To meet the challenges of congestion, fast growth, and residents seeking viable transportation alternatives, Boise must prioritize active mobility and quality public transit. Seeking a trusted advisor to guide the future of mobility decision-making, the City of Boise engaged Gehl and Sam Schwartz Engineering to create the Boise Transportation Action Plan (TAP).
Boise aspires to become the Most Livable City in the country. This vision is becoming a reality through various programs and collaborative initiatives that aim to create lasting environments, cultivate innovative enterprises, and build vibrant communities.
Boise’s downtown has the conditions to be Boise’s most walkable sector. The high density of jobs and commuters, increases the need to prioritize alternatives to the automobile for trips within the downtown.
Wide streets, designed to optimize vehicular throughput have a direct impact on residents health, quality of life, and home values. People who live along these streets are less likely to walk or participate in neighborhood life.
The Boise Transportation Action Plan (TAP) is a road map to a modern, well-balanced transportation system that provides real mobility choices and creates great places. The TAP expresses the people’s vision, values, and goals developed over the last seven years of planning work by the City and its transportation partners.
Boise’s collective vision for the future of the city’s transportation can be understood as ‘choice.’ Real mobility choice means that all citizens have the option to bike, walk, ride, or drive safely and comfortably. To realize this potential, the TAP recommends targeted investments in transportation infrastructure, actions, and metrics for creating accessible places. Just as importantly, the TAP articulates and documents the economic, environmental, and quality of life benefits of a high-quality, multi-modal transportation system. The City of Boise, the Ada County Highway District, the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho, and Valley Regional Transit have conducted extensive planning efforts that set the stage for this document. The TAP builds on the work that has been completed to date so that these plans can be translated into meaningful and strategic action.
The Gehl team engaged various stakeholders to develop a precise series of ‘moves’ focused on changing how the city and community think about and utilize the public right-of-way. The TAP’s ‘Mobility Moves’ offer city-wide initiatives combining infrastructure investment and incentives for behavior change.
With a limited number of transportation projects that can be built at any one time, the City wants to ensure that its first projects align with Boise’s Mobility Vision and Values. To do so, the City has developed a project prioritization framework that packages the TAP Values and Moves into a transparent scorecard – one that identifies the transportation investments that best serve the people of Boise.
A vision for downtown Boise with high quality bike lanes, trees providing comfort and shade, open buildings that address the street, and narrowed car lanes.
Mixed use corridors including a generous pedestrian realm, small public spaces breaking up intersections, and active sidewalks.
A vision for compact neighborhoods with street geometry designed to slow traffic, ecological infrastructure in unused space, and signs and crosswalks to acknowledge pedestrian priority.
Suburban Neighborhoods with a path that serves active users, protection for cyclists near high speed traffic, and tree canopies.
The TAP’s ‘Mobility Moves’ offer high-level initiatives that advance Boise’s transportation values by listing specific infrastructure improvements, programs, and areas that would most benefit from those actions. The six Moves represent the needs of different population groups, different locations within the city, and different modes of travel and support current City of Boise and partner initiatives.
Using the city’s planning framework and geospatial analysis, Gehl developed a classification of ‘Place Types” and specific locations to assist in the prioritization of ped-bike improvements. This map illustrates four Place Types, that were determined by analyzing the travel behavior of Boise residents and correlating it to the physical characteristics of their neighborhoods.
Urban Strategy is the foundation upon which form, function and behaviour are created. Our holistic approach always starts with asking what life should exist in place, what spaces invite for that life, and what buildings and facilities support this. People and life first, always.
Public Life Data, the collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative information about how people use and engage with public spaces, uncovers the true picture of how design impacts behavior. Our teams use this collected analysis to develop strategies and plans that foster more equitable, healthy and climate-positive lifestyles.
Mobility is a key driver of urban transformation and quality of life. By approaching transportation and mobility challenges from a people-first perspective we help clients prioritize the human experience in everything from city-wide strategies to street corner improvements.