Utah vs. Idaho: Transportation

As many are familiar, I am at work on my Ph.D. dissertation, which is exploring how Idaho and Utah, which seem so similar politically, culturally, and socially, have such different economic development outcomes. I’ve just returned from a trip to Salt Lake where I interviewed a number of key leaders, among them the CEO of the Utah Transit Authority.

Just a week after I returned from Utah, AP writer John Miller posts a brilliant piece about previous troubles at ITD. And really nothing better illustrates why Idaho, until political attitudes shift, is going to struggle economically.

A former Idaho Transportation Department director was asked to resign in 2006 after a scathing whistleblower complaint, a detail hidden from the public until it recently emerged in court documents filed as part of a separate lawsuit.

The papers, filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday, show the circumstances of how former director David Ekern exited the state’s top highway agency job in August 2006.

Ekern announced that month that he was leaving after 3 1/2 years to pursue “two potentially significant career opportunities.” He later took a job in Virginia that he quit in 2010.

But the Idaho Transportation Board had previously voted in executive session to remove him after an internal complaint in March 2006 alleged Ekern engaged in favoritism and “misuse of power and authority.” The board then gave Ekern an opportunity to leave of his own accord, the court documents show.

“The Board was dissatisfied with his performance and he should look for other employment,” according to the documents. “Chairman Frank Bruneel told Mr. Ekern that they would give him the opportunity to gracefully leave ITD. There was a general agreement that Mr. Ekern could leave basically in good standing if he voluntarily retired. Shortly after this discussion, Mr. Ekern submitted his retirement letter.”

Former Transportation Director Pamela Lowe filed the documents last week in her ongoing bid to convince a federal court judge she was illegally fired in 2009.

She was fired despite good job reviews after Idaho Transportation Board members raised concerns about her rapport with some Idaho lawmakers; Lowe blames her dismissal on a backlash after she began trimming a highway management contract with a big political donor, URS Corp.

I encourage you to review the whole article, but the short story is that political leadership in Idaho is driven by hyper-individualism, and personal vendettas to such an extent that the big picture is lost. This state has a completely dysfunctional Department of Transportation since at least 2006 - nearly 6 years, and because there has been no real change in policy direction, funding, or management structure at ITD, the only conclusion one can reach is that the electeds are ok with that.

To contrast that with Utah, about the same time that Utah legislators (conservative Republicans) were passing a bill to allow for public transit authorities (with public option taxation authority) we were trying to figure out how to get money away from the Ada County government which was building roads to Star and Kuna while the City of Boise struggled to fill in potholes. Though the problem was the state funding mechanism, legislators instead gave us the Ada County Highway District. Utah created what is now geographically the largest transit provider in the U.S.; Idaho was adopting a form of local transportation authority that has only one other example in existence. That’s what we refer to as worst practices.

I know I’ve mixed a lot of agencies here, but the story is not so much about them as it is about leadership: while we fight petty battles and adopt truly bizarre policy solutions literally seen nowhere else, our neighbors are kicking our butts. And those who suffer are those who have a fixed investment in Idaho, and Idaho’s residents at large.

Transportation infrastructure is a critical component for economic development - it shows the private sector that we are willing to invest in what they need to get their employees to work, and their products to market. But history again and again points to an Idaho that is not willing to subvert its hyper-individualistic nature for something that might be good for all of us - like a functioning transportation department.

Brad Little: Idaho “Very Competitive”

Last week the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Transportation Commission wrapped up its work. The work was trying to figure out how to pay for the massive transportation infrastructure investment needed in Idaho. Betsy Russell at the Spokesman wrote a GREAT series of posts on the work of the Commission. I encourage you to get the details there.

In short, the Commission decided to recommend the Governor do nothing. In order to maintain and improve our existing road and bridge network, Idaho needs to spend more than a half billion dollars per year. And revenue enhancements are not forthcoming.

Lt. Governor Brad Little in response to the Committee’s work said this:

“One of the things that makes Idaho a great state and makes us very competitive is how hard it is to raise taxes.”

First a comment, then I’ll ask the questions that are begged here. To illustrate the flawed thinking in this statement, let me translate it into private sector language (since the Guvs want to run ID like a business):

“One of the things that makes ACME a great company and makes us very competitive is how few capital expenditures we make.”

Any CEO that said they were successful because they didn’t invest in their physical plant would be deemed insane by the Board of Directors and fired. But our leaders say exactly the same thing - we’re not going to invest in Idaho and that’s what makes us competitive - and we send them right back to office with high marks.

So - on to the questions. I want to know who told the Lt. Governor that Idaho is competitive, in what, and compared to whom? As I have argued over, and over, and over if a site selector has Boise and Salt Lake on his list, there is simply no way Boise wins. Not ever. Boise is absolutely not even in that league, and that should concern private and public sector leadership here, but it does not.

