Transportation Policy
Boise Trolley FAQs: Our Future as America’s Most Livable City
Transportation planning has evolved since a focus on cars and roads seemed imperative. We should evolve, too.By Chris Blanchard, 10-13-09
The proposed streetcar in downtown Boise has generated a lot of comment and controversy. But even with all the news coverage and discussion there still seem to be a number of questions. I try to get to the most important ones in a series of trolley FAQs:
Just where exactly is Boise getting the $60 million to pay for this thing?
Earlier this year President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law. As part of that Act, the U.S. Department of Transportation is making $1.5 billion available to state and local governments through the TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) Discretionary Grants Program. TIGER grants can be used for most any kind of transportation related project, but it must also achieve certain outcomes such as increasing livability, sustainability, economic competitiveness, and job creation. Grants will be announced as soon as possible after September 15, 2009, but not later than February 17, 2010.
If the City of Boise gets the grant those funds will partially cover the start-up costs. To generate the remaining monies needed they are considering the establishment of an LID or Local Improvement District. Under the LID, the City would levy an additional tax on businesses along the streetcar route. There is still no consensus among business owners as to whether there is support for the creation of an LID, but Idaho state law 50-2601 allows Idaho municipalities to create LIDs (or BIDs - Business Improvement Districts) with a simple majority vote of the Council. The Mayor and Council will then have to cobble together funds from the City’s general fund and CCDC to pay for ongoing operations.
Why do we need a trolley, anyway? What we need is better bus service, or congestion reduction on I-84 between Nampa and Boise.
The most important thing to consider in any policy debate is the objective of the policy. The Mayor/Council’s objectives are stated clearly on the Boise Streetcar website: ”A streetcar would boost economic development in Boise’s downtown core, increase the “livability” of downtown, relieve traffic congestion and reduce the city’s collective carbon footprint.”
This is not a transportation project; it is an economic development project. When it comes to economic development and rail vs. buses, transportation planners are in general agreement on several points. First, the permanence of rails and the related infrastructure is what increases property values along transportation routes, not the mere existence of a route. Bus routes can change at any moment - it’s just a matter of moving a sign. A rail stop is more permanent, and generates higher property values for building owners and businesses. Second, in general, people prefer to ride rail transportation over buses.
As a transportation project, the goal of the streetcar is to move people from one end of the City to another in a convenient fashion. There are over 40,000 jobs in Boise’s downtown core and those workers run errands, go to lunch, and go to meetings throughout the day. The streetcar will enable more of that to take place and reduce car trips in the city.
This project is only part of a larger rail vision for the city and the Valley. Eventually, the streetcar would be expanded to run up Capital/Vista serving BSU and the Boise Depot. Additional westward routes would expand the line to the 30th and Main master planned area of Boise; eastward expansions would go out past MK Plaza and Park Center.
If Senator Crapo is able to get funding for the re-establishment of Amtrak’s Pioneer Line, we would then have a system that could carry people in from Nampa, drop them at the Depot, then take them to virtually any part of downtown from 30th street to Park Center. So that’s the vision.
We used to have a Trolley and it didn’t work. Why on earth would we do this again?!
Not true. Boise and the Valley had an extensive rail system that operated from 1891-1928, and it served the public quite well. Streetcar lines ran through all of downtown Boise, and the Interurban Lines ran out to Collister, Pierce Park, through Eagle, Star, Middleton, to Caldwell, Nampa, Meridian and back into Boise. Like many rail systems across the globe, however, the system ran into financial difficulties which led the owners to shut it down in 1928.
Art courtesy of Adele Thomsen, Nick Casner and Valeri Kiesig
This of course coincided with the rise of the automobile. The car was not immediately well received, but soon gained favor as the rail infrastructure fell into disrepair. At this time too, the city planning profession was young and very preoccupied with relieving congestion in city centers. They saw providing more space to cars and wider roads as the way to make that happen. That is hardly the prevailing theory in planning practice today.
What are other places doing about rail?
