Very good data and all true. The mayors comments that “people will not ride buses but they will ride trains” is just plain silly. Even IF you have a train system you have to have a BUS SYSTEM to get them from the train stop to the work place.

If the city turns the Depot into a transit station then you still have to unload the people there and put them ON A BUS to get them downtown.

So we in up getting TAXED for BOTH a train AND A BUS SYSTEM!!

Please do not let the legislature allow the locals to option tax us to death!

We need a toll system to charge all the Canyon Co. SUV drivers who commute to Boise every day. Let’s face it. They are not going to ride buses or a light rail system. Let’s not waste our money. Let’s waste theirs.

I’m going to play devil’s advocate as always. Mr. Harriman leaves out the comparison to taxes we already pay to support the highway/single occupant auto industrial complex.

Rail transit would be an easier pill to swallow if it could be demonstrated an equal amount would be saved by building less roads. I don’t think this has ever been demonstrated though.

The toll road idea is a good one, I’ve always been a fan of pay-as-you-drive. Why stop at tolling for I-84, with GPS based chips in every license plate, we could have a pay-per-mile system that covers all the roads in the valley or even the state.

Of course the devil is in the details, out-of-state drivers would get a free ride with respect to that system.

The fact of the matter is, the local demographic it is more akin to the LA, Atlanta, Houston model of development than is to the New York and euro-cities model.

Hasn’t Wendell Cox of the publicpurpose.com website that you reference for this index admitted that he is pro-urban sprawl? I think I read an online debate between him and someone else where he proclaimed that sprawl is the “American Dream” and not smart growth or transit. At any rate I would have reservations about information from this website. Not saying it isn’t factual, just that there is an obvious agenda against transit and smart growth. I wonder if Cox and his organization supported all the measures and propositions across the country to neuter planning and zoning regulations (like Prop 2 here)?

I think the biggest obstacle to funding mass transit is getting the public to believe it is money well spent. If great results were obtained then the public would probably embrace mass transit. Consider this:

Our transit system has a fare recovery rate of about 15%. This means that ridership fees by the users of the system account for 15% of the cost to provide the service. The national average fare recovery rate is 30%. This can be due to artifically low rider fares, low ridership numbers, or both.

I think it would be a mistake to approve any investment into mass transit with an acompanying metric goal for VRT to obtain. Examples:

Public will invest 15% more dollars into the VRT system, and in two years VRT needs to have ridership 15% higher for this investment to continue. Plus

Public will invest 10% more dollars into VRT and in two years VRT is to have their far box recovery at the national average of 30% for the investment to continue.

I think it is unfair to expect VRT to improve in these areas without an investment from the public, but it is also unfair for the public to make an investment without the requirement for improvement. Paying more for the status quo is a bad idea.

I would encourage reluctant legislators to support investing in public transit, but temper their sceptisim by requiring specific and measurable improvements and have automatic removal of funding in the bill if metric goals are not met. This places the responsibility on management of VRT to perform, and most studies indicate that good or poor management makes the difference between sucsess or failure.

Guardian, I would like some clarification. Do you oppose local option taxation in general, or oppose the current public transit proposal, which would be funded with LOT?

I can’t believe you would oppose LOT as a policy. You’re always calling for a public vote before a large capital expenditure and here’s a proposal to give that voting opportunity to people.

I support local option taxation and the current transit proposal and as a citizen, I would like the chance to vote on it.

I agree with the apt statement “Rail costs more than the entire budget of God.” We don’t have the development density to support rail, but we could have a great busway system.

I propose tearing out the existing railroad tracks all over the valley and paving them over for a busway, to be used only by busses, carpool vans and emergency vehicles. With a some intersection tweaking, the current crossing arms could come down and give the busses priority. Yet busses would be free to enter and leave the busway and travel on streets. Viola – the priority of trains with the flexibility and low cost of busses.

EDITOR NOTE–Wonk, I absolutely favor local option taxes.