There’s a nifty new tool out there that Dr. Brian Greber over at the BSU College of Business and Economics developed that shows detailed cost of living comparisons between metro regions in the U.S. Soon, he’ll be unveiling dashboards that will allow public and private sector leaders real time economic indicators. Maybe that will scare ‘em finally. We’ll see. Anyway, quickly - here’s the comparison of SLC and BOI:

This tool is mostly relevant for employees as opposed to employers. And remember, it’s employers that decide where plants are located. Generally, employers don’t care about quality of life issues. They care about costs, connectivity, infrastructure, and quality of workforce among other things. So employers don’t care if a t-bone costs more in Vegas than it does in Des Moines. But three things that they will definitely care about are utility costs, local transportation costs, and the cost of health care. And, as Dr. Greber’s nifty tool shows us, the cost of living differential between BOI and SLC is minimal except in the areas that business cares about.

So maybe Brad Little is right in one regard. We’re competitive because you can pay low wages in Idaho, because cost of living is relatively low. But the lack of economic development in this region relative to the BOOM in economic development just south of the Idaho border, is prima facie evidence that those low wages aren’t offsetting the costs of doing business here.

Stupid Bike Tricks, Part One

As a bike commuter, I get awfully tired of seeing stupid cyclists. As a social scientist, I am amazed at how people use space. This picture is a classic example of a stupid bike rider, and an interesting example of how Boiseans differ from Portland residents.

So what is happening here is that this guy has just come barreling down the sidewalk off of Crescent Rim. Mind you he is 1) on the wrong side of the street; 2) on the sidewalk which is for PEDESTRIANS; 3) not wearing a helmet (I too often am guilty of this as well). But the big problem for me here is that that sidewalk gets a lot of pedestrian use, and it is SO DANGEROUS when bike riders come hauling ass down that hill yelling ON YOUR LEFT ON YOUR LEFT ON YOUR LEFT and scaring the hell out of pedestrians who are trying to walk to the park, school, Papa Joes, or one of the other businesses down there. Don’t be that guy.

It’s also really interesting to note that you NEVER see this in Portland. Not once in the year that I have been living between Boise and Portland have I seen a bicycle on the sidewalk. Not once. Portlanders have a very well-defined sense of space - cars stay where they should, as do bikes and pedestrians.

Airport to Get Bonding Power? Some Urban Legislators Balk

Any day now my good friend Dave Frazier will be going ballistic over on the Guardian Blog about HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 5, which passed the House 57-12-1, and the Senate 34-1. This resolution which will go to a vote of the people this fall would amend Idaho’s Constitution so that Airports can issue bonds without having to get a vote of the people. This is an idea whose time has come as evidenced by the vote. Good on you Senator Stegner for finally designating some authority to jurisdictions other than the state. With luck, this is the start of a new trend.

But there are those who still don’t see the need to devolve power to local governments and other jursdictions. Idaho’s cities and counties (and airports and public hospitals, etc.) have less authority than do the cities and counties in any state west of the Mississippi (see: D, Krane, Rigos N, and Hill M. Home Rule in America : A Fifty-State Handbook. CQ Press, 2000.). Of the 12 Representatives that voted against this measure, half are from urban areas, the other half rural. Thus, the urban rural divide is still in full effect.

I think it is somewhat amazing that anyone from an urban district would vote against this, thus some of these legislators’ votes deserve special attention. Clifford Bayer (R), Boise casts a vote that puzzles me. His district is part of the economic engine of the Valley. The Boise-Nampa MSA is responsible for 50% of state’s GDP. Voting to hamper the airport is no help to this economy or the citizens in his district.

Representative Hartgen (R), Twin Falls is the other mystery here. His vote is interesting first because his own district struggles with urban problems such as providing public transit - so he should be well aware of the need to start devolving authority to the governmental units that can actually solve his people’s problems. Secondly he is a professional economic development consultant. Voting against the public’s ability to provide infrastructure isn’t in any of the textbooks I had on economic development.

Several of the delegation from the CDA area voted against this measure as well, showing that they too do not yet grasp that their region is an urbanized area and also very much needs to have some flexibility to solve regional issues such as the traffic between CDA and Spokane, and also the border crossing to the north. No longer are CDA and Hayden sleepy little mountain towns on the way to nowhere.

Full details on the bill are available over at the Statesman.

PDX: $613 Million for new Bike Lanes

Saw a story last week that said Portland just passed a $613 plan to improve bike infrastructure over the next 20 years. I know it’s apples and oranges, but $60 million for a streetcar downtown seems like a bargain by comparison. Full story in the Portland Business Journal.

No. The Streetcar Won’t Relieve Traffic on I-84.

