Stock holders vs Stake holders

Well, I finally made it up to the Canyons this week after hearing outrageous stories of long lines an limited terrain. It is true, it is a corporate cluster up there.  With all the snow we have had, half the mountain is still closed with very little evidence of efforts to make snow, groom trails or open existing slopes.  Clearly Vail has put profits ahead of people and their product, with impunity.  They don’t care.  They sold 2 million discount Epic passes and have a billion dollars in the bank.  Now they are cutting corners at our expense.  It is the shareholders and stockholders vs the stakeholders and skiers.   Guess who is winning.

They say it is Covid, which should not be a big surprise to them after 2 years.  They say it is an employee problem, but it is more of a wage problem.  They pay less than $15 an hour for ski patrol and for all other workers who commute for hours a day in the dark, from Heber, Kamas or SLC, thru inclement weather and horrendous traffic.  Surprise, no one wants to work a crappy job for a non-living wage anymore, at every end of the economic scale.  Blame it on Unions, Covid or Biden but that is the way of the world now with over 20 million Americans quitting their jobs since this summer.  It would cost Vail 1-3% of their operating budget to offer all employees $20 and hour and they would fill all those empty spots in a heartbeat, but corporate greed triumphs over generosity, stock holders triumph over stake holders.

It has been ten years since PCMR forgot to renew their sweet land lease with UPMC followed by the hostile corporate takeover by Vail and the death of good resort skiing in North America.  We made our Faustian deal with the devil for their cheap season ski passes and found that everyone in town has one, not to mention everyone in Salt Lake City, Colorado, LA, New York, Chicago, Japan and Europe.  We don’t blame Blaise Carrig, Chip Carey, Bill Rock or Mike Gore, who are all good guys and know how to manage a ski resort, but they got their marching orders from the long management table at Vail Corporation.   They don’t want to talk to us about backcountry gates, avalanche fences, parking lots or traffic.  Vail’s gifts to our community are threatened greater development densities, crowded slopes and roads, and a ‘Je ne sais quoi’ attitude towards our local thoughts and opinions. 

We don’t want our money back, we want our mountains back.  We want our town name as well as it’s reputation for low key powder skiing.  Skiing has now become prosaic and pedantic instead of being world class like they advertise.  Weekend and holidays are off limits and powder days are now a crowded joke where if you can get on the mountain by 1100 it is all skied out by those who have better credentials.  There is no good public access to the local backcountry or our public lands and the overall skiing product has deteriorated to the point where it feels like a bait-and-switch or a breach-of-contract and public trust.

Is this the beginning of the end of this house of cards.  Does the quality of the product get so bad that people refuse to renew passes or frequent Vail resorts?  Do the employment conditions get so deplorable that no one will work there?  Would they try to raise the pass price and sell less of them to improve the product?  I doubt it.  We will all be expected to accept the current conditions as the new norm that they will blame on Covid, Climate Change or Economics.  They will take the money and run and we will be left holding the bag, again.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU READ

              Sequestered

For the quarantine I have been re-reading Walden.  Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 masterpiece manual of romantic transcendentalism, satire, and self-reliance.  Why not, what else is more appropriate now than sequestered nature-worship.  He self-quarantined in 1845, in his 10x15 cabin on the pond for a year or two.  Simplify he said.  Actually, he was only a mile from Concord, and he went home on weekends to have his mother do his laundry, but it felt like the wilderness of western Massachusetts, and it probably was.   

The first chapter of Walden is called Economics, not Adam Smith economics but personal microeconomics.  Henry talks about all the things he has but does not need, like houses and farms, animals and imported food.  How the farmer is a slave to his farm, as the shoemaker is slave to his shop, for generations.  How we are all slaves to our own sustainability, sustenance, maintenance, and entertainment.  How most of our concerns are about stuff and not people, how eventually the possessions possess the possessor. 

We have all read this story in high school and loved the idea, for about ten minutes, but then went back to over-complicate our lives with college and jobs, friends and family, houses, and toys.  We have not come that far.  But now we are all forced into our own little Walden, our own little 100 x150 foot cabins in the woods, with this self-imposed semi-isolation, where we can contemplate and experience the simple life.  All the distractions have been stripped away and we have been forced to honestly look at our lives and ourselves, who we are. 

