It’s up to each of
us to resolve transportation issues
Guest opinion by CHRISTOPHER SIMMS
Christopher Simms is director of
Outreach and Development for Blaine County Citizens for Smart Growth.
What will motivate each of us to make a
personal commitment toward solving our transportation challenges? In the Wood
River Valley we value personal freedom and commitment, quality of life, and the
pursuit of happiness. Our economic engine, tourism, is based on the valley’s
abundant natural qualities and friendly, vibrant communities. Yet we are
beginning to experience the effects of growth that have decreased the quality of
life in other areas, such as traffic congestion, polluted air and water, and the
wildlife-human conflicts that ultimately lead to wildlife loss.
Many residents of the Wood River Valley
have recognized the hallmark urban problem of traffic congestion and reached for
the obvious and most convenient solution: highway improvements. While a wider
highway will alleviate one symptom of our transportation challenge, we know from
the experiences of other communities nationwide that road widening alone does
not solve traffic jams, except for the first few months following their
completion. After a decade of experience, it is now commonly accepted in
transportation planning agencies that road building alone does not solve traffic
congestion; it only stimulates drivers to commute from farther places.
Already a great deal of public energy,
political will, and public expenditure has been invested in an attempt to solve
our local transportation challenges. These efforts have produced the state and
federal Timmerman to Ketchum Highway 75 NEPA process, the Blaine County Public
Transportation Feasibility Study, and the City of Ketchum’s Multi-Model
Transportation System Plan and their 2001 statement of a transportation
improvement goal, embodied in Resolution 772. Every one of these documents
concludes and recommends more than highway widening. These documents support
exactly what we know: meeting our transportation challenge requires a battery of
complimentary strategies.
Unfortunately, while we have these
studies, resolutions and plans in hand, not many of our citizens or elected
officials have taken their message to heart which is, again, that highway
improvements are but a small part of a larger solution, which requires the
implementation of multiple strategies. These strategies also include commuter
buses, pedestrian-friendly towns and neighborhoods, paid parking in the city
cores, car pooling, bicycling, telecommuting, and flexible and/or staggered work
hours.
What would a comprehensive solution to our
transportation challenge look like? We would see both bottom-up and top-down
efforts in which a) each individual makes a small change and b) our elected
officials contribute their support to the solution.
The bottom-up effort would include a
challenge to the dogma that says, "The best way to get from Point A to Point B
is to drive alone in my car." It would include each of us taking daily
responsibility for making a difference by combining our errands, taking the Peak
Bus, car pooling with a coworker, and working one day a week from home (wouldn’t
that be great, anyway.) And it also would include personally telling our elected
officials that we support a comprehensive solution to our transportation
challenge, one that includes complimentary strategies in addition to "the
obvious solution," more macadam.
The top-down effort would include the
active support of these elected officials for a number of "transportation
complimentary strategies" because these strategies have worked in other areas,
because local constituencies support them, and because they would contribute to
the overall goal of preserving our quality of life. Our elected officials would
support high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes during heavy commuting hours, the
Peak Bus, and Wood River Rideshare’s efforts toward facilitating car pooling,
working with local employers to reduce commuter congestion, and toward promoting
walking and bicycling.
Especially in these uncertain times, it is
important to exercise our personal freedoms. Perhaps the most important
responsibility of having personal freedom is our participation in the process
and being part of the solution.