The city hasn’t worked out all of the details for parking prices but Park City’s public works director Blake Fonnesbeck said it will be hourly. To help Old town employees offset some of the impact to their wallets – the city is in the process of creating some plans to encourage them to make better parking choices.
“Basically employees would be able to get an employee pass card that would then give them an actual employee discounted rate," Fonnesbeck said. "So they would be paying less than the others. It would still be during peak time – they’ll be paying more than some of them want to pay during that time.”
The net revenue gained from the system he said, will be used to improve the options for employees.
“It will go back into creating other remote parking lots, enhancing employee shuttles, those types of things," Fonnesbeck said. "So that we have a really quick system that gets employees here and gives them those good choices.”
The city created a parking implementation task force that is made up of the Historic Park City Alliance as well as city staff to help finalize the program.
Currently – the peak times they’re working with are Friday and Saturday nights with the possibility of Sundays during the summer and Sundance in the winter.
“But we noticed with our data that Thursday nights were starting to become increasingly busy and we were starting to hit full China Bridge at around 7 – 7:30 PM during the winter season," Fonnesbeck said. "So that could bump into Thursday nights as well – we’ll just have to adjust as we go and this system provides us with that ability to do so.”
The China Bridge parking permits are good this winter – but once summer hits – the city will begin use an employee parking card.
“When we get to the summer season we will be able to take these employee parking cards that are reloadable, and take the balance of that permit," Fonnesbeck said. "So they can pay for the full permit now and take the balance of that and put it on that parking card so they’ll still have that value throughout the season.”
Fonnesbeck said that employees who ride their bike to work or take the bus will be able to earn credits to help offset their parking.
“So we currently - with our buses that we have now – they have the ability if we want to plug on a reader to where people could do a tap card and tap that when they get on the bus – and that would apply a credit that they took a bus to Old Town and use that for a credit for parking," Fonnesbeck said. "It would just be employees that would have those. The bicycle thing we’re going to work with a consultant to figure out how we can do that as well. There could also be with carpooling as well. If they carpool – and we have some carpool spots that people could sign up for carpooling and park there – maybe theres a reader they could use for that as well. So something we’re trying to figure out – we know the technology is out there.”
The employee parking cards can’t be used to buy lunch however it does give you other alternatives for parking and because improvements have to made to the 248 route, the express busses won’t be available until late 2018.