              Simplify

I had a similar Walden notion to remove myself from the hurly-burly of the real world and simplify my life.  I thought of escaping to a cabin in the woods, or on a lake in the mountains or in a cave in the desert or on a lonely and anonymous park bench in a big city where no one would bug me and I would bug no one.  But that was too much effort and counter-intuitive to my desire to simplify.  So, I walked out my back door into the Snyderville Meadow and sat on a shady low bench besides Willow Creek and swore not to return to reality until I was good and ready.  Simple ain’t easy.

You do not need to go to the ends of the earth to entertain or remove yourself or give you things to do.  We spend all our time in self stimulation, constantly entertaining and occupying ourselves.  Or travelling the world, searching for someplace different but are only happy when we find a place just like home.    Wherever we go, there we are.  The constant is us. 

Simple is more of a state of mind.  Simple ain’t easy but it is more than just a desire to streamline or uncomplicate.  It is an effort to clear the mind and the schedule and to prioritize the real things we want to do and think and get rid of the clutter of modern times like; phones, schedules, deadlines, commitments, relationships, what to leave in and what to leave out and where you have to be at noon.  It is also a liberation from the constant burden of self-entertainment, stimulation, travel and adventure seeking.  It is the desire and ability to recognize and focus on the people that are really important to us, family and friends, partners and lovers, cohorts and comrades, and to serve and satisfy those people the best we can. You can only maintain 5-10 friends at once.  Life is too short for fast food and bad friends.

             

Self-confinement

We are loving it, my wife and me.  We have been retired for ten years so we have had some practice.  Waking up when we want or when it is warm, with no list or agenda, opening one eye at first light or at full sunrise to gage the day for what it might become.  Then enjoying a leisurely breakfast with correspondence and conversation, avoiding any contact with the real world for that is too depressing.  Self-disciplining to coffee, juice, Zinc and an occasional breakfast chocolate, eggs only every other day and bacon only once a week, no TV or drinking until 5 but anything else goes, all day. 

After my morning douche and yoga practice on the east facing bedroom deck while singing with my dog Eva, I take my patient companion out for her morning interval Frisbee session.  Then I look around and let the day come to me.  If it is cold, cloudy, or snowing, I’ll turn the heat up a notch or start a fire and hunker down in the house for a while, reading, writing, dabbling or fixing and improving stuff.  If it is sunny and warm, I will wander around the backyard or garage to see what calls out to me.  Sometimes I will trick myself with a small, predetermined chore to get me started.  I usually quickly find several other things to do and start mutli-tasking until a natural priority develops and the less important or non-fun chores fall off until tomorrow or next week or never.

Today it was removing half a tree encroaching on the backyard, by hand.  My wife Tracey and I started yesterday with a hand saw on a two foot diameter branch.  We took turns sawing the day before, 100 strokes at a time each and then jagging off in between, talking to friends in the field and playing with the dog.  By lunch we were exhausted and by dinner we were halfway thru.  So yesterday we continued with little headway in the moist dense core of the tree.  The spring buds were emerging so the juices were flowing and we thought of quitting and letting it leaf out on the branches on the far end of the moment arm, or let it fill with heavy spring snow to bring that big bad branch down. 

But we got impatient so we threw a rope up and over the far end of the branch and Tracey and I yarded rhythmically on it, up and down, until it cracked and we ran screaming while it came down with a fantastic crash, exactly where we wanted it to fall.  Then we took the ax to the downfall, chopping up the big logs and trimming the small branches off and stacking them next to the fence to build a more natural branch fence.  It was exhausting so I took a nap and then went for a long ride on my bike.   Live deliberately.  Then go for a bike ride.

              Hank and Ralphie

Henry David would be proud of us because the first thing he did out at Walden was chop some trees to clear some land.  Ralph Waldo Emerson owned the land, but it was too expensive for Henry to purchase at eight dollars an acre ($300 today) so he was a squatter, with permission.  Thoreau paid him back by cutting his lawn and trimming his flowers, but they had a classic haves/have not relationship.  When Ralph visited Henry in jail for civil disobedience (not paying taxes) he asked him ‘what are you doing in there’ to which Henry replied, ‘what are you doing out there’.