Twice lately people have either asked me what the downtown circulator will do to relieve congestion on I-84 coming from Nampa, or say they don’t support the streetcar because it won’t relieve congestion on I-84 and that is what the TIGER grant ought to be used for. Proof:

My smart friend Claire has tweeted me multiple times about the streetcar. She seems to oppose it because it is a poor priority compared with the Valley’s desperate need to reduce congestion on I-84. I totally agree with that. Three things though: 1) I-84 is not the responsibility of the City of Boise. It is a federal/state maintained route under the auspices of ITD, and usually paid for already by federal highway funds; 2) TIGER grants are theoretically possible for highway funding, but hardly probable; 3) Improvements to I-84 between Nampa and Boise are probably not only beyond perceived cost caps on TIGER funds, there most likely aren’t any shovel ready projects on the books.

I don’t know what is on tap as far as future I-84 projects. I do know however that BSU and ULI hosted a conference on the subject of opening the rail line between the Depot and Nampa - which is probably the favored solution for reducing congestion on I-84 (except by Randall O’Toole and Dave Frazier) - and that Senator Mike Crapo has been working diligently on the issue.

So again - the people that should be working on I-84 ARE working on I-84. That isn’t the City of Boise’s issue.

As to this question that I got at Urban Lunch, all I can say is, “No, I can’t tell you how the circulator will bring people in from Nampa because it is a circulator. A downtown circulator. For downtown. Boise.”

Streetcar Conversations: I got nuthin.

Earlier in the week we had a bang-up Urban Lunch event and brought out Cece Gassner from the City of Boise to talk about the streetcar proposal. And I have to admit, I had a really unexpected bunch of comments and questions. I am really just confounded - I just want to throw my hands in the air and say I got nuthin’. But the public deserves to understand exactly HOW we go to this point - the point where we are potentially going to build a rail-based downtown circulator.

So to kick off the discussion, here’s the tweet stream that came from my good friend, Dr. Norris Krueger, just before Urban Lunch:

So Norris’s first question to me was, “Are you going to let someone from the other side present as well.” I said, no, this is just a representative from the City talking about the facts of the proposed project, there’s no rah-rah-go-vote-for-the-streetcar advocacy happening.

He then accused me of letting Cece present “her” facts, as if there was some kind of contestable scientific evidence being presented here, which he also accused me of. Now, Norris is a scholar, and I have a graduate level degree in social science, and I don’t understand how someone with a Ph.D. could question the veracity of a series of engineering reports and traffic studies - which is exactly what was presented.

Here’s the facts. In 2003, Valley Regional Transit launched a study called the “Downtown Mobility Study,” the purpose they stated,

. . . was to develop a comprehensive approach to mobility within downtown Boise and for people traveling from, to and through the downtown area.

The final report and implementation plan to improve mobility in DOWNTOWN was completed in the Fall of 2005 - OVER FOUR YEARS AGO. The results of that report were not exactly kept secret from the public. The Idaho Statesman published FIVE articles on the study in 2005, including these findings and recommendations printed in the January 12, 2005 edition, on the FRONT PAGE of the local section:

The Downtown Mobility Study recommends more than $100 million worth of improvements to prepare downtown for the next 20 years. The consultants who wrote the $600,000 study say Boise needs a downtown shuttle with buses or street cars, two transit centers to accommodate a variety of transportation uses, and a revamp for the I-184 Connector to make it more biker- and pedestrian-friendly.

So it wasn’t kept secret from the public - the Statesman alone has published 16 columns on the Downtown Mobility Study. So it must have been that the public had no input into the study, then?

Nope.

As that same Statesman article noted,

After this week’s open houses, officials will have a chance to revise their draft plan based on the feedback they hear. Then the study’s final recommendations go to local agencies for public hearings and final approval this spring or summer, said Pamela Sheldon, planning and development director for Capital City Development Corporation, Boise´s urban renewal agency.

Oh. Ok. So there was a great deal of media coverage and the people have all had input on this thing and the plan was adopted. So the people must have been hoodwinked by a bunch of lobbyists or a bunch of crooked, untrustworthy organizations with no experience in governance. That must be it.

The City of Boise, CCDC, ValleyRide, Ada County Highway District, Idaho Transportation Department, Community Planning Association of Southwestern Idaho and Boise State University joined together to oversee and fund the study.

Huh.

Ok. So the consulting report must have been prepared by a political hack with no experience in transportation planning looking to sell a bill of goods to the people of the Treasure Valley?

Well, here’s the text from the “About us” page from the world-renowned engineering firm, Arup, that did the study:

Founded in 1946 with an initial focus on structural engineering, Arup first came to the world’s attention with the structural design of the Sydney Opera House, followed by its work on the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Arup has since grown into a truly multidisciplinary organisation. Most recently, its work for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing has reaffirmed its reputation for delivering innovative and sustainable designs that reinvent the built environment.

Ok. So they aren’t a hack firm, but they don’t know anything about transportation, right?

