The gondola isn't the problem--our workweek is.

• Author: Griffin, Elle

RIGHT NOW, there is a big debate about what we should do with Little Cottonwood Canyon. Every winter, ski destinations Snowbird and Alta draw millions of people up a two-lane road. Demand on a Saturday is intense; thousands of cars create a two-hour-long queue up a 12.5-mile stretch of avalanche-prone highway. People sell breakfast burritos to waiting skiers.

To solve this problem, Utah's department of transportation (UDOT) decided to implement a toll road to encourage public transportation, then proposed two potential methods of public transportation we could use: We could widen the road and build a bus system that would get skiers up in 36 minutes (Enhanced Bus w/ Widening), or we could build a gondola that would get skiers from the base to the top of the mountain in 55 (Gondola B).

In both cases, parking garages would be built at the base. In both cases, 1,000 people would get up the mountain using public transportation every hour (1,008 via bus, 1050 via gondola). In both cases, the cost would be in the $500 millions ($510 million for buses, $550 million for the gondola). Where they differ is the ongoing maintenance cost: busses will cost us $11 million every year while the gondola costs us only $7 million, or only $4 million if it runs just in the winter.

The bus option is more expensive because of labor. It will take a lot of bus drivers to make that plan a reality, and right now, those drivers are hard to find. In October of this year, UDOT announced that ski busses would come every 30 minutes this year instead of every 15--among other changes to local transport--because they are short 85 bus drivers. Meaning after we've spent $500 million to widen the roads and add parking garages to the base of the canyon, we might not even be able to hire enough bus drivers to make that plan a reality.

If the gondola is starting to sound like the better option, well, UDOT thought so too. In August, they announced their plans to move forward with the gondola and opened the decision up for public comments. This is where politics gets involved. Outrage sparked across the state like wildfire, garnering comments from three camps: the conservationists (those who think getting more people in the canyon isn't a good idea), the NIMBY-ers (people who live in the area and think the gondola will be ugly) and the taxpayers (because why should we have to spend $550 million in taxpayer money so that tourists can go ski at private resorts which stand to earn the...