Lift Ogden's Bob Geiger has been carefully tracking the events and discussion following a Std-Ex September 21 guest commentary, “Streetcar deemed most appropriate transit system for Ogden.", by Professor Bryan Dorsey, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Urban and Regional Planning at WSU.
Mr. Geiger has submitted a detailed rebuttal piece, offering his own analysis, and updating developments since the original publication of the Dorsey article. In the interest of conserving front-page space, I've placed Mr. Geiger's article in the WCF archives. You can read the full article here.
Click the link to read this thoughtful Bob Geiger analysis, gentle readers; and if you have comments, press the back button to return to this page, and offer them here.
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17 comments:
As usual, everyone is getting the cart before the horse.
There are 200 parking spaces at the Intermodal Hub and 70% of those are leased to the IRS.
Where is everyone supposed to park downtown in order to ride the Gondola? Build more parking terraces? Where?
Now that I have been released from the emergency room I would like to report on the not much anticipated show down at high noon at the saloon between myself and that gun slinger from Lift Ogden Bob Geiger. Please bear with me as it is difficult to communicate with my jaws wired shut, my arm in a sling and this damn body cast.
After the smoke cleared and the blood and guts were scrapped off the walls he and I sat down for a few shots of sarsaparilla and a little lunch. I don’t recall what Geiger had to eat as my vision was still a little blurry, but I had the Chinese Crow salad (blended so's I could get it throught a straw) which was OK although a little tough to swallow.
As the conversation went on, and the Sarsaparilla took effect, I discovered that Bob was not the no good lyin mouthpiece for the evil Godfreyites that I has expected him to be.
On the contrary I found him to be a very bright and erudite young fella that is brimming over with enthusiasm and good intentions. He is scrupulously honest and is very earnest in his good intentions for our dear Ogden and its future.
So Bobby G. please accept my apology for all the nasty dispersions I have cast your way over the past couple of months, and when I recover I wouldn’t mind buyin another round. But please, if ya don’t mind, can ya leave the brass knuckles and knives at home?
To the rest of you folks out there please don’t get me wrong here as I am still an implacable foe of the nefarious Godfreyites and their numerous goof ball schemes, but I gotta tell ya that this young Gieger is one heck of a good guy who only wants what most of us do – a better future for Ogden.
Ozboy, the way you win a knife fight is to bring along a couple of close pals, Messers Smith & Wesson. Remember, you're dealing with a "Jarhead."
After the dust settles, the crow salad will taste tha much better.
Salude!
Great Job Bobby. I'm glad you kicked that dude's ass for him. He has had it coming for quite awhile now. How did you come out of it? Any serious wounds? Hope not.
Good job, troops!
I was kinda wondering what might happen when the US Marines met the US Army's "Screamin' Eagles," the 101st Airborne for "lunch" at some Ogden yuppie gathering place.
As usual in most such scraps, you two guys "duked it out" a little bit (four hours we've been told), fought it out bitterly, fighting each other from the entry-way into the kitchen for 4 hours; and then you both finally discovered you're BOTH FIGHTING ON THE SAME FRIGGIN' SIDE!
Shee-ut!
Typical US military conduct.
Ten-Shun!
AT EASE, boys. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.
TEN-HUT! The situation's well in hand....the Marines have landed!
Ten-shun....That's the term of Army pukes!
Colonel Hayes -
It is not the military conduct that is the problem,
As always it's the friggen politicians!
On a national level,
On a local level...
Bernie - It is OzBoy, as in a boy from the land of Oz, and damn proud of it!
And the mayor is no republican but an old fashioned tax and spend liberal only without the heart. Now days they're called NeoCons or Central Planners. I just call em heartless bastards. In any event they may end up doing what the commies tried and couldn't do, destroy America.
But they will have to do it over my dead body...
That's right, Ozboy. Godfrey is known locally as a RINO...Republican in name only.
Otherwise...a NEOCON!
Well, if we can move past the mutual admiration society that seems to be developing here and the fascinating question of who enjoyed having lunch with who, and get back to discussing substantive questions about the gondola/gondola proposals [since as Mr. Geiger admits, it will take two of them to tango successfully]....
How about this: since the Downtown/WSU leg of the proposed gondola [to be built by private money or public money or some of both maybe, depending on who the Mayor has pitched most recently] will depend, as Mr. Geiger states, on its hooking up with the proposed privately-operated gondola to Mr. Peterson's Malan's Basin Ski Resort, I wonder if there is available a feasibility study regarding that west-slope ski resort. Will climate/temperature and snow conditions on the west slope permit commercial skiing at the elevation of Malan's Basin sufficient to support a ski resort? Odd, if such a study exists, that the proponents have not made it public. No bank would fund such a project without seeing such a study, conducted by a reputable firm in the ski industry. If one has been done, why hasn't it been made public? Or are Ogden's hapless taxpayers being asked yet again to buy a very expensive pig in a poke?
Nice plug Bernie! Next time I have trouble falling to sleep I'll check it out again. The last, and only time, I looked at your blog I yawned and fell right off to slumberland.
Dear Bernie:
OK. I understand your message. You don't think a feasibility study has been done either. At least we agree on that.
