BART or BRRT. BRTS ("berts") is the best name for valley transit: Blaine Region Transport System. It is encompassing of all transportation modes, an easy acronym, a single syllable; it just rolls off the tongue.
But the portent is great. What the area needs is a single company or organization, private or public, providing all the modes of road transportation, including school bus service. (In the Boise metro area, school districts contract with private companies to provide school bus service.) At present, the multiple transportation systems are fragmented and inefficient. All are not optimally cost-effective. There are multiple managements and staffs drawing off funds that could be used for on-road operations and
equipment. There are simultaneous and duplicate transportation routes.
In the morning traffic, there are empty school buses going to Ketchum from Hailey. In the afternoon traffic, there are empty school buses going to Hailey from Ketchum. Those empty buses could be carrying commuters. Buses could also carry school children and commuters on the same bus. (In my school days in the Chicago suburbs, we rode the regular public-transportation system to school, merely using voucher passes given us by the school district.)
A consolidated, unified bus transportation system for Blaine County, maybe later extended for commuters all the way to the Jerome area, would have as its major component the school bus operations (separated from the school district.). Combined with the other bus services, this would give great economies of scale and flexibility and efficacy of operations to the entire system.
The school bus drivers along with other drivers could also drive those and other buses for daytime and evening transportation between Bellevue and Ketchum/Sun Valley. School buses could even have multiple uses carrying adult passengers. (If they are adequate and safe for our children, they certainly are that for adults.) In the Big Sky/Bozeman Montana area, school buses are used for school children, adult commuters to job sites, and even KART -type service in the Big Sky resort area.
Let's give serious thoughts and considerations for a unified transportation system in Blaine County.
Milton Adam
Sun Valley
