I’ve been thinking about Aspen’s proposed paid parking expansion. From what I’ve heard, commuters are angry, and I can understand why. It’s bad enough that gas in the valley toys with $4/gallon. Add $7/day for parking (over $150/mo.), and the working class will have to pick up a night job just to cover the cost of commuting.
Currently, hundreds of commuters take advantage of the free two-hour parking offered on the outskirts of the downtown core. The problem, the City claims, in addition to the traffic, is that many are taking advantage of the free parking by moving their vehicle every two-hours to avoid being ticketed. A survey conducted this winter determined that as many as 600 cars a day were doing the “two-hour shuffle”.
One thing I can assure you is that these people aren’t doing it for the sake of bucking the system. They are doing it because they can’t afford to pay for parking. It’s not as if it’s convenient to walk back to your car and find a new parking spot every couple hours. I would imagine it’s a complete pain in the ass. For Aspen’s working class, every dollar counts, and the two-hour shuffle is simply part of a larger effort to survive financially.
A resident of Aspen proper, I know not the burden of the commuter. I ride a bike to work. However, I do understanding the plight of the working class in this overpriced valley and I want to help. In that effort, I put forth the following idea. It’s a collective protest, of sorts. I’ve even given this idea a title, as any revolt worth a damn must have a title.
The Commuter Rebellion of 2007
The concept is simple. Parking tickets are tracked by a vehicle’s license plate. Therefore, if all commuters remove their license plates on the day the new parking meters are installed, the City will have a hell of a time assigning fines. I have read that tickets can also be distributed using the vehicle’s VIN number, but most VIN numbers are located in door frames, or some other hard to reach spot, and can not be obtained without access to the interior of the car. If your VIN number happens to be on the dash or on the steering column, simply cover it with an old unpaid parking ticket.
The thought of ticketing officers shaking their heads in frustration at the sight of hundreds of plateless cars, well, that just makes me smile.
To be successful, such a rebellion requires serious coordination. So rise up my fellow peasants! Coordinate. Let’s win one for the working class.
The goal of Comrade Mic is to return Aspen to the former mining town of old, and it is well on its way to getting there….a ghost town.
What the city council do not understand is that businesses are the ones going to suffer. How many tourist do you think will return when all they remember is that they spent their vacation looking for a place to park and soured by ridicules parking tickets erasing all image of the great skiing or summer in the valley? Business are going to have to take up the slack for parking if they want customers to visit their establishments. Think I am going to pay for an hours parking just to run into the local bakery or go grab a cup of coffee? Nope, I will be getting it from city market or clarks starting the new commie program of parking.
Give it a few years and you will see a glut of employee housing as the working people leave the area as business dries up. It is already happening, the desertion of businesses, but the problem is only going to get worse. Like all good commie collectives, the people eventually realize that capitalism is the only way to live and the empire that Mic is trying to create will crumble around him. Too bad in the mean time the whole of Aspen has to suffer.
Alpha, you’re wrong. Mic wants to take the town back to the month he moved there. Mining days were before that.
Many other people must want that as well, because they voted for him.
I bet if you held the election again today the results would be different given his commie agenda.
And wake up, you can never go back to the way things were…this isn’t an Andy Griffith re-run, its real life. The best you can do is guild the development of the city as it moves into the future, you don’t do that by driving away business and people, especially when the city’s economy depends on those people.
Mic and those who he is taking the kickbacks from are serving their own agenda. Anyone that can’t see that has their head in the sand.
I don’t think Mick is taking “kickbacks” from anyone and it’s unfair to imply that he is.
The issue is power, plain and simple–and democracy, just plain simple.
Mick clearly loves the power and wields it without fear. That in and of itself has the potential to be anti-democratic. Look at the decision by the Council to block a public vote on the Lodge because pro-Lodge forces might actually win.
That’s called democracy. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
Best, Michael!
I wouldn’t be so quick to write off Mic and others taking kickbacks…its a long tradition in this town…”if you don’t pay, you don’t get to play…” just ask the former owners of the Jerome.
As a long time resident of Aspen, some of that time in Gerbazdale (now known as Aspen Village), I have seen the parking situation evolve.
There was great concern about parking when the city bricked over four blocks of streets in the downtown core. It did not have a negative impact on business, tourism, or the peasants.
