This winter. my family
discovered that Oregon’s Mount Hood is known for more than
dramatic mountain rescues. Would you believe it could also be
called the mother of all traffic jams? Tail lights for as far as
the eye could see, gridlock for nearly an hour: That’s what
the highway through the Mount Hood National Forest becomes on a
snowy winter weekend. With five lift-served resorts and numerous
backcountry trails within striking distance of the Portland metro
area‘s 2 million inhabitants, the mountain teems with skiers,
boarders, snowshoers and sledders when good snow and fair skies
coincide.
As the five of us squirmed cheek to jowl inside
our compact sedan, my thoughts gravitated toward two seemingly
unconnected subjects: Oregon’s congressional delegation, and
the Swiss transit system.
The leap of consciousness from
a traffic jam to our local congressional worthies really
wasn’t such a stretch. Last year, Reps. Earl Blumenauer,
D-Portland, and Greg Walden, R-Hood River, crafted the Mount Hood
Stewardship Legacy Act, which included a provision directing the
Forest Service to work with the state to develop “an
integrated, multi-modal transportation plan for the Mt. Hood
region.” Planners would look for non-car alternatives such as
gondolas and other ways of moving lots of people efficiently to key
recreation destinations. Amen to that.
That was promising
news – especially if the bill gets anywhere – and it
also made me think about my family’s recent trip to
Switzerland. Two years ago, when our daughter was attending a Swiss
university, we spent Christmas in the Alps, and during our entire
18-day stay, we never entered an automobile. Using the
nation’s integrated transit system, we relied entirely on
buses, trains and cable cars to visit cities, villages and
world-class snow resorts. It was heaven.
Back home in
Oregon, a day trip to the slopes means grueling hours behind the
wheel, struggling amid a surging tide of SUVs. But while in
Switzerland, we zipped from the lowlands to the heart of the Alps
on an ultra-modern train, all the while stretching out comfortably
and sipping schokolade.
We also spent a week in one of
Switzerland’s famous car-free mountain resorts, of which
there are nine. Some simply can’t be reached by auto;
everyone arrives by train or cable car. Others can be accessed by
vehicles, but cars and buses are left at the town limits, with the
streets reserved for pedestrians and tiny electric taxis. In either
case, they draw snow-sport enthusiasts from around the world, and
in the summer, they cater to tourists, hikers and climbers.
Could the Swiss model — or something like it — be
replicated at Mount Hood or in other resort areas close to Western
American cities? A few mountain resorts in North America have
incorporated some pedestrian-friendly elements in their town
planning; in particular, Whistler, in British Columbia. At least
one Western resort, Winter Park, in Colorado, can be reached by
train, and most larger resorts sponsor a few buses to bring some of
their clientele to the slopes. Coloradoans also talk about a train
linking Vail to the Denver area, but when state transportation
planners talk about mass transit costing upwards of $4 billion or
more, the conversation shifts to expanding the interstate instead.
Nowhere on our continent is there really an
“integrated, multi-modal transportation plan” that
comes close to what the Swiss have achieved. In the American West,
going skiing or boarding almost always involves an uncomfortable,
unsafe, gas-guzzling, environmentally unfriendly drive. And that
assumes that the roads are even open. This winter, avalanches
repeatedly closed Interstate 70 and other roads feeding Colorado
ski resorts, and a massive debris flow over Oregon’s Highway
35 isolated Hood’s largest resort for weeks.
We of
the Portland area pride ourselves as being pioneers in
environmentally-sound urban transit, with an integrated web of
buses, light rail, streetcars and an aerial tram, as well as
efforts to encourage walking and cycling. Looking to the Alps for
successful planning, why not translate their same approach to Mount
Hood and similar Western resort areas? Why do we say we can’t
afford to do what’s right, when spending huge amounts of
money only perpetuates what’s wrong?
Bill
Cook is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He writes in Lake
Oswego, Oregon.
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