Ignoring Regional Differences Is the Fundamental Problem With the Mountain Accord
We’ve been looking at the Mountain Accord, the plan for uniting the Wasatch via trains, planes buses, and automobiles. Something didn’t sit quite right but we couldn’t put our finger on it. Then this morning Peter Metcalf, CEO of Black Diamond Equipment, was on KPCW. Leslie Thatcher asked Mr Metcalf, who had served on the Executive Committee of the Mountain Accord (and is a Summit County resident) where he stood on the Accord. He said:
That sounds great in theory. However, in practice, the back side of the Wasatch is very different from the front side. It’s even unfair to say that the front side is necessarily similar. When you drive through the Avenues how similar does it seem to Sandy? How different is Cottonwood Heights from Sugarhouse? It’s only 6 miles via I-215 but it’s truly a world away.
When we look at the Mountain Accord, it tries to look at the entire Wasatch as homogenous. “Let’s connect it all. Won’t that be AWESOME!” Yet, there are differences that fundamentally should influence how one approaches the region. Sandy had its growth in the 80’s and 90’s. Compared to that, Wasatch County is a babe-in-arms. It’s looking at a future that’s just begun. Park City is a world-renowned resort community that lives and dies off of tourism (Sundance and mountain sports). Sandy is generally a suburb where its “wholesome lifestyle” and good schools make it ideal to raise kids. Summit County is a mix of second home owners, commuters, people desiring a rural lifestyle, and outdoor enthusiasts. Does that mix sound like Salt Lake City to you?
If Park City is truly like Salt Lake City then Donna McAleer would be in the US House of Representatives instead of Rob Bishop. Yet, we know how that turned out.
The truth is that different areas of the Wasatch are … different. They are at different points in their “lives.” They have different backgrounds… different needs…different pros…. and different cons. By trying to define a regional solution they are willing to sacrifice what makes Park City great for the benefit of the Wasatch Front. They are willing to enable a horde of day-skiers to flood our mountains without contributing to what has made Park City successful.
If they truly wanted to maximize Park City, they would look deep into our soul and optimize what has made Park City great. They would figure out how to reduce traffic while making it easy for tourists to experience our town. Instead they seemed focused on enabling Sandy to be a hub for locals wanting to ski and perhaps build a few more Motel 6’s along the train tracks.
That may be great for them but it’s not for us. We need to start calling what it what it really is… the Sandy Accord or perhaps the Cottonwood Accord (that has a nice ring to it). It may be just what Sandy wants but it’s getting really hard to see a benefit for Park City and Summit County.
Does UDOT Need The Olympics to Fulfill Its Mountain Accord Dreams?
We’ve drawn our conclusion on who is running the Mountain Accord show — Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT). We’ve also seen the Mountain Accord Blueprint which calls for transportation from I-15 in Sandy… to the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon … up the canyon to Alta… then over to Brighton …through the mountain… and into Park City. UDOT’s Blueprint says the line could be bus or rail. Given a plan as ambitious as the Mountain Accord, we’ll just assume that their ambition is rail. It meets a number of requirements likely needed to seal this deal. What does rail cost? Good question.
Tom Clyde, in last Saturday’s Park Record, calculated that it would cost $1.4 Billion, excluding tunnels, to build a line from Sandy up to PCMR and over to Kimball Junction. He used the price of the airport line recently constructed in Salt Lake ($50 million per mile). That also happened to be the cheapest light rail constructed at the time. Park City Mayor Jack Thomas quoted a price of $66 million per mile. We still think that’s low. Today, due to increasing costs, the average light rail is $100 million per mile. Honolulu is building an elevated light rail at $250 million per mile. Seattle is building an underground light rail at $600 million per mile. So, let’s say our light rail will be 25% more than average at $125 million per mile. Going up and then through a mountain has to be more expensive than average. So, the cost may actually reach $3.5 billion.
