Living lab is a dead end

This past July 4 weekend I spent a few hours in the downtown observing this “living lab” experiment and can report the following:

First, just about everyone on a bike is still riding in the street and not in the designated bike lane. Second, the designated path for bikes squeezed between park cars and sidewalk is uninviting to bicycle riding. Third, the designated path is being used mostly by pedestrians, which is another disincentive to use as a bike path. Fourth, we came back into town for dinner and no one was using bikes to ride to dinner.

If Aspen City Council wants to experiment with people’s lives or livelihoods, let them experiment on their own lives at their own expense. The locals and businesses that earn their living working downtown are not the millionaires you loathe. Bicycle riding in the downtown core is not the visitors’ highlight of Aspen but rather the businesses that they patronize and remember. 

Lily Garfield

Aspen