In Big Cottonwood, morning parking reservations are creating afternoon ski rushes, delaying first responders and ensnaring locals

Phillip Mervis has called Big Cottonwood Canyon home for 22 years.

Traffic congestion has long been a constant — particularly near his home off the Brighton Loop. These days, it’s not unusual for Mervis to spend 45 minutes inching his car less than a mile for that last stretch.

Resorts have known it’s a problem. Solitude Mountain introduced parking reservations in 2019, and Brighton Ski Resort followed suit in 2023. The system has helped pace out the morning rush, but locals say it’s also created new chaos in the afternoons — when reservations lift and drivers circle ski resort lots for coveted spots.

The situation is significantly delaying emergency services, concerning first responders and residents alike. For locals, it’s also making needed tasks like home repairs more expensive, because workers who often charge by the hour get stuck in the gridlock, too.

Even everyday things like package deliveries and grocery trips are a headache. Once, Mervis’ wife, Sheryl Facktor, held two quarts of ice cream outside her car window as she slowly crept home just so it didn’t melt.

It’s why the Utah Department of Transportation is still looking into creating a bus-only lane, instituting tolls at the mouth of the canyon and adding more buses to cut down on traffic. Resorts are also extending their hours and hiring more parking employees to mitigate the more-busy afternoons.

But there’s only so much that can be done as more and more guests keep venturing to the resorts, Brighton Mayor Dan Knopp said.

“Residents need to understand that they they’ve decided to live in a place that has a lot of visitors,” Knopp said. “It’s like putting a Ferris wheel in your backyard. It’s really fun to ride. The problem is, everybody else wants to come ride it too.”

‘This congestion is dangerous,’ detective says

From around the start of December to mid-January, there were “multiple incidents” where ambulances, police cars and fire trucks were unable to get to Brighton and Solitude Mountain Resort, Unified police Detective Anna Walker told Brighton Town Council members during a Jan. 14 meeting.

During that period, officers had to respond to a SWAT situation, a vehicle crash and a fatal avalanche, for example, Unified Police Department spokesperson Aymee Race told The Salt Lake Tribune.

“I know it’s extremely frustrating for the residents of [Big Cottonwood Canyon], and I know from a first-responder standpoint, this congestion is dangerous,” Walker said. “... We can’t get to Brighton in a timely manner, even though we’re so close — and even though we’re using our lights and sirens, we cannot get through the traffic, because there’s no place for the traffic to move to allow us through.”

UPD leadership meets monthly with the town of Brighton, UDOT, the ski resorts and other agencies during ski season to address traffic concerns in the canyon. Though Walker’s comments were pointed, Race assured in an email that despite the delays, first responders are “able to still respond to emergencies, assist stuck motorists and serve the Brighton community.”

As for how things could improve, UDOT can’t make immediate adjustments to the roadway, engineer Alex Fisher-Willis said.

UDOT canyon workers stay in contact with emergency services to help clear paths when needed, but they only operate in the middle to lower portion of the canyon, stopping cars at the mouth from adding to gridlock closer to Brighton.

What’s causing extra congestion lately?

Parking reservations have helped ease morning traffic “immensely,” Walker said in January.

But as soon as reservations aren’t required in the afternoons, it becomes a free-for-all. That’s when people who didn’t get a morning reservation try to find spots, sometimes to no avail, she said.

On powder days, for instance, fewer early arrivals leave, meaning there’s often little or no available parking later in the day. Determined drivers hunt for spots anyway, creating a chain reaction of congestion that clogs the Brighton Loop, a nearly mile-long path that circles the end of Big Cottonwood Canyon Road.

“I literally can’t move out of my driveway, out of the road that leads to the circle,” said Sheryl Facktor. “... If I would try to cut through the Brighton Store Lot, it is so heavily congested with either employee parking or with other parking, you can’t get through safely. So the only choice [we have] is to go with traffic around the circle — and that’s an hour.”

That gridlock also thwarts some skiers from using the ski bus, encouraging more traffic, Facktor said.

“Now the bus is sitting in the same traffic as all those cars, and wouldn’t you rather be sitting listening to your own tunes with your friends in your own car than sitting on a bus for an hour going nowhere?” she said. “The problem with the system is that logjam.”

Is it solvable?

Ski areas are doing their part to combat the new afternoon rush — Brighton now keeps one lift open for an extra hour until 5 p.m. on Sundays to account for the 4 p.m. surge, and Solitude will now run three lifts until 5 p.m. Fridays through Sundays for the rest of the season.

Brighton spokesperson Jared Winkler recalled a February day that saw “standstill” traffic all the way from Solitude to Brighton and down Big Cottonwood Canyon.

“It was kind of just the worst case scenario that I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I’ve been a Brighton pass holder for over 30 years, and an employee for 23 years — I’ve never seen it be that bad.”

After that, Brighton doubled its parking staff and extended their hours.

“It’s just dealing with a problem that we’ve never seen be a problem,” Winkler said. “That’s just an insane amount of congestion, and people coming and going later in the day — and so just seeing that there was a problem, and trying to do the best we can to help with that problem.”

Any long-term solution, though, will likely come after UDOT’s Big Cottonwood Canyon environmental study, Knopp said.

The state transportation agency is currently analyzing peak weekend traffic data and hopes to have a plan for canyon improvements by the end of 2025, transit project manager Devin Weder said.

That could include a dedicated bus lane in certain portions of the canyon, like the Brighton Loop, with construction potentially starting in 2026 and wrapping up by 2027 or 2028, Weder added.

“That will obviously help emergency vehicles, because they could use that bus lane,” Weder said. “... We’re hoping to have at least half the loop have a bus lane.”

UDOT is also considering adding more busing — and possible tolling — to cut down on cars canyon-wide, which would in turn help locals get home quicker, Weder said.

Until then, Facktor thinks all-day reservations at the ski resorts would be quicker to implement and more effective. With ski-pass deals driving demand, she feels the problem was foreseeable.

“We all share a very finite area, and we need to do a better job of working together to solve this problem,” she said.

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