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Transportation conundrums

LAKE TAHOE, Calif./Nev. — Like everywhere else, roads and streets around Lake Tahoe are congested with cars, and it’s getting worse. In response, some see a combination of rail transportation and boats across the lake being the answer.

LAKE TAHOE, Calif./Nev. — Like everywhere else, roads and streets around Lake Tahoe are congested with cars, and it’s getting worse.

In response, some see a combination of rail transportation and boats across the lake being the answer. This vision of the future, as explained in the Tahoe Daily Tribune, is a remembrance of the past. Among these visionaries is Gunar Henrieolle, who has 18 rail cars that he purchased from the City of San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the new leader of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, John Singlaub, is hoping to have a unified vision in place by 2007. "If we have any hope of having an Olympics near the lake, we’d have to deal with the gridlock. Right now we can’t even handle Presidents Day weekend."

Others, such as Chris Swan, who owns a San Francisco-based company called Suntrain, foresees trains powered by a combination of solar energy and fuel cells. The salvation he sees is development of hydrogen fuel cells, which he predicts will be in place by 2006.

Tax-increment financing proposed

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — Several business and property owners at the base of the Steamboat ski area, including the ski area operator, are assembling a proposal to use tax-increment financing as a way of financing public improvements such as roads and pedestrian paths.

A similar but more ambitious plan was rejected in 1999, notes The Steamboat Pilot. That previous plan envisioned steering $150 million in property taxes back into improvements. This one, in a bar-napkin estimate, would divert $5 million to $10 million in tax money that would otherwise go to county and other property-taxing governments. School taxes, however, are exempted.

Paul Hughes, Steamboat’s city manager, suggested city council members would be receptive to the proposal. "With the right boundaries, it would probably be well received."

Many have seen Steamboat’s base area as so dysfunctional that it has deterred real estate reinvestment.

Much ado about Hemingway house

KETCHUM, Idaho — A proposal to allow public access into the Ketchum home where the author Ernest Hemingway committed suicide is drawing opposition.

Hemingway’s fourth and last wife, Mary, willed the house to the Nature Conservancy with the understanding that it not be open to the public, explains USA Today. But Hemingway’s granddaughter, Mariel, an actress, thinks that times have changed.

"It doesn’t have the same validity that it used to, worrying about whether he committed suicide," she says. "It’s a fact of life that he did. It’s part of the tremendous colour of his existence."

Hemingway began spending time at nearby Sun Valley in the 1930s when completing For Whom the Bell Tolls. He bought the house in 1959, and two years later, when he was 61, shot himself with a 12-gauge shot gun.

Among those opposing the opening of the house to the public are neighbours. The house is not currently identified. Doing so, say some, will cause a public distraction. "It’s a land-use issue, not a Hemingway issue," says one neighbour.

But a Hemingway scholar from South Carolina told the newspaper that the neighbourhoods have it backwards. "It’s too bad about these people who don’t want the peasants parking in their streets," said Matthew Bruccoli. "But the claims of literature override anything else."

Other Hemingway homes, in Cuba and in the Keys of Florida, are already open to the public.

Snowpack only 60 per cent

FRASER, Colo. — May is often mudluscious in mountain towns, including Fraser, a sibling to Winter Park located at about 9,000 feet in elevation near the Continental Divide.

Mud looks to be in short supply this year, though. A photo in the Winter Park Manifest in late April showed a road that appeared to be as dusty as might be expected in July. Indeed, the snowpack is so low that runoff in the upper Colorado River basin this year is estimated at only 60 per cent of normal.

Terrain parks geared for beginners

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — Crews will be busy at three of the four ski resorts in Summit County to expand and modify the terrain parks.

The theme seems to be to create better increments for beginners and intermediates, instead of providing more features geared strictly to expert riders, explains the Summit Daily News.

At Copper Mountain, for example, another 25 rails and boxes are to be added to the existing 45. "We’re definitely going to be building more rails and boxes that cater to all ability levels," said Doug Hagen, the terrain park supervisor.

