Bikelash in Boise

“Plans to add new bike lanes and streetscape near the Boise Co-Op and St. Joe’s School are getting a shakeup after a flood of opposition over the summer,” reports Margaret Carmel for Boise Dev.

The Ada County Highway District Commission recently reviewed the latest revision of the proposed street reconfiguration, which would add “new buffers between pedestrians, cyclists and drivers and splits the lanes north of Franklin into a sort of cycle track, where northbound traffic would ride up 8th Street to Union and southbound traffic into downtown would come down 9th Street,” according to Carmel. 

The previous proposal for the street reconfiguration “two projected bike lanes, one going in each direction, one going in each direction, on both sides of 8th Street dead ending at Union Street,” adds Carmel. “This new proposal instead makes a circuit around 8th and 9th streets, moving the bike lanes away from St. Joe’s and St. John’s Cathedral on 8th Street by moving the southbound travel lane one block over to 9th Street.”

The project, part of a long-planned effort to extend the city’s existing bike network in the North End met significant resistance from the parents and parishioners of St. Joe’s Catholic School, St. John’s Cathedral, and St. Michael’s Episcopal Church. As noted by Carmel, some bike advocates also expressed concerns about how the project would terminate at Union Street.