Ikon Pass

Old Goat, like most on TGR, are delusional. There is no profitable public transit in North America. They all must be heavily subsidized by the government to exist. Where are you going to come up with these billions in tax dollars to pay for this transit you want? Where are you going to come up with the billions every year that are necessary for it to continue to exist? There is no legal mechanism to make Alterra pay for it, not that they have the cash to do so. There are too many people living in Truckee, a place that cannot absorb all the people who want to set up shack there. Mass transit barely works in San Francisco, one of the densest cities in America. Mass transit will never work in a place like Truckee.

Like I mentioned above, Alterra does voluntarily pay for a free, Alttera operated bus to Crystal to help alleviate parking and road congestion. That's the best you can hope for.

Old Goat misses a big point though. Visitors generally use their personal transportation device to get here, and once here reasonably expect to continue to use said device (so do locals). Perhaps if visitors get here via mass-transportation they'd use mass-transportation for local journeys too ? Plus it's a problem getting to mass-transit centers with all your ski gear when your accommodation is perhaps a mile away. High density accommodation options are what we need and then we could have workable transit options. So high-rise villages, clustered hotels and restaurants and retail and grocery stores. We're screwed.

By the way I tried to use the bus to get to the renamed resort for the World Cup racing. Said bus did not arrive :rolleyes2

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Originally Posted by altasnob

Old Goat, like most on TGR, are delusional. There is no profitable public transit in North America. They all must be heavily subsidized by the government to exist. Where are you going to come up with these billions in tax dollars to pay for this transit you want? Where are you going to come up with the billions every year that are necessary for it to continue to exist? There is no legal mechanism to make Alterra pay for it, not that they have the cash to do so. There are too many people living in Truckee, a place that cannot absorb all the people who want to set up shack there. Mass transit barely works in San Francisco, one of the densest cities in America. Mass transit will never work in a place like Truckee.

Like I mentioned above, Alterra does voluntarily pay for a free, Alttera operated bus to Crystal to help alleviate parking and road congestion. That's the best you can hope for.

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Bullshit. If they can pay half a billion for "improving the skier experience" they can spend it to improve the lives of the people w,ho live near their resorts. As far as getting Alterra to do, one would hope they would do it voluntarily, but the anger in the community has reached a point where they may well be be forced to. Lawsuits, especially CEQA, both against Alterra and against Placer County, who gets tax dollars from Palisades but refuses to spend it to alleviate the impacts, emergency traffic holds when public safety is threatened, special taxes--even things like protests blocking the access roads.. Now whether it will happen is questionable but the solutions are there if people want them badly enough. It's people like you--cynical apologists for the status quo and the powers that be --who get in the way, but you can be run over.

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Originally Posted by truckeelocal

Old Goat misses a big point though. Visitors generally use their personal transportation device to get here, and once here reasonably expect to continue to use said device (so do locals). Perhaps if visitors get here via mass-transportation they'd use mass-transportation for local journeys too ? Plus it's a problem getting to mass-transit centers with all your ski gear when your accommodation is perhaps a mile away. High density accommodation options are what we need and then we could have workable transit options. So high-rise villages, clustered hotels and restaurants and retail and grocery stores. We're screwed.

By the way I tried to use the bus to get to the renamed resort for the World Cup racing. Said bus did not arrive :rolleyes2

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. Yes visitors expect to use their own cars. "Reasonably" is another question. If parking at the resorts is limited and expensive, if there is a plate reader based toll on, if there are park and ride lots and extensve enough routes that most people can walk, if the transit service is much faster than driving, reliable, and frequent--then yes, people will leave there cars and use transit. And just because someone feels entitled to use their own car doesn't mean they get to do it. Although I'm sure that's one of the freedoms people think the Founders priomised us in the Constitution. And if that is too inconvenient for people I'm fine with them staying away. I've used mass transit in multiple resorts in the US, Canada, and Europe and it was easy. As it is now in the Truckee Tahoe area I wouldn't use it or expect anyone else to.

START - Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit

Jackson has had public transpo for decades.
For most folks it works fine. For some it sucks and for a few, it rules.

