It seems Park City has more money than sense

“A town with money is a little like the mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and dang’d if he knows how to use it.”

In TV lore, it doesn’t get better than when Conan O’Brian wrote those words for the Simpsons episode “Marge versus the Monorail” back in 1993.

In 2017, Park City government seems to have got a little bit of mule in them.

Park City Municipal is considering entering into a pilot agreement with Downtowner, Inc. to provide up to four cars to transport people in Park City short distances. For example, the service may shuttle someone from their home to a bus stop. Sounds good.

People can use an app and request a pickup. Sounds good.

The city says we’ll take a number of cars off the road because it will be easy for people to take buses. Sounds good.

That all sounds good. However, when you get to the cost, which is $68,000 per month during peak periods, it starts to lose its luster.

So, why is Park City considering this?

According to Park City Municipal documents, “Park City’s transit ridership has been relatively stable over the last five years…In order to increase ridership in these markets it is necessary to better serve the residential populations of Park City by providing better service into underserved neighborhoods. Additionally, many areas require a somewhat lengthy walk or bike ride over varying topography or without adequate and/or safe bicycle and pedestrian facilities which can deter non-transit dependent populations from utilizing public transportation. Providing all electric on-demand response app based transit provides additional and attractive alternatives to the private automobile and seeks to eliminate the ‘first mile/last mile’ barrier and furthers the City’s energy and transportation related goals.”

So, the plan is to hire an outside company to have between 2 and 4 electric cars rove areas of the city between 11A and 11PM. Those areas include: Old Town, Prospector, Bonanza Park, Thaynes, and Aerie neighborhoods. Park Meadows and Aspen Springs may be considered later for inclusion. There will be an app (smilier to Uber or Left) that people will use to request a ride and an electric vehicle will arrive a few minutes later and take them to their destination.

On its surface, we like the concept of finding ways to shuttle people from deep in neighborhoods to bus stops. However, we’re not sure this service is actually going to prioritize that.

In some ways we are fortunate to have a”sister” city who has plunged into the use of the Downtowner before us. Aspen has been using the service since April 2016. They recently renewed their contract for another 7 months for $280,000. That’s about $80,000 less than Park City’s deal, and includes one more month. We’re not sure if Aspen has fewer vehicles, whether that are using different vehicles, or if we are just paying Park City prices (as usual).

What’s also interesting is that Aspen is averaging around 2,000 rides per month using the service. One might ask, what’s the cost of a taxi ride in the narrowly confined area proposed for this service? $20? $25? The $60,000 a month invested in this service would probably buy 2,500 to 3,000 taxi rides per month in this are. So, it seems we may be expecting 25% to 50% greater usage than they have in Aspen, in order to break even.

Park City says they are also aware of the impact on the taxi industry. They have heard from taxi representatives on the topic. However, again, Aspen is instructive. According to a post relating to Aspen’s use of the Downtowner Inc. service, it has decreased taxi revenue by 15%-30%.

Aside from the comparisons, one must also step back and say, “Is this the best use of $60,000 a month?” Maybe we are naive and perhaps Park City spends more than $60,000 on break-room cookies a year, but it seems like real money. IT seems that sort of money could pay the rent of 45 people a year. It could subsidize affordable housing for hundreds. It could fix a number of roads. It could probably buy a fleet of natural gas mini vans (and pay for their drivers) to continuously shuttle people from the neighborhoods to bus stops (if that really is the goal).