Bill Ciraco is globetrotting through the first half of 2026.
Two months after attending the Winter Olympics in Italy for fact-finding purposes, the first-term member of the Park City Council is slated to return to Europe. The upcoming trip will allow Ciraco to study transportation systems, learn about investment-related topics and attend a trade show.
Ciraco will be a part of a trade mission from the state that is scheduled to visit Switzerland and Germany. The World Trade Center Utah and the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity invited him. The organizers have outlined the key topics for the trip as being advanced manufacturing, transportation, investment and the related issues of apprenticeships and development of a workforce.
The trip is scheduled from April 13 to April 22. Ciraco said he will pay for the travel himself without requesting taxpayer reimbursement. The World Trade Center Utah estimated the cost at $4,000.
The travelers are scheduled to visit Zurich, Switzerland, a world financial capital, with a discussion there highlighting Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group. That talk is expected to be one of the important items of the trip for Ciraco. Doppelmayr/Garaventa is a top manufacturer of ski lifts and other ropeways used at mountain resorts.
Park City leaders are considering aerial transit as a traffic-fighting measure, and supported additional research into whether Richardson Flat would be a suitable spot for a system connecting to the Snow Park base at Deer Valley Resort. Decisions have not been made, but they are looming with the community hoping to tap any monies that become available from the federal government as the state prepares for the 2034 Winter Olympics.
“I want to become an expert on that,” Ciraco said about aerial transit systems.
He said he wants to learn how aerial transit could apply to Park City and whether such a system would accomplish the goal of reducing traffic amid the long-running complaints about backups inside the city and in surrounding Summit County.
“There is competition for the types of visitors Park City seeks to attract. How do we stand out from the crowd?” he said, contending that aerial transit could be a step toward separating the community from other resort destinations in the mountains.
Ciraco wants to study mockups of various Doppelmayr/Garaventa options and learn about the operational differences between the aerial systems.
A discussion with Stadler Rail, a manufacturer of rail vehicles, is anticipated. Ciraco wants to hear about how the technology works in mountain environments, even though Park City is not currently considering rail as an option to combat traffic.
The trip will be the second to Europe for Ciraco in the span of two months. He attended the Games in February to learn about the staging of the event. He spent time in the host city of Milan as well as the Italian Alps communities of Cortina d’Ampezzo and Bormio. Cortina d’Ampezzo seemed to draw the interest of representatives from the Park City area who attended the Games, with there being a series of similarities between the two prominent mountain resorts.
Ciraco did not travel to Italy as part of the municipal government’s official delegation and instead crafted his own itinerary. He funded the Winter Olympic trip himself. The trip to the Games occurred as Park City is expected to broaden its work toward the Winter Olympics in 2034. The Park City area is a key to the vision for 2034, as was the case during the 2002 Winter Olympics. Park City Mountain, Deer Valley Resort and the Utah Olympic Park have again been tapped as competition venues. The area will also be crucial to the transportation, security and celebration plans.
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