Change in the Cottonwoods Is Desperately Needed

I have lived in Salt Lake City for 20 years and have seen dramatic changes in the Cottonwood Canyons during that period.  The canyons have always been popular, but transportation and parking for either resort or backcountry recreation is at its breaking point on many weekends and holidays.  This year we seem to be pushing it to a whole new level with major backups for the canyons and lots filling at resorts in both canyons.  Backcountry trailhead parking is becoming quite difficult.  Yesterday, the number of cars parked at Mineral Fork and Butler Fork was staggering.

Perhaps there's a lot of pent up powder desire out there and this is just a temporary surge, but I doubt it.  Population projections for Utah show another million people will be here by 2035, possibly earlier depending on the estimate.  This is due to both internal growth (i.e., birth rate) and in migration, with those in the latter category frequently coming and staying here for the remarkable quality of life and access to recreation that we have here in Utah.

Source: http://www.utahfoundation.org/uploads/rr720.pdf

There is no place in the United States like the Cottonwood Canyons (and Mill Creek to the north) with their combination of snow quality and ease of access to a major metropolitan area.

With some hard work, you can find skiing like this less than 3 miles from the edge of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area.

Surveying friends, I find a remarkable range of views about options for the future.  One thing is clear, the status quo is a recipe for disaster as we are now frequently at the carrying capacity for automobile transport into the canyons.  Doing nothing means more gridlock and further degradation of quality of life we enjoy.  And no more making fun of Colorado and their I-70 gridlock.

Ignoring potential rail solutions, which are likely to be costly and take many decades to implement if they ever see the light of day, we need to look at ways to get more people up the canyon highways more efficiently.  This could include improvements in current bus service, which often works well on days when it's not very busy (although bus routes midday are often lacking), but can be a disaster on busy days due to limited parking near the canyon mouths, overcrowding, difficulties even getting on late day buses if you aren't at the first stop, etc.  

Another option that might be implemented quickly and at low cost is slugging.  Slugging is a car sharing option used in the Washington D.C. area in which drivers pick up passengers at designated locations with similar destinations in order to travel in HOV lanes.  I've always though such an approach has some potential in the Cottonwoods.  A number of pick-up-areas could be designated on major routes to the canyons, possibly even at some bus stops, and drivers would pull in, announce where they are going (e.g., Alta, Snowbird, Solitude, or Brighton), and people with those destinations would hop in for the ride.  Basically this is hitchhiking with some organization.  Uber is providing a paid car-service already, but the idea with slugging is that it would be free.  

For slugging to be successful, carpooling would need to be incentivized, either through some sort of HOV access to the canyon mouths (perhaps doable to Big Cottonwood, Little Cottonwood might be more difficult unless something more draconian were implemented like SR-210 being HOV or local traffic only from 7-10 am), better or cheaper parking at the resorts, etc (it's hard to imagine that paid parking isn't going to become more common at the resorts).  The issue of return back to the Salt Lake Valley is another potentially problematic area since people would need to slug back to the Salt Lake Valley and typically this would not be with the person who drove them up the canyon.  

There's no silver bullet, but change is needed, or gridlock will only worsen in Wasageles.