The Mayor points to 10 cities that have a streetcar, and another 3 dozen or so that are considering building some sort of rail based circulator. The Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) has written a couple of pieces poo-pooing the proposed Boise system because our conditions are not like those found in Little Rock, AR, a system Mayor Bieter points to as a success. The IFF makes some good points if we view the proposed streetcar as a transportation system. But 1) it’s too early in the build out of the system to judge whether the streetcar makes sense (of course it does in the wider scheme that I outlined above); and, 2) this is an economic development project. What the Mayor needs to demonstrate is that there will be a net positive return on investment for the city and the local landowners. Current academic literature shows extremely high rates of return on fixed-rail investments.
This is one reason regions are looking at rail transit. One of the most famous examples is Portland, OR, which has an international reputation for its rail transit operated by Metro (a regional governing body). I would posit that our neighbor to the south, Salt Lake City, will one day be much the same as Portland. But the ability of those cities and regions to raise finances for operations far exceeds Boise’s. Boise has no ability to create “local option taxes” to fund transportation. It is also not likely that though 50% of the state’s GDP comes from the Boise-Nampa MSA, that the state will ever invest in rail though that is exactly who pays for the rail line that runs from Sandy to Ogden (the Utah Transit Authority). That leaves us with a lot of work to do from a governance standpoint if we are ever to get any of this to happen.
Do I support the trolley/streetcar?
Yes. I think that it is a good first step in developing transportation infrastructure for this region that we will need in the next 40 years. Can we do everything immediately? Nope. Have I seen evidence that property values will increase along the streetcar line more than enough to offset the taxes levied by an LID? No. There are still many questions and details to sort out. But I do commend the Mayor and Council for exercising LEADERSHIP on an issue that is critical to our future.
And what about simply funding Valley Regional Transit (VRT) to a greater extent so that we can have better bus service? The federal funds available through TIGER and other ARRA funds cannot be used for that and cities have no way to raise revenues to pay more for bus service. Cities facing reduced revenues are cutting back their payments to VRT which means bus service is going to get worse in the Valley long before it gets better.
The streetcar debate opens the door to so many policy questions - policy debates we need to have. So even if we don’t get the TIGER grant, I’m glad to see so many people talking about transit, taxes, governance, and our very future as America’s Most Livable City. It would be unfortunate to get to 2050 only to lament, “I (Boise) coulda been a contender.”
Chris Blanchard is a Ph.D. student in the acclaimed urban studies program at Portland State University where his research focuses on urban planning and economic development.
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(The oft-touted "TIGER" funds are being competed for by muliple proposals, and this whole ongoing discussion is therefore likely a moot point. But streetcar supporters must also be "pork" supporters to buy in; it's just more money that the feds don't have, and that our kids and grandkids will have to repay with interest someday. From a transportation standpoint, a much-better way to spend Magic Fed Money would be to further subsidize the bus system.)
One glaring difference between the proposed Boise streetcar and the comparison-models in Portland and the SLC area is... the other models are served by multiple "park and ride" type facilities, and other places where it is practical for users to initiate their rail travel. (Correct me if I'm wrong - I'm NOT an expert.) By comparison, the Boise streetcar has essentially no parking for users, and would thus have essentially no positive impact on traffic congestion, etc.
Another source of a LOT of good information (from somebody with a contrasting opinion to Blanchard's) can be found here:
http://noboisestreetcar.blogspot.com/
[if the mayor and his cronies can figure out a way that it's bought-and-paid-for by the beneficiaries... the businesses along the route] ... then I might be convinced.
The Little Rock streetcar was not added to their development district, which, by the way, was a $300+ million planned real estate project, until 8 years after the fact, so it was not responsible for bringing in new development. If streetcars bring development, why aren't they putting the Boise one where development is needed instead of where it is already developed or is going to be developed?
As for Portland, please read this analysis of their system by a highly credentialed urban planner. It's quite different from the rosy picture that everyone paints. And, on top of what he talks about, they had to raise the public parking fees to offset the streetcar maintenance costs, and Portland also has a $500 million backlog of road paving they cannot pay for - partly because they are having to pay for continued rail expansion and maintenance.
http://www.newswithviews.com/O'Toole/randal5.htm
The Portland rail ridership has also dropped 5% in the last year. So people are not exactly begging to ride their system.
One final point. Proponents of the Boise streetcar are making it out to be much more than it is. It is just two, with a possible third, streetcars going around a 1.2 mile oval at 20-minute intervals that, if Little Rock and Kenosha are the models, will carry roughly the same amount of riders - 300 a day. There is absolutely nothing more to it than that, so how it will somehow be a sudden driving force for regional transit is just wild speculation. And, it is no bargain to the taxpayer. It is designed to raise lease rates, fees and taxes - all in the CCDC's urban renewal district - so they will reap the benefits.
