.

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

Wouldn't that just make LCC and BCC that much more crowded? What percentage of the LCC/BCC tourists are coming from Park City now? I bet it isn't a lot.

Also, wouldn't One Wasatch open before the road on big powder days? Park City people would be skiing LCC/BCC powder while SLC people would be parked on Wasatch blvd waiting for the road to open.

[telefreewasatch]

Good points. On the first, no. Purportedly 30%+ of the Cottonwood traffic comes outta Summit Co.
And those cars are the bulk of the problem in the Cottonwoods. Shitty drivers, shitty tires.

On the second? Very true. Those folks could be gettin country club. Helluva point.

[BobMc]

All of SLC would be at Alta\Snowbird by the time someone rode lifts from the bottom of Park City, through Solitude, over the ridge and down to LCC. Pretty sure all that was covered back in the days of hype for OneWasatch.

Somewhere in here is a video of Straightchuter timing the ride to the top of Park City.

https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/...enemy-TALISKER

[telefreewasatch]

Not if the LCC is closed for avalanche danger.
Happens a bit.
Country club for those up there when there is.
The Guardsman's 1, Honeycomb, Grizzly lifts proposed in One Wasatch don't have the same avalanche considerations as the LCC.
May not be often anymore, but on those days...

To add: A gondola wouldn't be dropping folks off on top of ridges and skiing the local side country like the One Wasatch chairlifts would be doing.
They would originate and terminate in valley bottoms.
Best for the way I think things oughta go...

[BobMc]

Lifts open at 9:00, Straightchuter timed it as 1.5 hours to ride the PC lifts to the base of the One Wasatch lift, hesajoke said he could do it in 45 minutes. If LCC is closed for avalanche control do you really think Solitude will have the Summit lift spinning at opener or even an hour after opener? It’ll be at least a couple hours of pure lift riding to get from PC base to LCC (on a no snow day), how often is the road not open till 11:00.

I think it’s silly to think resorts will be spinning all the lifts right away while there was enough snow to close the canyon.

To add: In the original OneWasatch proposal nobody was going to be getting off the lift anywhere but a resort.

[telefreewasatch]

Bob, least we're not arguing over the concept, which of the lot ain't a bad one.
Swing by for a cold one and I'll convince you to move to Summit Co. to ski Snowbird...

[BobMc]

I’ll definitely swing by for a room temp cabernet, but you’d have to do a lot of talking to convince me of that. Lol

My biggest problem with Onewasatch was that it was touted as a transportation initiative, as in it would whisk you away from Park City to spend your day skiing endless Pow in LCC. When in fact you’d be spending your day riding lifts just to get there and back.

It was a marketing initiative for Ski Utah to draw even more crowds to Utah.

[alias_rice]

Over the last few years I have done some business with the gondola developers and earlier today I got this email and figured you all may find it interesting. Not to be a shill for them, but I have dealt with a bunch Utah developers in the last decade and the majority of them are greedy, lying bastards. But that has never been my impression of these guys.


Hey everyone,

As most of you know, I am working on the proposed Little Cottonwood Canyon Gondola. To that end, I don't know if you are a supporter or an opponent of the gondola proposal and feel that you may want information on the gondola proposal to form or enhance your opinion. To get info, you can go to: gondoalworks.com or even the UDOT LCC EIS website.

Right now UDOT is accepting comments on the proposal until October 17, 2022 and with that in mind, there is a lot of misleading information and in some cases downright false statements and data being supplied by opponents of the gondola.

To help clarify the mis-information, I have attached a copy of a couple documents. The first is a gondola versus bus list of items and the corresponding clarifying statements that have been drafted by myself and others. This is of course our opinion but we have tried to make it as accurate as possible.


The following points are often quoted as facts as they relate to the bus versus the gondola debate. Often, the gondola opponents’ versions are misleading or blatantly false. This letter’s intent is to clarify inaccurate statements.

