Goyden letter: Public transportation

Attention people of Boise. Time to safeguard your wallets. Our fine mayor, and he is a pretty nice guy whom I usually vote for, is having a reoccurrence of his vision. Actually it might be a hallucination. It’s definitely delusional. He is once again trying to convince us that iron rails downtown would be a good thing. Now, notwithstanding the incredible current congestion downtown, I cannot imagine how more lane restrictions could be beneficial. Interestingly, on a recent NPR news report, the very cities cited the last time we were presented with “the vison” are now saying it hasn’t turned out to be the boon they anticipated. But, we are reassured that though the hard rails are four times more expensive initially and 50 percent more expensive thereafter than the alternative, the benefits are anticipated (that word again) to be a great boon to the developers. (We may also want to buy a bridge or some swamp land.) I wonder if the consultants to this idea for Boise are the same as the ones for those other cities, like Tacoma and Portland, and Salt Lake City.

This story was originally published March 26, 2016 at 9:08 PM with the headline "Goyden letter: Public transportation."