Help shape the future of public transportation in the Treasure Valley!
by Ethan Schweitzer-Gaslin, Idaho Chapter Sierra Club Transportation Committee Chair
The planning and subsequent implementation of robust high capacity public transit service in the Treasure Valley is long overdue. COMPASS, the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho, is currently seeking another round of feedback (click the link to take the survey!) on their plans for such potential future service. This will provide an opportunity for all of us to reexamine the ongoing relevance of this issue we are currently experiencing due to extremely precipitous population growth in our community. Now is the time to think and plan for the future of cities and infrastructure in Idaho to improve transportation accessibility, equity, reduce income inequality and protect the clean air and open space we all love as Idahoans.
Currently, we compensate for the effects of growth on our system for moving people around our community in the most expensive way possible; by continually adding lanes and widening our roads. This creates added cost in time and dollars to the government and to individuals, in addition to exacerbating traffic, carbon emissions and air congestion. Dense housing that allows people to live in close proximity to services, recreation, and employment opportunities is part of the solution. However, a recent survey by COMPASS in 2019 indicates that the majority of current residents want suburban style housing on large lots in the future, and are most likely to drive alone (or to travel by rail if it were an option). On top of this, housing is currently often more affordable farther away from dense areas of concentrated economic and cultural activity like downtown cores. This means that a transit system built out to a level that will adequately serve our growing population will need to accomplish two goals at the same time; creating connectivity between residential areas and central activity nodes, as well as connecting these nodes to each other. If more people are to use transit then it must be designed with services that accommodate their lifestyles.
The Treasure Valley is already made up of many sprawling suburban communities that revolve around distinct activity centers which are spaced out across a large geographic area. Any effective transit service will need to connect these areas of our community in order to allow people to access all the opportunities they present. Luckily, many of the largest of these centers lie along a distinct corridor that may also have some existing infrastructure, making it prime for implementation of high capacity transit. When many people want to travel between the same few destinations, moving them all together is the best use of both time and money. It is also a wiser use of time and money by beginning to implement these kinds of plans now rather than waiting until the need is greater.
There is a present and growing need to provide people with options other than driving, and if there is one lesson we can learn from other cities in our region, it’s that we don’t have a choice about whether we experience the kind of growth we are seeing. The longer we wait, the more land and construction costs rise and the more expensive it becomes to create these kinds of options while our air quality worsens and we lose more and more opportunitinities to protect open space . There are many barriers to the implementation of high quality transit service in our community at the capacity our population will need - most notably funding and overcoming the current legal barriers to generating it - but without a plan in place for what such service would look like and a robust public conversation about the benefits it would provide, like greater transportation accessibility and equity, none of the other pieces of the puzzle matter.
COMPASS is currently conducting a survey on their website about potential future high capacity transit options. I urge you to respond in support of public transit by filling out the survey before it closes on February 27th. I also urge you to continue to speak up about the importance of improved transit service and push your local public officials to make it a priority.