We’ve Figured out What it Will Take To Get Us to Ride the Bus
Bus. Bus. Bus. Everywhere you turn, you hear the word “bus” when people talk about solutions to our transportation problems. Unlike 80% of the people around Park City, we have actually taken the bus. Ok, that was just once and for a story. So, what would it take for us to become regular riders? We’ve figured it out.
- We would walk no more than 5 minutes to catch the bus.
- We would not drive, then park, and ride the bus.
- Buses would need to come every 10-15 minutes. If they came less frequently, we’d be at last half way to wherever we were going if we took our car.
- It would have to be an option we took every day. It couldn’t just be a Sundance thing. We’d need to think “bus first.”
- The bus would have to go close to where we go… Kimball Junction, Home Depot, Prospector, Willow Creek Park.
- We would walk no more than 5 minutes from the bus stop to our final destination.
- The bus couldn’t take more than 5 minutes more time than it takes by car. We are already walking 5 minutes, waiting up to 10 minutes, and walking 5 more minutes.
- We’d pay a couple of bucks.
We may sound like uncaring dolts, but at least we are being honest. What would it take for you to ride the bus?
Summit County… Please Please Please Please Please Do Not Waste Our Money on the RideAmigos Transportation App
Summit County has been looking at a number of ways to help the transportation issue around Park City. Some initiatives seem more logical than others. However, we couldn’t be more opposed to the county spending $7,000 per month on the RideAmigos.com platform (plus 20 hours from a county employee every week). What does Ride Amigos do for you as a commuter?
- It provides a Trip Planner that includes information about buses, the time it takes to go from point A to point B when walking or riding a bike or driving, and information on carpools (or vanpooling).
- It gives you a Commuter Dashboard that lets you track your commuting statistics, get “virtual badges”, and track your competitions with others.
- It “Gamifies” your commute where you will get points for certain events and can share those on Facebook and Twitter.
- You can build your own transportation network, with other school parents, to visualize and cluster households to create carpools.
- You…yes you… can respond to surveys about transportation.
- You can plan your travel to events so you can carpool with others.
Please don’t get us wrong. As certified geeks, this sounds cool. The app looks nice. Clustering data to optimize carpools is ingenious. So, what’s the problem.
This isn’t something your average person around Park City is going to do. We can imagine someone saying, “Should I ski, hike, bike, exercise, take my kid to school, or work today? HMMM. Forget that, I’m going to earn virtual badges by using RideAmigos. Yeah!”
The other problems is that 90% of the really useful features are already handled by Park City’s MyStop Mobile app. You can find when buses are coming. It will kick you out to Google Maps to see the time it takes to walk, bike, or drive to a location.
As we see it, the most useful part of the service would be carpools and we wonder if anyone would really use that. Our carpools aren’t the type where we want to see if anyone wants to carpool with us to Target in Salt Lake today at 4PM. If people want to carpool, it would likely be to work. A regular car pool would be set up (more like a work vanpool). Do we need to spend $7,000 a month to do that (plus a part-time employee) through an app? Could Summit County start a program that encourages employers to carpool and then takes tiny fraction of that $7,000 per month and does something with it that would encourage employees to compete for the most carpools each month? Maybe something like giving $500 to the charity or school of their choice. Summit County could match riders to a carpool online or even over the phone to start with to see if the idea has legs. It would cost something but not much.
Then if no one carpools, which is likely the case after the initial momentum dies off, the program ends. Easy. Not much money wasted.
We hate to be cynical but this sounds like one of those “cool ideas.” However, we don’t think after a few hundred thousand dollars are spent, with little to show for it, it will seem quite as cool.
They Say We Need To Compromise on the Mountain Accord Tunnel. We Think We’ve Found the Compromise.
A very nice person sent through an uplifting story of human triumph, community, and determination. As one person put it, it is awe inspiring. So, if you haven’t seen this before, please take one minute to go read:
They told him it was impossible. It took him a hammer, a chisel, and 22 years to prove them wrong.
