New Shuttle System

Dear Owners,

Thank you for the many of you that have shared your appreciation and support of our new shuttle system. The Shuttle Team tells me this year’s guest, owner, and employee usage has been off the charts. But after a recent conversation with a couple of you, it occurred to me that our reason for this change may not be fully understood.

In late fall, our ski and ride department requested we purchase two new snowmobiles and pull behind sleds so that they could pickup our lodging guests to transport them from the Village to their lessons at Moonbeam. Apparently, this was a practice in use season’s prior. The need conveyed to me for this new equipment was that our shuttle system from SRL to Moonbeam was unreliable and guests were frequently missing their scheduled lessons. Our team spent quite a bit of time researching these equipment items and trying to find unbudgeted monies to make this work.

At the same time this request was happening, we were having internal discussions with our shuttle & parking team on the Nordic shuttle and how difficult it was to support that on busy days due to canyon traffic. The team reported many days last season that the shuttle would take several hours to get from SRL up to the Nordic Center and back. Soon thereafter, Nate went out to walk the road between the bridge and Moonbeam to see if it was possible to run our shuttle the backway. If we could do this, it meant we could keep our shuttle off the main road, removing yet another car from the canyon traffic, and hopefully increase our reliability in getting guests from the Village to the Moonbeam area. Much to my amazement, Nate was able to pull this off and here we are.

We know the system has opportunities for improvement. These include: smoothing out the drop-off by Last Chance, possibly paving the entire section, removing the grassy area in the middle of the bridge, looking at a new extension of the bridge for a covered pedestrian walk-way, widening the roundabout so the vans can make a turn in one fell swoop, addressing some drainage issues, and improved signage.

We know for some of you this shuttle change has altered your accustomed Village look and feel, and we get that. However, the functional improvement for our village guests (and yours) - leave us with our intention to keep this change for the go forward. In addition, we now utilize the UTA Bus from Moonbeam as our primary shuttle up to the Nordic Center. This bus goes more frequently (versus 2x per day) and generally has more space on it. This change has also been favorably received by our Nordic & Snowshoe users.

We assure you we will continue to hone our process and plan work on some of those improvements for next season. In the meantime, thank you for your ongoing patience and support as we continue to try and enhance the Solitude experience.

Best,

a.