In today’s world, “billions” get thrown around a lot; however, that is still a lot of money. UTA (Utah Transit Authority) has an annual budget of $200 million. UDOT has a budget of a little over $1 billion for the entire state. Park City’s budget is about $90 million. Summit County’s budget is about $50 million. $3.5 billion is 17 times UTA’s annual budget, 38 times Park City’s annual budget, 70 times Summit County’s annual budget, and 3 times UDOT’s annual statewide budget. Simply put, the money isn’t there. While it could likely be financed through a series of bonds and tax increases, that would be an expensive way to go.
With that in mind, we were reading a Washington Post article entitled Boston may need the Olympics to fix its problems, which is bad news for all of us. It seems Boston’s subway system is crumbling, the main railway station needs expansion, and there isn’t enough housing. The “solution”… at least to some… is the 2024 Summer Olympics. This leads us to the 2026 Winter Olympics, which Salt Lake City is the front runner for the US bid…if the US Olympic Committee decides to bid. The draw of Salt Lake is that it has much of the required infrastructure. We have a stadium. We have mountain resorts. We have indoor venues. About the only thing we would need is… you guessed it… better transportation.
What better way to get the government to chip in some money? What better way to get Utahns to chip in a chunk of money? Heck, it worked for the Russians. They spent $50 billion on the last Winter Olympics and they did get a train out of it. Perhaps the Mountain Accord members should have gone there… but we digress.
Do we want an olympics? Would the US even bid on the 2026 winter olympics if Boston wins the 2024 Summer Games? Who would profit from an Olympics here? Those are all questions to be answered at some point. However, the question we are wondering is whether the Olympics are part of the grand plan. If not, we don’t really see how this is paid for.
in Real Estate
New Home Inventory and The Impact on Your Home Value
We read today that mortgage purchase applications are down 66% from their 2004 levels. It is the white line in the graph below:
We’ve speculated, and anecdotally confirmed, that many of the purchases of Park City real estate are cash-only and therefore don’t need a mortgage. Yet, when we look at the homes coming online we see Park City Heights, Silver Creek Village (yes, its finally starting up), and East Creek Ranch. Perhaps these have all been designed as luxury, second homes where the buyer will buy all-cash. More likely, though, they are trying to hit the $500K-$700K buyer who will need a mortgage.
So, our question is whether the buyers will be there when these are built? If not, we may be laughing at the big, shiny new home that fetches $500K instead of $600K in order to attract buyers. Then we may realize that our not-so-shiny old home that used to fetch $600K will likely fetch $460K. There goes that college fund.
Don’t worry, though, that $20 million home in Deer Valley will still sell for $30 million.
What Does a $22 Million Investment in Mountain Accord Buy? Control.
Let’s say you and your friends decided to start a business. You have come up with the greatest idea EVER on a new dog toy, but it’s going to take a huge investment to build your production facility in Park City. You are going to need $27 million dollars to build the factory, create marketing, pay employees, and get it into every Barking Cat store in the United States. You have $400K you can put into it. Your buddy Jason has $200,000 he’ll invest. All of your 11 other friends have a total of $5 million to put into it. Then there’s your uncle Mortimer … he has $22 million to invest. Sweet, you have your $27 million.
But what color do you make this fabulous dog toy? You like RED. Todd is fond of GREEN. Your other friends like BLUE, PURPLE, YELLOW, and ORANGE. Your Uncle Mortimer likes BROWN.
What color will the dog toy be?
Yep… BROWN.
Is it any different with Mountain Accord? No. Who is scheduled to donate $22 million to Mountain Accord? Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) — via the State of Utah.
He who controls the money… controls the future. At least we now know who is in charge.
Where Should We Start With our Mountain Accord Analysis?
Where do we start with the Mountain Accord? What better place to start than with a quote from one of Robert Redford’s best films, All the President’s Men:
And that is precisely where we will start. The latest budget we could find lays out that Mountain Accord will receive over $27 million by 2017 from it’s “partners.” Those partners include localities like Park City, the State of Utah, and a little private funding. This money will be used for program management, travel, planning consultants, PR, etc. It won’t actually build anything but will lay the foundation.
