Mercilessly carrying yesterday's topic into yet another day, we now put the spotlight on interesting additional information provided in this afternoon's Standard/NET mid-day update, in which we get some very foggy statements (we're trying to be nice) from Michael Allegra, director of transit development for UTA.
While the article starts out with Mr. Allegra's comments, reaffirming yesterday's UTA position, i.e., that UTA has made no agreement for the funding of yet another gondola study, Mr. Allegra then seemingly makes an abrupt 180-degree turn, suggesting that UTA is head over heels in love with the "concept" of Gondola transit in Emerald City, with the apparent insinuation that such UTA funding will be readily available, merely upon Boss Godfrey's submission of an "acceptable plan."
Perhaps significantly, Mr. Allegra makes no mention of a year 2004 UTA gondola feasibility study, in which flatland ski-gondola transit finished dead-last in a field of three.
We've been out all day and thus haven't been able to devote much time to ponder what Mr. Allegra's reported statements really mean -- if anything.
So we ask our readers this: Is Mr. Allegra officially "hedging" on UTA's statements of yesterday... or are these merely the inarticulate mumblings of that UTA "guy" whom the UTA lawyers would really prefer not to make statements to the press?
Perhaps out gentle readers can help us out with their interpretations.
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6 comments:
Rudi:
I've had some emails suggesting that Mr. Schwebke just didn't understand the situation and was making far more of the matter than it merits. If that is so, and I'm by no means convinved that it is, no one could blame him if what he got from UTA was the bucket of smoke in the "official" UTA response you linked to from Mr. Allegra.
Let's look at what it says: (a) UTA DID allocate $200,000 for a gondola-as-transit study. [Point to Schwebke] (b) UTA has not spent any of the money yet, only because Mayor Godfrey has not been able to get his act together to come up with an acceptable management plan [Note to UTA: get used to this if you are going to continue to provide, or even to promise to provide, a UTA Gondola Slush Fund for Hizzonah. The long promised "Peterson Plan" on which the flatland tourist sky ride you want to spend 200K to study, is now about 21 months beyond its promised delivery date.] (c) Once Hizzonah, Maryor Godfrey, gets his act together and comes up with an "acceptable" plan to manage the grant, UTA will fork over the money.
Seems to me that if Mr. Schwebke got things wrong, it wasn't by enough to matter much.
What standards will UTA look for in the as-yet non-existent management agreement? Mr. Allegra doesn't say. What control [if any] over the management of the study will UTA retain, what oversight function [if any] will it fulfill if it gives the Mayor his Gondola Study Slush fund? Nothing from Mr. Allegra on that. Will UTA choose the consultant or firm to do the analysis? Silence from Mr. Allegra. Will UTA require City Council involvement in the management of the grant and selection of the firm to do the study, or will it be exclusively Mayor's choice? Silence on that. Is the 200K the UTA has kept set aside waiting, it says, for Hizzonah to get off the pot and draft an acceptable management plan public money? And if so, how can the UTA justify spending it for a feasibility study for the transit option that was the only one among three that was not identified as a viable transit option for Ogden in the feasiblity study looking at bus rapid transit, the streetcar and the gondola that the UTA has already funded?
If as Mr. Allegra alleges, UTA has made no agreement and the city has not submitted any plan, what the devil is the draft management agreement the Mayor says he has from [?] UTA that he won't release?
So many questions. So few answers....
This is the sterling example of just how screwed up our city government and mayor really is.
Godfrey aledgedly has two hundred grand at his disposal to once again study the gondola proposal that has already apparently flunked a previous study. Godfrey desperately wants this gondola contraption and to this day claims it is the lynch pin of all that he has strived for these last 6 years. Godfrey doesn't have his shit together enough over a years period of time to submit a paper plan on how the study will be conducted.
What is wrong with this picture?
If the UTA gives Godfrey this two hundred thousand dollars, then it would be a major indication that UDOT truly should take them over as is currently proposed.
