Bringing Forward an Early Idea of Innovation

It has been said that Vail was built by skiers for skiers when Vail Mountain opened in 1962. But building a ski town from scratch demanded more than lifts and trails. Indoor running water, wastewater treatment, fire trucks, fuel and other essential infrastructure had to come together quickly. There was little time to calculate Vail’s future needs when so many other priorities were imminent. In hindsight, Vail’s early planners acknowledge a coordinated system for loading and delivery was overlooked when Vail’s first commercial buildings and streets were designed. The town has been working to catch up ever since by combining an old idea with new technology as it introduces the E-Vail Courier pilot program for the 2021-2022 winter season.

The concept for E-Vail Courier has its roots in a Town of Vail planning document dated August 1973. Excerpts from The Vail Plan identify the ongoing problem and a revolutionary solution for its time:

“The obvious problem as one attempts to walk within the town is, with the exception of a portion of Bridge Street in the Village and the plaza area of Lionshead, that it is literally impossible to walk without conflict with moving autos, parked autos, or unloading trucks…

“Service trucks entering into pedestrian areas to deliver materials to stores and restaurants is not a desirable process for the pedestrian areas will suffer in quality by the presence of large trucks. It is recommended that a fleet of small electric vehicles be used as the eventual replacement for the trucks.”

--The Vail Plan, 1973

The enactment of the Pedestrian Mall Act in 1978 put in motion a plan to better manage vehicles in the Village core as well as the establishment of Checkpoint Charlie which is staffed by the police department to restrict unauthorized access. During the 1980s and 1990s, there were various community meetings which debated the balancing of further pedestrianization of the Village core and the need for the ever-increasing delivery of supplies and goods to keep up with the growing demand Vail was experiencing.

The 1993 Vail Transportation Master Plan began to quantify the volume of products and mix of vehicles entering the villages. That year, approximately 19,000 delivery vehicles entered the core through Checkpoint Charlie; another 81,000 cars, construction vehicles, taxis and other service vehicles made their way to the checkpoint gate. Rules restricting access to specific times of day were put in place as well as establishment of designated on-street loading zones to manage when and where delivery vehicles could operate.

The 1999 Loading and Delivery Study further quantified the amount of goods being delivered and divided the Village into quadrants and established the number of delivery bays needed in each quadrant. The plan also lent support and recognized the importance of snowmelting the streets in the villages to better accommodate deliveries.

Vail’s Billion Dollar Renewal, which took hold in 2005, served as the catalyst for significant progress in implementing the community’s long-term loading and delivery goals as the town worked for more than a decade to establish public-private partnerships that were used to build a significant component of the infrastructure first suggested in the 1973 plan and outlined in later plans. A shift in thinking from a single centralized loading and delivery system facility to a series of many facilities dispersed around the commercial core areas on private property was formulated. The idea was to create a dispersed loading and delivery network in Vail Village that would use underground delivery bays to help minimize the presence of large delivery vehicles within Vail’s pedestrian areas. By 2009, shared underground delivery bays had been incorporated into redevelopments at One Willow Bridge Road, Sebastian Vail Village Inn, and Mountain Plaza. Facilities at Solaris and Four Seasons would soon follow, providing access to a total of over 30 loading bays and a multi-million-dollar investment across the five properties encircling Vail Village.

Much to the community’s disappointment, these docks have been underutilized due to the challenges associated with labor, handcarts and other manual transports that are needed for goods to reach their final destination. Introduction of the E-Vail Courier pilot program will address these challenges by providing customized, environmentally-friendly, door-to-door deliveries – and at no additional charge to businesses.

Deliveries to Lionshead Village have been excluded from the 2021-2022 winter pilot program due to the long-term success of a centralized underground loading dock at Arrabelle at Vail Square which opened in 2008 with six bays.

While there is much work to do in coordinating the E-Vail Courier program, this effort could be a gamechanger in the way Vail approaches loading and delivery operations, thanks to a vision set forth in 1973.