Park City's walkable vision ahead of planning curve

PARK CITY — Planners who map out communities of the future want the cities of tomorrow to incorporate walkable pedestrian and bicycle friendly developments, offer multiple transportation options and reflect a lessened dependence on the automobile.

For Park City, a resort town of 8,000 surrounded by another 21,000 in the Snyderville Basin, the future is now.

Residents bought into the “livable community” concept in 2007 when they passed a $15 million bond issue to fund a series of walkability projects.

Liza Simpson, a member of the City Council, said the first thing city residents had to do was define walkability.

“A large part of what it meant was connectivity,” she said. “It meant people being able to choose their mode of transportation and not be hindered by the lack of a sidewalk or bike path. It’s about making it easier for people to make the choice of a mode of transport that is healthier for the community and themselves.”

Since the bond issue passed in 2007, Park City has completed 30 of 36 projects identified by the citizen-based Walking and Biking Advisory Liaison Committee (WALC), formed to guide the City Council through the prioritization process.

Projects have included pedestrian tunnels on Kearns Boulevard near local schools; an underpass on Bonanza Drive from Iron Horse to Rail Trail; a Safe Routes to School project at Holiday Ranch Loop and a series of trail connections, sidewalks, traffic calming projects and other walkability projects that bubbled up through WALC. A traffic calming and sidewalk project on Comstock Drive and Sidewinder Drive is currently under construction and scheduled for completion in October.

“We hit the biggest safety red flags first to get the biggest bang for our buck,” said Jonathan Weidenhamer, the city’s economic development manager. “We connected regional centers to make sure that people could move easily throughout the city’s borders,” he added.

Heinrich Deters, the city’s trails coordinator, echoed the importance of safety. “Safety was our number one goal. We are a resort town, and we live on return visitors. We wanted our visitors and residents to be able to bike or walk to events such as the summer concerts we have,” he said. Simpson said the walkability initiative was started by a group of mothers concerned about getting their children to school safely.

After the bond passed, the city hired Salt Lake-based Landmark Design to conduct a Walkable/Bikeable Neighborhood Study, which included a trail master plan update.