When banks are asked to finance ski developments, they usually insist that such studies be done first. Just last year, for example, Swiss banks increased the minimum elevation at which they would finance ski development by 1000' in light of a warming climate and declining snow accumulations at lower levels. The feasibility studies indicated development below the new minimum would be too financially risky.
Mr. Peterson is free to risk his own money as he pleases, of course, and if that were all that was involved, I'd have nothing more to say. But he's asking Ogden to risk a great deal as well. Even the most ardent advocates for the gondola/gondola project [e.g. Mr. Geiger] concede the downtown/WSU gondola will not work without a connection to an up-mountain gondola running to a ski resort. If a Malan's Basin resort fails, the city will be left with huge operating expenses to maintain a gondola designed primarily to carry skiers. The ridership estimates from Lift Ogden are based on the presumption of a ski resort at the other end of the gondola/gondola link. Not even the Lift Ogden group pretends that the downtown/WSU gondola is primarily an urban mass transit development anymore.
So, since Ogden taxpayers will be at risk for huge costs if the Malan's Basin resort fails, common sense would seem to suggest that the City Council commission such a study before commiting the city [and taxpayer dollars] to the scheme for decades into the future.
What Mr. Holding has to do with all this --- other than his apparent unwillingness to let the WSU/up mountain gondola connect to Snow Basin --- escapes me.
Anonymous is delighted Bernie is committed to civil discussion and finding information. Permit me to suggest he might wander over to www.smartgrowthogden.org for information about transit and urban development and related matters that may, just may, not be available at Lift Ogden meetings. Which, by the way, I've attended. The first one I went to trumpeted the gondola/gondola scheme as connecting downtown Ogden with Snow Basin. We heard all about world travellers coming to stay in Ogden hotels once they could take a gondola to the world-class resort at Snow Basin. We heard discussions about how the downtwown/Snow Basin gondola would reduce traffic in the canyon and relieve crowded Snow Basin parking lots. We heard, endlessly, about how Ogden had at its very doorsteps the Olympic downhill course and needed only the gondola/gondola plan for Ogden to rival Aspen and Park City as big money ski destinations.
But then, Snow Basin apparently said no. [I will not presume to read Mr. Holding's mind as you have as to the reason.]
When Snow Basin said no, Lift Ogden didn't miss a beat. Suddenly, the lynch-pin of Lift Ogden Scheme #1 [connecting downtown with Snow Basin by gondola] disappeared, and magically, a new all-season resort was proposed for Malan's Basin and the west slopes of Mt. Ogden. This was Lift Ogden Scheme #2.
This new resort, the plans for which the public has not yet seen, and a feasiblity study for which, regarding snow conditions at its elevation on the west slope apparently has not yet been conducted, was nevertheless pronounced by Lift Ogden representatives to be "a world class resort" to which skiers would flock from the world over, enabling Ogden to rival Park City and Aspen yet again.
Does the term "pie in the sky" ring a bell?
But I agree that what the public, the city council, the taxpayers, WSU and everyone involved in this discussion needs is information. Permit me to note that it was Mr. B. Geiger of Lift Ogden who told a Standard Examiner reporer that Lift Ogden was keeping plans secret out of fear that if the public knew what those plans were, opposition to the gondola/gondola scheme would increase.
But I contratulate you on your desire to get more information than Lift Ogden is willing to make public. The SmartGrowthOgden.org site might be a good place to begin.
Bernie:
Just against, not for anything? Didn't spend much time on the SmartGrowthOgden.org site, did you? You need to break away from the mayor's talking points. They're getting old. Check out the "transit" section at SmartGrowthOgden.org for example, just for openers. You'll find there the beginnings, but only the beginnings, of a discussion of the trolley alternative [the one the transit study ranked first for Ogden] and how trolley lines have worked to foster urban development and economic growth, particularly when they connect a city's "historic district" with other neighborhoods. Other posts deal with express bus service as an alternative that can be put into service quickly.
Unless of course you're convinced that folks advocating other transit solutions for Ogden than the one you favor are, necessarily, "just against" things. But glad you enjoyed your visit. Keep going back. They post new material all the time as their research continues.
Enjoyed the conversation. WeberCoForum is a good idea.
Just a point to clarify some misconceptions floating around these days.
Sadly Earl Holding is not in complete charge of the great empire he built almost single handidly. He had a stroke a year or so ago and is some what compromised. If he were driving this thing I believe it would not be happening like it is. It is inconceivable that he would be doing anything in league with the likes of Godfrey and the lame city council of Ogden. He is a winner and winners don't hang with losers, although they sometime have them as in laws.
Unfortunately his business genius has not passed down geneticaly and especially not by marriage.
Bernie -
I followed your advice about TV and the only thing I could find, after flipping through 115 channels, that was more boring than your blog was Mayor Godfrey's propoganda piece on channel 17.
You could make a fortune and finance all this Gondola BS if you were to market it to insomniacs nationwide.
Bernie:
I have to take exception with you on this one, again.
After reading your posts I believe that you are exceptionaly bright as is your nephew in law the Mayor! That's what is so scary about you guys!
If you truly were dull it would only be a fun game. we're playing here. The only apparent difference between the two of you is that you have a sense of humor and some contact with reality.
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