SodaCanyonRoad | Let's survey residents about the tourism industry.

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Let's survey residents about the tourism industry.
Bill Hocker | Aug 14, 2015 on: Tourism Issues

NVR: Local residents view wine industry positively, survey reports

As usual there is not one use of the word "tourism" in the article, just as the word is never used at APAC meetings and rarely in the County General Plan. Am I the only one who sees a difference between the wine industry and the tourism industry? People who like the wine industry but don't like its traffic are in fact conflating the two, just as the county does (perhaps in good faith) and as winery event center developers do (in their own self-interest). If you've been to any real agricultural region you know that traffic congestion is not a major concern. If you've been to tourist traps you know that traffic is always a problem.

In Napa it isn't just winery tourists and the winery tourism workers that are causing the problem (although they do cause 20% of the traffic which is not a small amount). It is also the tourism infrastructure that the municipalities supply, and their employees, all of those restaurant, hotel, resort, limo, and catering workers that must commute because they can't afford to live here. And there is the army of people and equipment needed to build the tourism infrastructure, new buildings, new roads, new sewers, electrical grids, and of course eventually new housing, new schools, new fire stations and wastewater treatment plants. And of course new jails. And more workers to quarry the all the aggregate necessary for all these projects.

The argument is out there that much of the traffic is generated by institutional employees (some of the largest single employers in the county) . Even if this were true, which it is not, those are not population growth industries. Neither is the wine industry, even counting commuting vineyard workers and cellar rats . Only the tourism industry in Napa county is a growth industry and the growth is exponential as more and more workers are needed to handle the ever increasing daily influx of visitors.

Please, lets stop asking what residents think of the wine industry and start asking them what they think of the tourism industry. The wine industry makes this a desirable place to live because it has maintained a lovely rural community, a rarity in this urban world. The tourism industry makes this an undesirable place to live because it is replacing the rurality with urban ills. One traffic jam at a time. Lets stop confusing the two.