The Field of Dreams School of Politics

While Idaho’s infrastructure is deteriorating, Senator Nicole LeFavour (D-19) is pushing for more rural bike lanes. When she brought this up in committee, she was told by Governor Otter’s budget director Wayne Hammon made a smart aleck remark about the North End.

First of all, Hammon was out of line. The Governor represents all Idahoans  and his budget director should not single out the North End for ridicule. That’s my job.

Second point, though is what bothers me ultimately about Senator LeFavour’s point is that like her, I too have lived in a rural area. I road bicycle around town. I was one of the few who did. Bike lanes in the middle of rural Idaho are mini-bridges to nowhere made to service a small number of people who use them.

However, Nicole LeFavour and most of the Treasure Valley liberals are of the Field of Dream school of public policy. “If we build it, they will come.”  Lay down a bikepath in a rural area near a farm, and bicyclist will literally come zipping out of the corn. Or so the theory goes. Or perhaps it’s the idea that in biblical fashion we’ll beat our motor cars into bicycles. All we’re waiting for is for somebody to establish a bike lane.

I know a thing or two about bike lanes. For nearly two years, my daily commute home took me down Veteran’s Memorial Parkway towards State, where there’s a bike lane, that I rarely saw a bicyclist in. It’s about 99% empty. Apparently, the same voice that told us to build bike paths wasn’t the same one Ray Kinsella heard.

And unlike in Portland and Columbus, where buses are well-occupied, every time I board a bus in Boise, it’s as if I’ve stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone, where four or five people are on the bus, and the rest of the seats are empty because Rod Serling was on a budget.  True, there are some things we could make Valley Transit buses bettet. But wouldn’t it be smart to see if we could effectively and competently market public transit in Boise before trying to push mass transit across the state in communities so small, any system will either inefficient or borderline useless to its residence?

However, such petty concerns won’t stall the “forward thinking” Idaho legislators and Transit officials. If they get their way, we’ll all be paying a 1% higher sales tax on everything we buy after an election next to nobody knew about and where none of us can go and vote at our normal polling places. The net result of this proposed tax increase? We’ll be running 3/4 empty buses from Greenleaf to Boise.

It seems smarter for me for government to supply the services people demand, rather than the ones they really wish they would demand.