OMISSIONS The opponents to the Gondola are spreading false and misleading information in many areas. Listed below are a few:
• Opponents criticize the gondola because: “[it] only stops at Snowbird and Alta.” While this is true, their statements and printed materials conveniently omit the fact that the bus only stops at the resort locations as well. To validate this stop location priority, a three-year cell phone GPS tracking study places 85% of the people’s destination who enter Little Cottonwood Canyon (LCC) at Snowbird and Alta. It should also be noted that the highest used dispersed recreation locations can be accessed through these same stops.
• Costs. They overstate the cost of the gondola. While the EIS estimated $550 million for the project, the gondola represents only $391 million of that amount; the remainder would fund non-gondola related canyon improvements.
• Inflation. They also inflate the estimated costs by stating the $391 million dollar gondola might cost $1 billion, a wildly speculative number, presumably due to future inflationary impacts. If so, opponents omit that the bus and road improvement costs will be impacted by the same inflationary impacts as the gondola.
• Flexibility and Pivoting. The opponents’ claim that the gondola can only load 30% of the vehicles’ traffic passengers or 1,050 PPH is false. The gondola, using the submitted LaCaille Base Station design can load up to 3400 PPH. The gondola can also respond within minutes to peak period demand variations by adding or subtracting cabins onto the cable; the enhanced bus system is simply not able do that.
• Ridership. In several polls conducted by various groups, including one recently published by a local municipality, up to 85% of the respondents state they do not like nor do they plan to ride the bus. While residents may think busses are a good option, we can infer by the written comments (in the polls) that they feel the bus is for other people to ride. If very few plan to ride the bus, why are we spending millions on a system that the majority does not want to ride and will try to avoid?

TAX-PAYER FUNDING Opponents argue that taxpayers should not be funding a “half-a-billion-dollar system” that serves “rich resort areas” with a gondola. What they leave out is that the bus system would do the same thing. Either way, taxpayers would pay for the construction, like what they do with all other UDOT roadway and UTA train and bus public transportation improvements.

NEGATIVE IMPACTS Opponents cite that the gondola will negatively impact the view corridor of the canyon. However, for the bus system to work, according to the Draft EIS, UDOT and UTA testimony, it would require LCC roadway to be widened to four lanes of travel. This four-lane road would create a significantly greater lineal and horizontal impact in the canyon, far greater than the estimated twenty-two towers for the gondola. The road widening would drastically alter views, decimate the hillside in most roadway areas, create untold hazards and impacts to traffic during construction, and increase the flow of pollutants to watershed because of the increased road surface and annual avalanche debris flow.

ACCESS Opponents have privately stated that they like traffic congestion because it keeps people out of Little Cottonwood Canyon. The gondola frightens them because it allows all citizens to have safe, clean, and convenient access to “their” canyon. What happens to the congestion when the Wasatch Front population doubles in 20 years? The gondola is a long-term future solution, one that does not kick the can down the road by providing a short-term solution disguised as a long-term solution to the problem. Even today, access is a critical issue when the canyon is closed due to avalanche and extreme weather conditions. It is not uncommon to have several thousand recreationists, tourists, and employees stuck at the resorts overnight when the road becomes impassable.

SAFETY For decades, UDOT has been conducting on-going road maintenance and dealing with hazardous conditions during the winter months, including avalanche control, removal of debris, and rescuing the public from various incidents including occasions where a death occurs in the canyon. The future population growth will cause a broader and exponential increase in UDOT’s ability to keep citizens and visitors to LCC safe. Presently, the only LCC traffic solution that includes a secondary emergency egress from the Canyon is the gondola. More busses are also subject to an increased number of slide-offs increasing the congestion, especially in adverse conditions due to compromised road conditions and canyon closures.

TIMING. UDOT has been researching and struggling for nearly three decades to determine how to best resolve the issues that negatively impact the public’s safety and vehicular travel reliability in LCC. UDOT has also been working for nearly five years to provide the public with an opportunity to make suggestions. These suggestions for LCC have resulted in over 120 conceptual solutions, including detailed analysis of the train, two bus options, two gondola options and even status quo. All these options have been thoroughly vetted over years of debate including the analysis of every public comment, nearly 17,000 of them.
The result of this arduous process is that UDOT selected Gondola as the preferred alternative. The opposition would have us slow down the process or choose a bus or train option that has been deemed less favorable. Several public officials have also asked that UDOT and resort owners try other less expensive solutions such as tolling, paid parking, car-pooling, etc. These measures have already been considered and in many cases implemented. They have minimal effect on the traffic and offer no long-term solution to the many issues. And they do not take into consideration the impact of future growth. UDOT has been studying the problems extensively for decades. At some point, we must act, and that time has come.

As it relates to vetting the bus options, UTA has testified that the bus option without a four-lane highway will not work. The UDOT bus alternative with its 1050 people per hour (PPH) capacity would require at least forty-eight busses in the canyon every hour.
Recently, UTA announced that it will be cutting bus service in the canyons this winter because they cannot hire the needed drivers for a system that operates about eight busses per hour in LCC. So, how are they going to hire 60+ drivers for the LCC enhanced bus system to operate the 66 new buses, if they cannot hire the drivers needed now? The fact that the new drivers are seasonal employment opportunities compounds the problem even more. The gondola system, however, has considerably fewer employees (estimated to be 17).

