In musing about the summer so far, a few high notes come to mind, along with some rumblings:

Baby birds

Front and center in the yard and on hikes over the past month have been the baby birds. An American robin family hatched and raised three blotchy-breasted babies in this summer’s first brood in my neighborhood. At one point, I looked out my window and saw the two parents scooting across the length of the lawn like the silly-looking cartoon roadrunner. On further investigation, I noticed the target of the parents’ attention — one of the youngsters sitting quietly on a rock in the perennial herb garden. What a classic nuclear family!

Hiking up Red Hill the other day, an energetic collection of baby mountain chickadees, juniper titmice, mountain bluebirds, and white-breasted nuthatches were making chortles, sweet whimpers, violent squawks, and gasps. The parents of this winged nursery poked, pecked, and swooped for food to keep their charges happy. I’m sure human parents, especially moms, can relate.

Airport economics

Also on the topic of taking flight, I have to raise the fairly recent news report announcing the annual economic impact of the state’s airports. The Aspen/Pitkin County Airport rated third-highest in the state, with slightly more than $1 billion in economic contribution. According to the reporting, this amount covers payroll, sales, and spending related to the operations and businesses at the airport, plus a “multiplier effect” applied to these figures to capture the ripple effect of the subsequent local spending by the employees. The analysis also included the expenditures contributed to the local economy by flying visitors, along with another round of economic multipliers.

But didn’t Aspen’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory single out the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport as the superstar of carbon emissions? It indicated that the airport was responsible for 41 percent of the area’s total emissions (62 percent of transportation-related emissions), equating to 344,487 tons of CO2 in rescent years. I didn’t see any accounting of these costs in the economic impact analysis, or of other social and environmental costs of airports such as noise and air pollution. Remember how nice and quiet it was when the airport was shut down for two months last spring? Interestingly, the analysis decided to add the economic impact of the airport construction, but not the value of quiet skies (which could be thought of as a cost of a working airport). Did anyone visit Aspen via some other mode of transportation when the airport was closed? They probably did (and enjoyed a lovely, peaceful time), which makes it sketchy to tie the expenditures made by visitors who fly here directly to the presence of the airport.

Economics does have its creative side.

Bike/ped friendliness

I just returned from a trip to Boulder. Since I stayed right in town, I spent a lot of time riding my bike around to do errands and enjoy the evenings along the Boulder Creek bike path. When I lived in Boulder in the mid-1990s, it was already friendly to bikes and pedestrians. But it’s even more so now, as most of the major streets have crosswalks with the flashing light option (just push the button, and the lights flashes for motorists to stop: Instant power to the walker-biker).

There is a similar feature on Aspen’s Main Street at Paepcke Park. It’s a good thing, as I’ve seen many pedestrians on Main Street this summer standing at crosswalks like forgotten props. Flashing reminders about pedestrians’ rights can’t hurt.

It would be nice to extend this awareness to Highway 82: The other day I crossed Highway 82 from Highway 133 on my bike, and it was a scary proposition. This was not because of the bridge construction (I intentionally chose a Sunday morning for this adventure). It was because a driver traveling downvalley, talking on her cell phone, ignored the red light and proceeded to pull right into the turnoff to Red Hill and the park-and-ride. She stopped mid-intersection, amazed to see that a truck and a measly biker were actually taking our green light cue to cross the highway into that exact location.

Drivers, be alert — we share the road and every intersection with an increasing number of bus-goers, bikers, and pedestrians. I don’t know why people speed on Highway 82, anyway. It isn’t going to do you any good. See you at the next stoplight.

Kristine Crandall welcomes e-mail comments at birke@sopris.net [1].