{"id":9027,"date":"2021-04-25T14:40:55","date_gmt":"2021-04-25T20:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.parkrag.com\/?p=9027"},"modified":"2021-04-25T14:40:55","modified_gmt":"2021-04-25T20:40:55","slug":"silver-springs-you-arent-getting-your-bus-back-but-there-may-be-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/25\/silver-springs-you-arent-getting-your-bus-back-but-there-may-be-alternatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Silver Springs, you aren&#8217;t getting your bus back but there may be alternatives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you haven&#8217;t been following the drama of Silver Springs and the loss of their bus route, here is the <strong><em>tldr;<\/em><\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Park City and Summit County had a falling out over the current bus system. Summit County is making their own bus system called High Valley Transit (HVT). As part of that, they are canceling the 7 Pink bus service that runs through Silver Springs. Silver Springs residents are up in arms because it impacts their transportation options. Many claim they moved there because of the bus.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, that&#8217;s where we are. Silver Spring residents are writing letters to the Park Record. They are calling their County Council people. A few have sent in comments to the Park Rag. I&#8217;m sympathetic, but I also pay attention to what our leaders say. In Wednesday&#8217;s County Council meeting, HVT Board president Kim Carson and Summit County Regional Transportation Planning Director, Caroline Rodriguez, spoke about current plans and answered questions from council persons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the county council conversation, here is why your leaders think the current HVT plans are good for you (and why your bus isn&#8217;t coming back).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Huge buses are going through your neighborhood with &#8220;no one&#8221; on them. That&#8217;s a waste of resources and bad for the environment.<\/li><li>Today buses come every 30 minutes. HVT plans are better because &#8220;on-demand&#8221; minivans will pick you up in 15 minutes.  It&#8217;s actually better for you whether you believe it or not.<\/li><li>Neighboring neighborhoods can now call for pickups, instead of having to walk to your neighborhood. It&#8217;s a benefit for others.<\/li><li>There is no time. They are establishing temporary offices at park-and-rides and getting in vehicles (hopefully) a week or two before launch. There is no time for changes.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I see the flaws in these arguments. For instance, yesterday morning, at many times, there were more people on the 7-Pink in Silver Springs than on the 10 Electric from KJ to PC. However, I think leaders have made up their minds &#8212; for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The &#8220;for now&#8221; is the important part. Kim Carson did say that they want to be flexible. They want to alter their plans based on how the system functions. So, Silver Springs residents, I&#8217;d give up on the fight to get a diesel bus careening through your burb. It&#8217;s not going to happen. However, I wouldn&#8217;t settle for a generic micro-transit alternative either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was messaging back and forth with someone who lives in Silver Springs and they had a good point. If the micro-transit would pick them up and take them to the Canyons or a central spot like Smith&#8217;s in Kimball Junction, that may be good enough. I think the Silver Springs&#8217; fear is that they will need to take micro-transit to another bus stop, transfer, and then get to the Canyons or Smith&#8217;s to shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, why not propose that Silver Springs micro-transit have expanded drop-offs for a trial period. If every pickup ends up being one family in a car headed to the Canyons or KJ, then expanded service doesn&#8217;t make sense. It&#8217;s no better than the family hopping in a car. If there is really the demand that is being signaled, then perhaps it would make sense to continue on-demand, micro-transit to a few extended locations like the Canyons and into Kimball Junction. If demand is big enough, perhaps a small shuttle bus would make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silver Springs is a little different from many neighborhoods in the Basin. For example, in Jeremy Ranch, HVT micro-transit is an addition to what we have had. In Silver Springs, the current HVT plan is seen as a subtraction.  By providing Silver Springs with a chance to show that it makes sense to provide an expanded micro-transit, it may bridge the gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The diesel bus isn&#8217;t coming back to Silver Springs, but that doesn&#8217;t mean there aren&#8217;t alternatives. Perhaps my proposal isn&#8217;t what Silver Springs wants, but maybe Silver Spring residents can come up with something that meets both the HVT and residents&#8217; needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Note, the video of the meeting seems to have disappeared but <a href=\"https:\/\/summitcounty.app.box.com\/s\/ccsjd0wv8z2pa4cvztgii0kxq2tbh5av\">here is the link<\/a> in case it comes back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t been following the drama of Silver Springs and the loss of their bus route, here is the tldr;: Park City and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9027"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}