High Valley Transit Names New Bus Rapid Transit Line the Bobsled Express

Shauna Rohbock, the 2006 Olympic bobsled silver medalist, led the countdown Friday at High Valley Transit's Silver Summit campus as cowbells rang and an electric bus rolled out of the garage bearing its new identity: the Bobsled Express, already nicknamed "The Bob."

The April 3 reveal at HVT's $46 million, 8-acre Sego Lily Campus near Home Depot in Silver Summit capped more than a decade of planning for a transit solution along SR-224, one of Summit County's most chronically congested corridors. The bus that emerged wore fresh branding, its marquee reading "Hot, fresh & ready." HVT Executive Director Caroline Rodriguez, who spoke alongside Summit County Councilor and HVT board member Megan McKenna, Park City Mayor Ryan Dickey, and HVT board chair Kim Carson, acknowledged the significance of finally having a name to rally behind.

"It's hard to say, Oh ride S.R. 224 BRT, be so excited about it," Rodriguez said. "But now that we have a name and that branding, we can really say, Ride Bob."

The name went through a formal public process. Beginning in fall 2025, HVT collected more than 300 community suggestions, narrowed them to four finalists: Mountain Town Express (MTX), The Pulse (TPX), Double Black (DBX), and The Bobsled (BSX), then ran an online vote that closed November 21, 2025. The Bobsled won, a direct nod to Utah Olympic Park's sliding track near Park City, which hosted bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and is set to do so again at the 2034 Games.

For commuters, the practical details are as follows. The Bobsled Express will run seven miles along SR-224 from the Kimball Junction Transit Center to the Park City Old Town Transit Center, stopping at six stations. New stops include a Canyons Village Transit Center and stations at Bobsled Blvd. and Thaynes Canyon Drive. Zero-emission, ADA-accessible electric buses will run every 10 to 15 minutes, seven days a week. Fares have not yet been announced publicly. To accommodate dedicated and mixed-flow bus lanes, SR-224 will be widened by 10 feet between Kimball Junction and Thaynes Canyon Drive.

The project carries a price tag of roughly $102 to $109 million, approximately $20 million below estimates from summer 2025. As of late 2024, HVT had already secured $64 million through state and federal funding, with partners including the Federal Transit Administration, UDOT, Summit County, and Park City.

Construction kicks off April 6 across five segments of the corridor, three days after the name reveal. Work pauses each year from December through March and is expected to conclude by late 2028, with full service launching in September 2028, well ahead of the 2034 Olympics. Two lanes of traffic remain open throughout, with additional pauses around holidays and major events.

HVT projects up to 5,000 boardings per day at launch, growing beyond 10,000 at full operation and exceeding 15,000 within five years as frequency increases to every 10 minutes. During the 2034 Winter Olympics, the Bobsled Express is projected to move more than 50,000 people daily, a number that reflects the system's dual mandate as both a daily commuter workhorse and an Olympic-scale infrastructure asset. Park City's economy already depends on more than 10,000 employees commuting into the community every day.

Those figures are the promises. What HVT has not yet committed to publicly is which performance benchmarks it will report, and how often, once service begins. Given that the agency logged 3.5 million rides in its first three years since founding in January 2021, baseline demand on the Wasatch Back is not in question. Whether The Bob hits its targets when it opens in September 2028 is the metric residents will be watching.