Mobility lab?

I would just like to inform our City Council that Aspen is not their private little laboratory experiment. It is a living, breathing city where people live, shop, eat, work and sometimes just enjoy life in the mountains.

Even though the Mobility Lab plan has shrunk from eliminating 200 parking places to 15, and with today’s news is being reconsidered entirely, I am concerned that this is a bad idea whose time will come again. What makes you, as our elected representatives, think that blocking off between one and six blocks of Hopkins Avenue for biking access will alleviate the downtown traffic problem? Please!

The plan to make Hopkins one way further exacerbates challenging driving during Aspen’s ever lengthening tourist season, and may very well create serious problems for the fire department. Business owners have spoken loudly against this proposal, and it is good to see you’re listening by tabling the whole idea. I suggest you do more than table it by dropping it in the circular file cabinet (i.e trash it). Many of us who live in Aspen and shop, dine and work here join the merchants in opposing your experiment. We do not want it to go ahead.

Aspen is in many ways a victim of its’ own successful marketing and advertising — and it’s too late to do much about the throngs of visitors from mid-June through late October. Making Hopkins Street one way and blocking off part of the street, however attractive in theory, will make summers in downtown Aspen even more intolerable and unmanageable.

By the way, there is a nearby example of a resort that is completely malled off, with a big parking garage for all who live and work there — it’s called Vail. Don’t “Vailify” Aspen. Keep downtown accessible for visitors and locals alike and end your experiments with our mobility.

Susan Bernard

Aspen