So I kinda formed a picture in my head of what Boise must have been looking like. I returned in ’93 expecting to see the foothills covered with houses. Surprise! The foothills still look pretty much like I remembered them.

Where Boise’s permitters really screwed up is on Capital Bullyvard. One of the images of Boise I kept in my head was that beautiful bullyvard with the state cap on one end and the train station on the other. The depot looks the same pretty much, no damage there. The capital looks the same, too. But you can no longer get a postcard view of one from the other! How stupid to squander that scenic asset with those big buildings right up to the street. It couldashouldawoulda been something very different if the planners would have just looked and asked people about what’s attractive about Boise.

If you drive out west toward HP, you’ll see block upon block of slab pens and subdivisions built in the 70′s and 80′s. Occasionally you’ll see an old farmhouse built before that land was subdivided. When those houses were built, it was a quick zip into town. But now there’s so much traffic it becomes an ordeal just to get into town when you’re in town to begin with.

My point is that there is plenty of room for plenty of houses, given sufficient infrastructure. IS there enough water? IS there enough electric distribution, and WHAT will the traffic be like?

Boise is really hemmed in by too much density in the “old grid”. There are only a couple “express routes” in and out of the city. Going just a few miles is an ordeal in some parts of town, and without some *RADICAL* express route planning and construction, traffic will soon reach a point where congestion becomes more than just an inconvenience.

Build it…and anyone who opposes the project please understand that your concerns will fall on deaf ears so you may not want to waste your time.

The traffic study for Cartwright Ranch, aka Yet Another Phase of Hidden Springs Sprawl, mentions Cartwright Road having a capacity of 9,000 trips per day. Cartwright Road? Go take a look, if the road is reopened after 2 recent land slides.

Cartwright connects to Bogus Basin Road, which connects to Harrison Blvd, 15th, 13th, Fort, and Hays streets, all of which have been beyond planned and promised traffic capacities since 1994. The pedestrian and vehicular accident rates here are already very high, to the point that some developers and their officials are working to shut down neighborhood schools. If common sense had any place in local government they might simply route the traffic to safer non-school routes instead of into the middle of the most children, cyclists, and pedestrians.

No doubt another stop light would have to be installed on Bogus Basin Road at Cartwright, probably in a dangerous slope and visibility location, to allow all that additional left-turning traffic to mix with the existing resort and foothills traffic. If you are a skier you have probably already seen traffic backed up the hill for a couple miles in winter.

Earth Tech, a former ACHD employee’s company hired again by the developers, used their original erroneous traffic study for the first Hidden Springs for this new development as if the past decade of heavy growth has not changed anything. They make it look as though there are no streets, homes, or schools below Hill Road that will be impacted. Current Hidden Springs residents admit to cutting through the North End even when their destination is Overland and Eagle Road (the more direct route would be Gary Lane miles away), because they can drive a lot faster through this residential area than they can elsewhere.

With State Street at Level of Service F, where will the massive Avimor/Suncor traffic impacts be directed? Developers have offered ACHD (and possibly Ada County)a deal to widen Dry Creek and Cartwright roads to serve additional foothills development traffic. Only Harrison Blvd was invited to the meetings, and only Harrison Blvd is mentioned in current planning documents for protections. An ACHD administration employee lives on Harrison and has aggressively worked for years to push the arterial traffic onto the neighborhoods schools and children. At this point 4 schools in this historic area impacted by displaced Harrison Blvd traffic are being proposed for closure and/or destruction, most often mentioned as being sold to developers for high density housing developments.

It’s not just that the valley’s development is too fast and too heavy, the true costs and common sense are not allowed into the equation. Weeks of cruddy air quality already threaten federal highway funds for the state, and long term human health, plus we are already tapping surface waters as the aquifers continue to shrink.

Get out there and build, build, build!

After all, isn’t that what God designed the Earth for — to provide nourishment for the greedy appetites of subdividers and other developers?

What did you think — that it’s supposed to have plants and animals and insects and snakes and who knows whatall just running around wild? Cheezzz!