When you get back, please consider whether this isn’t the compromise we need for Mountain Accord. If the people who want a tunnel from Brighton to PCMR want it so badly, perhaps they should agree to personally show up every morning from 4AM – 7AM and dig that tunnel by hand.
If they want it that badly, we’d throw all of our support behind making their lifelong mission come true.
Another h/t to the person who shared this with us… It made our day.
in Vail
Are Park City and Vail Equals?
Have you seen the 1980’s movie Arthur starring Dudley Moore? It’s about a semi-lovable, rich drunk who is heir to a fortune. However, his father and grandmother decide that unless he marries a woman named Susan, who he doesn’t like, he will lose it all. While it’s not the greatest movie ever told, we’ve begun wondering if it’s perhaps a metaphor for Park City and Vail.
We were listening this morning to a Park City Planner on KPCW talking about Vail’s connection between PCMR and Canyons that’s coming. Leslie Thatcher bombarded the gentlemen with questions about the impacts of allowing the connection and every answer sounded like it had come straight out of Broomfield Colorado (the home of Vail). Ms Thatcher asked if this plan would bring more skiers to Park City. The response what that Vail said it would not. Ms Thatcher asked whether this would mean more parking is needed. The answer was no. To the casual listener, it was hard to keep one’s mouth from gaping in that “did he really say that” sort of way.
The interview started us to think about the relationship between Park City, Summit County, and Vail. Are the parties equals…. does one hold the upper hand? If you were to ask someone from our local government, we’d guess they would say we were all equals. Yet, we seem to remember that Vail gave over $500,000 to Park City non profits last year. We also have been told a $50 million investment will be made into the “New” PCMR. To us, that indicates who actually holds the upper hand.
Does that leave Park City a little bit like Arthur … someone who is tied to decisions made by the people with the purse strings? Like Arthur, could we stand up to our rich Grandmother and say NO? If we did, would she cut us off? Or would it end in a fairytale, like Arthur, who marries the woman he loves AND keeps the money. Doubtful.
We think it’s a good question to ask before we get too dependent on others.
This morning we heard that Park City Municipal wasn’t too concerned about the connection going over sensitive lands or that it exceeds height restrictions. Perhaps, like that lovable drunk, we are already dependent on our grandmother to take care of us. Let’s just hope in the future she doesn’t make us do something we really don’t want to do.
Mountain Accord’s agenda is to get taxpayers to fund tourism industry
This weekend’s Salt Lake Tribune had an interesting Op-ed from Patrick Shea who is a Salt Lake City attorney and a former director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Mr Shea’s points are:
- We’ve inherited a great treasure, in the form of the Central Wasatch.
- Our ancestors and the people here before us “were not motivated solely by financial gain. Instead, particularly for the pioneers, they understood there was an inherent moral obligation for ‘justice between generations.'”
- The plan being proposed “on an unsuspecting public” is for “certain financial interest, both public and private, to create a transportation system which will facilitate our tourism business.”
- We the citizens would be obligated to pay $3-$5 billion in our taxes for this.
- We run the risk that this plan actually destroys 60% of our water system.
- The promoters of Mountain Accord believe that Orrin Hatch will find a way for the Federal Government to fund the entire proposal, “tunnel and all”
- The centerpiece of Mountain Accord — planning for the future makes sense. “But we as citizens need to make sure that the short-term financial interest of a few don’t destroy the future for many.”
It’s an interesting argument. We hadn’t heard or thought of the Orrin Hatch play. We’re not sure it’s possible but you never know. We would suggest you read the op-ed in its entirety and see what you think.
h/t to the Friend of the Park Rag who told us we needed to read the op-ed
in Environment
FEMA to Deny Funds to States Whose Governors Deny Climate Change
We hope Utah isn’t counting on any disaster preparedness aid from FEMA. It appears the government agency is going to begin denying preparedness funds to states that have governors who deny the existence of global warming. According to Think Progress, Utah’s Governor Herbert fits into that category squarely.