As a transportation project, ALL this is designed to do AT THE MOMENT is CIRCULATE people once they are downtown. It *could* become part of an important piece of a transportation system in the future, but if it is built it will only be a downtown circulator until as you point out we get more pieces to the puzzle (commuter rail, park and rides, etc.).
First, there is no policy option on the table to pay for more bus service. So opposing the streetcar on the grounds that what we need is more bus service presents a false choice.
Second, comparing "rail," of which there are numerous types, with bus service is like comparing cars with skateboards. Cars and skateboards are transportation solutions to two different transportation problems as are bus and rail transport.
Now, the economic development potential of the project is probably a good area to question. I have not seen the mayor's calculus on this so I don't know how he arrived at his conclusions. But as I hinted I think it is likely that the biggest economic development impact from this project will come far down the road when and if the 30th Street master plan ever comes to bear.
You may have to copy and paste it into your browser - sometimes the browsers don't pick up the apostrophe in O'Toole.
Tons more info at http://noboisestreetcar.blogspot.com
The question really needs to be, if Boise is so intent on a trolley, then raise the local taxes by however many millions and see how long the current elected officials stay in office. If the taxpayers who will ride the system and benefit from it won't ante up, then it's yet another redistribution from someone else's wallet. It's like the 260 bucks a seat on the Pioneer. Nuts.
Some of the other sources cited in the comments here come from here: http://ti.org/antiplanner/
I recommend becoming familiar with both.
Ever see the line up of cars on I 84 or HWY 20 streaming between these city's? Acqusition and development of a intra City circulator gets us all working better together for a greener valley and leaner reliance on the car. With the big piece of the transit system in place, our communities, leaders and existing infrastructure would be primed for the next growth wave as well.
No doubt also, chances for public funding success would be greater. Consider the potential benefits measured across nearly half a million people, tens of thousands of businesses, four cities two counties, and too many other taxing district to mention.
No doubt a regional circulator would create a few good jobs and new business opportunities (something for everybody). Just think what could be saved in oil, gas, highway wear and tear, and the need to keep adding Freeway lanes. That means more discretionary money for other things. Also, what a regional circulator could do to reduce highway emissions for a region already known for non-attainment of air quality standards. Plus, acquisition of the rail coridoor, creates a future potential rails with trails bike corridoor, which could equally lower rates of heart attack.
A regional circulator probably has a whole lot more potential tax appeal for the business community and citizens. Politically, it should be doable, especially as Boise City already owns about 18 miles of the spur line to the southeast of Micron.
Yes the trolley idea is cool, but Boise is many years from having the demand and tax base associated with a densely built-up downtown and near downtown growth and development that involves many new residential units and high rise office towers. When Boise turns that corner, the trolley should be fully planned and built into the City's, and maybe even ACHD's, capital funding and operating costs.
Let's put a focus on the pack, and not on the big dog or its tail. After all, that's the critical concept behind the Valley Wide planning Study "Blueprint for Good Growth."
This is while other projects and expenses go unfunded and the city has a 9+ million deficit.
This is just a small indication of what the future holds if this project is allowed to go through.
http://noboisestreetcar.blogspot.com/2009/10/boise-city-ccdc-have-already-spent-over.html
CNU Study Rebuts Anti-Rail/Anti-Planning Hokum
In their recently revved-up insurgency against public transportation, critics of light rail transit (LRT) seem to be making a particular point of selecting for attack some of the most successful LRT operations in the USA. In practice, this means attacking also the urban policies, economic performance, and other characteristics of the cities these rail systems serve.
Of these, Portland, Oregon – which serves as a national model of excellence and success in both urban planning and public transportation (see Portland Light Rail and Public Transport Developments) – has become a primary target of the ongoing jihad against Smart Growth, urban transit, and especially the "dreaded" rail transit.
The latest effort to nuke Portland's reputation as a paradigm of effective planning and superb urban transit comes from national anti-transit, anti-planning, pro-sprawl activist Randal O'Toole in a tract sponsored by the extremist rightwing Cato institute propaganda mill.
