Ski season feels like a distant memory at the end of May, especially since it was cut short due to the coronavirus pandemic, but we wanted to take a moment to circle back with our riders about this key UTA service.

Big Picture

The Utah Transit Authority ski bus serves ski resorts in Weber County, Utah County and Salt Lake County. Since it first went into effect in the mid-1970s, UTA has continued to refine this valuable service to meet the changing conditions and demands in our canyons. This year, in partnership with Central Wasatch Commission (CWC) and ski resorts, we increased the number of trips, reduced bottlenecks in park and ride lots, and increased the number of seats on buses.

In addition to continuous improvements, we have also taken the following safety precautions with our ski bus service:

  • dedicated supervisors overseeing dispatch operations,
  • driven by experienced operators (at least 6 months of driving experience),
  • specialized vehicles with automatic chain deployment capability for safe canyon driving.

Our improvements seem to be paying off. Across all routes, the ski bus served 383,000 riders overall and in Salt Lake County we had a 1.5% increase in ridership despite having 30% fewer ski days due to COVID-19.


What You Told Us

To close the season and to assess the impact of changes we made, we ran a ski bus rider survey from April 7 to April 30. We received responses from 366 riders. Here’s a quick snapshot of what we heard from you:

  • majority of respondents (55%) want more parking options,
  • majority of respondents (58%) feel safer on the ski bus than driving,
  • majority of respondents (72%) plan to ride the ski bus again even if service remained the same,
  • improvement ideas include: additional park and ride lots, direct routes to each ski resort, more frequency, improved ventilation, floor grips, dedicated bus lanes, ski bus included with ski resort gold passes, and year-round canyon service.

What We Are Working On

In response to the survey feedback and other data, we are exploring:

  • more park and ride lots at retail locations,
  • police escorts for high traffic days,
  • express buses to one resort (one pickup and drop off) at one location,
  • canyon road drop off for ski resorts to speed up trips.

How You Can Participate

We’re grateful to partner with organizations that have incredible expertise and care deeply about the future of our beautiful canyons.

Key organizations and guiding documents:

If you want to be more involved in shaping the future of transit in the canyons we encourage you to get involved with one of these organizations. The CWC in particular leads numerous public engagement opportunities; we recommend joining their email list.

And at UTA we track and review every comment we get from the public. You are always welcome to reach out to our Customer Focus team to share your thoughts about the ski bus or any of our services.

We look forward to an even better ski bus service and snow season next year!

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