For the week of July 4 - July 10, 2001

County shuns 
transit plan

Without funds, commissioners 
won’t commit to projects

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By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer

The Blaine County Commission refuses to endorse a study that describes ways to improve public transportation in the Wood River Valley over the next 20 years.

Lack of commissioner support is related not so much to the study’s content as to a lack of funding for transit projects. Without funds available, commissioners won’t commit to the projects.

Before transit advocates turn to the county, the three-member board agrees, they should look to the Idaho Legislature for help. The commissioners advise proponents of an all-day, valley-wide bus system, park-and-ride lots and light rail to draft and promote a legislative bill that would allow county voters to approve a local tax to pay for those things.

"If you can’t do that," Commissioner Dennis Wright said during a hearing that was practically unattended by the public Monday morning, "it doesn’t matter what you’ve been smoking and coming up with visionary concepts here."

Wright was referring to a $80,000 Blaine County Public Transportation Feasibility Study funded by the Idaho Transportation Board, which oversees state road planning.

Commissioners Mary Ann Mix and Sarah Michael and several other local officials chose a planning firm called Otak, based near Aspen, to draft the document. In its 75 pages, it states county planners must do more than just add lanes to Highway 75 to solve the county’s growing traffic problems.

Wood River Rideshare coordinator Beth Callister, an outspoken advocate of public transit who helped organize public meetings to gather suggestions on the Otak report when it was being drafted, was not able to attend Monday’s commission hearing.

"I do understand that there needs to be funding, but there needs to be some agreed-upon direction [also]," she said Tuesday. "Otherwise, what’s the motive to get the [funding]?"

For the next two years, Otak recommends, the county should work with city governments to fund programs that raise public awareness of transit options. The governments should also expand the existing Ketchum-area KART bus service, expand Rideshare, develop carpool-only lanes on Highway 75 and participate in an Idaho Department of Transportation environmental study, now underway, of proposed highway expansion projects.

But, Wright said, "we are basically going right down this path already" even without the help of the Otak study.

It was the report’s long-term recommendations that worried the board the most. Commissioners said they would not saddle the county with a five- to 20-year agenda to create a regional transit authority, build transit infrastructure and maybe even build a $20 million railway system before a method of funding those things is available.

A local option tax, which county voters could approve specifically for transit, could provide that funding. But Idaho law would have to be changed first.

Similar legislation that allows Ketchum to collect a special tax to pay for costs associated with tourism took six years to get through the Legislature, Mix said. However, she said she believes a law for transit could move faster.

Meanwhile, Ketchum officials approved a resolution in March to endorse one piece of the Otak study that suggests the city use paid parking to discourage an increase in the average number of vehicles entering the city.

North-county Commissioner Michael denied, however, that commuters are getting the stick of paid parking without the carrot of alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles. She said carpool-only lanes would be considered after the current highway work south of Ketchum is finished in spring 2002.

Ketchum has not set a date to begin charging for parking.

Michael also cited the existing Rideshare program as an alternative for commuters.

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