Henry cleared off 2.5 acres near Walden and planted the first year, but he was too busy farming the first year and had to sell much of his food for only 15 dollars ($50).  The next year he planted less than a half-acre that he could farm just ”with his left hand, at odd hours”.  Then he built his house mostly with stuff that he found lying around for $28 ($1000) and he was all set.  No oxen, nor horses, no cows, no sheep, no fertilizer, no tractors, no bankers, no contractors, no Home Depot. 

Ralph said, ‘Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond itself, a world’.  Henry David probably said, ‘yeah/no, maybe not’.  Ralphie, the thinker and innovator, wrote his classics “Nature” and “Self-Reliance” a few years before and Thoreau, the doer, decided to give his social experiment a try.  Hank was a more approachable voice for the nature movement than Ralph, less grand-eloquent, so he went to the woods to write his first book.  Henry was set up in his cabin for life, but he only made it two years before moving on to something else.  He had TADD, Transcendentalist Attention Deficit Disorder, and he got a little bored. 

              Evaloution

Today the day came on a little different for us when the morning warmed quickly under the hot April sun (equivalent to an August sun).   We took our dog Eva for a long walk in the meadow with the Sand Hill Cranes, eagles and hawks, the gophers, and the ducks.  She left the Cranes alone on our command but sneaked up and pounced on the gophers repeatedly despite knowing that no dog has ever caught a gopher in this manner.  She was invigorated by the walk, as were we and we went about our chores content that we had gotten some warm-up exercise early.  We found a dead juvenile hawk caught under a willow wicker chair in the back yard and marveled at the intricacies and varieties of all its feathers.  Eva licked it.  Evolution is an amazing thing. 

I took Eve out for her frisbee workout with some friends and they were amazed at how she could burst out after the thrown disk, picking its flight up quickly over her head and calculating instinctively its trajectory, complete with a Fibonacci compound curved decay as well as spin, force and wind effects while keeping an eye on the terrain and any obstacles she should avoid.  She has closing speed to match Ronnie Lott’s and the peripheral vision of Wayne Gretzky (her eyes are slightly wider set and on the side of her head, in defense of Wayne). 

Breaking quickly to where the disk is going to be, she sprints at first, with a quick first step to match Karl Malone, but lays off as she approaches the interception point if she is early, or powers thru like Michael Jordan to finish strong.  Instead of jogging out under the descending Frisbee and catching it as it settles to the ground like most dogs, she leaps in slow motion 4 – 5 feet in the air and snatches the disk at the apex, styling nonchalantly with her slightly curled legs, before sticking the landing and jogging away proud and triumphant. 

On the beach Eva can run super-fast in the dry or wet sand, with the dry sand being much more tiring so she prefers to land in the water after the catch.  She is self-aware and loves to style in the air and prances as she come back to me for another throw.  There are no bad catches, only bad throws.  I threw one too close to a fence one day and she adjusted and picked the disk off the top of the fence like Freddy Lynn pulling a ball off the Green Monster.  Eve has never seen baseball, Fred Lynn or the Green Monster, she just made it up as she went along.

If she were a pro athlete, she would make $30 million a year and make everyone else look silly.  My friends were suitably impressed and howled and laughed with appreciation. Eva was not unaware. As many people have said ‘that dog has skills’.  And she knows it. 

The point is that Eva is always ready for whatever comes at her.  Always ready for frisbee, never sore or tired, and she always performs at a high level.  Always ready for a hike or ski tour, even if the snow is ten feet deep and it is well below zero and we are out all day.  Her coat is both warm and cool, her heat radiation efficient even though it is only thru her mouth and tongue and I have never seen her hot, cold, tired, or hurt.  Eve never really needs to eat or drink much, just 25 cents of good dog food a day and a bowl of water.  We have taught her to ‘camel up’ and drink more before long hikes.  She is perfectly designed for whatever comes and is always game.  She is a cattle dog by nature and a Frisbee dog by training, with a mutt pedigree, so she has energy and athleticism and she demands a job, something to do, a reason to be, every day.  Frisbee is her job, no, her avocation and she loves it to obsession.  She ignores people and dogs, gophers and food, even bathroom breaks, when she is playing Frisbee.  Her raison d'être. 

