This is a time for the people to unite and make some noise. Without it, we stand little chance of stopping this. Your voice is powerful. Go to the meeting tonight (which will be about trails, but people will be speaking out whenever they can). 6pm at Cheyenne Mountain High School in the kiva room. 1200 Cresta Road. A little procedural background: The Jan 25th meeting was the second meeting at which results from "surveys" from the first meeting of the 4 options were presented. Only 80 people were at that first meeting. When presented with the absurdity of 80 people dictating the choices for over half a million people was presented to Patricia, we were told, essentially, too bad. This attitude does not reflect an interest in serving the will of the people. 2. Many people rejected all 4 options and asked to be heard. They were given 5 minutes at the end of the meeting to speak out....for over 200 people who showed up to the January 25th meeting. The reason so many people were there is word was finally getting out about the 4 options, all of which include buses, and include just granting Mesa Avenue to the Broadmoor and shutting public access to the South Cheyenne Canon loop. This is not a sincere attempt to gauge the will of the people and allow them to publicly share their views. 3. Now, that the people are aware, there is outrage. This petition shot up to over 1200 signatures in one day. The Strawberry Fields petition, to give context, took a week to get climb over 300 signatures, and that issue was, according to City Council members who get copies of the petitions, the most contested issue the council has ever seen. 4. When confronted with this idea that the people do not want any of these 4 options and they need to go back and start over, the response was, essentially, another too bad, this is what we have. Ah, a clear sign Mayor Suthers is truly in it for the people and seeks to reflect their will. (*sarcasm*) Email Suthers and tell him to stop these farcical attempt to appear as if they are seeking the implement the will of the people (it is YOUR land) and copy the press for transparency. Email: jsuthers@springsgov.com, and for transparency, cc: AllCouncil@springsgov.com, savecheyennemountain@gmail.com, zubeck@csindy.com, krdonews@krdo.com, mike.rausch@krdo.com, news@kktv.com, lmartin@kktv.com, news@koaa.com, kduffy@koaa.com, jcole@kxrm.com, jpaul@denverpost.com, info@krcc.com And email Jim Alexee at the Sierra Club, jim.alexee@sierraclub.org and copy the press and council also asking for the Sierra Club to step up and use their powerful voice to stop this.Let's take a minute to talk about the science and reality of bus emissions. In a recent British study conducted by the ABD and Sheffield University, it was noted that the CLEANEST buses emit 3.5 times the nitrous oxides (NOx) as a car, and the AVERAGE bus remits 16 times the NOx as the average car. The reason for the variance is loads and maintenance of buses. So, let's take an average of 9.75. (for particulate matter, the stats are even worse with the average bus emitting 28X the average car). It does not take an Einstein to quickly see that the buses need to consistently carry 9.75 the passenger load of the cars just to breakeven. The smaller buses in question, like the Broadmoor buses, typically carry between 8-16 passengers....2 to 4 times the average car load of 4. So, even if the buses are utilizing full capacity on every run, we are starting off with a 2X increase in pollution into a SLOT canyon. This is an obvious worse alternative. Now, let's go back to those traffic studies which should have been conducted. We know that the canyon will only push these limits during three major holiday weekends over the year (Memorial, 4th of July and Labor Day) with Memorial and 4th of July being the busiest. For the other days of the summer, the buses will run low to empty in terms of passengers sometimes making runs through the canyon to pick up people from trail stops....and, it is these constant runs which makes the added pollution even worse. The narrowness of this slot canyon makes the emissions even worse as they will be trapped. Buses are an absurd idea for that reason as well as the safety risks. The canyon road is too narrow to safely accommodate two way bus traffic. They have proposed one way traffic as an option also which will mean after descending Mt. Cutler trail, for example, one gets to wait for the bus, and then take a 30 minute, easily, ride through the rest of the canyon making stops to pick up others and riding all the way down Gold Camp road to 26th street and then back down 21st to the Starsmore bus load/unload area and parking lot which used to be a lovely, natural wedding and picnic venue. So, on top of a dramatic spike in pollution, we have serious convenience issues with many more people loitering around the canyon roads as they wait for bus pick ups. Add to that bikers and wildlife, and you are adding an increase in risks for accidents. There are places where buses make sense to justify the dramatic increases in NOx and particulate emissions over cars -- and that is when you have consistent heavy passenger loads which keep buses full for all their runs. You know, like Disney World. We do not have those loads and should not seek to have them. Speaking of Disney World, the other problem with buses, is on those 3 peak weekends, the canyon trails are already maxed out.....why would we seek to add more traffic to the trails at those times? Full parking lots are natural barriers to protect our public lands. We should not seek to accommodate every visitor at any moment in time. If the Cutler parking lot is full, go to another trailhead or comeback another time. Cheyenne Canon supports a thriving hummingbird population and is the center of a high critical habitat area for the endangered Mexican Spotted Owls. These increases in NOx and particulates will threaten those species.