"Portland, Oregon, long touted as the paradigm of modern urban planning, is awash in corruption, government waste and public discontent" claims a Cato news release (PRNewswire-USNewswire, 9 July 2007), summarizing the central theme of O'Toole's diatribe, a 20-plus-page "policy analysis" titled "Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn't Work". "O'Toole catalogues Portland's failures in city planning and offers suggestions to other cities on how not to repeat its mistakes" continues the Cato release, which cites O'Toole – who happens to be based in Oregon – as a "Cato institute senior fellow".
O'Toole's paper has been recycled in several shorter summaries, mostly in the form of newspaper columns with his byline. In addition, various other propaganda mills ("think tanks") are circulating his claims, and the "Debunking Portland" paper has been providing material for anti-rail columnists in several mainstream newspapers around the country.
"Debunking Portland" is is chock full of the chicanery and carefully cherry-picked, calculated misinformation that have become familiar hallmarks of O'Toole's forays into Big Lie propaganda projects. For example, O'Toole attempts, through verbal trickery, to convey the impression that Portland's transit ridership has been plunging with the introduction of light rail transit (LRT) in 1986 – whereas, in reality, Portland's transit ridership has soared since the addition and expansion of LRT.
According to federal data reports, in 1979 (seven years before the launch of light rail), Portland's transit system carried a total of 40.0 million passenger-trips and reported 145.1 million passenger-miles. By 2005, in contrast, the system's ridership had expanded by more that 2.5 times to 104.5 million trips, and 432.6 million passenger-miles. (UMTA/FTA National Transit Database figures)
O'Toole plays games with the transit-oriented development (TOD) issue and tax-increment financing (TIF) – portraying these as direct subsidies to developers – when in reality TIF involves tax collections that are merely ploughed back into improvements in specific, targeted areas that need revitalization (i.e., the same areas from which the taxes were collected).
Portland's MAX LRT system is widely acclaimed for its role in boosting transit ridership and attracting transit-oriented development.
[Photo: Peter Ehrlich]
But O'Toole's fabrications about Portland are not going unanswered. By far, one of the more extensive in-depth critical rejoinders to "Debunking Portland" has been sponsored by the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), which commissioned a critique by Michael Lewyn, an assistant professor at Florida Coastal School of Law (and a "veteran urbanist", according to CNU) to "check O'Toole's facts and analysis."
The result is Lewyn's own study, "Debunking Cato: Why Portland Works Better Than the Analysis of its Chief Neo-Libertarian Critic", available on the internet at the following URL:
http://cnu.org/node/1532
According to a CNU summary of this report (dated 200709/20),
Lewyn says O'Toole raises a number of issues worth discussing, including whether improvements to Portland's transit system have failed to increase transit ridership; whether Portland's planning system has failed to attract popular support; and whether Portland's urban growth boundary has made Portland one of America's most expensive cities. Through detailed analysis, Lewyn concludes that O'Toole's attacks on Portland often miss the mark by distorting and misrepresenting data.
The CNU summarizes some of Lewyn's most trenchant findings in "Debunking Cato":
· Lewyn rebuts O'Toole claims that hordes of people are escaping Portland and "moving to communities beyond the reach of Portland planners." in fact, the city of Portland's share of regional growth is far higher than that of other peer metro areas. Between 1980 and 2000, Portland grew as fast as its suburbs – about 43%. In Seattle during the same period, the city grew by 14% while suburbs grew by 46%. In Denver, the city grew 12% while suburbs grew 47%.
· Although O'Toole declares "Portland's transit numbers are little better than mediocre," Lewyn reports that transit use has doubled since the debut of Portland's first light rail in 1986, at a time when the population of Porltand's urbanized area grew 50-60%.
· Despite O'Toole's claim that Orenco Station and other transit-oriented developments in Portland don't significantly change people's travel habits, a closer look at a study quoted by O'Toole shows that 69% of Orenco Station residents report using transit more than they did in their prior locations.
· Lewyn says O'Toole doesn't prove his claim that Portland planning is driving up housing prices. In fact, numerous cities (many of them in the West) without urban growth boundaries and with few planning policies encouraging compact neighborhoods have more expensive housing. In metro Los Angeles, the ratio of median home price to median family income is 9-to-1 compared to 4.3-to-1 in Portland. The median house price in sprawling Las Vegas is 4.8 times median income. In San Diego, the ratio is 6.7-to-1.