LCC ROAD LCC roadway is known to be one of North America’s most dangerous highways of its type, which includes sixty-four known avalanche pathways that cross the highway. Adding more rubber-tired vehicles to a known dangerous highway is simply making the problem worse. Alternately, the gondola could eliminate this public risk caused by avalanches and make it possible for UDOT to meet and even exceed their 30% vehicle reduction, an EIS stated objective.

RELIABILITY The gondola option increases the reliability of guaranteeing that canyon closures (due to adverse weather conditions including avalanches) would have little or no known impact on citizens’ travel time into and out of LCC. The 3S gondola operates in almost any kind of weather.

TRAFFIC The detailed traffic impact studies completed by Hales Engineering state that the Gondola – Alternative B (LaCaille Base Station) minimizes congestion at the mouth of the canyon. The gondola can also load at least three times the number of passengers (as compared to the bus) during peak AM/PM travel periods. The opponents claim otherwise but have no science-based studies or proof to their claims – just rhetoric.

[alias_rice]

Continued from above:

ENVIRONMENTAL The opponents claim that the gondola is not the environmental choice. However, the new widened LCC road destroys fifty acres of the canyon as the new road is carved directly into the mountain side. The increase in impervious asphalt surfaces and other materials will have a continued negative impact on the atmosphere and our water shed. By comparison, the twenty-two towers will have a total footprint of approximately 2-3 acres, and unlike what is being stated by the opponents, very few road improvements to the towers will be required because they generally follow the existing road. Furthermore, the gondola is electric, creates its own in-cabin power, and is silent.

PRIVATE LAND CONTRIBUTION If the gondola is selected, Snowbird has agreed to place property they own along the north side of LCC into a public conservation easement; no development of these hundreds of acres would be possible in the future protecting this property as open space that is also a large watershed area. If the bus alternative was selected, Snowbird’s (or perhaps its future successor) stated contribution will be withdrawn.

OPPONENTS RENDERINGS The gondola opponents have renderings that are wholly inaccurate, for example:
• Their rendering of the gondola shows four towers from the mouth of the canyon to the base station; there will be only two.
• The footings and footprints on their rendering and others show “hotel-sized” tower structures with massive footprints mentioned and estimated to be 20-30,000 square feet. The actual footprint of gondola towers is about 40’x40’ or 1600 square feet total.
• Their rendering includes an eight-story parking structure above the grade of Hwy 210. The actual base station design proposal is to have the parking structure built, in part, beneath the UDOT ROW and all of it below the existing Hwy 210 grade to protect the traveler’s view of the mountains and the canyon entrance, to every extend possible.

TAX PAYER FUNDING In their EIS, UDOT projected the operational costs for both systems and they estimated the gondola annual costs to be $10 million less than the enhanced bus system per year. The gondola also presents several unique revenue generating sources—such as locker rental, naming rights, increased participation by resort owners, etc. Using these public and private partnerships input on gondola funding options, the proponents of the gondola show a revenue stream which suggests the potential that no State, County nor municipal taxes would be needed to cover the annual gondola operational expenses. The bus has no such advantages.
In fact, the gondola could have up to a $4 million dollar per year surplus, which could be used as a Little Cottonwood Canyon fund to enhance and preserve roads, trails, and trailhead maintenance or other worthwhile canyon needs. While opponents claim the cost to ride the gondola could be as high as $50, proponents preliminary estimate states that the ticket to ride the gondola could be as low as $9. By comparison the same analysis estimates that the actual cost to ride the bus would be greater than $25. The bus fare for the riders would most likely continue to be $5, but make no mistake, all TAXPAYERS through the traditional means of subsidizing UTA through the 1% state wide sales tax will pay the additional $20 per rider. The annual bus deficit is projected to exceed $7 million per year, leaving no potential for an on-going canyon improvement and maintenance fund. The bus is more expensive, less environmentally friendly and creates an on-going deficit leaving no maintenance fund for LCC without taxing citizens even more.

Thank you for taking this information into consideration when deliberating on the fate of our canyon. The projections, estimates and clarification are assembled using information from numerous gondola supporters.

[telefreewasatch]

I’ll definitely swing by for a room temp cabernet, but you’d have to do a lot of talking to convince me of that. Lol

My biggest problem with Onewasatch was that it was touted as a transportation initiative, as in it would whisk you away from Park City to spend your day skiing endless Pow in LCC. When in fact you’d be spending your day riding lifts just to get there and back.

It was a marketing initiative for Ski Utah to draw even more crowds to Utah.

