Little Cottonwood Canyon Transportation Alternatives

The Utah Department of Transportation has identified three alternatives for more in-depth study to improve transportation in Little Cottonwood Canyon.  Information is available at https://littlecottonwoodeis.udot.utah.gov/ and you can also input comments from June 8 – July 10, 2020 via the web site or other avenues described at the site.

The three alternatives are summarized below, including capital and O&M costs.

Source: https://littlecottonwoodeis.udot.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/9234_42_LCC_EIS_Alternatives_Project_Factsheet_FIN_WEB.pdf

I thought I would talk a little about the gondola option based on my experience in Austria last year.  We have also discussed this in a previous post in December 2019.

Stubai Glacier ski resort in the upper Stubai Valley south of Innsbruck has a tri-cable gondola similar to the one proposed in the third alternative above.  The gondola, labeled 3S Eisgrat I and II below and referred to as the Eisgratbahn, is the primary lift for accessing most of the ski terrain.  There is an old 4-person gondola, labeled Gamsgarten I and II that can also be used, but it has a limited capacity.

Stubai Glacier has an uphill lift capacity of 40,000 skiers.  For comparison, Alta and Snowbird combined have an uphill capacity of about 30,000 skiers.  At Stubai Glacier, it is sometimes possible to ski to the base, but more often than not, due either to lack of snow or avalanche hazard, the Eisgratbahn is the primary way for skiers to access and exit the ski area.

The Eisgratbahn has an uphill capacity of 3,000 skiers per hour with large capacity gondola cars traveling at about 17 miles per hour.  The video below provides some context.

Curiously, the alternatives summary above appears to undersell the transport capabilities of a tri-cable gondola by listing the number of people per peak hour via transit as 1,050. The text below suggests that for some reason, UDOT assumed a similar peak-hour ridership of about 1,000 people per hour.  The capacity of the gondola would be much higher than that, although this assumes you can get people to the base of the canyon at that rate (as well as extract them from the base of the canyon at the end of the day).

I have a number of questions about how this will be paid for, how much it will cost to ride, how gondola costs or tolling might affect public access to the canyon in summer as well as winter, etc.  Beyond that, here are some additional thoughts:

• The White Pine Trailhead is critical for accessing the Lone Peak Wilderness area and parking there is extremely limited.  The current design has an angle station near Tanners Flat Campground.  Is there a plan to modify access to the Red and White Pine trails from that location? 

• What is planned for ADA-accessible trails between stations?  If we are to build something of this magnitude, people with a wide range of abilities should be able to hike point-to-point along the gondola line.  

• How does the mountain accord fit into this?  That effort to create a coherent plan for the central Wasatch appears to have languished and the web site, mountainaccord.com, isn't even functioning, at least this morning.  Building this gondola must be a component of a larger vision for the Wasatch Range.

• This may be addressed in the EIS if I give it a deeper dive, but are we still dealing with a bottleneck at the bottom of the canyons?  A dedicated bus lane along Wasatch Boulevard is a positive step forward, but the combined traffic of Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons backs up beyond the proposed mobility hub and there are other bottlenecks as well.  A large capacity gondola is great, but only if people can get to it.

• What about Big Cottonwood Canyon?  Although focus on Little Cottonwood may reflect political realities, it's disappointing not to see a canyon-wide plan.  Traffic issues to and within both canyons are intrinsically linked.

• If built, the gondola will be used for decades, which means it will be operating in the summer in a warmer climate than today.  Gondola cars will need to be designed to deal with with ridership on hot summer days warmer than those we see today.  

I'm interested in your thoughts.  Feel free to add to the discussion in the comments below.