Gondola, Gondola Parking & Transit
Updated 8/27/25
The reason I frame my updates related to UDOT’s “Little Cottonwood Canyon EIS Environmental Impact Statement ROD Record of Decision preferring a Gondola” pertaining mostly to their “Gondola Parking Garage” is that the negative aspects of the widening of Wasatch Blvd/SR 210 AND the 2,500 parking stall garage to be built within residential Cottonwood Heights and ONLY .7 miles from mouth of LCC, is that this malady is getting little to no attention.
The associated degradation of the foothills, the gateway to Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons, during years of disruptive building construction, traffic congestion, noise, dust and danger only to facilitate the “induced demand” that a gondola parking garage will bring. That is, parking lots, wider roadways and more lanes are immediately filled in with vehicular traffic, according to transportation sources.
The way forward can be for UTA & UDOT, possibly with public/private systems, that create transit based on a regional, year-round, multi-hub system encouraging canyon recreationalists to leave their vehicles closer to where they live or lodge. Multi-hubs can be part of a county-wide system advancing better transit generally (not just up to BCC and LCC). It can facilitate affordable mobility for workers, shoppers, those traveling to educational institutions, shopping, entertainment.
Currently, UTA uses a grid system called “local service” that stops frequently upon demand and takes an inordinate amount of time to get any distance. In Salt Lake County, we need “good transit”.
What is “good transit”?
When a household can choose to operate with one motor vehicle, we’ll know that we’ve achieved good transit.
It reduces vehicular violence, air, noise, soil, and light pollution for all Salt Lake Valley residents.
Currenty, UDOT is engaged with lawsuits from local organizations, Sandy City, Salt Lake City, SLC Public Utilities over alleged inadequate scoping for UDOT’s LCC Record of Decision.
CM Birrell note:
Full disclosure. Between my husband and I, we have 50 years working within the ski industry. I travelled the world promoting Snowbird & securing conference contracts and Jim building and managing Snowbird ski lifts and tramway. No one loves “transportation by rope” (i.e. trams and gondolas) more than we do.
The gondola will not operate when avalanche control work is being conducted. Then, the lines will have to be inspected before loading passengers. By this time, 60+ minute-queues of persons standing holding ski equipment, waiting within the 2500 parking stall will likely occur. Once boarded, gondola cabins are unattended and so you are trapped with 32 strangers for a minimum of 25 to 35 minutes from departing gondola terminal to arrival to Snowbird or Alta.
This constrasts with continuing up the road .7 miles until you are inside LCC and only 15 minutes from your desired ski destination.
Oh, and you will be paying approximately $30 per person for gondola ticket. According to Jim, there is no way that this operation won’t need an ongoing subsidy of taxpayer funding.
Let me ask you: Would you do this more than once?
This 8-mile gondola system has no peer. With a little research, you’ll find the closest experience to what UDOT has in mind is Serbia’s Zlatibor Gold Gondola:
Length: 5.6 miles
Trip time: Approximately 25-30 minutes
Passenger cabins: 10 passengers per cabin
Comparably, the LCC Gondola would squeeze 35 persons with equipment onto each car. No attendant. Don’t confuse the 7-minute Snowbird Tram ride, replete with attendant, with being trapped with 35 of your favorite strangers dangling in the air for 25 minutes on proposed LCC Gondola. A Zlatibor Gondola rider noted: “It can feel a bit claustrophobic in a smelly cabin after a while.”
With a 25-minute gondola ride still ahead, for what would take 15 minutes to drive, who would go through this ordeal more than once?
Don't be fooled by the gondolaworks.com marketing. This is NOT a tried and true system. Alpine gondolas in Europe are less than 1/3 the distance of this system and people arrive to gondola base by train. The traffic gridlock getting to the gondola along the foothills does not improve with the UDOT Gondola plan. UDOT Record of Decision indicates that buses will be curtailed when the gondola is operational, and so gridlock within the canyon has propensity to be as bad as ever.