· Lewyn finds that O'Toole's claim that Portland's planning system is unpopular in Oregon is not supported by recent trends. Writes Lewyn, "A 2005 survey of Oregon voters showed that 69 percent believed that growth management made Oregon a more desirable place to live. An equally high percentage valued ‘planning-based decisions for land use' over ‘market-based decisions for land use.' Only 32% believed that current land use regulations were ‘too strict'; an equal number said land-use regulations were ‘about right', and 21% even believed that Oregon's land use regulations were ‘not strict enough.'"
All in all, Michael Lewyn/CNU's "Debunking Cato" rebuttal of O'Toole's "Debunking Portland" tract provides an arsenal of valuable material for advocates of public transport and more progressive urban planning, who might be interested in countering the latest Road Warrior volley in North America's relentless Transit War.
A new anti-KRM (Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee [WI]) Line report from a California-based group calling itself the Reason Institute has garnered much publicity in Wisconsin newspapers. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called the Reason Institute a "libertarian think tank (that) claims the projected economic benefits of a proposed Milwaukee-to-Kenosha commuter rail line have been inflated and questions its ridership estimates."
But the author of that study is Los Angeles-based Tom Rubin, who had taken a far more positive view of the $200 million project back last June, when pro-transit business leaders were pushing the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority to hire him as the authority's consultant. Rubin almost was hired, too, except for one anti-Rubin veto vote from Len Brandrup, director of Kenosha Area Transit and the Kenosha RTA representative member, enough to stop Rubin's hopes of employment there.
That Reason Foundation release said the transit authority should instead consider express buses as an alternative to the KRM Commuter Link, which would connect downtown Milwaukee and the southern suburbs to Racine and Kenosha with 14 round trips each weekday. Rubin says his latest study was meant to illustrate the advantages of bus options. Rubin said on Monday, December 15th, 2008: "I am not saying that KRM is going to fail. I am saying there are other options that should be studied before you make that commitment."
A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee study projects property values would rise 10%, or $2.1 billion, along that rail route. Rubin disputed that in his release, but Ken Yunker, deputy director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, said the UWM figures were based on development along other commuter rail lines, including Chicago-area Metra routes that carry fewer riders than KRM's projected 1.7 million a year.
Rubin argues with KRM ridership forecasts, saying that either the ridership is overestimated or the service wouldn't be enough to handle all the riders. Yunker countered, saying the projections had been extensively reviewed and approved by federal transit officials.
Rubin argues that KRM planners haven't considered express buses on I-94 and urged consideration of that option, which he said would better serve riders farther from the Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha downtowns.
But back in June 2008 - when Rubin had already been paid $30,000 by the Milwaukee 7 regional development alliance and was seeking a $50,000 contract from the regional transit authority - Rubin said the KRM would work better than any bus alternative because it would serve Kenosha, Racine and other lakefront communities that are miles from I-94. The new study concedes that distance would be a disadvantage for I-94 buses.
That year, some Milwaukee-area business leaders supported hiring Rubin, saying that Rubin's anti-rail views would give the transit authority more credibility among Republicans who then controlled the Wisconsin Assembly. But then Len Brandrup's 'No' vote stopped Rubin from getting hired by stopping the RTA's seven-member board from mustering the required six-vote supermajority to hire him.
Rubin's December 15th release is more consistent with his previous work and other Reason Foundation releases, which typically oppose light rail and commuter trains and push buses instead.
A look into the Reason Foundation's 1999 annual report brought the annotations that its main corporate donors that year included the American Petroleum Institute, ARCO Foundation, BP Amoco, Chevron Corporation, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Daimler Chrysler Corp., ENRON, Exxon Mobil, FMC Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, National Air Transportation Association, Shell Oil, Sun America, United Airlines, and Western States Petroleum.
Pete Beitzel, a vice president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, suggested Rubin's opinions depended on who was paying him.
Rubin denies that, saying this latest release was based on careful study and that the earlier work was a study of Milwaukee County Transit System finances that touched on the KRM, and this study focused on the KRM.
"The think tank guys got real mad at him when he said it (the KRM line) was a good idea," Beitzel said. "Apparently, they hired him to change his mind."
