I've sort of stayed out of the flow trail idea, not wanting to either rain on or cheer for anyone's parade. Given that my idea of mountain biking is huffing and puffing and getting my heart rate up, I don't have a dog in this fight as a cyclist as much as I do as a taxpayer and resident. I have marginally followed the discussion, most recently offered by Mike Warren here and here. But here are some thoughts.
One, this would be a highly manufactured trail aimed at attracting a visitor industry. That is not a bad idea for a town with a circa 75 year old one horse economy; horses don't live forever. That said, I have seen a dearth of analysis of the realistic costs vs. benefits of such an adventure. Being a highly developed trail, it would require an enduring maintenance and advertising budget to ensure we are both attracting visitors and not attracting litigation should someone auger themselves into an un-maintained curve. As far as costs vs benefits, I go back to my column regarding the Krogers Marketplace fiasco that has left a Mari-Mac size eyesore at the eastern edge of town (and I was skeptical from the start). We are not always good at predicting the future or managing outcomes. Like rain following the plow, tourism following money is a belief, not a fact. On that note, if this is such a good idea why isn't a private company ponying up cost matching with LAC?
Mike Warren made some good comments about the effects of such a trail on our canyons. Those are worthy of consideration. Some locations are more ecologically and historically sensitive than others and this could easily turn into a political fight rather than a community collaboration. From my conversations with the county, considerable thought is going into planning this potential development in a thoughtful fashion designed to do minimal impact to the sensitivity of the landscape. But that's just my opinion and we know all about opinions.
The notion that we could partially transform Los Alamos from a company town populated by coneheads to a significant tourist destination must be backed up with some facts. Especially as we would be competing with established tourist destinations. I don't blame those who are putting their sweat equity into establishing recreational resources up here for trying and wish them well. Nor do I blame Council for trying to add a second horse to the economic team. Certainly a more diverse economy, not to mention a more diverse community, could be good for the place as we are utterly dependent on Uncle Sam's largess, which is in part a result of our being a single business community and in part predicated on involuntarily taking other taxpayer's money by virtue of the vaunted GRT windfall resulting from privatization. But there are a lot of ifs, ands, and buts involved in how to accomplish economic diversification and what such efforts would bring in the way of changing traffic patterns, a need for housing diversity, and ensuring a living wage for those service workers who would be making a living in a tourist business within a community predicated on high government salaries for people with advanced degrees. We need a fuller discussion with numbers on the table.
Again, going back to history, I recall the T Board finally recommending that we get a second professional opinion to vet the county's consultants on a roundabout project because the consultant offered rosy models not accepted by critics who did their own calculations. As T board chair, I eventually became exasperated with the difference between official projections and a private citizens group's more dire models. When the county hired a second, highly technical firm to do a numerical model as a form of peer review, the roses quickly wilted into dust.
Since this is public money and public space, we need a serious and quantitative as well as qualitative analysis of what we would put into this and what we would get in return. Its that simple.
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