This is another one of those guilty pleasure stories I so enjoy. Another fable from the annals of Leftist impulses going – not horribly, but so inconveniently – wrong that’s it’s a multi-purpose parable. A real life story with a moral, a lesson to be learned if one wishes to do so, and it’s pretty damn amusing in the most satisfying fashion for those of us who delight in that sort of comeuppance.

That would be me.

It starts with the American Green dream, where both an entrepreneurial vision and a place of incredible natural beauty in the American West meet.

Jackson, Wyoming.

It’s been decades since I’ve been to Grand Teton National Park and wandered around Jackson Hole. Seems it’s changed quite a bit, and gotten very cosmopolitan – especially for what used to be kind of a hard place to get to. Nowadays, the ski crowd has Grand Teton Village so packed, skiers and workers have to be bused in for lack of parking, and the roads are gridlocked at the best of times.

Add weather conditions to the transportation challenges and the fact is things can get difficult quickly.

Getting to Teton Village by bus last year wasn’t easy. Employees were late to work and getting home. Skiers felt the anxiety of missed time on the slopes.

Bruce Abel, director of Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit, is the first to admit that.

“Our reliability was below our desires last year,” he said. “Many missed trips and poor on-time performance.”

…A new Town of Jackson compensation package means higher wages and better benefits. Staffing levels are ahead of where they were last year, thanks to recruitment that started earlier and focused on areas like Alaska, where buses are the go-to for tourists.

START received 11 brand-new buses this year, which Abel said has already decreased stress levels for staff and increased predictability for riders.

…Jackson Hole Mountain Resort and the Teton Village Association have also offered help with housing, which Abel said was humbling.

“They had every right to be extremely upset with us last winter,” Abel said.

Parking at one of the country’s most popular ski destinations and biggest mountains has been intentionally limited by government for decades.

In 1998, Teton County approved the Teton Village Resort Master Plan, which reduced the capacity for skiers and hotel rooms while allowing the businesses to grow.

…Parking passes are in short supply and expensive. This year the price of the passes rose 10% or 25%, depending on the product. An unrestricted pass costs $2,105.

They sold out the 300 passes they had available in just a couple of hours. The only employees with passes either work in maintenance or have to be in the Village before 6 a.m. Everyone else gets to ride the buses. As you can tell by the going rate for the passes, money is not in short supply in Jackson.

Sounds pretty chi-chi for what used to basically be a cow town and hunter/trappers’ rest stop at the foot of the Tetons, no?

You can tell the “in” crowd has moved there. All you have to do is check out the 2020 election results for Teton County. Where the Cowboy State went deep red 70% for Trump, Teton was one of two blue holdouts. They flipped that ratio on its head.

With that much touchy-feely blue, you know they have more rules than a Florida retirement community HOA has people peeking over your privacy fence.

Here’s where the entrepreneurs come in.

Obviously, Jackson has significant traffic issues on their hands that either hadn’t been addressed, or just waved at. They definitely needed more buses and, being uber liberal, uber wealthy,, plus smack in the middle of a place that gets an average of 428″ of snow each year, with average Dec-Jan daytime highs and lows of 28° / 7°, they went ELECTRIC. The buses came from a company named Proterra.

Because, of course.

Teton County and the town of Jackson had set its sights on a low-emission transit system for the county.

The Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit (START) system, a joint operation between Jackson and Teton County, bought eight electric buses to complement its fleet of 31.

There’s only one problem with the eight buses. Well, wait. Actually a couple of problems.

The first is that none of them are functional at the moment, and, when they were working, they didn’t work very well.

…But none of the electric buses are running, and so the town’s transit system is relying on its diesel fleet.

…When the START electric buses did run, they also suffered from degradation of performance during the winter months, something that plagues electric vehicles of all types.

Abel said that during the summer months, the buses would go all day without needing a charge. When the temperatures dropped, the batteries would lose considerable range. Not only does it not provide as much power, the bus has to be heated, which places further demands on the battery.

So, the electric buses had to return to the depot at midday to recharge. They were replaced by another electric bus, when one was available, or the diesel-powered buses.

“So, there is a difference in performance between cold weather and warm weather,” Abel said.

Well, knock me over with a feather. You need heat in the frigid winter. Probably defrosters, too, or is that just my innate cynicism?

No worries, though – saving the planet! And POTATUS loved him some Proterra.

…Proterra might have seemed like a solid company when the buses were ordered. It enjoyed financial support from federal taxpayers, as well as praise from President Joe Biden.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided more than $5.5 billion for low- and no-emission buses, each costing around $1 million each.

In 2021 Biden participated in a virtual tour of the company.

“The fact is, you’re making me look good,” the president said.

Lookin’ good, Big Guy.

The other, potentially more serious problem for the transit system and it’s broken buses?

Proterra, the electric bus manufacturer and darling of the Biden administration, declared bankruptcy last month. Parts are going to be a problem.

Oops.

Electric-vehicle parts supplier Proterra (PTRA.O) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday, making it the latest company to go belly up in an industry grappling with supply chain constraints, slowing demand and a funding drought.

The move comes weeks after Lordstown Motors filed for bankruptcy protection and put itself up for sale after failing to resolve a dispute over a promised investment from Foxconn.

Proterra, whose shares nearly halved in value after the bell, listed its assets and liabilities in the range of $500 million to $1 billion. The company had a market value of $362 million as of last close.

This makes me smile.

YAY! ELECTRIC!

Some Eeyore-ish, salty old Jackson locals were feeling a good, hopeless case of “I told you so” regarding the new NIMBY princelings running the place, who’d insisted that driving remain “inconvenient” to keep peasants off their roads.

…Paul Vogelheim, a Jackson resident who previously served on the Teton County Commission, told Cowboy State Daily that 15 years ago, he and other residents of the area wanted to improve the county road system to make traffic flow smoothly across the Snake River.

Then, the idea of electric buses became some “noise” along the way, he said, and the road improvements they wanted never materialized.

He said it was difficult to move forward with road projects in a community with a strong voice of “not in my backyard.” He said it would have been better to get out of the way and let the Wyoming Department of Transportation do its job, while influencing projects with the values of the community.

Instead, a majority wanted driving to remain inconvenient in hopes that people would ride more bikes and take public transit, Vogelheim said, adding, “That’s not very practical.”

As you might well have guessed, the virtue signalers have ordered new buses, as they never paid for the first ones – we did.

…According to the News & Guide, the eight buses in its fleet cost $2.3 million, 80% of which was covered by a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) grant in 2019. Between 2020 and 2021, similar grants provided another $2.6 million, and START plans to spend $3.3 million for four more electric buses.

But they’re going to buy from a different company and “delivery is years away.”

Maybe that company will go under before the buses get to Jackson Hole for the season.