Well, let’s see - they built the rail line between London and Paris, the airport railway in Hong Kong, the subway in New York, and the freight lines in Australia.

So here is where we are in 2009:

• We began with a goal of improving mobility downtown.
• A global engineering firm with an impeccable reputation as experts in mobility authored a now four year old study recommending a series of improvements including streetcar routes.
• The public gave its input at open houses, and in open testimony to the elected officials of the City Council, and the Ada County Highway District.
• The plan was widely covered in the most popular media.
• The plan was adopted.

So why now, when Mayor Bieter comes out and wants to actually do what he was elected to do - in fact directed by the public to do - are people acting like this idea was pulled out of someone’s backside? The next phase in the plan is IMPLEMENTATION.

There’s still more to this story - the “disconfirming evidence” as Norris puts it - disconfirming what exactly I don’t know, pending confusion on what a downtown circulator is for and what it isn’t for, but those are issues for another post.

The point of this post is to understand HOW we got to the current proposal to build a downtown circulator. It was through a rational planning process, conducted by experts, with input from the public, approval by elected officials, and coverage by the mainstream media. This isn’t some last-minute whim by a snake-oil politician as critics like failed city council candidate Dave Litster, and photographer turned municipal government gadfly Dave Frazier would have you believe.

Urban Lunch a Big Success!

The inaugural urban lunch was a big success with well over 100 people showing up to hear City of Boise Economic Development Director Cece Gassner talk about the street car proposal. If you missed it, Nate Hoffman at the Boise Weekly has been doing great work covering the streetcar. The image above links to the piece about Urban Lunch. He also wrote a GREAT piece on the various TIGER grants that Idaho has out there, and another piece on where the City and CCDC plan to get the rest of the dough to build the streetcar in the event that they are TIGER recipients. I’ll be blogging more about the streetcar following some bizarre conversations I’ve had about it recently.

For now, I just want to thank Sherry McKibben, Lindsay Dofelmier, Ashley Ford, Melissa Lavitt (my boss at BSU), Jenny’s Lunch Line, Idaho TechConnect and Krissa Wrigley, and Dave at Phy.La Design. It took the work of a lot of dedicated volunteers to make this successful - not the least of who was all the people who showed up. Thanks too to NPR who did a nice story, and Zach at the Idaho Business Review (but where’s the story, man?).

Next month we’re slated for the Urban Lunch January Edition, scheduled for noon on Wednesday January 20th, at the Water Cooler. Tentatively speaking is City of Boise Comprehensive Planning Manager Patricia Nilsson giving an update on Blueprint Boise - or what the City envisions land use and development to look like for the next decade. RSVP to the event on the Urban Lunch Facebook page.

Urban Lunch!

It’s “Urban Lunch!” What is it? A new monthly lunch where we get together and talk about the urban issues of the day. Brought to you by the University of Idaho Urban Research and Design Center, Boise State University’s College of Social Sciences and Public Affairs, and friends from ULI Idaho and the USGBC, Urban Lunch is designed to be an easy opportunity for those interested in urban affairs to get together for a quick bite, some conversation, and a short presentation on a pressing topic.

The inaugural Urban Lunch happens Tuesday, December 8 from 12:00 - 1:00 pm at the Water Cooler at 1401 W. Idaho Boise, 83702. Lunch will be available from Jenny’s Lunch Line for $5. If you plan to eat at the event, please RSVP to Sherry McKibben.

Our guest speaker is City of Boise Economic Development Director Cece Gassner who will talk about the proposed streetcar/downtown circulator.

For more information contact Chris Blanchard or Sherry McKibben.

Streetcar Opponents LOSE in City Elections

The Portland Streetcar in front of Portland State University

John Miller from the Associated Press reports it the other way around - streetcar advocates WIN. No matter how you slice it, proposed streetcars in 80 cities across America brought voters to the polls. The AP reports:

A U.S. streetcar revival fared well in Tuesday’s elections, with pro-trolley candidates for mayor in Cincinnati and Charlotte, N.C., winning. A critic of Boise’s proposal lost.

Streetcars are being considered by as many as 80 U.S. cities, as federal grants are available, and President Barack Obama’s administration has given urban rail favorable reviews.

In Charlotte, streetcar advocate Anthony Foxx beat John Lassiter.

Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory won against Brad Wenstrup, a streetcar critic.

And in Boise, voters in a city council race chose TJ Thomson over David Litster, who is trying to kill a plan in Idaho’s capital to build a 2.3-mile trolley loop.

It will be interesting to see how this issue shakes out in the future. I was unimpressed with TJ Thomson’s waffling on this issue during the campaign; he refused to take a position. My prediction is that we will see more of the same from him as he settles into office after the first of the year. I also predict that we have heard the last of Dave Litster. What we have not heard the last of is the streetcar.