Mayor's Message - 2125: Back to the future with the mayor

By Gary Hall

Let’s talk the future. But not 2025. How about 2125? We do have to deal with the short-term problems and solve them, but I want to try to see what Estes Park will look like 20, 50, 100 years. We’ve been here for 150 years or so and we’ve made it look like what it is. Can we keep the beauty while tending to our population and workers and wildlife for another 100 years and beyond?

It’s a worthy exercise but perhaps TOO conservative with the vision. There will be great advancements that I’m missing here. I need my inner Isaac Asimov to kick in; as I go to press with this, I think it looks more like 50 years in the future, not 100. So, what do YOU see in Estes’s future?  

Green Energy and Transportation

We will have achieved 100% green dependable electrical power no later than 2037 for Estes. The Virtual Power Plant will track the many sources of private electricity into the grid. We’ll have enormous, redundant battery storage to get us through. There will be new sources of energy not yet discovered or developed today. Will the rest of the world be as good as us locally/regionally?

We’ll have continuous autonomous (no driver) transportation up and down the hill. We’ll have only a small number of private vehicles, because it will be so convenient to use the automated green methods. You can still have family privacy on a long road trip by using personal vehicles.

There will be aerial options, vehicles of the air. Really! You can get one now for $300K, but the FAA doesn’t have rules yet.

Our fleet of Town vehicles

Vehicles will be completely electric by 2032. We’ll have pedestrian overpasses: the top of Big Thompson or across Highway 7 / S. St. Vrain. Crosswalks will not be danger zones – cars will be stopped automatically if a person or elk is crossing.

Personal wheeled or hovering devices

Pedestrians on gyroscopic wheeled shoes will follow paths around the Dry Gulch/Devils Gulch loop, the full Fish Creek/Highway 7 loop, and more.

Downtown Estes Park

Our will be a beautiful, interwoven multi-street mall with pedestrian walkways and some areas of downtown will have weather management with seasonal enclosure. Flowers all year! It will be more than shops and restaurants: there will be various entertainment and play options that I can’t imagine. Many streets will be heated (technology to do that will be much cheaper); ice and snow will be much less of an issue. Paid parking? Not needed by then. (But it’ll be around for a while yet.)

Forests: hiking, climbing, fire protection, and suppression

The beetle kill stands will be long gone, some through conflagrations. Fire protection and suppression will be advanced technology that would look like sorcery if we could see it today. Automated transportation will be the thing in the park but there will still be options for backpacking into the more remote parts of the parks and forests. Long before 2125, we will help our guests and residents depart the Park with a greater understanding of how to live in harmony with our forests and mountains and streams, how to do no harm and instead nurture.  

Read full story here:

https://estesvalleyvoice.com/2024/12/04/2125-back-to-the-future-with-the-mayor/