Efficiency

How cool would it be if we were that efficient, with no wants or needs except a purpose and bare sustenance.  We could spend all our time just being, like Eve does, being a dog.  Thoreau tried to show us that it does not take much to be happy, that less is more.  I picture him in modern days, a Rastafarian street person living under the viaduct, or a bearded curmudgeon living in a desert cave in New Mexico or cabin in Montana.  But he was well educated, at Harvard, ambitious, thoughtful, and outspoken, and might be like us, living in the material world but fighting the good fight to simplify while keeping up with the Joneses. 

Our collective sequestration would appeal to Henry, as It appeals to me.  I am lucky to be safe and healthy, wealthy, and wise, or at least three out of four, so I can enjoy my plethora of free time.  They say that free time is the blessing and curse of the upper and lower class but for a while it is forced on the shrinking middle class.  Some can embrace it, some resist.  Some struggle, being only one paycheck or health emergency away from the poor house.  Some scream irresponsibly, to return to normal and continue our mindless consumption and pursuit of self-entertainment and something to do, to fire up the economic engine that trickles up and down and drives everything.  

If only we could be like Hank and Ralphie and Eva and be content to, as they say to; let game come to us, let the day come to us.  This is an opportunity to reinvent ourselves and the world as we know it.  We could all be more content with ourselves and each other and simplify the world around us.  It is an opportunity to let our problems solve themselves, as they often do, with or without us, and just sit back and let the mystery be.

Bisbee AZ

We visit the small, funky town of Bisbee Arizona every ten years or so, just to see how it is doing.  It is an old mining town on the Mexican border with a lot of big, brick, boomtown buildings so every time it burned or flooded, there was something regal remaining.  It was originally a big underground copper mine until after the Second World War when they said ‘screw it’ and dug some Kennecott sized open pits at the entrance to town and took down some of the local mountains.  Nonetheless it is a groovy little town now, tucked up in the hills at 5200 feet with lots of dive bars and haunted hotels, grandmas’ antiques, and tourist curio shops.  It has had its ups and downs since they stopped mining in 1975 but it is still viable and, on some level, it works.

The town is just like Park City was in 1970 with so much cute potential that it could just explode.  There is no skiing due to the dearth of snow, nor much hiking or biking, due to the dearth of local ambition.  Most of the residents are freaks and haries, old timers down on their luck or newbies looking for another way.  There is a strong art community and free form expressionism as well as the long beard and colored hair contingents.  There are not many jobs here, but no one seems to mind while living on their wits, a fixed income or the kindness of strangers. 

My wife and I got engaged there on New Year’s 1999/2000.  We were staying at the fancy old Coper Queen Hotel and having a fine New Year’s dinner when a parade of crazed hipsters passed in front of the dining room windows with kazoos and ukuleles, costumes, and props.  We dropped our silver spoons and pressed napkins and went out and joined the parade.  It serpentined all around the hilly town gaining momentum and participants.  We wound up in Brewery Gulch (the red light district) at this happening bar with a raucous grunge band cranking at midnight and I popped the question.  The rest, they say, is history.  

So my wife and I went back to Brewery Gulch in the old red light district and found the funky bar we got engaged in 22 years ago.  It is now called St Elmo’s and has been in service since 1902, without any new paint or soap employed the entire time.  I think the same old, grey-beard dude has been sitting at the corner of the bar, closest to the door, ever since 1902.  St. Elmo’s was ranked as one of the top dive bars in the USA, coming in at a respectable #7 and they are trying hard to improve on that ranking.  It didn’t seem that repulsive when we got engaged there but it just goes to show that memory is selective, transient, and inaccurate.  

St Elmo’s did remind us of the old Alamo bar (No Name now) with its vaulted-arch brick ceilings, the same guys sitting on the same stools all day long and the puddle of blood on the floor from last night’s altercations.  It reminded us of Park City before our huge success.  It reminded us what Bisbee could be with a little effort and imagination.  We started to brainstorm the immediate needs of the town for success:  water, schools, roads, hike and bike trails, art festivals, film festivals, sports fields, tournaments, theaters, traffic circles, free busses, park and ride lots, affordable housing, public art, a Banksy, gondolas, cabriolets, funiculars, Pickleball, a tunnel, a fly over, timed traffic lights, a mall, ice rinks, a terrain park, painted bike lanes, leadership, vision, ambition and energy ….  

