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. 

Boise Biking Heroine

Boise’s Kristin Armstrong Shines in Many Ways

The Idaho Statesman’s Brian Murphy had it first: Boise’s Oympic Gold Medalist Kristin Armstrong won the gold medal in the cycling world championship time trials Wednesday. In other words, she’s the fastest female cyclist on Planet Earth.

Murphy quotes her as saying, “It’s amazing. It doesn’t matter what year or how many times you become world champion, it always feels the same.”

Next she’ll compete in the international road race, which will be aired on the Universal Sports channel tonight (Wednesday) at 9 p.m. Mountain time.

After the road race, Armstrong plans to retire.  But Boiseans will never let that happen without a welcome-home-again party when she returns from Switzerland, and I’ll go out on a limb here with the prediction that it will be a doozy.

Armstrong’s roster of medals and awards is well-known by Idahoans, but what is less well-known is her persistent and affectionate work in promoting safe cycling and good bike trails and the health benefits for children from riding bikes. In July, she’d been home from Italy just hours when she participated in a public panel on cycling safety in downtown Boise, and her city rides with children and their parents are fresh in our memories after her 2008 Olympic Gold Medal win.

Sustainability Blog

Western Rail Network Key to Regional Sustainability

According to his bio, “Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, where he also serves as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He studies the economics of cities, and has written scores of urban issues, including the growth of cities, segregation, crime, and housing markets. He has been particularly interested in the role that geographic proximity can play in creating knowledge and innovation. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992 and has been at Harvard since then.” An obviously brilliant and esteemed urban economist, you’ll see why I find his article “Put Transit Where the People Are” so bizarre.

From Crosscut.com

Obama’s Fast Train to Sprawl

Harvard economist Edward Glaeser is skeptical about high-speed rail as an economic stimulus strategy. The Obama administration has laid out a plan for investing in corridors around the country, including the Vancouver, BC to Eugene, OR stretch in the Pacific Northwest, a route pushed by groups such as the Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center. Indeed, so happy about the president’s proposals is Cascadia’s executive director Bruce Agnew that he told me recently that Obama is “the best president for rail since Lincoln.”

Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, Boise Mayor Dave Bieter Want Train Service Restored to the West

Idaho Senator, Mayor Are Working On The Railroad

Is this train bound for Boise?

Under the boiling sun on the sizzling cement platform at the historic Boise Train Depot, U.S. Senator Mike Crapo and Boise Mayor Dave Bieter announced the probable return of Amtrak to Boise.

Speaking to a crowd which included lots of guys in railroad hats, the announcement from Crapo that “we’re working to reestablish the old Pioneer Route” brought sincere cheers, and they weren’t the staged kind often heard at these kind of events.

A preliminary analysis from J. L. Patterson Associates, a transportation engineering firm in California, should be ready this week, and “we expect a positive evaluation from the report,” said Crapo.

Stimulus Money

Boise’s Vista Interchange Project Includes Beautification

Having once written that Boise’s Vista Boulevard, a main artery into the city from the interstate, was a “tasteless trail of trashiness,” I’m happy to hear that the Vista Interchange project broke ground this morning.

In a press release, Governor Otter said, “For thousands of people a day, the Vista Interchange is the Treasure Valley’s gateway to commerce. It provides a primary link from Idaho’s largest airport to our largest metropolitan area. It’s the first part of Idaho that many people see on the ground, so it plays an important role in our efforts to attract and retain quality employers who provide the kinds of careers our people need.”

Anybody who follows Idaho politics knows that Otter is a madly enthusiastic road-builder, and has spent a lot of political capital fighting for the money he thinks is needed. There is a backlog of road and bridge repair and new construction of over $240 million dollars in the state, and the past two legislative sessions have been mighty power struggles between the governor and the legislature to allocate money to address it.

Are We Stimulating Sprawl?

Report: Western States Spending Too Much Stimulus on New Roads

A report out this week from the national Smart Growth America group takes a look at where transportation stimulus money is going on the state level and it found that in most cases, especially in the West, states are spending too much on new roads and not enough on maintenance and repair of existing infrastructure or on public transportation options.

The report is exhaustive, and you can read the whole thing here, but two main points from the group are these:

Not enough money is being spent on repair and maintenance: “Despite a multi-trillion dollar backlog of road and bridge repairs, states committed almost a third of ARRA STP money—$6.6 billion—to new capacity road and bridge projects rather than to repair and other preservation projects”

Not enough money is being spent on public transportation: “By allocating few funds (3.7%) to public and non-motorized transportation, states made less progress on modernization, rapid job creation, enhancing public transporation, long-term economic growth, reducing greenhouse gases, oil dependence and providing low cost transportation choices,” the report states.

Read on to see the report’s findings on how specific Western states rank in the group’s assessment.

Governor and Legislature Will Try Something Else

Idaho Task Force Will Consider Transportation Impasse

After a miserable legislative session dominated by fruitless disagreements over transportation issues, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has appointed a 15-member task force to consider how to resolve them. The task force was a provision of the agreement between Otter and legislative leadership which finally ended the second-longest legislative session in state history.

Lt. Gov. Brad Little will preside over the group, and meetings, starting in August, will be open to the public.

The governor’s press release describes the groups goals as “developing recommendations by December 2010 for sustainable road and bridge funding for the next 20 years. Task force members will study everything from fuel tax increases and registration fees to truck fees, targeted transportation-related sales taxes and other alternatives.”

A state budget backlog now over $100 million and possibly several times that is needed for road and bridge repairs and maintenance and road improvements. The governor and the state legislature have disagreed over the best way to raise the money for several years, with Otter favoring a gas tax and the legislature firmly opposed. The Republican-dominated legislature is so opposed to fuel taxes that they have established a different task force to determine by the 2010 legislative session whether the share of funding from the state’s 25-cents-per-gallon fuel tax that now goes to the Idaho State Police and the Department of Parks and Recreation should be replaced with some other form of user fee.

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.