I applaud Aspen City Council’s efforts to use innovative approaches to get people out of their cars. It is crucial to the quality of life of everyone in Aspen to solve the traffic problem.
Council members should continue Shift’s well-thought-out plan and give it a try. New approaches to transportation are taking over everywhere, and are sorely needed here.
The taxi industry is mired in old ways, which always has made the traveling public suffer because of the paucity of taxis and their high prices, and the difficulty summoning a taxi, and these facts are particularly the case in the Aspen area. Any taxi driver has the opportunity to work for Lyft and Uber, and be part of the solution. More plentiful, easier to use and cheaper taxi alternatives will get a lot of people to stop driving into the core.
Shift hopefully will get a portion of the commuters and workers, also. I noticed that last summer, with the construction at the Entrance to Aspen, traffic was considerably reduced, indicating to me that people driving into Aspen can be open to alternative transportation options. The bicycle shops also should understand that the uses of bikes proposed in the Shift program shouldn’t affect their business. It is tourists who rent their bikes, not commuters, and not city of Aspen residents.
In any event, don’t let this program die because a small number of people were against it. I’m sure that most voters are supportive and hope that traffic can be reduced through innovative approaches like Shift. In light of the history of the Entrance to Aspen quagmire, these kind of approaches may be the only solution for a long time to come.
Gerald Grayson
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