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Originally Posted by altasnob

Old Goat, like most on TGR, are delusional. There is no profitable public transit in North America. They all must be heavily subsidized by the government to exist. Where are you going to come up with these billions in tax dollars to pay for this transit you want? Where are you going to come up with the billions every year that are necessary for it to continue to exist? There is no legal mechanism to make Alterra pay for it, not that they have the cash to do so. There are too many people living in Truckee, a place that cannot absorb all the people who want to set up shack there. Mass transit barely works in San Francisco, one of the densest cities in America. Mass transit will never work in a place like Truckee.

Like I mentioned above, Alterra does voluntarily pay for a free, Alttera operated bus to Crystal to help alleviate parking and road congestion. That's the best you can hope for.

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Seriously, fuck that. It doesn’t matter one Fuk if the mass transit is profitable. It just needs to be efficient. It would not be hard to make a dedicated bus lane like OG suggests. Traffic is strangling the entire Tahoe basin and it should be 100% on alterra now in the north lake to pony up $$$ to provide some remediation. It’s not that hard, it just takes some money and decent government incentives. Unfortunately m, the problem in North Tahoe is we have basically Zero representation. LA had overpasses rebuilt and functional mere weeks after the northridge quake. A bus lane (or even a monorail) is certainly doable. All the power in placer is down the hill making the decisions they don’t have to deal with everyday.

The Gondola should have been between truckee and tc w a spur for squaw. That would have be a useful gondola addition instead of the stupid $50m marketing trip

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Originally Posted by Djongo Unchained

START - Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit

Jackson has had public transpo for decades.
For most folks it works fine. For some it sucks and for a few, it rules.

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Yes the Jackson transit system is very good and Aspen's transit is the gold standard for North American ski resorts. The basis of the system is free parking and then frequent buses offering a free or inexpensive bus ride to the skiing with some bus stations having boot change and washrooms.

As far as Ikon resorts during the Xmas Holidays: Sun Peaks is the newest Ikon resort, over crowding is limited because for those flying it means taking a connector flight from Calgary, Kelowna, or Vancouver to Kamloops and then a shuttle from the airport to SP.

Once at Sun Peaks you will discover that the place spreads skiers out better than any mountain you can name. Even on the busiest days (6,500-7000 skiers on 137 runs spread over 4,270 acres ) on most runs you will be the only one on it. Skiing is on both sides of a valley with the ski-through village in between.

But here is the best reason to consider SP at Xmas: For more than 30 years there has been a summer grooming program with every stump on the mountain pulled, rocks picked, backhoes doing run reshaping in places, grass planted. Some runs are on a 5 year and some a 3 year rotation for cutting weeds and small conifers. With the addition of some snow making (20 guns) SP has been able to push the normal opening date from the end of the first week of Dec to late Nov., usually several days or a week before U.S. Thanksgiving, making Sun Peaks most often the first to open in the B.C. interior. Early season SP can have a base that is 20cm to 30cm thinner than other B.C. resorts but with better coverage.

Due to snowmaking on OSV and Lower Chute, Sun Peaks offers race team training in early Nov., several weeks prior to the mountain being open to the public.

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Originally Posted by altasnob

There is hardly any form of public transit to any ski area in North America. The Cottonwoods in Utah is the only I can think of, and that's only because the ski areas happen to be next to a metro of 1.4 million people.

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https://www.visitparkcity.com/explore/free-bus-system/

Just used the buses in Park City this weekend and it was great. I have done Whistler without a car and been happy with my experience.

Mammoth has town shuttle busses and it works

I'm confused as to why the bus system in Park City isn't more popular (granted, I haven't been there for a bonafide powder day). If you're doing the tourist experience on a budget, it's especially useful since the Ikon Pass and most season passes cover the bus fare. You can save even more by driving the crappiest rental car of variable tire-quality, boot up in the park-and-ride, and bypass the "experience" of driving a 2-wheel piece of crap rental up and down LCC/BCC.

Mammoth bus system has also been good to me. The park-and-ride on Old Mammoth Road is right next to the Red Line and is the easiest way to get to Main Lodge, imo. And, the VIP drop you off right at the front door to the mountain is top notch. No need to gimp through a parking lot. It makes me feel special.

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Originally Posted by ~mikey b

Mammoth has town shuttle busses and it works

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It works very well, and I try to use it and not drive at all.