Chairs instead of a gondola

BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — Ever since Telluride plunged ahead in the mid-1990s with a gondola connecting the old and new towns, ski communities in Colorado have been toying with the idea of gondolas as key people movers.

The story from Avon and Beaver Creek suggests a more difficult calculus.

From the opening of the resort in 1981, diesel buses have been the primary means of transportation to connect Avon, on the valley floor, with Beaver Creek Village two miles up the tributary valley. But the buses were never intended as the ultimate solution. With the rapid growth at Beaver Creek, now around 800,000 skiers, the noisy and smelly buses are struggling to meet demand.

At first, Vail Resorts investigated a tracked funicular. It was vetoed as too expensive. Then, last year, a gondola estimated to cost $30 million to $40 million was announced. It was to have begun at Vail Resorts’ property in Avon at an 18-acre strip called The Confluence, continued to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Bachelor Gulch and then on to the western ridge at Beaver Creek.

Avon leaders enthusiastically embraced the idea of a gondola that would have, in effect, made the town slope-side real estate, but balked at paying $6 million, as Vail Resorts wanted. As well, plans for commercial and residential real estate development at The Confluence did not come together for reasons that have not been publicly disclosed.

So, instead, Vail Resorts is spending $13 million this year to install two high-speed lifts that are geared primarily to the more advanced local and Colorado skiers who are a large part of the mix at Beaver Creek. Also planned is a new 500-space parking lot at the bottom of the lift system. As well, there will be a lift ticket office, lockers, a rental shop, and a Starbucks coffee shop.

The idea of a gondola from Avon to the lift system – bridging both the Eagle River and Highway 6 – remains a possibility, officials say.

Density debate continues

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — The density debate continues in Jackson Hole.

First there was the plan to increase density potential in downtown Jackson, the valley’s only town. By increasing downtown density, said the city council, sprawl into the countryside would be reduced.

But town residents vetoed that plan. The up-zoning that would allow the density increase was not accompanied by a guarantee of reduced building potential in the unincorporated areas outside Jackson, said opponents. They won.

Now, a development proposal at the ski resort base, called Teton Village, has triggered a similar argument. The proposal calls for a substantial increase in building density. The proposal from the Rezor family, ranchers turned developers, calls for 478 housing units, plus a golf course, a big-box-store amount of commercial space, plus 812 parking spaces.

The strong and influential Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance has released a critique that says the proposed density is not accompanied by guarantees of reduced sprawl while protecting open space, ranch lands, and wildlife.

The Rezors, according to the Jackson Hole News & Guide, respond that the increased density is to accommodate more affordable housing. Two-thirds would be free-market, but nearly a third would be labelled as either affordable or attainable.

Ban on butts in Banff

BANFF, Alberta — For Banff businesses that currently allow smoking, Aug. 1 will be cold-turkey day.

A new municipal law authorizes several exemptions. Smoking will still be permitted on outdoor patios or decks where staff does not provide service. And second, smokers will be allowed to congregate in designated smoking rooms that are fully enclosed and ventilated, although they will not be serviced.

"As usual, when things are designed by a committee, it looks a bit like a camel," observed the Rocky Mountain Outlook of the new law.

Although generally supportive of the ban, the newspaper noted the hypocrisy of "forcing bars, which are in the business of peddling alcohol, to forbid their patrons from consuming another, equally harmful substance, tobacco."

Some friction in Revelstoke plans

REVELSTOKE, B.C. — Revelstoke Mayor Mark McKee acted swiftly in late April to calm what appeared to be a deteriorating situation regarding the potential development of the municipal ski hill, Mount Mackenzie, into a major resort.

"There was some posturing going on and some potential lawsuits," he told the Revelstoke Times Review.

The newspaper interviewed a one-time principal in the proposed resort development, Russ Powadiuk, but also acknowledged legal sabre rattling in a complex case. Cause of the dispute was not evident.

McKee, the mayor, inspected eight resorts in the Alps, returning to British Columbia espousing the virtues of essentially car-less resorts.