“The environmental impact from adding this gondola will be massive. “This is a terrible idea,” wrote one commenter in the most recent batch of public comments. People voiced their opposition to the project for different reasons, with many arguing the project - which is now estimated to cost over $728 million in taxpayer money - would almost solely benefit the canyon’s two ski resorts, Snowbird and Alta, and would only serve a handful of Utah’s population. The public comments, which consisted of thousands of pages, are available as part of the agency’s record of decision. “It is disheartening to learn of UDOT’s decision of record to proceed with plans to construct a gondola in Little Cottonwood Canyon despite overwhelming community opposition,” Zoltanski said in a statement. “I’m fully confident that we have both a more complete and accurate final EIS and record of decision,” he said Wednesday morning.Ī number of elected officials around Salt Lake have made it clear they don’t want the gondola, including Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson and Sandy Mayor Monica Zoltanski - both of whom made public statements Wednesday voicing their dissatisfaction with the gondola project moving forward. Van Jura said the tens of thousands of public comments had a large impact on how the department approached addressing traffic in Little Cottonwood, most notably by starting with expanded bus services. About 35% of comments supported the gondola, while the remaining 4% didn’t have an opinion. The document says the gondola was picked because of travel reliability, transit mode travel time, delays due to snow removal on roads and environmental concerns.Īnother analysis done by KUTV last November found that of the 35,000 comments publicly available at that time, the majority - around 61% - were against the gondola. He told The Tribune the codes are meant to give detailed responses to each comment, which UDOT included in the same document that specifies the codes.įor example, a comment that mentions the gondola would be directed to the reasons why UDOT picked the gondola over other options. Van Jura said Friday that he disagreed with the notion the codes are used to sort comments into pro- or anti-gondola boxes. Firmani said the new UDOT document contained around 13,000 comments, meaning there were still plenty of public comments that didn’t include their stance on the gondola. That’s exactly what Salt Lake City resident Nick Firmani did after UDOT released the newest public comments.Īccording to his analysis - which he posted on Reddit - 8,990 comments were tagged with the anti-gondola code, while 1,112 comments had the pro-gondola tag. In theory, one could sort through the comments and see how many comments were tagged with the anti-gondola code as opposed to the pro-gondola code. Different positions have specific codes based on the opinions expressed. ![]() That means if a comment was in opposition to the gondola, it would receive a specific code, as spelled out in a document released by UDOT last year. ![]() In the latest batch released this week, all collected in recent months, UDOT included tags on each public comment according to the sentiments raised in the comments. UDOT did, however, take the time to categorize the comments. “Rather, public comments are an opportunity for UDOT to field suggestions or criticism for a project and to evaluate whether additional engineering or environmental analysis were needed based on the feedback.” ![]() The statement from Van Jura echoed what UDOT said in a tweet Wednesday regarding the department’s record of decision. “UDOT doesn’t tally the comments as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ votes like a referendum, as the process is not a public vote,” said Josh Van Jura, the UDOT project manager over the Little Cottonwood EIS, in an email Thursday.
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