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hamish f
Social climber
squamish
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I don't know how much "reviewing" you can do. It all depends on volume and these numbers will only ever be estimates. Might be easy to estimate the nice summer days but a little tougher to crunch the numbers of people showing up when it's socked in with horizontal rain.
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hamish f
Social climber
squamish
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Call me crazy but I'm almost sensing a little compromise between the lines of M.H.'s recent posts.
As far as the numbers of riders go, it's all about marketing and proximity to the masses. Ziptreck, for instance (Whistler,I know), runs 360 plus days/year and you don't want to know how many people they pump through that thing. At $100/head, I might add.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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but the estimates are important...
firstly, while the serious outdoor community may like the access, they are a minority of those 500,000 annual recreating visitors. Not likely that their needs or desires would have a high priority in planning the activities around the gondola. Any benefit to that community would be indirect.
A good business model would be based on getting the "normal" visitor interested in buying a ride.
Also, what would be the lifetime of such a facility? Both from the business standpoint (I assume the goal is to be bought out by some bigger concern, at a profit, and early) vs. the public interest in the alterations to the area, and the potential for having a failed commercial operation/facility to deal with...
...both the "success" scenario and the failure scenario are an important consideration to deciding how to manage public lands.
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hamish f
Social climber
squamish
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You're right Tami, guess I was seeing things. He's probably staying with the "No Soup For You" attitude.
Which is why we all like him so much. Truly.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Bruce, I'm all for process, but the public's interest is in perpetuity where as the commercial concerns are necessarily short term... they want the place to succeed enough to make it worth selling off, at a profit to the investors, probably within 5 to 10 years.
Isn't that the balance that is being struck between land set aside in Provincial Parks and those lands that are left to be used commercially? The balance between short term goals and long term goals.
Once you have a gondola on that site, who is responsible for it through out its lifetime? Commercial interests will weigh the benefits of cutting their losses if that comes to pass... then the situation is not unlike the current gravel pit, only more extensive.
"And visible from the road" as the proposers' website states as a requirement.
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hamish f
Social climber
squamish
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Apr 10, 2012 - 12:29am PT
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Hi Bruce. What's that? Needs and wants of Squamish locals? Are you kidding me, that's a Class "A" Park little fellah.
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bmacd
Trad climber
100% Canadian
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Apr 10, 2012 - 01:02am PT
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Anders stop pissing around. Build up your case and threaten to take parks branch to court if this doesn't go your way. I am sure you can use some good old fashioned court time to brush up on your lawyer skills.
Just do it bro
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Apr 10, 2012 - 02:04am PT
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One things for sure, a locally born and bred process is more likely to be accountable than anything dreamt up by the Federal or provincial government.
Is it? That is, in comparison say with the highly accountable process that was used to create the park, which included a considerable 'local' element, but much more? It's hard to get land into parks, and should be even harder to get it out. And the current (flawed) process was 'dreamt up' by the provincial government, although we may never know how it really came to be.
Just back from a FOSC meeting in Squamish. I'm the token Vancouverite.
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hamish f
Social climber
squamish
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Apr 10, 2012 - 09:58am PT
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Praise the Lord they don't have Walmarts or Gondolas in West Vancouver.
Those things are just down the street, about a mile from West Van, in that shanty town of North Van.
Those poor residents, having to look at that Grouse gondola every day; it must be terrible...
I can be pretty snappy before my morning coffee. Sorry if I offended anyone.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Apr 10, 2012 - 11:26am PT
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Anders, just so you know I'm not at all loathe to hearing from those from far away, even Latte suckin' seattle-ites.
...
"You are NOT entitled to your opinion. However you are entitled to an informed opinion"
Well, just so you know, this latte-sucking seattle-ite agrees with you 100%
Does that mean you're going to have to change your opinion? In this case, no, because I acquired my latte addiction during the years I lived in North Van (and Kitsilano before that). And anyway, I mostly take my fix in the form of straight espresso, so I haven't gone totally over to the lite side.
But the "informed opinion" thing is important. And not always clear cut. It's easy to sit in your urban or suburban living room and feel bad about the plight of spotted owls, and vote to protect their habitat. Or, on the other side of the fence, it's pretty easy to sit in your small town living room and think about how cutting down trees is what makes your community a wonderful place to live and raise your kids.
Both of those groups include people who believe they have informed opinions. So who is to judge who's opinion is worth hearing?
Personally, I think the two key elements in this whole debate are:
a) will the gondola be designed to carry bikes, and
b) will there be a good pub at the top.
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hamish f
Social climber
squamish
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Apr 10, 2012 - 11:30am PT
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CLASSIC !!!!!!!
