Utah is a world-renowned skiing destination. It is home to what Jim Steenburgh’s book describes as the “Greatest Snow On Earth.” Thanks to the Wasatch Front’s frequent storms, snow conditions are often ripe for primetime skiing.
Courtesy of Lukas Kloeppel via Pexels, free to use via CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
Link: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-concrete-building-2416589/
Utah’s reputation as an international destination for winter sports was put to the test in 2002 with the hosting of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. That is a big commitment–academic analysis by Philip Porter and Deborah Fletcher’s paper “The Economic Impact of the Olympic Games: Ex Ante Predictions and Ex Post Reality” finds that proposed economic benefits of hosting the Olympic Games are often overstated, and when complete host cities are left with tremendous debts.
Can anything mitigate these challenges? What about long-term investments such as transportation infrastructure? Transportation developments figured significantly in the run-up to the 2002 Olympic Winter Games and have transformed Salt Lake City since. This podcast takes on whether transportation developments in Salt Lake City impacted the operation of the Games, and if so, what those effects have been on the city since.
From Wikimedia Commons, user “famartin” (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Famartin)
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MotionArray: “Sound inside racing car 1” stock sound: https://motionarray.com/sound-effects/sound-inside-racing-car-171601/ (used in intro to highway section of podcast)
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“Transportation” of an alternate type during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games (bobsleigh event)
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Bibliography
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“Project Profile: I-15 Corridor Reconstruction Project.” Center for Innovative Finance Support. U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration, n.d. Accessed May 8, 2021. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/project_profiles/ut_i15_corridor.aspx.
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