Forward progress on solving LCC congestion via incremental common sense solutions are on hold by UDOT as the legal process to stop the gondola proceeds.
A reminder: Three lawsuits challenge UDOT’s gondola decision. Sandy City, Salt Lake City and The Metropolitan Water District are suing for the protection of the watershed and the finite water resource that comes from LCC. Save Our Canyons’ lawsuit claims that UDOT pursued a fundamentally flawed and arbitrary evaluation and decision process, which some in the community feel led UDOT to a predetermined gondola solution. Canyon Guard, a coalition of individuals and organizations, of which Friends of Little Cottonwood Canyon is part, argues that UDOT made serious errors and omissions in the NEPA process leading to a flawed canyon congestion solution.
UDOT stalls litigation discovery phase: The Court has combined these three lawsuits. We have begun the discovery phase requiring UDOT to provide all documents it used to come to its Record of Decision (ROD) for a gondola. UDOT sent Plaintiffs 200,000 pages with 30,000 documents. Canyon Guard Coalition responded to UDOT, via the Court, with a list of what we believe are missing documents (attachments or documents referred to but not included in discovery and classes of documents that should have been included but were omitted). We await UDOT’s response. This process is time and resource consuming.
UDOT refuses to spend funds allocated to solve LCC congestion: In the meantime reduced bus service and congestion remains—even though the Legislature authorized $150M to be used for congestion-reducing activities before UDOT’s gondola decision. UDOT claims that, because of the Lawsuits, it is prohibited from proceeding with any of the actions the Utah Legislature charged them to begin. UDOT claims of the 20 issues raised in the lawsuits, 13 expressly keep them from proceeding until the legal process is resolved.
UDOT refuses to mediate the lawsuit claims: The legal teams from all three lawsuits approached UDOT to enter into mediation for lawsuit resolution, or to at least identify and attempt to set aside the 13 issues UDOT claims are prohibiting it from doing as the Legislature instructed to reduce congestion. UDOT refuses mediation and refuses to identify the 13 issues they claim keep it from moving forward to reduce congestion. Contrary to its claim it can do nothing, UDOT still installed massive canyon status message boards and purchased private residential land to build an access road for to the proposed gondola parking garage, sparking a fourth lawsuit by Granite Oaks HOA which alleges that UDOT violated multiple state statutes and private property rights with this land purchase.
It is inexplicable how UDOT is insisting that the Lawsuits are blocking all Phase 1 activity, such as improving busing, yet it has used taxpayer funds to purchase private residential land that only supports Phase 3 activity—the gondola build. In light of UDOT’s unwillingness to proceed with incremental congestion-reducing tactics and refusal to sit down with Plaintiffs to see if there is anything they might agree to which could provide the public with some short-term traffic relief, we can only conclude that UDOT is set on advancing its gondola objective instead of finding the most cost most effective solutions.
Friends of Little Cottonwood Canyon takes no joy in the filing of these lawsuits. We regret the decisions UDOT has made brought us to this place. The NEPA process does provide for an Administrative Review, but UDOT expressly excluded this in their process and has closed off any conversation. The only course of action left to us was litigation.
While the lawsuit is in play we will continue to advocate for a gondola-free LCC. We will carry this message for the thousands of like-minded Utahns who believe that spending $1.4B + of our tax dollars is wasteful spending for the direct benefit of two private corporations, a few politicians, and developers. The gondola is wholly inconsistent with a state that prides itself on being fiscally responsible. We know that there are less invasive solutions that don’t desecrate the canyon and more cost effective options to congestion reduction.