I fear giving that tax authority to a bunch of local politicos who all have different agendas. The recent post by Ron Harriman certainly raises questions about the benefits of transit.

If you are a regular reader you will remember the GUARDIAN presented a pretty simple plan for an “above ground subway” using buses. No politicos responded to that suggestion.

We oppose trying to “design society” by supporting CCDC and various downtown efforts. Paris has the
“periphery” where they build new buildings, leaving the old city relatively intact. We see similar in Houston and some other big cities in the USA. Your bus experiment is worth a look.

Since I-84 is a federal highway I don’t believe you could charge any tolls without purchasing it from the feds. More likely is a southern route for the interstate so that all local traffic on the interstate is LOCAL.
Heck, I don’t know why everyone is worrying about this, in a few years we’ll all be running around in flying cars powered by a Mr. Fusion anyway.

Taking public transit can cut your individual “carbon footprint” in half. Now just getting people to use it. But how can they use it if an effective public transit system is not in place? We need to implement an effective BRT program in the valley first and provide the foundation for a light rail system so that when it is practical to do so, which it eventually will be, we can seamlessly implement it.

How about paying people to commute on bicycles? I think $1.00/day would be about right. It would take a lot of cars off the road for local commuters and offset the carbon footprint for those who insist on driving. Why not reward people for doing the right thing instead of always subsidizing the profits of the polluting oil and car corporations.

The Canyon County commute to Boise might be solved by designing light rail vans that can also drive on the streets. They could use the new hybrid electric/deisel engines. I see pickup trucks tooling down the tracks all the time for maintenence crews. The Boise Train Depot would be used again. The vans, could work much like the Super Shuttles used in major Western cities. This would eliminate the need for urban tracks. I’m sure the engineering department at Uof I could create a protoype demonstration rail van.

They should run light rail from the Pit to the site of the proposed expansion of the convention center. They could call it the Sisyphus Express. Together, they would form a triad of civic blundering.

Here’s a bit more well researched document on Bus Rapid Transit.

http://www.fta.dot.gov/documents/CBRT.pdf

And for an opposing view, here’s Wendell Cox’ info

http://www.publicpurpose.com
http://www.demographia.com

I’m not saying that the Federal government is a wellspring of objectivity, but Cox certainly isn’t. He’s not much more than a hired gun used by special interest groups who have a deep-seated interest in keeping things just the way they are.

Mr. Cox’ lucrative speaking engagements are underwritten by an organization named the Heartland Institute.

http://www.heartland.org

The institute holds a number of positions on the environment. Air Pollution doesn’t actually exist, the global warming threat is overblown, and any purported contamination of the environment by toxic chemicals is overstated (specifically: asbestos, lead, dioxin, mercury, pesticides, PCB’s, chlorine, and endocrine disrupters).

For MASS transit to work and work well you need MASSES of people. Boise doesn’t have, nor will it have in the future, MASSES of people. For a public transportation system to work well you need a system that is responsive to its target markets and managed well. Build it well and riders will come. VRT has yet to define a target market for itself and/or show it is capable of managing itself well.

Wendell Cox and his organization may not be a wellspring of objectivity, but then the same can be said for the Center for Transportation Excellence (http://www.cfte.org/) and LightRailNow (http://www.lightrailnow.org/). Both these organizations have some very heavy public transportation hitters backing them. Heavy hitters who stand to directly benefit from various public transportation projects. Check out the supporters of the Regional Coalition here in Boise. Some more heavy hitters in the public transit arena.

The facts for Boise are: it doesn’t have the population density now or, according to COMPASS transportation planners, in the future to support a rail system – heavy or light; bus ridership in Boise is basically stagnant even though the population continues to grow; and according to Federal Transit Administration documents, VRT recovers less than 10% of the cost of the Boise operation through fares (Pocatello gets 12%).

JJ is right. Any legislation that is passed needs to have specific and measurable performance metrics with the automatic removal of funding if those metrics are not met.

