Transportation Policy

Boise Trolley FAQs: Our Future as America’s Most Livable City

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. 

Demographic Patterns

Boomers Migrating to Rural America

My friend has lost his voice. He communicates with a child’s “doodle” pad these days, writing on an Etch A Sketch kind of board he can wipe clean with the sweep of a green plastic handle.

I tell him I’m reading a report about baby boomers who, in increasing numbers, are moving out of cities and into smaller, more remote towns. He picks up his hard-headed doodle pen and scrawls, “Like maybe me!”

The Economic Research Service (a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) reported this week that some parts of rural America will see a steady and quite large influx of older Americans over the next decade or so, as Baby Boomers, like my voiceless buddy, leave the larger cities for the quiet and the community of smaller cities.

Live Long and Prosper

Planning in the West: A Few Lessons

If we all live to be 120 years old, we'll have a lot of things to worry about besides land-use planning. But consider this: serious people involved in biomedical research think that such longevity is likely, if not necessarily imminent, and if it were to transpire it would in fact have huge implications for the design of our communities. It would bring huge population growth, far more old people and a far smaller ratio of children - and drive growth patterns towards urban centers and away from the the suburban fringe.

That was one of the more provocative arguments put forth last week at NewWest.Net's 1st annual Planning in the West conference. Keynote speaker Arthur C. Nelson, Director of Metropolitan Research at the University of Utah, said these kinds of drastically changing demographics would alter land-use patterns in ways we are only beginning to understand.

This kind of thinking is more than a little removed from the quotidian arguments over planning that still rage across the West. Just last week, residents of the Flathead County, Montana town of Somers almost came to blows over whether a preliminary discussion of a neighborhood plan for the lakeside community was appropriate. Here in Missoula, a city council meeting on Monday went past midnight as people argued over a new zoning code, and especially whether the city should allows "accessory dwelling units" - which might, not incidentally, be an important type of housing for an aging population, but are considered anathema by University-area residents who fear they will fill up with students.

Yet planning, by its very nature, is all about the long term, and it can be a lot more inspiring than the day-to-day politics of subdivisions and infill and roads and sewer systems. Here are a few of the highlights from our recent conference:

Deja Boo

Missoula City Council Hears Nays and Yeas About Zoning Rewrite

After more than five hours of hearing public comment Monday night, the visibly exhausted Missoula City Council sent the proposed zoning rewrite ordinance revision back to the Plat, Annexation and Zoning committee for re-evaluation.

If passed, the new zoning ordinance would replace the existing zoning ordinance, which Office of Planning and Grants Director Roger Millar described as confusing and contradictory.

“Everything we do depends on zoning, and our regulatory foundation is broken,” Millar said during his brief presentation last night. “It’s time for a change.”

Following Millar’s presentation and continuing until past midnight, about 50 Missoula residents representing commercial, organizational, neighborhood and personal interests lined up in the aisles of the Council Chamber and, one by one, voiced their concerns before the weary Council members, Mayor John Engen and City Attorney Jim Nugent. The meeting was adjourned at 12:30 a.m.

Conference Coverage

Planning in the West: Morning Sessions, Key Word “Sustainability”

The morning sessions at New West's Planning in the West Conference has been devoted to the key issues facing planners today: the challenges faced in an economic downturn; how to turn the buzzword of "sustainability" to actual, on the ground planning; moving beyond planning to sustainable design; and the granddaddy of all issues--the massive growth facing the region.

The Smart and Narrow

Doing Density Right

Stand in the shadow of any giant residential megablock in Seattle and you can't help but wonder: Isn't there a better way to do this? The reality of massive buildings now being auctioned off at fire-sale prices seems proof that bigness alone is neither necessary nor a sufficient condition for successful development in Seattle.

Developers have long crowed — and local politicians have cowed to — the notion that "we can't make money in Seattle unless we build six-story buildings." After a round of developer-driven up-zoning we now behold the post-bubble result: fleets of full-block behemoths standing half-empty, unsold, even half-built.

What will we make of this enforced economic pause? Will we carve out urban and mental space in which to think about growing smartly and sustainably instead of just bigger and faster? Or will we simply wait for the banks to resume shoveling debt so the bulldozers can resume shoving dirt?

A few blocks from the lively Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill is a place that could change our thinking about Seattle urban density.

New Report Questions Fire Plan Logging

A new report on the effectiveness of thinning forests under the National Fire Plan shows that most logging occurs far from communities, thus questioning their effectiveness. Plus the majority of lands that should be treated lie not on federal lands, but private lands. The report gives new credence to critics such as myself who maintain that most fuel reduction logging operations are wasting tax dollars and causing more harm than good.

PLANNING IN THE WEST CONFERENCE, JUNE 17-18 IN BOISE

Adjusted Development: Saving the World with Sustainable Growth

Why should towns in the West change the way they grow? And why should planners design healthier, greener communities?

Because if they don’t, they’ll suffer and fail.

Dire as that answer sounds, it's sparked something worth celebrating: a planning revolution and a move to sustainability across the West, according to land-use and green planning expert Christopher Duerksen.

'THE MOST VULNERABLE GROUP'

Feeling Recession’s Sting, Some Immigrants Going Home

By 9 a.m. on a cold Monday morning, Rafael Novarro has already put in a four-hour day waiting for work that never comes.

Laid off three months earlier as a carpet installer, the El Salvadoran immigrant regularly joins a group of immigrants standing at the edge of a gas station in Carbondale, Colo. They hope contractors will stop and offer jobs, even if the wages pale in comparison to just a few months ago. Every rumbling diesel truck offers hope, but each one pulls away again, and this crowd of 10 men, many wearing work boots, their work gloves stashed in their pockets, sweatshirt hoods pulled over their heads against the cold, remain behind.

“Almost nobody has any work,” says Rigoberto Leon Ruiz, one of the men waiting.

It’s a scene common in cities like Los Angeles or Houston but until recently unheard of in places like Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, home to Aspen, where jobs were abundant and employers relied on immigrants to fill work crews. The economic downturn has hammered the West’s resort economy, though, and it has hit immigrants particularly hard. More than others, they rely on jobs in the struggling construction and service industries. Those here illegally lack the cushion of unemployment benefits.

From Las Vegas to Jackson Hole, Wyo., many across the West are going home. Some set out in search of jobs in other states. Others hang on, relying on the kindness of friends and family, and hoping for better times ahead. “If not,” Novarro says, “I’m going back to El Salvador soon, because I can’t stay here without work – without anything.”