Longtime Boise City Council member Elaine Clegg is leaving after 19 years. This is why
The Boise City Council president, Elaine Clegg, will leave the council this year after 19 years.
Valley Regional Transit, the agency that operates the region’s ValleyRide bus system, said Monday that Clegg will take a new job as its CEO starting Feb. 13.
The transit agency’s board unanimously decided to hire Clegg on Monday, according to a news release, after she was recommended to the position by the executive board in December. A member of that executive board herself, Clegg recused herself from the agency’s search for a new leader after Kelli Badesheim, the executive director, announced in May that she planned to leave.
“We’re at this really wonderful, pivotal moment in this valley where being able to move around in a different way is going to become even more important,” Clegg told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “If we can figure out a way to introduce that option to people effectively, there’s a tremendous opportunity for growth in the system, growth in ridership, acceptance of this as a way to move. I have been working on that for my whole life and am really excited to be at the head of it.”
“The VRT Board of Directors voted unanimously to approve Elaine as the next CEO because we recognize her visionary mindset, passion for public transportation, knack for coalition-building, and deep ties to the community,” said Joe Stear, the mayor of Kuna and chair of the board, in the release.
Sometime in the next few months, Clegg said, she will resign from the council. She said she is still deciding what the best timing will be.
Once she resigns, Mayor Lauren McLean will recommend a replacement for Clegg, who would then be approved by the council and serve until after city elections in November. Had she stayed, Clegg faced the prospect of running against a fellow incumbent, Holli Woodings, in the first councilwide election since a new state law required council members to be elected by district, not at large.
First elected in 2003, Clegg has been council president four times.
She also has been pushing for the return of passenger rail service to Boise, which would connect travelers in the inland city to Salt Lake City, Portland and Seattle.
Clegg will leave her job as program manager of Idaho Smart Growth, a nonprofit planning outfit.
She is a board member of the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho, the regional transportation planning agency. Clegg is also the City Council’s liaison to Compass and to Valley Regional Transit.
‘Pivotal moment’ to get people moving
Clegg said that Boise’s consistent and fast growth has put it in a position to build more robust public transit infrastructure, especially because a new generation is more amenable to hopping on a bus or a train.
As the region grows, housing costs have forced some residents to need to look for housing further from their job, making the cost and time of commuting a challenge.
“There’s nothing wrong with driving,” Clegg said. “But when driving is the only choice you have, it can become a burden. So my goal would be to make driving only one of the choices that you have to make about moving around.”
She also said that greater transportation options could be helpful for businesses, giving them access to a subset of workers who don’t now have a way of getting to their location.
More density in Boise would help improve transit, but Clegg said it isn’t the only factor.
“High-capacity transit especially is best served by more compact, more dense development, (but it) doesn’t mean that you uniformly make density everywhere,” she said. “It means you figure out those places where it is most advantageous both to movement and to living.”
What does this mean for buses? Or light rail?
When she starts at the transit agency next month, Clegg said she is excited about existing projects to improve bus service in Canyon County, as well as one to redesign the Boise system to bring as many residents as possible closer to bus routes.
Valley Regional Transit is also in the midst of a project to redesign the State Street corridor in partnership with local cities to bring denser, mixed-use development to the well-traveled road.
“What are the ways that we can reimagine how we do bus, so that it provides some of the same benefits that light rail does, in terms of ease of use, intuitive understanding of where and how it goes, good amenities, good reliability?” Clegg said. She hopes to work with others in the region to come up with the best ideas.
When she approaches transit, Clegg said her focus is first on what the best network would be. After that, she looks at what technology would be best.
“(Let’s) design a network that we think does that that’s agnostic in terms of what technology you use, and after we get that network, then figure out what technology we can use and how can we use it,” Clegg said.
In the short-term, that means building the best rapid bus service system, she said. In the long-term, if Boise continues to grow quickly, the footprint of the bus system could inform a future network that serves more people and costs more.
“As we grow, if we find that we can change the technology we use to make that network more efficient, then go for it,” Clegg said. “But in the meantime, let’s not stop people from being able to move because we’re waiting for that other technology.”
This story was originally published January 9, 2023 at 6:05 PM.