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Apr 10, 2012 - 12:13pm PT
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good friggin point greg.
Plus ten on that. It is really easy to get caught up in "the issue", while never realizing the real issue is something else entirely. Perfect example is the tunnel that is going to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct here in Seattle. This is a multi-billion-dollar project, that generated conflict that makes the Squamish gondola fight look like two kids arguing in a sand box.
I won't go into the details, but everybody was focused on "the issue" of whether a tunnel, or a new viaduct, or some other alternative made the best sense. Nobody, as far as I ever read or heard, bothered to look behind these first-level questions and start asking about the 3.5 kilometers (over two miles) of Seattle waterfront that would suddenly be available for development if the Viaduct came down and its traffic was re-routed underground. I don't know exactly how much that land is worth. I don't even know if numbers that big exist. What I do know is that this will be some of the most expensive land in North America and a few billion dollars for a tunnel is peanuts by comparison.
But the kids in the sandbox just kept shouting about whether option A was better/cheaper than option B.
So, yeah, Greg's got a point. The idea of a gondola to take me up into that area between Oleson Creek and Shannon Falls seems pretty cool, but it might be worth looking behind the "Gondola Good/Gondola Bad" stuff to see what else might be at play.
Not in the sense of "Developers are EVIL!!!" that comes through in Anders' posts, but more as a matter of due diligence. Might be some good news there, or some bad. But worth a look.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Apr 10, 2012 - 12:15pm PT
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Yes, Knee Wrecker is rather interesting.
In a sense, none of our opinions about this may be informed. As an example, none of us really know the plans of the developers. While some may be better informed than others, and there are a variety of different perspectives to have on this, none is necessarily "right" or "wrong".
Opinion on a matter of principle, e.g. removing land from the centre of hard-won Class A parks, can also be more difficult, as they're about values, not facts.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Apr 10, 2012 - 12:35pm PT
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And that it's a provincial park, although one of international stature.
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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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Apr 10, 2012 - 12:51pm PT
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A well balanced process give a more equal playing field when making decsisons like this. Business and government have many overlapping interests such as the tie between profits and taxes. Giving citizens a place at the negotiating table adds critical analysis that can stop some proposals and can vastly improve others.
The rush to get a proposal through the review process without full involvement of all stakeholders sometimes indicates a fragile financing mechanism...
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Apr 10, 2012 - 06:41pm PT
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Ive got a couple of what I consider to be simple questions concerning this issue, so let's just cut to the chase.
Do the supporters of this gondola proposal approve of industrial (or any other) development of "Class A" parks? If so, as I have asked earlier, where do YOU draw the line?
I would appreciate a response from the cheerleaders for this project.
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hamish f
Social climber
squamish
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Apr 10, 2012 - 08:05pm PT
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I'm not a cheerleader, I just find it frustrating when well intentioned citizens are so quick to say No.
Like I said before, I don't even care if there's a gondola or not. I love riding my bike uphill; I went to the Rob Cocqyet school of mtn. biking and therefore learned to earn my turns. I'm simply very willing to welcome and entertain any and all proposals in the corridor.
In my opinion, our society would benefit from people trading some breathtaking scenery for the usual sights seen at the mall.
Of course it would be better if they were all hiking up to shannon creek basin but currently there doesn't seem to be any trail building proposals out there. Baby steps.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Apr 10, 2012 - 09:05pm PT
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It's kind of weird, but what Bruce said above is almost word-for-word what I had been thinking about posting to this thread for several days now. That is, if you simply say "This is a Provincial Park, and therefore sacred" then there's no sense talking to you. It's just more "Because it says so in the Bible" close-mindedness.
But if you have even a single rational neuron in your brain, you'd be willing to agree that if the solution to world peace was to remove a bit of parkland and give it to a developer, you'd do it in a heartbeat. So the question, for all but the blindly religious, is: "Is removing park land justified in this case?"
I'm no cheerleader, but I'm kind of more pro than con. I think the Chief and the areas adjacent to it are so far from wilderness, or parkishness, that a gondola wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference, and if it allowed access to the land above (and was set up for bike transport) then why not?
And on the "why not" side are questions about the sanity of the business plan, and whether or not there is some hidden agenda -- some kind of bait and switch deal that would leave everybody saying "Boy, were we suckered!"
Personally, I'd like to make the handing over of this land to the developer conditional on the Government adding an equivalent or greater amount of land to this or some other park, but other than that, I sort of like the idea.
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hamish f
Social climber
squamish
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Apr 10, 2012 - 09:36pm PT
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Ya, what Casper said.
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hamish f
Social climber
squamish
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Apr 10, 2012 - 11:52pm PT
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Jim is right. Land "swap" seems pretty weak.
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