We should put some tax dollars into something besides the misspent millions that we put into road widening. OPU’s comment 24 says it all about why we don’t. We voted in 1994 to give VRT authority for buses outside of Boise, and what is it now? The new Nampa route? I seriously wanted to take a bus this morning. It would have been a mile and half hike 30 minutes too early, and I live right off a main Boise road.

What kind of beast is VRT? It acts like government but its website is .org. A non profit doesn’t have to rely on tax dollars. Do they have any extra buses right now that they could actually put to use, if they had ridership that would pay for the route? You’d think they would monitor a blog site like this and would seek a few alternatives rather than sticking with the same old losing game plan. Why not try a Plan B rather than twiddling their thumbs for the next couple years when they can throw some tax dollars at the problem? VRT, repeat after me. It’s about ridership and not about funding.

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.

To try and tax ourselves for this, really pie in the sky transit dream, would be very difficult if the “true” tax costs were explained to the voters. One could do the old bait and switch a la the community college, but that may have used up the one con already.

The best thing is to really ramp up the bus system. I don’t begin to know the answers there other than it cannot just be a Boise funded system. I really don’t know what it will take to get the public riding the busses. So far $3/gallon hasn’t moved people into the system. It might take $5/gallon but even that is no guarantee.

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!!!

Currently, we are exploring the use of smaller hybrid/electric “movers” to operate with extended hours and regular stops throughout the arterial corridor.

In addition, Tibbs has called for free parking in any city-involved parking structure with 3, or more, commuters.That alone, is the positive short term attempt to lessen the impact of rush hour traffic. Coupled with an honest effort to mitigate with employers to examine the possibilities of “flex-time” operating hours and calling for any additional highway construction to provide for HOV lanes, will go a long way to improve the lack of anything being done in years.

The entire policy statement can be seen on the Jim Tibbs for mayor website. (Yep! Proudly for Tibbs)

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.

Commuter use of light rail is less than 1% with .3 tenth in SLC. .25 in Denver and .22 in San Diego. As far as a break even point for transit, it will never happen except in high densities like Tokyo. The highly touted SLC transit actually has a public cost of $7.80 per passenger after they pay their fare, and those fares only cover 13% of the cost.

A highly efficient bus system would cost the Public about $.85 per passenger mile. Having reviewed the ACHD’s budgets and passenger miles 3 years ago I came to the conclusion that the cost of Commuter vans was around $.20 per mile, but that the commuter was only paying $.05 per mile. The purpose of this article was to correct the data being pushed onto the public to support a system that would make a lot of money for everyone except the citizens and they would be the ones paying for this party. I have no objection to a local option tax.

I do oppose a bill that would take the sovereignty away from Counties so that their citizens will not have the right to accept or reject the local option tax.

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!

To tax us to the tune of over a BILLION dollars is not something that we can handle especailly since the current mayor likes to “hide” excess tax revenue now rather then lowering our taxes.

I am just sick and tired of politians that want to tax us out of our homes!

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).