The Park City-area travelers to the Summer Olympics in Paris learned there can be challenges as the crowds move about the Games region.
Park City Mayor Nann Worel, Summit County Council Chair Malena Stevens and Jennifer Wesselhoff, the president and CEO of the Park City Chamber/Bureau, recounted the trip during joint meeting Monday of the Park City Council and County Council at the Richins Building.
The travelers presented a slide that described the experience, calling traffic and transportation the “biggest issue for Parisians.” The slide addressed road closures, communication challenges and dedicated road lanes for vehicles that were part of the official Olympic fleet.
The slide also indicated transportation “between Olympic cities challenging” and there were “not sufficient train tickets.” It was two and a half hours to the closest venue community, and some of the venues were eight hours from Paris, the slide said. There was also information about what the travelers said was a doubling of “the price of transit during the games.”
Worel noted what she considered to be a lack of clear communications regarding transportation as well as the road closures.
Stevens said an app available during the Games did not reflect routes open to the public.
The observations about the transportation system during the Games in Paris came as the Park City area begins planning for the 2034 Winter Olympics. Crafting the transportation plans will be one of the critical tasks for the area governments and an Olympic organizing committee.
The plans will be expected to address routes between Park City and the Salt Lake Valley in addition to movement throughout the Wasatch Back. The system that operated during the 2002 Winter Olympics relied heavily on park-and-ride lots and a reinforced bus system.
There were also brief comments about the economic impact of the Games. A slide indicated lots of Parisians left for the Games and “small businesses (were) impacted by closures.”
Other topics the travelers mentioned on Monday included:
- The presence of 35,000 members of law enforcement in Paris from around the European Union.
- The availability of more than 1,000 water fountains in Paris.
The trip to Paris covered the International Olympic Committee award of the Games of 2034 to Salt Lake City and the opening days of the Summer Olympics. The travelers wanted to be in Paris for the awarding of the Games and use the trip as an early fact-finding mission about the staging of an Olympics.
One of the slides shown on Monday mentioned a desire to continue learning about the Games through missions to future Olympics. The next opportunity will be the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.