Oy vey....what a muddle.
WHO is in charge at UTA??? Now we have Allegra...what happened to the two guys who went out of town? Inglish and Crandall... are they still out?
Another spokesperson...that makes three in the last couple days.
Calling the gondola(s) 'the elephant in the room ' is apt.
The proposed plan has been non-existent for 21 months...isn't that about the gestation period for an elephant?
This whole 'plan' should be sent to Hogle Zoo. Maybe those docs can 'birth' something tangible.
Oz:
Been thinking on exactly the point you raised. What is this 200K going to buy? What will the study study? Not whether the gondola will be a mass transit project. That's already been studied, and UTA has said, I think, that the gondola is not a mass transit project. So what will the study look at, given this business about the gondola establishing a "nexis" [lovely word that] with UTA transit.
Only thing I can think of is this: if the gondola is apporoved and built and if it connects with a private gondola with a base near WSU and if a mini-resort is built in Malan's basin for that gondola to go to, and if this Rube-Goldberg gondola/gondola/resort trifecta works, and significant numbers begin riding the downtown to WSU flatland tourist sky ride, then how will the gondola riders needs/wants impact UTA transit systems [Frontrunner, bus lines, etc.] Something like that?
And if that's the kind of study this 200K will pay for, it cannot possibly begin until the so-far mythical Peterson Proposal becomes a reality. Without it, it would be impossible to study in any meaningful way the impact of a proposed flatland gondola on another gondola and a resort that have not been proposed and about which virtually nothing substantive is yet known.
Also seems to me that if the goal of the study is to assess the potential impact of the flatland gondola plus mountain gondola plus Malan's Resort on UTA transit systems, the time to do that would be once the gondola has been approved, the park has been sold, sufficient money has been raised by turning the park into vacation villas behind gates that the up-mountain gondola will be built along with the resort. Which Mr. Peterson has told us will take as much as a decade.
What "nexis" will the 200K fund a study of at the moment? Will it estimate the impact of a potential on a probability on wish?
More I think of it, the more I wish Mr. Allegra had taken just a few sentences to give us all some idea of exactly what it is this study is supposed to look at, if it is not to simply repeat the earlier UTA feasibility study, minus the two options that were actually found to be true transit options [street car and BRT]. Or is this to be simply a Godfrey-accommodating "do over" with the competition eliminated from consideration?
We're back to Alice: curiouser and curiouser.
Why are we all showing angst over the UTA and Godfrey stonewalling, promising, not knowing, giving confliciting statements and generally not making believable pronouncements on any of this??
It's all Godfrey crap that we've had thrown at us for years.
Let's see if Peterson returns from the missing or dead.
This whole gondola idea is so assbackwards.
UTA is agreeing to "study" building a gondola across Ogden to a barely "proposed", undersized resort. Since the resort is not even fully conceptualized we have no numbers to derive a demand for the town gondola.
Most transit lines are built in areas where extreme demand exists already evidenced by traffic jams and parking issues. WSU is already well served by a bus system that will in no way be replaced by the gondola. Even Snowbasin is not plagued by traffic jams. How would Malan's ever generate such demand. Not even the Cottonwood Canyons in SLC with five huge resorts are considering gondolas.
UTA is doing great things in SLC with light rail and streetcars. Frontrunner will be a huge contribution to the local lifestyle.
Central Ogden has the necessary density and need for redevelopment that a streetcar and dedicated corridor would bring.
Isn't it strange that in the case of road building they always seek to get ahead of the growth with huge freeway corridors and big box commercial layouts well before all the homes are built. In the case of transit they seem to put it on the back burner forever and study it to death while the inner city decays and people move out to the big-box heaven. Transit is what will revitalize central Ogden, serve the downtown-WSU route, and any possible development in Malan's Basin.
I hope the Trib and wiser heads in SLC and the ski industry speak out to expose this shell game being perpetrated on the citizens of Ogden.
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