Few issues rankle the average Parkite quite like traffic. Lately, the city and county have been ramping up all manner of carrot-and-stick approaches to getting people out of their cars: paid parking, color-coded walkable routes, bike lanes, police presence at choked intersections, raffle giveaways for bus riders, park-and-ride lots, e-bike shares, extended and increased bus service, micro transit… but traffic congestion has proved to be a tough nut to crack. Now, local public transit advocate Bill Ciraco has taken a citizen’s-eye view and come up with a regional solution: trains.  

Ciraco’s railway vision is a multi-phase affair. The plan initiates with rail lines along Park City’s two entry corridors. In phase one, he envisions “putting the ‘Rail’ back in the Rail Trail” parallel to Hwy 248, where a three-mile line would stretch from Richardson Flat to the Iron Horse district, alongside a multipurpose recreational trail. The next phase would provide an alternative to clogged Hwy 224 with a line initiating at Kimball Junction and running to the same Iron Horse hub. In-town connections would web from there, involving both a gondola to the base of Park City Mountain as well as a driverless people-mover skirting Deer Valley Drive. Later phases concern the outskirts of town, connecting both Richardson Flat and Kimball Junction to Silver Creek and Promontory, as well as tracks from there to Wanship, Hoytsville, and Coalville. The critical—and expensive—line connecting Park City to Salt Lake City and the airport would start in phase two and wrap up alongside later phases, just as a southbound route, linking to Heber City and beyond, starts chugging along.

“What I’m proposing is that we invest in a transit system that has zero emissions and takes thousands of cars off the road each day. That’s better for local air quality, better for the environment in terms of climate change and carbon emissions, and better for our quality of life,” Ciraco says. 

The idea was inspired and spurred on by a few coinciding factors: the grassroots redevelopment plan of Salt Lake City’s Rio Grande train station (riograndeplansaltlakecity.org), Park City’s call for public input on Rail Trail improvements, and numerous burgeoning developments and redevelopments in and around town—all of which exist in the shadow of an erstwhile rail-serviced mining history.  

Ciraco has done his homework, sat down with big and small players, put the puzzle pieces together, identified potential funding, researched hydrogen-fueled trains, and dreamed up a large-scale, long-term transportation solution. He admits this plan has obstacles. The cost will be substantial. The solution, he says, may lie with Olympic bid-related funding and federal infrastructure and clean energy-related grants and loans. He counters “urbanization concerns” by pointing to other pastoral spots, like Zermatt, where rails and trails coexist. And, rather than attracting unsustainable visitation, he says trains provide a path to controlling the flow of people into and out of town. 

The upshot: To get from a high-level concept to reality, everyone—landowners, developers, citizens, politicians, and bureaucrats—would have to come together, share the vision, rethink some in-the-works plans, request funding, and jump onboard in a timely manner.  

“I feel like this is a huge opportunity for Park City to become what everybody says they want it to become,” says Ciraco. “We just need a little focus and a little courage to ask for something big.”

Ciraco’s web portal is in the works. In the meantime, email [email protected] for more  information.