Fact 1 – Ustick was only changed to five lanes by ACHD in January 2004. Up until then it was in all plans as 3 lanes Preserve for 5 not build for 5 until 2025.

Fact 2 – ACHD has never held a public hearing on this issue. They held a public info meeting in October 2004 to tell people that it was going to be five lanes, but please pick a sidewalk type. ACHD can’t even tell the truth about the feedback they got at the meeting. The vast majority were against 5 lanes, but they spin it as a slight majority in favor.

Fact 3 – Traffic counts on Ustick Rd were 2-3000 cars per day higher in 1995-6 than they are today. Why? Because Meridian is developing their own services, retail and employment and their residnets don’t need to come into Boise just to buy lumber or groceries anymore. It’s called growing up.

Fact 4 – ACHD Commissioner John Franden has said in public, twice now, that 90% of the traffic on Ustick is local. If this is the case, why build 5 lanes ACHD?

Fact 5 – Five lanes carry up to 50,000 cars per day. By building 5 lanes on Ustick, ACHD doesn’t have to buy expensive commercial right of way on Fairview to expand to 7 lanes as is in the existing, longstanding plans. They can buy, condemn is more likely, land cheaper on Ustick and turn Ustick into another commercial bonanza for some developer. Maybe one of the developers that contribute to the Idaho Pac that funds ACHD Commissioner campaigns.

Fact 6- Building out five lanes will kill the neighborhood, not just those who live and have small businesses and offices along Ustick but back into the totally residential areas as well. Look at Orchard, look at Overland and see what the crime rates are.

ACHD should put a stay on this ill conceived and unneeded project. Wait until Chinden Blvd is complete and see what happens to the traffic then. As taxpayers we shouldn’t have to spend $10,000,000 to ruin a neighborhood. And as taxpayers, we should get a break from the ACHD and have them stop using our tax dollars to spin their exagerations, half truths and flat out lies by their media people.

If no one moved into the valley from other places, there would still be a need for new houses to be built unless you kill off one old timer for every new generation born. After all, you cannot have it both ways.

Growth is like a balloon, if you squeeze one side it will pop out somewhere else. Has any one of you seen the housing going up in BOISE county. Wake up Boise the people that live in the outlying areas are working in Boise and using our services…. and not paying for them. Maybe we should encourage good growth, and not run it off where you and I in Boise will pay more taxes…

The Public Works dept. is divided into enterprise fund areas and those that are tax funded. The Public Works Commission also has a say in all of this and that leaves the City Council wandering in la la land much of the time.

I love the Guardian’s suggestion of a parkway. I lived in West Boise for many years just off Ustick and then off Cloverdale for awhile. The area clearly needs something, but the Council (present and past) can take plenty of blame for the out of control approval of growth without concern for getting people to and from it.

Another way to control ACHD is to NOT allow them to vote on policy issues and transportation projects at the MPO level. The MPO is the Metropolitian Planning Organization from which the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration requires a concensus on transportation projects before your Federal gasoline taxes are returned to Idaho and Ada County. Our MPO, formerly known as Ada Planning Association is now known as COMPASS.

The Federal Highway Administration recognizes that road building is a form of land-use planning and requires that municipalities (those with road building a responsibility within their public works departments) come together in a region to agree that land-use planning relative to roads, transit, open space, waterways, industry, air space, etc. are in reasonable balance. Unfortunately the way COMPASS is structured, roadway land-use planning is unethically biased by allowing ACHD to lobby and vote for its own projects.

When ACHD says that the 5-lane Ustick road was approved, they are referring to the COMPASS vote, which was not subject of a Boise City public hearing.

I’m sympathetic to ACHD because they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. The 5-lane plan has been approved and stands to be implemented, but now the latecomers are clamoring for further review and/or a 3-lane boulevard, and painting ACHD as the insensitive villains in the melodrama. (A lovely tree-lined boulevard would be splendid… but how much traffic capacity are we willing to sacrifice for the ambiance? The main purpose of roads is to move traffic.) ACHD is also still smarting from the Curtis Road chapter. You may recall that they built a 3-lane road with lovely landscaped shoulders. Perhaps somewhat like people are envisioning for Ustick. (The 3-lane road was planned and approved after everybody weighed in.) Within days, it was obvious that more traffic-carrying capacity was needed, and ACHD was pressured into widening it to 5 lanes… and everybody told ’em they were idiots for making it 3 lanes in the first place! Who can blame ’em for not wanting to repeat THAT ugly scenario?

I’m sympathetic to the residents along Ustick, who are going to be the victims, no matter what happens. There’s something wrong when the close-in people’s lives and situations are turned upside down to accommodate those who are moving out into “the country,” and need a commute lane. My first tendency is to say “screw ’em” about those farther out people… let ’em sit and stew in their SUVs on those 2-lane country roads every morning and afternoon. As the TV commercial jingle says, “There’s a price you pay, to get away…”

I agree with the Guardian on the city’s needing to take some ownership of the problem when they approve every new crackerbox neighborhood project that crosses their desks. And I also agree that “at large” ACHD commissioner voting was, and would be, better than the current situation.