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Originally Posted by mcski

Seriously, fuck that. It doesn’t matter one Fuk if the mass transit is profitable. It just needs to be efficient. It would not be hard to make a dedicated bus lane like OG suggests. Traffic is strangling the entire Tahoe basin and it should be 100% on alterra now in the north lake to pony up $$$ to provide some remediation. It’s not that hard, it just takes some money and decent government incentives. Unfortunately m, the problem in North Tahoe is we have basically Zero representation. LA had overpasses rebuilt and functional mere weeks after the northridge quake. A bus lane (or even a monorail) is certainly doable. All the power in placer is down the hill making the decisions they don’t have to deal with everyday.

The Gondola should have been between truckee and tc w a spur for squaw. That would have be a useful gondola addition instead of the stupid $50m marketing trip

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Vail doesn't get off the hook. The traffic to Northstar on 267 has gotten nearly as bad as to Palisades. Which is a sad sign of the detrioration of skiing in the US of A.
A gondola would be too slow I fear. I can drive from Truckee to Olympic as fast as the gondy trip from Olympic to Alpine (on a light midweek midday trip with no one doing 40 in the 55--the asshole). The idea has attracted enough attention to warrant an article in Moonshine Ink.

It's all Alterra and Vail's fault, right? Never mind that places like Placer County, CA, are amongst the fastest growing counties in the nation. Hordes of people are moving there, which creates traffic, but then they want to blame (or even sue) Alterra demanding they fix the mess caused by so many people moving there.

Park City, Mammoth, Aspen, Jackson, are all milk runs used by people who fly in that don't want to have to rent a car to get from their hotel to the ski area. What Old Goat wants is the masses who drive to Palisades from the Bay Area to have to park in massive parking lots and then take transit for the last part of their trip so it's easier for him to drive to the grocery store. I don't see it happening and if it does, I don't see Alterra footing the bill.

People will only take transit, whether it is in Tahoe, or a big city, if it makes their lives easier. If you can drive, and driving is faster (or no slower) people will continue to drive.

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Originally Posted by old goat

Vail doesn't get off the hook. The traffic to Northstar on 267 has gotten nearly as bad as to Palisades. Which is a sad sign of the detrioration of skiing in the US of A.
A gondola would be too slow I fear. I can drive from Truckee to Olympic as fast as the gondy trip from Olympic to Alpine (on a light midweek midday trip with no one doing 40 in the 55--the asshole). The idea has attracted enough attention to warrant an article in Moonshine Ink.

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Then we definitely need a monorail

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Originally Posted by altasnob

It's all Alterra and Vail's fault, right? Never mind that places like Placer County, CA, are amongst the fastest growing counties in the nation. Hordes of people are moving there, which creates traffic, but then they want to blame (or even sue) Alterra demanding they fix the mess caused by so many people moving there.

Park City, Mammoth, Aspen, Jackson, are all milk runs used by people who fly in that don't want to have to rent a car to get from their hotel to the ski area. What Old Goat wants is the masses who drive to Palisades from the Bay Area to have to park in massive parking lots and then take transit for the last part of their trip so it's easier for him to drive to the grocery store. I don't see it happening and if it does, I don't see Alterra footing the bill.

People will only take transit, whether it is in Tahoe, or a big city, if it makes their lives easier. If you can drive, and driving is faster (or no slower) people will continue to drive.

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Tahoe makes up a tiny percentage of placer county. Most of it is Sac adjacent commuter houses.

Def people won’t altruistically not drive if they see that as a benefit. But when people can’t get to jobs or safely evacuate a clogged area then legislation is needed to force the issue.

If Tahoe how had its own county, I guarantee you there would be some real action being taken. Unfortunately, it has no real representation. Just out of area folks making decisions and taking the money

Park City and DV, even with the available public transportation is a nightmare from 4-6pm on weekends and during busy times. You can can count on it taking close to an hour to get to either I80 or Hwy 40.

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Originally Posted by DanoT

Yes the Jackson transit system is very good and Aspen's transit is the gold standard for North American ski resorts. The basis of the system is free parking and then frequent buses offering a free or inexpensive bus ride to the skiing with some bus stations having boot change and washrooms.

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Having experienced both transit systems recently, can agree that both are very good. Haven't ever rented a car when flying into ASE. Don't need to. The RFTA in the Aspen/Snowmass area is top notch. Most of the bus drivers are awesome IME.

