Dave, just to be clear, I think that most of the comments from the consultants were specifically directed at the concept of commuter rail using existing tracks and not light rail. I’m not saying that is viable yet either, but I believe they were speaking to a very specific issue.

Light and commuter rail systems are complete taxpayer boondoggles.

Commuter/light rail is simply not feasible in Idaho because of the sprawl and low population density vs. cost.

This is not even mentioning that we do not have the supporting transit infrastructure such as a *real* bus system.

Go research the TRAX system in SLC if you think rail is a good thing. The taxes required to keep that system running are phenomenal and their ridership has been on the decline despite the fact they keep expanding the system.

Portland, Oregon has the bus transit deal figured out. Why not just copy the good stuff they have and apply it to Boise.

One problem is parking is still too cheap in downtown Boise. The other is the current bus system sucks.

It was amazing to see how many people in downtown Portland have monthly bus passes and use the bus to get to and from work.

Boise transit people need to get into the real world and get a bus system that acutally will work for commuters before they give any thought to fixed rail systems.

Don’t think for a second that Team Dave won’t dismiss the “experts” in the same way they have dismissed the Guardian for many years!
I am convinced that this bunch in city hall isn’t smart enough to even read the report.
And Jon? they addressed the question of light rail when they spoke of a high level of conflict between existing freight traffic and light rail. Don’t forget as well,that the tracks won’t support ANY type of traffic that would run over 30mph. That alone would leave out light rail as an option.

Do not forget that the rest of the world manages to make rail work and that rail is a much more pleasant way to travel than flying.

Yes a strong bus system is a necessity. But as someone pointed out in another conversation, buses are subject to lights, traffic and all the other ills of motor vehicles on busy streets. Street cars eliminate some of this. Electric buses offer a better ride but still are prisoners of traffic. I sometimes take a bus in New York but I much prefer the subway for getting from point A to point B. (AndI am perfectly happy not to drive.) Same was true for the time I spent in Washington, D.C. — we used the bus for places the subway didn’t go.

I grew up riding buses. It was a second class transportation mode then and it still is — useful, appreciated and utilized when it is properly run. But trains are just a better way to go.

Here is a bit on the future of trains from the brilliant John Michael Greer.

…A point made in passing in that post was that railroads, while they are much more efficient than automobile or air transport, still require relatively large amounts of concentrated energy, and so may become uneconomical for many uses at a certain point well down the curve of fossil fuel depletion. One of my readers took rather heated exception to this comment. Only America’s backwards railroads, he pointed out indignantly, relied on fossil fuel; since European and Japanese railways used electricity, they would be unaffected by fossil fuel depletion and could keep rolling along into the far future.

This kind of logic is common enough these days that it’s probably necessary to point out the flaws in it. Electricity isn’t an energy source; it has to be generated, using some other energy source to do so. The electricity that powers the European and Japanese rail systems is mostly generated by plants that burn coal, with significant help from nuclear reactors and a rather smaller assist from hydroelectric plants. Of these, only the hydroelectric plants are a renewable energy source; the others are poised just as firmly on the downslope of depletion as the diesel oil that runs American locomotives.

Coal is turning out to be much less abundant than the cozy estimates of a few decades ago made it sound, and of course there’s the far from minor impact of coal burning on an already unstable global climate. Fissionable uranium is well down its own depletion curve, and it’s worth noting that the enthusiastic claims sometimes made for breeder reactors, the use of thorium as a nuclear fuel, and other alternatives to conventional fission plants are very rarely to be heard from people who have professional training in the fields concerned. Thus my reader was quite simply wrong; the European and Japanese rail systems that so excited his admiration are just as dependent on nonrenewable fuels as the American system, and are also just as vulnerable to the economic implications of supply and demand as energy supplies dwindle.

Now of course there are other reasons why railroads may be kept in service, at least for certain uses, long after they become economic liabilities. Many of the world’s larger nations – the United States and Russia among them – grew to their present size only after rail transport made it possible to exert political and economic power on a continental scale, and future governments may well keep long-distance rail links going as a matter of national survival. That likelihood, though, does nothing to counter the point central to last week’s post: that in a world with much less energy, older and more energy-efficient transport methods such as canal boats may turn out to be much more economically viable than their more recent and more extravagant replacements, and those cities and regions well positioned to take advantage of waterborne transport may therefore thrive in the 21st century as they did in the 19th.

Anne – I am sure you will be the first to committ 50% of your paycheck to fund a train that the experts agree is a boondoggle.

Trains are an excellent form of mass transportation.

They transport huge masses of money from taxpayers to construction companies and train manufacturers.

As for moving people, not so good.

Signal prioritization is the key to bus rapid transit, think of BRT as a bus that thinks it’s a train.

A BRT express route ensures that riders arrive at a destination station faster than any other user of the road network.

If the State Street Corridor, and Chinden-20/26, were retrofitted to accommodate median BRT routes the congestion relief would be tremendous. Add a north/south link, say at Eagle Road, and the system would form the backbone of one of the most efficient transit systems in the west.

The cost of these improvements would be far less than the cost to expand the road network to accommodate the projected travel demand increases — and it would move more people.

The question in everyone’s mind shouldn’t be the cost of mass transit (taken in a vacuum), but its cost in comparison to the single largest investment of tax-payer money to-date — the cost of the paved road network (cost to construct, plus the cost to maintain). A BRT (and more robust bus network) extracts the greatest value out of that existing taxpayer investment — period.

The largest tax boondoggle ever conceived is the federal interstate system, especially in communities like the Treasure Valley where it forms a major arterial for local traffic. People like to talk about how mass transit is a waste of tax-payer money, how it doesn’t pay for itself — how exactly do these same people justify I-84?

Less than 10% of the traffic on the portion from Boise to Caldwell is interstate traffic, and compared to the value of moving manufactured goods across state lines, all local traffic on this same portion of road is a money suck. People worry about low ridership on buses, look at all the single-occupant cars on the interstate — talk about a waste of taxpayer money!

OK, you were just about getting me convinced that trains are awful and buses are wonderful.
But now “consultants” and “experts” are saying that, also, which switches me clearly back to supporting trains.
“Consultants” and “experts” are wrong more often than weather forecasters. After all, the experts are the ones who lost billions of dollars in the recent financial crashes, eh?
And “experts” guide all the war efforts, relief efforts, etc., and you know how smoothly most of those go.
It’s been so long since I’ve seen a good bus system … but if we let “consultants” and “experts” design one here, OMG!

A light rail system in the Treasure Valley is a developers fantasy dream. Much of the push comes from big land speculators wanting to sell places like Parma as a great place to live and work in Boise.

Yep, dog, that’s true — they did that years ago when we actually had train service through much of the area.
Of course, I guess we wouldn’t want to do that now: might help Parma and other towns grow, and might move some people out of Boise and slow its growth, and …. aw, who knows?

So much for your vindication. Today’s op-ed – http://www.idahostatesman.com/readersopinion/story/778646.html – points out that last Friday’s story was erroneous reporting by Cynthia Sewell.

EDITOR NOTE–I think my vindication stands at or above a lot higher than 64% after visiting the likes of Topeka, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Lansing, Chicago, Minneapolis. I’ve seen politicos elected by far less than 20% of the qualified voters and call it a landslide!