Wait a minute, stop the music.  We had gone thru the same exercise last year with some locals in the fledgling ski town of Phillipsburg Montana, who had just gotten new sidewalks and curbs, streetlights and pavement, a brew pub and a coffee shop.  ‘We don’t want to become another Park City’ they told us in hushed, apologetic tones.  This reminded us how we used to say that we didn’t want to become another Aspen in the old days, before we became another Vail.

 Why not, we admitted, let Bisbee be Bisbee – Mayberry on Acid – as they proclaim.  Let it be small and funky, floundering for identity but comfortable with who they are.  Be careful what you wish for Bisbee, Philipsburg and Park City, when God wants to punish you, he makes your dreams come true.

Valiens

 

Well Vail has spoken and the 9990 gate is closed for good.  They have thrown us an access bone to our public lands and left the Peak 5 gate open at all times for those who can navigate the obstructions and negotiate to the safe skiing.  We locals were not invited to the table for discussion but neither was the ski patrol, from what we have heard.  The stake holders were the corporate share holders, and maybe an accountant and a lawyer or two.  Its too bad since we might have agreed with them on this decision and then they would have had transparency as well as local and patrol buy-in and not our heightened disdain or dissent. 

We get It that it was a safety decision for the loss of life up there is unacceptable, but it was not a binary decision.  The 9990 gate cold have been equipped with a screening mechanism or the ski-patrol could have regulated it to prevent the uninformed or ill-equipped from using it during unsafe times.  Or the Peak 5 gate may be more dangerous.  Instead, the qualified and compliant are being punished for the actions of the unqualified and non-compliant. 

It won’t hurt Vail even if all 1800 signees of our Petition for Meaningful Discussion didn’t buy a pass this year but they are losing an important population of those who created that resort’s vibe. We did not invent this mountain town lifestyle, but we perfected it.   Park West, Pork Worst. Wolf Mountain, The Can or Park City, it does not matter what you call it, It’s about the people.  Vail needs us on that ridge line, they want us on that ridge line.  Every skier on that mountain would look up at those fine backcountry lines and think to them selves that they too could ski there, even if they never did.  Now they will look up at empty bowls with avalanche fences on them and wonder; what are they really for if not for ultimate powder skiing.  Isn’t that what it is all about. 

We don’t want our money back, we want our mountains back.  We want our town name as well as it’s reputation of low key, world class powder skiing.  Skiing at the Canyons has now become prosaic and pedantic instead of being world class like they advertise.  Weekend and holidays are off limits and Powder days are now a crowded joke where if you can get on the mountain by 1100 it is all skied out by those who have better credentials.  There is no public access to the local backcountry and public lands and we are forced to drive into the gridlock of the Wasatch Front or out to the Uintas for long approaches and alternative fall lines. 

Vail’s gifts to our community are greater density developments, crowded slopes and roads, and a ‘Je ne sais quoi’ attitude towards our local thoughts and opinions.  We made our Faustian deal with the devil for their cheap season ski passes and found that everyone in town has one, not to mention Salt Lake City, Colorado, LA, New York, Switzerland, and Australia.  Their hostile takeover of our resorts has resulted with us as the vanquished, relegated to the backseat with nothing to say.  It’s either that or pack our little boxes and get out.   Is that being a good neighbor?  Now as they parcel out their inholdings they are asking for bigger buildings, higher densities and less restrictions along with better busses, parking, roads and services.  Its like they own the place.  And maybe they do.

Vail is the biggest employer in town but they impose their will with impunity.  We are only a small handful of interested skiers that are easy to ignore but we believe our politicians and leaders should step up to this corporation on land access and other issues, in a public forum where it is not so easy to ignore the will and wishes of the people.  This is not a company town yet and only good conversations and communication will keep it that way.  Keep this in mind next November when we determine who will have these conversations.   It is time for our public officials to stand up to the bully corporate ski industry to give voice to their constituents to save our quality of life and the soul of our town.

