As Park City’s transportation director, an avid Park Record reader, and a Park City resident — which means I’m answerable to my friends, neighbors and everyone else who reads this paper — I feel obligated to weigh in on the recent letter to the editor titled “Junkyard buses.” In that piece, the author correctly pointed out that there are 19 buses parked at Richardson Flat before concluding that “buses are not the answer” to Park City’s transportation challenges.  To help clarify, those buses are retired vehicles that have reached the end of their service life. Because they were purchased with federal funds, they must go through a formal disposal process before they can be sold or scrapped.  The larger question isn’t what’s parked at Richardson Flat. The larger question is how Park City moves thousands of people through a mountain town with limited road space.  Old Town streets don’t widen when traffic gets bad. Bonanza Drive doesn’t add a lane on a holiday weekend. A mountain valley is many wonderful things — but expandable isn’t one of them.  That’s where transit helps.  One bus can carry dozens of riders — dozens of people who aren’t all trying to squeeze their own car into the same intersection or parking lot at the same time.   It may not be glamorous, but it is efficient.  We’ve also seen this play out locally. Anyone who has tried to park near Bloods Lake on a fall weekend knows the challenge. In response, the city extended the Purple Route to provide transit access to the trailheads and better manage parking demand. The result has been fewer cars competing for limited space and more people using transit to reach one of the area’s most popular destinations.  And it’s something Park City has been doing for a long time. This past year, Park City Transit celebrated 50 years of helping residents, visitors, and members of our workforce get around town.  Transit won’t solve every transportation challenge on its own, but in a community where road space is limited and demand is high, it remains one of the most practical tools we have to keep Park City moving.  And if you happen to see a few retired buses waiting at Richardson Flat, you can think of them as something else, too — proof that Park City has been running buses long enough to wear a few out.  Hope to see you on board soon!  Tim Sanderson  Transportation Director, Park City Municipal  The post Quite a leap appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less