What we would not expect, and what also has occurred, is that scores of Boiseans attended the streetcar information display sponsored by the city. Overwhelmingly, we supported the idea of a streetcar, but came away squarely against the poorly thought out plan.
In addition, the road-paving backlog in Portland has increased steadily ever since their streetcar and other light rail projects were started, and is now approaching $500 million. There is only so much money to go around. They have been discussing raising gas taxes to pay for the backlog.
I am all for public transit. However, streetcars like the one proposed for Boise are highly touted as attracting development and in this case, solving transportation problems - neither being truly the case. The city even fell flat on its face trying to prove that Kenosha and Little Rock were good examples of streetcar systems when in fact they only generate around 300 riders per day each - and the Little Rock system was put in 8 years after the development project was started.
The city is now once again getting ready to vote to spend $90,000 of taxpayer funds with a marketing company to promote the Boise streetcar. If it was such a great idea they wouldn't have to. In the meantime, other EXISTING city projects have been put on hold for lack of funding. They should take care of all the other needs and put the streetcar on hold - what's the rush to carry a few hundred people a day around a 1.2 mile oval?
What's being proposed is a starter system just like every other new start. The Kenosha line is also a starter system that is awaiting an RTA to allow its expansion. Tourism there rose from $92 million yearly before the line went in to $235 million in 2007. Thirty-four percent of visiting tourists use the Kenosha streetcars, about a quarter-billion dollars of development has centered around that system, and the downtown has rebounded marvelously. Its ridership is growing despite a doubling of fares and the general economy. (Three hundred fares a day is better than on many bus routes.)
Streetcars use clean domestic energy, not foreign oil. They are low in maintenance, last indefinitely (a bus' life-cycle is about ten years) and people look for reasons to use them - unlike a bus, which is used only when one absolutely must.
And there definitely exist small but vocal groups with shadowy parentage and funding that are dedicated to discourage communities from building such systems, for reasons of their own. I believe they're at work within Boise. One of their hallmarks is their attack on Smart Growth and the New Urbanism movement to make cities livable again.
As to a "rush to carry a few hundred people a day around a 1.2 mile oval": who's to tell people what they shouldn't like to do? Who would question a golfer's attraction to knocking a little white ball into a series of 36 holes, or a football fan's reason for sitting in subzero weather to witness millionaires bumping into each other on a 300-yard rectangle? (There are about 5 million railfans in this country alone.)
http://americandreamcoalition.org/transit/transitinfo.html
http://megafrontier.com/people/when-an-expert-is-not-an-expert
The Kenosha streetcar, like the Little Rock one, is a "heritage" streetcar that is NOT what is being proposed for Boise. There is a distinct difference in that heritage lines are more like an amusement park ride than a transportation solution, and they are only in place to support carting people very short distances to museums and other public attractions. Also, the same thing happened in Kenosha that happened in Little Rock - the development came first, the streetcar came afterwards.
The Boise streetcar is not only being touted as a development attractor, but also a transportation solution AND a tourist attraction that, according to Mayor Bieter, will pay for itself many times over. What he ISN'T saying is that a streetcar will completely and permanently change downtown Boise. We will have over 2 miles of overhead wires strung between poles and buildings, a streetcar that will have to negotiate 28 traffic signals less than 1/10th of a mile apart, and either it will have to shut down during downtown events or the events themselves will have to be moved because the streets are blocked off. In addition, the development attraction claims are patently ridiculous because #1 over 1/3rd the route is historic homes and buildings that will most likely never be further developed and #2 there are ALREADY large development projects scheduled for much of downtown, some of which will break ground in January of 2010.
The whole notion of it being a transportation solution is laughable as well. The entire Boise bus system only carries 3300 riders per day average. The proposed streetcar route goes nowhere, comes from nowhere and connects to nowhere making it toylike. While I am fully aware that public transit in Boise needs to be addressed, they are putting the cart before the horse by not taking care of the existing unmet needs - sixteen of which are already defined in their last transit study (and not one of them is a streetcar).
The whole streetcar concept is a very poor fit for Boise, no alternatives have been even looked at, and only 4 people are needed to make the decision about not only spending the $60 million initial cost but committing the city to tremendous long-term debt when it is already running a deficit.
Design, Route & Plan - Poorly thought-out, ill conceived, serves no one.