Equal TIme

 

It seems symptomatic to me that while this town struggles for its philosophical soul and balance, this venerable newspaper replaces an old school and respected columnist with a pro growth newcomer, the Director of the Chamber of Commerce.  What’s next, having Vail write a column on expanding development densities and zoning changes?  Is this equivalent to the fox guarding the hen house?  Where is the balance, where is the local opinion, where is the consideration of those who live and work here?

Now she is probably a very nice person, and she certainly is a good writer and very professional with good vision and values, but do we really need another public cheerleader for oxymorons such as ‘sustainable growth’ or ‘industrial tourism’.   Existing columnists Tom and Amy are polite and funny, and Terri is a great historical and matriarchal grounding influence so maybe we need another columnist to bring up alternative opinions on growth, economics and politics and the skiing industry. 

The Chamber, along with the Main Street Merchants, have always been very effective, maybe too effective, and have spurred unprecedented growth and economic development even during down times.  They were especially quick to recognize the ‘driving solutions’ to the Covid crisis and continued to put heads in beds and welcome the car culture to town this past year.  They deserve our thanks and support as well as our opinions on Sundance, Olympics, the Art Festival and the future of our town.

At a Leadership Meeting, years ago, I asked them when enough would be enough and was told that our economy was like a swimming shark and that to slow it or stop it would mean death.  I countered with the belief that endless growth is the mindset of a cancer cell, and we should be careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.  Maybe the Chamber and Merchants are too powerful or outdated and they are entities that need to be questioned or revised.  Do we really need to fill all the beds all the time, have three or four events each weekend or sell more and more T-shirts on Main Street?  What about the people who live here?  Isn’t it our town too?  What price can we put on peace and quiet, a weekend off or perhaps even a shoulder season?

So, I ask for an equal voice and column space for the dissenters, those who support our quality of life and not just real estate, development, and the almighty dollar.  Why don’t we give Rich Wyman a shot with his pointed questions about the next Olympics, or Peter Marth and Kathyrn Decker battling up on the top of Main Street for residential district rights, or even Myles or Dana or John Haney for some old ideas and new opinions on one way streets, satellite parking  or affordable housing.  I realize they don’t run for office or buy advertisement or support the newspaper in many ways but they represent who we are or who we could be and they deserve a voice too.  There is a place for the Chamber’s opinions, but do we need it every week?   What about the rest of us?

 

Perspective IV - Positive Solutions

 

Councilman Tim Henney once told me that I should recognize some of the good things in Park City and be thankful, otherwise I’m just another old curmudgeon grumbling in my beer.  Tim is usually the smartest guy in the room, if Chris Robinson is not there, so here it goes:  

Park City has a Northern Colorado Plateau, high desert - mountain climate with 300 inches of light-dry snow each year, cold-wet winters and cool-dry summers.  We have two local world class, destination ski resorts, with several others nearby and copious, public land backcountry that provide some of the best skiing in the USA.  We have several beautiful lakes and forests nearby and the Uinta Mountains - Utah’s Yellowstone without Grizzley bears.  We have over 500 miles of regional mountain bike trails, not to mention the paved bike trails and wide shoulder bike lanes.  We have a world class Film Festivals, Art Festivals and Silly Markets and we host more special events and cultural happenings in this town than you can shake a stick at.  We have great restaurants and bars, galleries and T-shirt stores, bike and ski shops, coffee bars and sushi-smoothie stands. 

I’ve also been told that I should supply solutions to problems that I highlight, or else I am just bitching into my beard.  So here are some of my transportation ideas, however personal or draconian:  Day skiers should not drive past Kimball Junction.  Parking at the ski resorts should be paid parking only with the profits going to regional transportation.  Workers, locals and day skiers should use the bus and the park-and-ride lots or pay dearly for parking at the resorts.  Rental cars should be verboten and overnight visitors should use the bus too.   Workers should be paid for their bus commute time and skiers that ride the bus should get free coffee at the resorts.  You need to use the stick and the carrot to get people on busses.  Busses should have bus lanes so they go faster than traffic and major intersections should use all available lanes and shoulders for traffic flow.  This town should be a No-Park City Zone.  I don’t care what the Chamber of Commerce says.  They put enough heads in beds. 

