`Move people, not cars’
Otak study suggests transportation options
"You guys live in a really cool mountain town, but
your highway has become a really urban experience."
Roger Millar, transportation planner
By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer
After six weeks of studying how Wood River Valley
residents get from one place to another, Roger Millar asks the community
to look two, five, ten years into the future and consider:
Roger Millar. Express photo by David
Seelig
"Is [public] transit a social service for people who
have no other choice or a legitimate and, thus, larger part of the
transportation system that everybody in the county uses?"
The answer to that question is of course up to county
residents. But Millar, a transportation planning consultant with the
Carbondale, Colo.-based Otak planning firm, offered 73 pages of research
and suggestions Wednesday night that might help residents decide.
A Blaine County ad hoc committee commissioned the Otak
study with an $80,000 Idaho Transportation Department grant.
"You guys live in a really cool mountain town, but
your highway has become a really urban experience," Millar told about
40 residents, mostly elected officials and government staff, at the
beginning of his slide show presentation in the Wood River Middle School.
In the past, people came here, skied and went home, he
said, "but now, they come here, ski and buy a house."
"What you’ve got here is a tourist economy that’s
become a growth economy."
With the subsequent inflation of real estate prices, and
the shortage of affordable housing, Ketchum now imports 1,800 workers each
day, which creates a total yearly demand for public transit of 110,000
passengers, Millar said.
That’s not enough to support a light-rail system, yet,
but it could support bus service between Bellevue and the Ketchum-Sun
Valley area, at the very least for special events, Millar said.
Right now, the county’s only public transportation,
KART, serves areas within Ketchum and Sun Valley only.
It is Millar’s informed opinion that counties like
Blaine can never build themselves out of congestion as long as they
continue to focus on moving cars rather than moving people.
One of the most important steps to improving
transportation in general, his "Blaine County Public Transportation
Feasibility Study" recommends, is halting the proliferation of cars
here, "because we want the people, we just don’t want the impact
the cars would cause."
That might sound like a tall order, but it’s what Aspen
did in 1994. And, he gives an "incremental approach" to how
residents in Blaine County can do it. The approach divides
"operations" changes, "capital improvements" and
"finance strategies" into short-, mid- and long-term goals.
Some things that can happen within two years include
public education and promotional campaigns to raise public awareness of
transportation issues.
That could include, for example, distributing brochures
that inform people about the advantages of riding a bus over driving a car—generally,
an annual bus pass costs from $100 to $200, but commuting by car for a
year costs $7,500.
It could include a banner on the side of Ketchum’s
existing city KART buses that reads, "Thanks for taking this bus and
keeping the air clean."
Other recommended short-term goals include special events
bus service connecting Bellevue, Hailey and the Ketchum-Sun Valley area
and enhancing the existing Wood River Rideshare program and KART.
Blaine County planners should also coordinate with the ITD
to develop peak-hour high occupancy vehicle lanes on Highway 75 near East
Fork Road and Elkhorn Road.
The HOV lanes would allow carpool vehicles to bypass
stagnated traffic during rush hour to help "make it worth
carpooling." Buses typically use the lanes, too. HOV lanes between
Hailey and Ketchum could save carpool vehicles 10 to 15 minutes, Millar
said.
A "teen bus" to move teenagers between cities
for evening movies and weekend sports events could be made immediately
available with existing KART buses, Millar said. A survey that Wood River
Middle School and Wood River High School students conducted of their peers
showed the idea to be popular.
Mid-term goals assume people in Blaine County want more
public transportation and that ITD supports them.
The crux of Millar’s two- to five-year goals is
promoting enabling legislation for a local-option transit tax that would
allow Idaho counties to tax residents for public transportation, and
creating a Regional Public Transportation Authority (RTA) to oversee
public transportation operations.
Two mid-term goals that would work together would be
initiating regularly scheduled peak-hour bus service in the Bellevue to
Ketchum-Sun Valley corridor and initiating a transportation management
program that would include paid parking in Ketchum and other disincentives
to driving a car.
"There’s an awful lot of parking in Ketchum,"
Millar said. "If you build a bus system, it’s going to be hard to
get people to ride," unless Ketchum planners make it hard to park.
A local option tax would help fund mid-term projects such
as constructing bus stations and park-and-ride lots, developing further
high-occupancy vehicle lanes and identifying and preserving a corridor for
a future light-rail system.
Light rail, Millar said, may be feasible in about 20
years, which is about the length of time needed to plan and build one.
Long-term goals—five years from now or more—mostly
include geographically expanding systems already in place.
It’s not yet clear which of these recommendations county
planners will follow or just what will happen next.
Beth Callister, who helps run Wood River Rideshare and is
a public transportation advocate, is currently working to secure a $90,000
federal transportation planning grant.
If secured, the grant would fund a "transit area
plan" to identify potential bus stops, zoning and other
transportation planning issues. The grant would also be used to help
secure additional funding, she said.