Not talking about a bunch of existing chairlifts with the three mentioned above added on like One Wasatch.
Talking about one gondola with four bull wheels; two lifts. Summit Co. to Brighton where one could disembark before it continues to Alta. One would be there so fast one's head would spin...

[telefreewasatch]

alias, who penned what you posted?
Feel like I coulda written that; sums up my thinking perfectly.
Just wish it could come outta Summit Co.

[muted reborn]

"Alternately, the gondola could eliminate this public risk caused by avalanches and make it possible for UDOT to meet and even exceed their 30% vehicle reduction, an EIS stated objective."


Can we just ban all Summit County residents and tourists and be done with this? Thats 30% of the canyon traffic, win-win.

[alias_rice]

"


Can we just ban all Summit County residents and tourists and be done with this? Thats 30% of the canyon traffic, win-win.

Finally a proposal we can all get behind!


TFW, that was sent to me by Chris McCandless. He’s one of the owners of the La Caille property.

[BobMc]

I thought he died in the bus??

[alias_rice]

I thought he died in the bus??

He’s like Tanner Hall. He can’t die.

[googledidoo]

Alias_rice a lot of people don't want the gondola or Little Cottonwood Road widened. Both ideas are horrible to most Utahns according to polls. Many of us don't want either option and neither does the mayor of Alta, Cottonwood Heights, and SLC. Salt Lake County just voted to condemn the gondola. This is going to be a hard fight.

That Chris McCandless is going to make a boatload more money if the gondola comes through.

While I think TFW is misguided, at least he ain't getting paid (that I know of) for pushing the gondola so hard.

[Touring_Sedan]

Finally a proposal we can all get behind!


TFW, that was sent to me by Chris McCandless. He’s one of the owners of the La Caille property.

It's interesting that McCandless was that willing to talk about it. I ran into Niederhauser this past weekend when I was hiking with the kids.



I've spent a bunch of time with him over the years in his role as a legislator, as homeless czar and most recently with the whole gondola shenanigans. The first thing out of my mouth was "Wow, it's been quite a month...." He was quick to tell me that he has nothing to do with the gondola deal other than to facilitate the sale. Yeah, right. He was more than willing to talk about the homeless situation though.... perhaps it was because I looked like a homeless person?

[alias_rice]

That Chris McCandless is going to make a boatload more money if the gondola comes through.

While I think TFW is misguided, at least he ain't getting paid (that I know of) for pushing the gondola so hard.

Here’s the thing about making money on this, I would assume that selling high end townhomes to dentists on that site would be more profitable than waiting 10 years for the gondola.

[altacoup]

I did not know that Snowbird is willing to put land into a conservation trust if the gondola goes through. I imagine that land is Mt Superior (which they own almost all of). Alta owns the rest of the ridge line up and through grizzly gulch. No way they offer up a single acre. The entire land swap deal in the wasatch that all 4 resorts agreed to was torpedoed by the previous GMs ego at the last minute.

[brutah]

Here’s the thing about making money on this, I would assume that selling high end townhomes to dentists on that site would be more profitable than waiting 10 years for the gondola.

One time sale vs a gondy you can profit off inevitably? And the taxpayers are going to build it for you?

I may need a calculator but I bet the gondy is the better long game.

[bigdude2468]

Wouldn't that just make LCC and BCC that much more crowded? What percentage of the LCC/BCC tourists are coming from Park City now? I bet it isn't a lot.

Also, wouldn't One Wasatch open before the road on big powder days? Park City people would be skiing LCC/BCC powder while SLC people would be parked on Wasatch blvd waiting for the road to open.

Why would PCMR / Vail allow lifts to be installed on their property that would move large numbers of customers to other ski resorts thus reducing Vail's revenue? I don't know the numbers but there are thousands of more skiers living and staying in Park City than there is in LCC & BCC.

[telefreewasatch]

While I think TFW is misguided, at least he ain't getting paid (that I know of) for pushing the gondola so hard.

I am not misguided, I am the guide and the light...

Anyone who is vehemently anti gondola does not stay at Alta til 5pm on a storm day.
Or work up there til 5pm and have no choice of leaving earlier.
Many evenings one does not get home til 8pm and must be back up there at 6am.
For not much pay.
2 inches of snow cripples the road and all it takes is one slide off, etc. to further exacerbate things.
Where do people piss or shit during those three hours of commute, anyway?
And as noted before, the LCC gondola is not my first choice for a solution, but it is a solution to a real problem for many people.

[Benneke10]

Sorry TFW but I don't think faster commutes for LCC employees is a legitimate reason to build the gondola. I bet on 90%+ of days it would be slower than driving.