No one should drive to Main Street for special events.  Main street does not need any more big events since it is a strong enough attraction to stand on its own.  It is our hometown, not Disneyland.  Festivals should be held out at the Kimball Junction - Redstone Center or the new Culture Center and not in a residential, dead end, box canyon like Old Town.  Commercial Main Street should be one-way, up, with diagonal parking and a return towards more parking down a one-way Swede Alley.  Main Street should be a pedestrian mall after 500 PM and for special occasions like it was during the Olympics.  I don’t care what the Main Street Merchants say, they sell enough Tee Shirts. 

We are fortunate to have countless great, active citizens in Park City.  We have new movers-and-shakers with fresh ideas as well as wise old timers who still set the friendly vibe for the town and smile and say ‘hello’ or ‘on your left’ when they pass.  It is still more about people and lifestyle than money and stuff, recreation is still the metric and free time is still the barometer here.  Yes, we could stand a few improvements to resist money grabbing, car-culture domination and keep up with our own success.  Park City doesn’t suck, its people rock, and it is still a pretty great place to live or visit.  Let us be thankful and work hard, together, to keep it that way.

Perspective III - Traffic

We used to imagine that we could control development with our limited water supply, but if you have privilege or wealth in the west, you have water.  Water flows to priority and money.  We solved that problem with regionalization, cooperation, conservation, good engineering, and money.  Well done.  I vacation in small Central Coast towns that have little water, want no extra water and control growth with water shortages.  This is an effective but a cowardice way of confronting development.

We thought that traffic would be the equitable, growth limiting factor in PC because you can’t use privilege or buy your way out of a traffic jam.  We told UDOT years ago that we were not ‘Flyover people’ so they redesigned Kimball Junction in just two doomed dimensions.  Then we put a two mile center lane planter box in the middle of our other entry corridor on 248. 

We have 10,000 – 20,000 units to be built around here over the next ten to twenty years.  More and more of these people will live here full time.  That’s 100,000 to 200,000 new car trips a day!  We already have grid-lock on weekends, powder days and during festivals.  While it is reprehensible to the locals what has become of our crowded streets, new people don’t think it is that bad compared to where they came from.  Perspective is everything.

We still have redundant double-wide shoulders, huge empty center-lane dividers, bike lanes AND bike paths on our major roads when shoulders could be used for traffic flow, turning movements or for bus lanes, as they were during the Olympics.  We also have a one lane exit ramp from I-80 east to UT-40 south that worked better as a 2 lane exit during the Olympics.  The Olympic traffic that we saw in 2002 is our daily traffic now and the traffic for the next Olympics is the traffic of our future and should be considered now. 

We have crazy, painted impressionistic bike lanes on the Pinebrook Frontage Road and on Park Avenue that no one understands or can follow.    We can’t pave our way out of traffic jams, but we can be consistent with road widths to avoid unnecessary pinch point constrictions and ineffective zipping.   We have competing and redundant bus systems (with empty buses and unobtainable park-and-ride lots out on the perimeter) that go no faster than traffic and have no bus lanes to drive in during peak hours. 

We have traffic light systems that are not fully coordinated or actuated with simple sensors and microprocessors, and we have traffic planners depending on Apps, bogus studies, social media, mapping and ebikes to solve our problems.  We still have busses, trucks and utility vans trolling over Guardsman, through old town and residential areas, looking for the quickest routes on their Google-Maps App.  We have traffic consultants pushing data and reports that they have not analyzed or even read.  Luckily, we have Randy Barton to tell us of the true traffic catastrophes on the radio or we would all be doomed.

Traffic is about trip generation and trip attraction, pressure, flow, velocity, and friction.  It behaves just like water and electricity.  It is iterative and adaptable, changing constantly, living, and responsive, psychologically correcting and compensating, dependent mostly on one critical mechanism – the nut behind the wheel.  We could all do better by hanging up, paying attention, and driving safely.  Yield to the right and to roundabouts, green means go, red means stop, yellow does not mean ‘punch it’.

In the end it is about supply and demand.  We need to provide more supply or less demand for our hydrologic and transportation systems.  Don’t count on water or traffic to control growth.  It takes leadership with vision and spine.  So, we ask our new and old leaders to think ahead, sac-up and save this town from itself and its success.