1 minute read
Framing the Challenges
Key Challenges
It’s hard to get around Jackson Hole, for people and wildlife, no matter how you’re trying to get where you need to go. Neighborhoods lack sidewalks and streets aren’t safe for kids to ride bikes to school. Unless you’re going to and from Teton Village during the winter, the START bus just doesn’t work for most of us. There’s rarely another route that will reach your destination. These obstacles force most of us into cars for a majority of our local travel, generating 60% of the area’s pollution related to climate change, a concern commonly identified by community members.
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On average, 114 mule deer, 35 elk, and 15 moose are struck and killed by motorists every year on Teton County roads. The summer tourist season floods our roads with traffic. Because of this seasonal congestion, and because many mistakenly believe that wider roads will alleviate congestion (despite decades of data proving wider roads only encourage people to drive more and do not reduce congestion), WYDOT is developing plans to dramatically expand the highways that bisect the community, which would harm community character and make it even harder to get around.
Teton County adopted an Integrated Transportation Plan (ITP) in 2015. Founded on the Teton County Comprehensive Plan values of Ecosystem Stewardship, Managed Growth, and Community Character, the ITP was intended as a blueprint that would “make travel by walk, bike, carpool, or transit more convenient than travel by single-occupant vehicle". A 2020 technical update to the plan tracked progress between study years of 2013 (used in the 2015 plan) and 2018. During that time that total miles driven per capita rose 50%. Anecdotally, traffic continued to increase in 2020 and 2021 as many people relocated to the area during the COVID pandemic and visitation surged.
It’s clear that a laudable vision and goals are not enough to uphold the community's values. Business as usual threatens to sacrifice the community's values and overturn the community's aspirations. Action is needed.
