The city of Boise’s ‘going’ concern? The state of State Street

The Boise City Council’s chief road priority is clear: fixing State Street.

The major east-west thoroughfare represents four of the top five items on the city’s wish list for the upcoming fiscal year, according to a draft project ranking considered by the council earlier this month.

With the deadline to submit projects to the Ada County Highway District on March 18, Boise is flagging a 2.2-mile stretch of State as its focus for the years ahead. The requests, which are divided into four projects, collectively run from the intersection at 27th Street to Glenwood Street in the city’s northwest.

If adopted by ACHD, the four stretches would join a segment already under construction around Pierce Park Lane, where crews are widening the road from five lanes to seven to better accommodate public transit, according to Bre Brush, a senior policy analyst for the city. That’s what the city would like to see for the length of State.

“State Street has long been identified as a high priority corridor for the city given its continuous connectivity throughout our valley,” Brush told the Idaho Statesman in an email. “Not only is it one of the most heavily trafficked streets in the city it also is home to our top performing bus routes, making it optimal for investments that move both people and cars.”

Boise’s ask maps onto Valley Regional Transit’s Route 9, which runs from Glenwood to 5th Street in the city’s downtown. The bus line is part of Boise’s “highest traffic transit corridor,” Brush told the City Council during a work session on March 3. The 9 local and express buses combined to make up about two-thirds of VRT’s annual ridership, according to a 2019 study on the State Street corridor.

Boise road requests part of countywide plan

Prioritizing a project doesn’t guarantee funding from ACHD. The highway district is an independent agency tasked with designing, building and maintaining all local roads in the county, meaning it has to walk a tight rope balancing municipal interests with the budget on hand. All six Ada County cities, each school district, the county government and Valley Regional Transit submit their own ranked lists of priorities. ACHD starts by looking at the top three on each list and determines whether to move them forward in its rolling five-year plan. Some ideas stay on the wish list for years, waiting their turn as items ahead of them are planned and built.

“The goal is to maintain a level of consistency and progression with the projects in each of the agency’s lists,” ACHD spokesperson Rachel Bjornestad told the Idaho Statesman in an email. “As new funding becomes available, and as projects make it to construction, additional projects are programmed and move forward into the [five-year plan].”

Boise’s preliminary road and intersection wish list — which Brush said is made up of “large capital projects” — is 18 items long. ACHD picks which projects to “program” — that is, schedule for a slot in its five-year plan. Boise may get one or two programmed for design and another one or three for construction each year, Brush said.

“For us, to have more on there is better,” Brush told the Council. “We think that ACHD needs to know what’s important for us and our residents.”

Cities, ACHD agree: State Street needs work

From ACHD’s perspective, it helps if a request shows up in multiple lists, Bjornestad said. As for State Street, ACHD is well aware of its broad-spectrum importance.

Cross-jurisdictional visions for the roadway date back to at least 2004, according to Boise’s “Building a Better State Street” plan. In 2019, stakeholders developed the “State Street Transit and Traffic Operations Plan,” which called for work to modernize a six-mile stretch of road. That plan describes a roadway overmatched by the Treasure Valley’s western spread — what was essentially a rural highway to market now swallowed by cities. The plan calls for more lanes, but also a strong investment in mass transit, with new and redesigned bus stops to connect downtown Boise to its border with Eagle and Garden City at Horseshoe Bend Road.

The underlying agreement was most recently updated in 2024.

“This corridor is a priority for ACHD, the city of Boise, Garden City, Idaho Transportation Department, the city of Eagle, COMPASS, and Valley Regional Transit,” Bjornestad said.

Beyond Pierce Park, where construction is ongoing, Bjornestad said ACHD has already worked on intersections at Veterans Memorial Parkway and Collister Drive. The stretch Boise is asking for from Glenwood to 27th “is currently planned,” Bjornestad said, with a vision of widening the road to seven lanes — three each way with a central turning lane — and multi-use pathways on both sides of the road.

In all, ACHD estimates that State Street projects will require around $90 million to complete, according to agency data.

Once requests are filed this week, ACHD will score the submissions in May. The plan is expected to be finalized in September ahead of the new fiscal year.