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Originally Posted by Toadman

Having experienced both transit systems recently, can agree that both are very good. Haven't ever rented a car when flying into ASE. Don't need to. The RFTA in the Aspen/Snowmass area is top notch. Most of the bus drivers are awesome IME.

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Yep, did the same this trip, stayed right next to Rubey Park transit center, busses running constantly to each mountain, really a great experience to not deal with parking and such. RFTA was really amazing.

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Originally Posted by DanoT

Yes the Jackson transit system is very good and Aspen's transit is the gold standard for North American ski resorts. The basis of the system is free parking and then frequent buses offering a free or inexpensive bus ride to the skiing with some bus stations having boot change and washrooms.

As far as Ikon resorts during the Xmas Holidays: Sun Peaks is the newest Ikon resort, over crowding is limited because for those flying it means taking a connector flight from Calgary, Kelowna, or Vancouver to Kamloops and then a shuttle from the airport to SP.

Once at Sun Peaks you will discover that the place spreads skiers out better than any mountain you can name. Even on the busiest days (6,500-7000 skiers on 137 runs spread over 4,270 acres ) on most runs you will be the only one on it. Skiing is on both sides of a valley with the ski-through village in between.

But here is the best reason to consider SP at Xmas: For more than 30 years there has been a summer grooming program with every stump on the mountain pulled, rocks picked, backhoes doing run reshaping in places, grass planted. Some runs are on a 5 year and some a 3 year rotation for cutting weeds and small conifers. With the addition of some snow making (20 guns) SP has been able to push the normal opening date from the end of the first week of Dec to late Nov., usually several days or a week before U.S. Thanksgiving, making Sun Peaks most often the first to open in the B.C. interior. Early season SP can have a base that is 20cm to 30cm thinner than other B.C. resorts but with better coverage.

Due to snowmaking on OSV and Lower Chute, Sun Peaks offers race team training in early Nov., several weeks prior to the mountain being open to the public.

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This sounds amazing, and I so want to hit the interior BC mountains, but from the US east coast and the connections / driving it needs , even Europe is easier. Its unfortunate but we would need to connect through Toronto to Alberta or Van, then Kamloops, then drive. Its rough

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Originally Posted by mcski

Tahoe makes up a tiny percentage of placer county. Most of it is Sac adjacent commuter houses.

Def people won’t altruistically not drive if they see that as a benefit. But when people can’t get to jobs or safely evacuate a clogged area then legislation is needed to force the issue.

If Tahoe how had its own county, I guarantee you there would be some real action being taken. Unfortunately, it has no real representation. Just out of area folks making decisions and taking the money

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While it does suck that people down the hill are making the decisions for us up here, I'm not so sure it would be much different if we had our own county. It would probably be the same fucktards that run the various business associations here that would end up running our local government - a bunch of Cindys, if you will. And we could still be outvoted by second homeowners. Truckee and SLT, as different as they are, don't seem like they are run much better than eastern Placer.
Maybe just let Alterra build their hotels, and for each room eliminate a STR, and shift the bed base to the valley? Maybe the same with the new TC hotel (or any other new hotel), where a bus to the ski area could make sense? It would never happen, but I would be ok with a skyscraper in the valley if it meant an end to STRs.

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Originally Posted by mmmm...pow!

While it does suck that people down the hill are making the decisions for us up here, I'm not so sure it would be much different if we had our own county. It would probably be the same fucktards that run the various business associations here that would end up running our local government - a bunch of Cindys, if you will. And we could still be outvoted by second homeowners. Truckee and SLT, as different as they are, don't seem like they are run much better than eastern Placer.
Maybe just let Alterra build their hotels, and for each room eliminate a STR, and shift the bed base to the valley? Maybe the same with the new TC hotel (or any other new hotel), where a bus to the ski area could make sense? It would never happen, but I would be ok with a skyscraper in the valley if it meant an end to STRs.

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Waddayoumean!? Truckee has shown itself to be very good at building roundabouts.

I’m a big fan of dedicated bus lanes.
Not only does mass transit use them, but school buses and emergency vehicles.
When Aspen holds the XGames, they bring in extra buses from the National Parks, which aren’t busy in January.
Fixed mass transit is expensive and inefficient.
I don’t see how residents can hold Alterra responsible, when they’ve been kicking the can down the road, for decades.


