Friday, January 24, 2014

Ski Traffic....Sigh!

I was driving to vail tonight and was thinking about how annoying it is that even thoug I don't ski, I still have to endure the horrible traffic along the I-70 corridor.  I know that C-DOT is working on it but after 8 years of this, I'm annoyed.

What can we do to "help" this along?  Well, we have all been assuming that the state would take care of it and while this is good thinking and we'll eventually get one more lane, by the time this happens, the traffic will increase as well making it almost a negligible improvement.

Let's think outside the box.  It's all a matter of money and let's face it, ski resorts are making money and they just really don't care that each person has to waste roughly an extra 3-4 hours per trip.  Let's have encourage the ski companies to invest in he necessary road improvements, maybe even the mythical rail system.

It's easy really, don't go skiing.  As long as people continue to trudge through the insufferable traffic and spend vast amounts of money on lift tickets, everyone will continue to suffer.  I looked it up and Vail Resorts had a total revenue of 450 million dollars and expenses of 295 million.  155 million that's left over.  W can talk about the finer points of profit later.  Assuming vail is the biggest of the resorts and there are roughly 5 resort companies feel by the corridor, I'm going to guess between the 5 that there is 400 million left.  That's a bunch of cash.

The easy part, don't go skiing next year.  Yesi know skiing is fun, local businesses will suffer, people will still ski, and in general, there will quite a bit of backlash.  Assuming half of all the skiers don't ski, we have effectively cut their revenues by half, if not more.  No company likes when this happens  and they'll be more inclined to "help" people go skiing and if the reason is clear that the holdouts want the companies to "donate" to the cause of  better corridor, I'm sure they'll see the benefits of providing for better transportation options.

Tell me your thoughts.  People are always complaining about government and taxes and what most of us have never really thought of is that we as consumers have the power, we've just failed to realize it.






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