So, how much are people kicking in? Park City is scheduled to give $400,000 to Mountain Accord. Summit County is slated for $200,000. Salt Lake City is at $800,000. State of Utah (via UDTO and UTA) is at $22,000,000. HMMM. Now that’s money.
What does $22 million buy that $400 thousand doesn’t? We guess we’ll see. Who’s agenda is served first? We guess we’ll see that too.
What’s Does the Mountain Accord Truly Mean?
You may have heard of the The Mountain Accord, but what is it? That’s a good question. We wish we had a good answer. So let’s try to figure it out. The Mountain Accord Website describes it as:
So, the goal appears to be preserving natural resources, providing recreation, establishing transportation systems, and contributing to the economy. How will that be achieved? There have been many meetings over the past couple of years with stakeholders from government entities and local groups. These have culminated with a Proposed Blueprint for what the Mountain Accord would like to achieve in each of the four areas above.
- Environment
- Preserve land and watersheds by securing federal lands, working with ski resorts to put land in protective ownership, acquire private lands from sellers,
- Monitor environment with management plan
- Implement an environmental restoration plan
- Recreation
- Connect trails
- Work with ski resorts to put land into public ownership to preserve back country access
- Improve transit service to recreation destinations
- Explore additional user fees
- Economy
- Encourage development patterns that preserve community character
- Increase tax revenue that can be reinvested in preservation and restoration of central Wasatch
- Ensure Utah’s tourism market is competitive in the future
- Transportation
- High capacity transit in cottonwood canyons and Park City
- Transit incentives and automobile disincentives including pricing/parking strategies
- Improved transit between Quinn’s Junction and Kimball Junction
- Improve transit connections in Summit County
So, that’s basically it. There is more detail in the Blueprint but that’s the gist of it. The problem we have as a citizen is that we don’t really know what that means. We get that there are some good ideas in the plan but we also see some bad ideas. We see ideas that conflict. We see some things very specifically laid out and others that seem to be included to feel good. We see winners. We see losers.
So, we are going to try and explore the concept on Park Rag. As we figure it out for ourselves, we hope it may help others get their heads around the issue as well.
in Huh?
The Couple from Michigan Who Will Probably Never Ride Park City Buses Again
We decided we should spend some time riding Park City Buses, if we were going to understand what’s working and what’s not with our transit system. We headed to the bus stop in Kimball Junction by Silver Mountain to await our 2:53 PM pickup (the bus was a bit late). A nice couple from Michigan was already waiting. They said hi and we asked how the skiing had been on their trip. They replied that it was nice on the top of the mountain but down low was pretty slushy; overall they had never skied in such nice weather though (great attitude!).
As the bus pulled up, they asked us if this bus would take them to Main Street. They wanted to go shop and have dinner. It was a “7 Pink” bus pulling up, so we responded that it would eventually get to Main Street, but there could be a better option. So we said they should ask the bus driver. We could have replied, “Well you should download My Stop Mobile, Park City’s $1.2 million application from the Apple App store” but there isn’t really time for that when the bus is pulling up.
When asked by the couple, the bus driver replied, “oh no… you should take the Brown bus line”. The couple got off the bus and headed back to wait. The bus drove off, and as we looked at the couple sitting there, we wondered how long would they wait. It turns out that they would have plenty of time to download the MyStop Mobile App.
We looked up bus transportation data and it told us that if they would have taken the 7 Pink, they would have gotten to Main Street at 4:45. Granted, that is almost an hour later (ugh). However, if they waited on the Brown bus, they waited until 4:51 for it to pick them up and it wouldn’t have dropped them off until 5:17 (double ugh). Oh, and that same 7 Pink bus even came back through the same stop. So, hopefully they got wise and just hopped on it.
