Good Government Brings Partners Together-Collaboration brings success
Public/Private Partnerships work!
Public Private Partnership’s success story is the Weber County Ski Bus, now in our third season. Originally, Weber County had been funding and operating the Ski Bus service for several years on a very limited scale due to lack of funding and inability to get our local transit system to participate. I think this was due to the fact that they did not believe that the ridership numbers existed to support the operation. Basically, it operated 3 months out of the year and was available only to tourists being transported between local hotels and ski resorts.
The county wanted to make the Ski Bus available to the all county residents. We formed a partnership between Ogden City, Weber County, UTA, Powder Mountain and Snow Basin. Each came to the table contributing a portion to cover operating costs and equipment. By the time we got the Ski Bus operating during its first year, it was too late in the season to effectively advertise, but we were pleasantly surprised by the response of the riders, and in the end we had a good year.
All the partners were willing to continue and we began a second season. By the end of the second year, we had doubled our ridership. To date in our third year we are up 21% from last year. This has required large amounts of time and willingness to partner, but the results have been rewarding and we have been able to offer a great service to our citizens.