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We blame Alterra and Vail because their resorts are what drive the gridlock. Their profits derive in part from public infrastructure for which they pay nothing. What taxes they pay go to Placer County, which isn't spending them up here. And Truckee gets zero. The reason some ski towns have good public transit is that the resort and the town are a single entity, so local govt has a lot of control over the resort, Our problem is spread out between a town and two counties, the latter being run from the other side of the mountains.

And as far as kicking the can down the road--we don't just blame Alterra. We blame Alex Cushing too.

Alterra/Vail pays property taxes. When they develop properties, there are infrastructure development fees that are required. But those fees are limited to things like improving parking lots and the nearby roads. I haven't ever heard of a private party being forced to pay for a public transit system.

Everyone who lives in the Truckee area moved there because of the resorts. These "locals" are part of the problem too, not just the tourists. If you want public transit, then pay for it. Beg the county to increase your property taxes. Enact sales taxes (which tourists have to pay as well). Hotel and STR taxes. Beg the county to impose a public transit levy on you. You can define the borders of this levee so that only people in Truckee area are paying and not the people living down near Sacramento who don't want to pay for Truckee's public transit system. Some will argue, we already do this. Well, obviously you are not taxed enough.

Adding bus only lanes is cheaper than light rail but still way more expensive than what you would expect ( in part, thanks to that CEQA law that Old Goat wants to use against Alterra). All these other resort areas with supposedly "good" public transit systems have terrible traffic as well, and it is only getting worse. Public transit only works in high density communities. None of the resorts qualify as high density. Instead, they are full of sprawled out, single family homes, with locals who drive everywhere complaining about the traffic that they, themselves, are creating by their lifestyle. If you want to sue anyone, how about suing the county/state/city for allowing you to live in your sprawled out, car centric fashion, rather than concentrating development and growth to specific parts.

The West is getting more crowded, and has been getting more crowded for as long as I have lived on this planet. You can't blame Alterra/Vail for this.

EDIT: Well said and all true. Well, maybe 1% moved to Truckee for other reasons, but basically spot on.


Popping back in here. Send me a PM before buying to help out the collective. Or if you are new, help out yourself.

EDIT #2: Went back and read some more of this debate. Compare and contrast Mammoth to North Lake Tahoe - NLT is much more dispersed than Mammoth, and would require significant infrastructure improvements that private companies do not fund anywhere. this is a failure of the county. When these resorts request permits for improvements on their resorts, that is the time a county can require funds for road issues. They should have done so, but the county failed at that point in time. There is no president for getting funds after the fact. MM shuttle is operated by Eastern Sierra Transit Authority. In 2016 70% of funds came from State and Federal sources (https://www.estransit.com/wp-content...Report-web.pdf). Im sure Placer county uses the vast majority of their funds in Sacramento. Mono County does not really have a competing population center.

Money is the crux of this. For sure the county should be coughing up for this, but with most of the population living down valley, it is hard to getting the populace to vote for a county wide tax. Hence why a local tax is theist option. But this shit is way more than the cost of a base to base gondola.

For sure this sucks for all ya all in north lake, but really am hard pressed seeing how you'd get much out of Vail or Alterra at the 11th hour. These are private companies, so they will only act finically if they see it in their best interest. As long as their parking lots and lodging are full and they are selling burgers, I don't see why they would do it out fo the kindness of their hearts. Even if all the locals ditched Palisades for local resorts next year, you still have a huge population in the Central Valley and Bay Area that will continue to buy passes and eat lunch.

I brought this epic up a decade ago when KW was bought by Vail, and complained and said no good would come of these multi passes. Most of TGR told me I needed to get used to the future and there was no turning back the clock. One of the reason I've never bought an Epic Pass, (I buy a KW Only Pass where the vast majority of funds stay with the local hill) was to minimize my support of the multi pass.

Clearly I've come pretty much full circle, now that I organize a group buy. , but I do have some alternate motivation there and that is getting as much back as we can. I'm no saint, but I do think the damage was done many years ago. I think the best option is to stir things up with local politics. A lot of those people stuck in traffic live down valley, and might be willing to be part of the solution.