The highway district wants to widen this Boise road from 2 lanes to 5. Neighbors object
The Boise City Council is asking the Ada County Highway District to drop plans to widen Warm Springs Avenue to five lanes through Harris Ranch.
The mile-long section of Warm Springs, which extends southeast from Parkcenter Boulevard to Eckert Road, now has two lanes.
The widening project is included in the highway district’s Master Street Map, which shows existing and planned arterial and collector streets. The map, which is updated every two years, helps the district in long-range planning to obtain land for road projects before it’s needed.
The Barber Valley Neighborhood Association raised concerns that having two lanes of traffic in each direction, and a two-lane roundabout, in an area where a number of housing developments are planned, would endanger pedestrians and bicyclists.
“Our concern was that if we surround these developments with this parkway that looks like Parkcenter Boulevard that weaves through East Boise, that’s just not a comfortable pedestrian or bicycle crossing,” John Mooney Jr., the neighborhood association president, said by phone. “The right thing to do here is to put that road on a diet.”
Road widening in Harris Ranch plan since 2007
The five-lane roadway was included in the Harris Ranch zoning ordinance when it was originally approved in 2007, ACHD spokesperson Natalie Shaver said in an email. The plan was added to the Master Street Map in 2009.
“All of the traffic-impact studies submitted for Harris Ranch have shown the need for a future five-lane roadway on Warm Springs and dual-lane roundabouts,” she said.
Planners for the highway district and the city met recently to discuss the requirements needed to change the Harris Ranch zoning ordinance and the Master Street Map to change that section of Warm Springs to three lanes and a single roundabout.
Originally, ACHD had looked to have a five-lane road go through Barber Valley east all the way to Idaho 21. Mooney said the association was successful four years ago in having the 2.7-mile section of Warm Springs from South Eckert Road to Idaho 21 downgraded to two lanes and a middle turn lane.
“ACHD retains the right-of-way, but their plans are not to build to five lanes,” Mooney said. “We’re trying to do the same thing to Eckert.”
Neighbors mostly favor two lanes plus center turn lane
Most neighborhood residents favor three lanes rather than five, although a few like the idea of being able to get to and from downtown Boise easier with more lanes, Mooney said. The third lane would be a center turn lane.
The matter came before the City Council on June 30 as part of a presentation on ACHD’s Master Street update. ACHD asks cities to comment on plans within their jurisdictions.
Staff members from the city and the highway district identified, reviewed and resolved more than two dozen changes citywide, Karen Gallagher, an associate city transportation planner, told the council. But they didn’t resolve the planned widening of Warm Springs.
That section of Warm Springs was added to a bicycle network planned many years ago through Harris Ranch, Gallagher said. Having five lanes would make it difficult for people, especially children, to cross the road, she said.
A new Boise elementary school planned just north of Warm Springs would add to the number of children crossing the street. The school, bordered by South Barnside Avenue, East Walnut Creek Drive, South Shadywood Avenue and East Thornapple Drive, was scheduled to open in fall 2022, but the Boise School District earlier this year delayed the opening to fall 2024.
“Keeping this at three lanes would really reduce the barrier that it would create at being five lanes,” Gallagher said. “Additionally, we have some (planned) restaurants and other residential and non-residential uses that would benefit from a narrower street section.”
The council unanimously approved the recommendation.
Traffic study recommends five lanes, roundabouts
“As of now, the Master Street Map that we’re updating will continue to call for five lanes, but it also explicitly says there are currently no plans to build the five-lane section for which we already have the right-of-way,” Shaver said.
A 2016 traffic study for ACHD by Fehr & Peers, a Washington, D.C., company with offices in Portland and Salt Lake City, predicted that at full build-out in 2035, Warm Springs would generate 2,120 daily morning peak trips and 2,747 afternoon peak trips.
A September 2019 traffic count on Warm Springs west of Eckert Road had a westbound morning peak of 347 vehicles and an eastbound afternoon peak of 355 vehicles. The 24-hour count in both directions was 7,536.
Fehr & Peers recommended widening Warm Springs to two lanes in each direction plus a center turn lane by 2035 and adding three one-lane roundabouts, which, it said, would keep traffic volumes at acceptable levels.
The highway district plans to hold a work session on the Master Street Map revisions on Sept. 2, with the updated map to be adopted Sept. 23.