What is more likely is that they hopped in their car and drove to Main Street.
Now, is this just an anecdote? Sure. In this case were the buses running late? Yes. Does this happen all the time? We don’t know.
What we are sure of is that public transportation failed this couple. It also highlights the inherent problem with our public transportation system. The buses are scheduled too far apart and when something goes wrong (like being late), it causes a huge impact. Then, if we think about the times when buses are late due to heavy traffic (special events, big snow, rush hour, etc.) it’s also the same time we want more people to take the buses. So, the times we need buses are likely the times they fail.
So, you may say that we should run the buses more frequently. However, that requires that the demand is there to justify it. We’ve been looking at the ridership data, and except on a few key routes between PCMR and Deer Valley, it seems really low. We will share some of that data as soon as we have enough information to draw a full picture.
It also highlights a technological problem. Given that Park City has invested so much in an automated system to track buses, this information should be shared with their drivers. A bus driver should be able to easily pull up a screen with popular destinations, and then the system could use their current location and real-time data to enable the driver to tell that poor couple from Michigan, “normally you’d take the 8 Brown bus but today you should ride with me. We may be taking the scenic route but its the fastest way to get there and you’ll see a lot of what makes Park City great.”
Instead, the couple likely headed to Wendy’s to get a Frosty for their car drive in.
Which has less pollution … bus or car? You may be surprised.
Yesterday we linked to a study that suggested that light rail pollutes our environment less than buses. However, what we read today is a little more interesting. The Reason Foundation has published an article about greenhouse gas emissions and whether buses are superior to cars.
Like us initially, you probably believe buses are far superior. A study from Duke University backs up that idea with the conclusion that less greenhouse gases are produced by buses than cars. The only issue is that they calculated the optimal solution based buses being 63% full. In reality, most buses are far less full. The conclusion that the Reason article draws, is that in the real world, based on real-world ridership and occupancy of cars, people riding in cars typically produce less greenhouse gases because buses have very low ridership (as a whole).
Why this matters around Park City is that we are trying to plan our future transportation needs. Right now we are focused on how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B and buses seem to be the only feasible solution to that. However, greenhouse gases are an equally troubling issue. We don’t want the valley inversion to spread here.
So, in Park City are buses better for both traffic and the environment? We suppose that depends on what percentage of buses are full. We are looking into that and should have data shortly.
For now we are left wondering if it ends up being a battle between air quality and traffic. If it does, which do you care about more?
in We Love You
Are you willing to send your children to war?
At the Park Rag, we rarely touch state issues, let alone national or global issues. Yet, this morning we saw an NBC/Maris poll that stated two-thirds of Americans think we should send troops to defeat ISIS (the Islamic group in Syria and Iraq). President Obama has thus requested Congress to formally approve military intervention against ISIS. We are currently launching air strikes against ISIS so this likely means an escalation to boots on the ground.
This is a big deal. Lest we forget recent confrontations in Afghanistan or we forget recent confrontations in Iraq or even go back to the 1970’s and Vietnam, 5 years on things often morph into something larger than expected.
Often times we think there are no personal impacts. Yet, you can never be sure of that once a war formally begins. Our new Summit County Manager is in the National Guard. Could he be called to active duty? Sure.
While the population of the Snyderville Basin doesn’t typically lend itself to a military life and this scene from Family Guy is too close to reality…
… someone’s children will be fighting this war.
Now, you may believe that another war is worth it, that ISIS must be stopped, and that is fine. Everyone has their own opinion. What we ask is that you form an opinion and please let your congress person know.
Our fear is that we are repeating the mistakes of the past. This time, we have an opportunity to learn from those mistakes and decide whether you are willing to give up your child in order to stop whatever threat ISIS presents. Maybe it is important enough to you that you are willing to pay that sacrifice. If so, then you should let Orrin Hatch, Mike Lee, and Rob Bishop know. If not, you should really let them know.
Parkrag
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