Comments on: Transit Experts Vindicate GUARDIAN

By: Gordon

Gordon — Mon, 25 May 2009 06:55:56 +0000

Huh! Didn’t know you were a politico!

I dunno about Topeka, St. Louis, Indy, Lansing and Minne, but have spent some time in Chicago.
Its combination els and subways seem to work pretty well.
The subway in D.C. is great.
But, no, I won’t suggest a subway for Boise — considering how long it’s taking crews here to dig a couple of holes to put our legislators in (What a great idea!), I hate to think how many centuries it would take to dig tunnels. 🙂

By: 64.07%

64.07% — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:42:22 +0000

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!

By: Sisyphus

Sisyphus — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:38:20 +0000

I’m not sure I get the whole cost effective argument. By these standards the biggest boondoggle ever perpetrated was the federal highway system. What is needed is an excuse for people to get out of their cars and use mass transit. The bus doesn’t do that because while there is some cost savings its actually much slower. Buying more busses that will just be empty ain’t gonna solve diddly. Having people bypass the congestion on the freeway now that’s priceless.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:05:17 +0000

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?

By: JIMV

JIMV — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:35:58 +0000

I live in SE Boise…I would love to try the Eagle restaurant scene but I will not spend the better part of an hour fighting traffic coming and going. Bus transit is for peasants, sorry, but that is true…all the bus lacks is a half dozen chickens to fit right into everyone’s version of the third world. A real train that went from here to there without stopping at every corner would be used, at least by me, but would never be cost effective. My point is that this love affair with the bus will never translate into riders. It will never make money and will only be used by folk who have no other option.

By: dog

dog — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:45:58 +0000

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.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Wed, 20 May 2009 09:28:36 +0000

P.S.
I don’t agree with Martin very often, either — he and I have a lot of fun arguing about building nuclear generation facilities around here: He thinks nukes are safe and says the dangerous waste from them is minimal.
Obviously, I don’t buy either of those views.

I bet he’d like nuclear powered trains, though. And nuclear power buses would be wonderful (hey, it works on submarines).

By: Gordon

Gordon — Wed, 20 May 2009 09:24:13 +0000

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!

By: Sisyphus

Sisyphus — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:39:04 +0000

I’m late to the discussion but I’m wondering if Cynthia Sewell was at the same seminar that others have described. This relatively in depth interview from KBSU with the various experts at the meetup is vastly different than the one Cynthia portrayed in her Statesman article.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/idaho/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1506307

I’m on the fence for light rail. But her article did nothing to persuade me against it after listening to the KBSU report. Sounds like there were cons and pros bandied about. Given the current bus use and low gas prices, expanding the bus system seems like a loser before it gets out of the gate.

By: Dean Gunderson

Dean Gunderson — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:19:19 +0000

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!