Funds like these typically trickle down into local agencies for use in all sorts of ways. In the last 5 years, FEMA has given $1 billion to states to help get them ready for a natural disaster. We have to think Utah has received substantial funds for potential flooding, fires, and earthquakes over the past few years. It will be interesting to see whether the governor is willing to back down from his position, especially if this summer brings a high number of forest fires.
in Schools
Another Reason to Start Schools Later… Safety
We were out driving this morning at about 6:30, when we came upon a group of cars waiting to drop their kids off on the bus. As the bus approached from down the hill, all the kids started getting out of the cars and running across the road. This was before the bus had arrived and put out its stop sign.
The issue is that at 6:30 it’s still very dark and it would be very easy for a car to not see a kid. We don’t know that there has ever been an accident, but it’s not hard to envision a child being run over. If that were to happen, there would be a lot of questions about kids hopping on buses at the crack of dawn’s ass in the dark.
There has been a recent push by Dr John Hanrahan to start our school’s later due to better learning. This may be an additional reason supporting a later start that should factor into the discussion.
Has Running With ED’s Website Been Hacked?
This morning we heard a radio promo for Running with ED, so we typed “running with ed” into Google. It brings up the normal google listing but when you click on it, it takes you to a Viagra site (kind of funny when you think about it…except the hacking part of course).
Here is what it all looks like…
If you click on the first link… it takes you to:
Oops… Not good. It appears if you type the site www.runningwithed.com directly into the browser it works, though. That’s pretty strange.
Update: First, we don’t know exactly what has happened here. We have done some research into “Pharma Hacks” as they are called and our best guess on this is that someone was able to compromise Running With Ed’s WordPress based website. It appears if security is not handled properly it may be possible to upload something to the website causing the site to send people to other locations — like a Viagra website. The risk here is that if one piece of code was uploaded to their site to do this, other parts of their site may have been compromised, too. It appears they use a third party for registration and collecting money. So, at least that’s a good thing. We would just advise using caution on their site until they either confirm that everything is OK, or if this was a hack that this has been taken care of and they’ve had a security specialist look at all of their “code” to make sure there isn’t something else nasty in there.
in Development, Economy
We Couldn’t Agree More With This Weekend’s Park Record Edtorial
In Saturday’s Park Record, the Park Record Editorial Staff advocate forcing the Boyer Tech Park to keep it’s original mission: Bringing high paying tech jobs to Park City. It seems the development company behind the 1 million + square feet of allotted space in Kimball Junction want to relax the rules to allow other types of businesses be housed at “The Tech Park.”
If changes are allowed to the original agreement, it goes against what most Basin residents originally thought they were agreeing to when they put support behind diversifying our economy through more advanced jobs (and approving this development).
Would you allow BOSAC (Basin Open Space Advisory Committee) to buy lands with public money under the auspices of making them open space and then allow them to sell the land to a Dollar Store because it was convenient?No. In this case, the development was approved with a lot of density (i.e. a ton of space per square foot) because we the citizens wanted to diversify the community through high paying tech jobs.
We believe the community still wants this. We don’t need more restaurants and stores with minimum wage jobs, we need jobs that allow the middle class to live here and our children to come back. We hope our elected officials still agree with that.
Here is the link to the editorial, in case you haven’t read it.
in Housing
8% of Summit County Mortgages Under Water
A recent report by Zillow indicates 8% of Summit County homes with mortgages are financially under water. Under water means that the home is valued at less than the mortgage amount. This is low compared to the national average of 16.7%. So, from that perspective Summit County is looking good.
That said, if we are depending on people moving here to spur growth, increase our government revenues, and ensure as many people live here as possible, other areas like Davis and Salt Lake counties have higher underwater rates. For instance Davis County, which is one of the locations where the most net immigration to Summit County comes from is at 17%. Salt Lake County is at 20% underwater. If people can’t sell their homes their (because of owing more than the house is worth) then they can’t move here.
So, if you are one of those people who are counting on a big population influx from the valley, you better hope home values start increasing rapidly.
Parkrag
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