I recently had to walk my bike through the Riverside Village area to log the mileage on the Greenbelt between Eagle Road and Glenwood. It was a LONG walk through Riverside Village – about 1.6 miles one-way.

Since Garden City has made it a pretty nasty offense (is it a misdemeanor?) if you ride on the private walking path, I didn’t want to take any chances.

But my point is, because it’s such a long walk, I doubt many bicyclists would dismount and use this path on a regular basis.

My feeling is that until Garden City buys a pedestrian bridge to span the river and divert bicycle traffic away from Riverside Village, the city should allow both bikes and walkers to use the pathway so we have connectivity between Eagle and Boise.

If you’ve been on that Riverside Village path, there are no “safety” issues because the path isn’t that wide. There’s plenty of room and plenty of line-of-sight around the pathway … it could accommodate bike traffic no problem.

But in my experience, it is really hard to change what uses are allowed on a trail once one type of use or another has been established.

Good luck in the protest!

We are indeed planning on showing up, rain or shine. The question of whether or not bicycles should be allowed through this area is hardly debatable. The State of Idaho said yes in 1980, Garden City Said yes after that. In 1994?(check the date) The courts said yes and most importantly, THE PEOPLE SAID YES. When a small group of elitists and a developer come mayor, can dictate the use of public lands to an entire community, then something is amiss. The ride / walk is designed to display the numbers of citizens of not onlt Garden City but of the whole Treasure Valley, who want the Greenbelt completed and accessible to all.

More information can be found at

http://www.idahocog.org

These folks have accumulated and organized such a huge amount of un-biased evidence, to support this cause, that there should be no further debate!

We hope to see everyone on Saturday.

Dave sums it all up in his last paragraph:

“The whole issue is about keeping the public away from high end residential property that just happens to have been developed by the current mayor.”

Anyone remember the high-end residents of Warm Springs Avenue and the scam involving Parkcenter Avenue and two bridges over the Boise River to divert traffic away from that high-end neighborhood? Sound familiar?

It worked for Ghandi, make some salt while you are there.

This is most definitely not on the Garden City police dept. They will just be doing their job as directed by “management”. So let’s be sure and be polite tomorrow. We want to make a point and right now public opinion is completely on our side.
10:00 AM be there!

There was an undercover officer standing in a residential backyard by the path bridge, he kept pulling his jacket open and talking on his radio. After we all made it back through the path and out of the dismount zone he drove away in an unmarked Ford Five Hundred sedan.

There wasn’t a GC police officer within 2 miles of that path Saturday morning. It was obvious that the city did not want this to become a confrontation. As I understand the process, the organizers are going to give city hall a chance to re-consider the situation and if they continue to resist, we will take it to a higher level. Saturday was an “informational” protest. Many had their kids and pets with them. Not a good situation to expose children to if it escalated into a confrontation with law enforcement.

Good job all you cyclists, except for one thing. 100 people standing around for 5 minutes, and not one of you bent over to pick up that pile of garbage on the ground. Somebody else did it.