The Guardian had it right with his proposed surface subway bus system back in March. Go Guardian!

The real story on VRT

Two high ranking direct reports of Kelli Fairless have left VRT management for similar jobs elsewhere. Did they leave for a promotion? No, there are problems within VRT and these managers saw it comming. One who left was the deputy director in charge of finance.

VRT at odds with Union, blame union for poor maintenance causing bus fires this year.

Some VRT board members proposed the mission statement of the bus program to change so the new mission statement would be to promote economic development. Effort was defeated but shows how some of these elected leaders think it is all about
development.

VRT claims they didn’t see it comming, but it is poor management, ADA county grew enough to make VRT ineligible for federal grants for operational dollars. VRT remains a grant reciever for fixed costs, but not operational dollars for ADA
county. This was a huge budget cut for VRT, one they claim they did not see comming.

If VRT spent money on operations instead of pie in the sky long range planning, services might be adequate enough for ridership growth.

VRT insists their only challenge is funding, and they look toward tax revenues. VRT refuses to think they could improve current services with current resources. While VRT would not admit to such, their sole emphasis and reliance upon legislative action shows it.

The above comments are all very interesting. Most of them that reject rail and buses demonstrate a total disregard for the overall picture where true costs are concerned.

When ALL externalities (health, stress, environmental impacts, economic distortions, energy consumption costs, military excursions in the Middle East..etc) are accounted for, transit gets very cheap. The big problem for the Treasure Valley is that it is a textbook case of stupid, self serving sprawl, that locates too many people in a low density landscape. The assertion made above that only great “masses” of people will justify a transit system is wrong. We have the masses, they are just spead too thinly across the valley.

There are cities in the world like Quito, Ecuador that locate building density in a way that transit can accomodate. We are the exact opposite of that efficiency. I agree that we should develop a functioning bus system first, before moving on to a rail component, and the two should complement each other. Where we really need a commuter rail is between Caldwell and Boise. If that were served by a supporting bus/park-n-ride infrastructure, it would create an option that could compete with the car. It’s still a big challenge though, given the ludicrous layout of the valley structure.

Now, I’m sure many of the readers doubt my viewpoint, but the real undiscussed matter before is not mere traffic congestion and dirty air. In fact, those things will actually improve when the real problem begins. The Peak Oil issue is the device that will break the SUV’s hold on society. However, you still need to be able to get around.

You can walk, ride a bike (like I do), take a bus (if it hasn’t been stripped away by the car lovers), or take a train (if the person above who proposed ripping out all current rails hasn’t gotten their way). BTW, we will need any and all current rail to receive goods that we’ll still need from long distances because it’s a far cry more efficient than semi-trucks.

If you think Peak Oil is a goofy theory…see this story-
http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,2181830,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=environment

Any talk of preventing alternatives to a functioning public transit system very short sighted and bone-headed. Every day I check the price of oil. It closed Friday at $83.69 a barrel. Last month it was about $79.00 a barrel. They can’t find any more big deposits of the cheap stuff. They have been supplementing with expensive tar sand oil. You can’t grow the economy without cheap oil and expect things to remain stable.

Come on people…WAKE UP!!!

The only train systems that work are ones that: have stations all over the place like New York, or ones that take people over long distances to a city that has a system with a ton of stations, like New Jersey to New York. People from NJ take the light rail into Hoboken, and then subways to NYC because they will end up only walking a few blocks when they get off the train. A train that has limited stations and leaves passengers to figure out how they are going to make it the next mile is no good. If a light rail could come into Boise from Caldwell, and end at a bus transfer point, with buses going all over Boise, that could work. Otherwise, it is a waste and you will convince nobody to abandon a car. The same can be said of a bus system. People aren’t moved by “helping ease congestion.” They are moved by the system making it easier for them.

And please, no GPS on my license plate. Thank you very much. Believe me, go live in LA for a month and come back and tell me that Boise has a traffic problem.