Editor’s note: This letter was addressed to the Aspen School Board and the Aspen City Council.
Editor:
A pedestrian only campus and downtown core area may sound quaint, peaceful, and idyllic in theory, but the way you’re slowly forcing it on us is painful! Let’s choose to either go there together all at once with a workable, smart design, or give up on it, and make lots of lanes, and lots of parking, so we don’t even notice traffic!
The 1970s decree our forefathers set forth of capping traffic levels was well intentioned, but there are more people downvalley, more jobs up here, and a four lane to a bigger airport, with more tourists now. Things have changed! If the intention of limiting autos was to decrease congestion, and improve the quality of life, and if the techniques we now implement to adhere to that decree actually increase congestion, and decrease the quality of life here, then it’s time reconsider our approach.
Our government has decided for us, that turning the valley into a Zermatt or Whistler is the way to go, with no cars, no room for cars, and everyone always using public transportation. Maybe that’d be nice too, but many businesses will suffer, and life will be cold, wet, and painfully inconvenient at times, when shopping, running errands, or taking our kids to a play date, performance, or sporting event when it’s 17 below out, or raining! Maybe that’s not what our citizens and our visitors really want. Jeffrey Evans, are you listening? You can’t force a vote on how the city’s policy is implemented, but you can force a vote on what that policy is! Do we want a car-less pedestrian valley, or do we want it to be convenient and easy for cars?
I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and argue that if there was plenty of free parking, and lots of big roads with too many lanes, we wouldn’t ruin the environment waiting, idling in traffic, or looping around endlessly looking for a space. OK, I don’t have evidence beyond common sense, that a carbon footprint would be equal if twice as many cars are used, but they run for half the time, but we wouldn’t even notice them if they all got where they’re going quickly and easily! Today, cars are starting to run cleaner, and technology may someday provide engines that even scrub the air, cleaning the atmosphere! Even if we don’t get there, I bet that one volcano that just blew in South America is spewing more smog, than if cars had always been electric, or had never been invented! When one wildfire can naturally inflict so much damage, should we futilely suffer such hardship and sacrifice every day?
Encouraging positive alternatives, like free, convenient buses, and wonderful bike paths, helping people to be more efficient and reduce pollution is all great! Green guilt and gas prices will discourage people enough, so why not make locals and guests feel welcomed to shop and enjoy time here, by ending all the negative disincentives like fees, eliminating parking options, promoting the S-curve congestion, and delaying that ongoing, dangerously narrow, potholed, bridge construction bottleneck!
Why not build the split shot, an auto bridge from the ARC to Tiehack, extra lanes for buses AND cars, public parking behind Rubey Park again, less lame landscaping at the ARC’s lot and the school’s campus, and require underground parking on new developments just like the employee housing requirements? The quality of life would be better, faster, easier, cheaper, and happier! Businesses would flourish, real estate values would soar, and we’d be a more popular destination! Use the carrot approach instead of the whip.
Please, consider how free and happy we’d all be, and how much nicer that would make us to each other, if you’d just ease up, and enact efficient designs to reduce congestion, and not punitively, in ways that really just causes more cars to be shuffling around our roads so slowly!
Comments
KNCB Moore in the early
KNCB Moore
in the early 1960's, i proposed that the new library and new schools be incorporated at the aspen meadows with the institute and maa tent. the plan was to use these facilities as a natural and pedestrian town campus for those interested in education, the humanities, music and art.
i am reminded that there are no big plans for aspen, there are only little planners and fools like me.
be brave comrades. kncbmoore