When the airport installed paid parking at the terminal, it did not have a negative impact. It did spawn a small fringe group of rebellion, the PLO- parking liberation organization.
When the Ski Co. built The Little Nell and Gondola Plaza, they eliminated the parking lot at the base. The only effect was that people wanting to go ski on Ajax, now had to park on the street somewhere, taking up spaces that would be used by workers, or shoppers.
When City Council installed the original parking meters, these arguments were raised again. Again, there has not been a negative impact on business, or tourism.
You talk about the financial drain on the working class.
$4.00 for a gallon of gas and $7.00 for a day of parking.
Let’s examine that. Let’s say that gas will go down to say $3.00 and you live in Basalt. Your vehicle gets 20 mpg. It takes one gallon to get to Aspen and one gallon to get home, assuming you don’t have to spend much time idling in the traffic jam. That is $6.00 that you have just spent to get to and from work. RFTA charges $6.00 for this round trip. That is the full cash price. Purchase a punch pass and save 40%. Take into account the wear and tear on your car, the hassle of playing the “2-hour shuffle” or paying the $7.00, and ask yourself what is more feasible.
The financial argument doesn’t seem to hold up. Oh, did I forget that we will spend $5.00 for some fancy latte, when we can just as easily get our caffeine from a simple cup of coffee, made at the place of work.
The parking price of $7.00 for an entire day of parking is not bad, when you look at what it costs to park in cities. On a recent business trip to the Big Apple, six days of parking cost $690.00 for seven days, and the lot was 14 blocks from my hotel. Granted, the vehicle was a 15 foot box truck. In downtown Denver, parking in a lot for the day can cost up to $20.00. Paying a large sum of money is something that most tourists are used to, it won’t even faze them. I bet we could raise it to $50.00 a day and the tourist wouldn’t even notice- except for the X-Gamers.
I think a better solution to the parking/traffic problem is to get more workers living on our side of the roundabout. I have little sympathy for those that chose to live down valley and commute to Aspen for work. That is a choice they made, or was made by a worker bee before them. An example, I used to be able to walk down Cemetery Lane and I knew the people that lived in most of the homes there. They were ski instructors, house painters, bartenders, shop owners, etc. real people with real jobs. A walk down that stretch now reveals that most of those homes are now empty second homes. The former residents having sold out to buy a bigger, fancier home in Blue Lake, or farther.
If there was a way of getting our working class back to town, then traffic/parking would be reduced.
But since we cannot go back to those good old days, I guess we need to build huge subdivisions in Silt and drive the 50+ miles to Aspen every day to work. And fight each other for the parking spaces, as more small lodges get turned into monster hotels and we have more second homes to take care of. That is what progress is.
Yes Alpha6, I voted for Mick and would again if the election were held today, as would many of my neighbors. I don’t think the “capitalists” would win. Many of us voted for him because we see the capitalist greed machine as an unchecked force, destroying the very fiber and soul of our community. Although I’m not sure when Mick moved to town, I know that it was a much more laid back, relaxed, mellow place to be, not quite Mayberry, but equivalent. A place where children could play in the streets, where you could afford to go out to dinner. I would love it if we could return to that time as well. I know that is not very likely to happen, despite our efforts to make it happen. The best I can hope for is that we can slow the growth to a mere crawl and make what we have now last as long as possible.
To call Mick a “commie” is just showing your meanness, and to imply that he is taking kickbacks is just trying to incite something. Besides, who would he be taking kickbacks from, the way I see it, his politics and actions go against making money. No self respecting capitalist would pay to have his profit margin damaged. If you are going to make allegations, at least have it be viable and give us some support for them. Just because he is a politician, doesn’t mean that he takes kickbacks, although it is hard to believe that a politician hasn’t taken a kickback in any town. That is how the game is played, here, there, and everywhere. Not just in a Democracy or Republic, but in dictatorships, and Monarchies and all forms of government. Deal with it.
Back to parking, I am in agreement with the council’s decision to expand the paid parking areas. I see it as an attempt to reduce traffic coming into town, thus reducing emissions, and helping our environment.
We need to address the real problem and not just the symptoms. The real problem is that too many employees have left Aspen proper, or can’t get into Aspen and thus have to commute.
As a way to get people back to town, maybe we could somehow figure a way for employees to actually occupy the ADU’s that all second homes must posses.