 Poster: A snowHead
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The depressing urban affliction of car parking affects most ski resorts, because such a high proportion of visitors arrive in private vehicles, particularly in North America. The Colorado resorts of Aspen and Vail have found the problem hard to solve, and are now looking at underground carparks with price tags of up to $135,000 per space.
One solution mooted for Aspen includes "a mechanized garage that shuffles and stacks driverless cars in a three-story garage buried halfway underground."
Very rustic! This report from today's Denver Post.
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Mon 21-06-04 10:01; edited 1 time in total
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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There was a similar garage in London - somwhere naguely east of westminster but west of the city. Been for a couple of interviews round there but can;t remember the name, aaarrrghhhh!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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There is lots of that type of parking used in New York, especially Manhattan where the price of land per m2 is horriffic, rather than go down into the ground they go upwards but it's the same principle. Quite nifty!
Why don't they operate some kind of park and ride for all day tripers at a site further down the moutain?
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And also in Japan for the same reasons. But I'd hate to see them above ground in the resorts. One of the few good things about some of the big purpose built French resorts is the underground parking and car-free zones above.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Mmm one of the problems of the Bernese Oberland and Wengen in particular is the distinct lack of roads to the resort, the favorite proposal to re arrange this is to drill a substantial tunnel up through the mountain and somehow hide a carpark up at village level, weird when you consider that people go to Wengen because it is catr free but then complain when they gety there that they have to transfer their luggage up the mountain by train !
Of course there would be some good points to this idea, people would be able to arrive when the trains were not running, locals would be able to get to shops, hospitals and so on more easily, but even in the village it is a hotly debated subject.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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| D G Orf wrote: |
Mmm one of the problems of the Bernese Oberland and Wengen in particular is the distinct lack of roads to the resort, the favorite proposal to re arrange this is to drill a substantial tunnel up through the mountain and somehow hide a carpark up at village level, weird when you consider that people go to Wengen because it is catr free but then complain when they gety there that they have to transfer their luggage up the mountain by train !
Of course there would be some good points to this idea, people would be able to arrive when the trains were not running, locals would be able to get to shops, hospitals and so on more easily, but even in the village it is a hotly debated subject. |
This is not uncommon for many ski stations in Austria and Switzerland. The relatively good roads to French ski stations are the exception rather than the rule and even then a lot of the smaller French stations have access that can be interesting in the winter.
As an unscientific measure I reckon I spend more time driving on minor roads in Austria and Switzerland than I do in France. The access road to Les Diablerets where I was yesterday isn’t too special and I came back cross-country via Gstaad and Chateau d’Oex which are pretty poor roads.
In terms of peoples expectations, that’s quite simple of course; it’s other peoples cars they don’t want to see, their own they expect to park 10 metres from whenever they want to be 
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Belle Plagne works quite well - the large underground car park follows the route of the buldings above, so that you can park close to your accommodation. Shame about the lack of ventilation, though - quite the most unpleasant car park I've ever used from that standpoint.
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Parking is not the only urban issue affecting Vail. The major road that runs adjacent to the resort - Interstate 70 - is generating more noise every year, to the extent that some homeowners are installing air-conditioning to avoid keeping their windows open in summer.
Traffic volume has trebled in the past 20 years, partly because the road services a chain of successful resorts in Colorado. Solutions such as a tunnel or railway line have been ruled out, as reported in today's Seattle Post Intelligencer.
I don't recall the noise problem when visiting Vail about 12 years ago, but the big wide road is certainly a visual blot when you're gazing down from the high slopes. Luckily there are plenty of compensations and escapes, such as the back bowls.
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