YOUR AD HERE »

Vail Daily: Some sober thoughts

Vail Daily
Vail, CO Colorado

Let us consider carefully what it means for government to have “public safety” as one of its primary responsibilities and how that language is used to justify “drunk bus routes” for the Valley bus system.

First let me state that through the decades that I have seen ECO Transit grow in serving the Eagle Valley.

It ranks at the top compared to what I have experienced through the country where I have traveled and used buses. It is great and we are blessed to have it.



Its purpose is to serve the residents who live and work here and the travelers who come here all year long to enjoy all this county has to offer.

It can never offer custom service to the public at large because of cost restraints. Go get a cab.

Support Local Journalism



Schedules and routes must be organized to offer basic busing to meet the greatest needs within the least-expensive means.

Since the county is under a funding crunch, the bus system, as well as other departments, must examine and pursue how they can keep their services within budgetary demands without imposing on other sectors of the county for additional funding.

Plain and simple, they must function within their means and not within whatever anyone dreams!

If late-night routes need to go, let them go. Those routes should not be subsidized using the threat that a bunch of lawless drunks may kill someone on the highway.

Please rethink your position, Vail Daily. Almost any service to the county could be justified through the appeal of providing for the welfare and safety of the community.

We must not use the politics of guilt and pity to implement or continue any government service that is not for the general needs of the community. When it becomes specific need, let private entities subsidize themselves. The public at large has no responsibility filling that trough.

If we want safer roads from drunken driving, the solution has been proven for decades in Sweden. They have a .05 alcohol-blood level “driving under the influence law” and require a mandatory 1-year jail sentence for the infraction without much a lawyer can do to intervene.

Imagine how that would cut into 20,000 people a year in this country dying on the road purposelessly!

So, bar owners and friends, do your buddies a favor. Take their keys and drive them home or get them a cab. It is not the purpose of the bus system to lend a theorized level of safety serving the drunken community late at night if it is not affordable to run at that time within current funding constraints.

Robert Hemmerich Dinosaur


Support Local Journalism