Welcome to the Boise Bus Blog

Greetings, and welcome to the Boise Bus Blog. My name is Julie Fanselow, and I live on Boise's Central Bench, a working-class area about a mile from the Boise State University campus (Go Broncos!) and two-and-a-half miles from the heart of downtown Boise. Since 2003, I've written Red State Rebels, one of the top progressive political blogs in the Mountain West. I also worked as the campaign blogger for Democratic candidate Larry Grant during his 2006 run for Congress in Idaho's 1st District. The New York Times included me in a recent roundup of influential bloggers that worked for campaigns during the midterm elections. I am currently back to my freelance writing business of 15 years, Write the Change, in which I focus on people who are doing "small-d" grassroots democracy work and community building.

So why do a new blog focused on my local bus service? I have my reasons:

• I love Boise, and when we bought our house here in 2004, I was excited to learn we were literally on one bus route (the #29 Overland, since rerouted slightly but still within half a block) and within a few blocks of another (the #3 Vista). This was a big step up from our previous home in Twin Falls, Idaho, where there was no public transportation to speak of. Alas, I soon learned that Boise's bus service has serious limitations. The worst issue is that the buses do not run after about 7 p.m. Other drawbacks are a total lack of Sunday service and infrequent service during the middle of the day.
• I've been an occasional bus rider in the past, typically riding a few times a month. I'd like to ride the bus a lot more than I do. It's a challenge, since I work out of my house, I don't need the bus to get to work, and many places I go are within walking distance. But with some advance planning, I know I could ride the bus more to downtown meetings, activities, and events; the airport; the movies; and even the mall. This blog will document my efforts to do that.
  
• I believe that by riding the bus more, I will be making a personal commitment to using less oil, improving our local air quality, and being healthier. (I already walk a lot, but I'll be walking more, to and from bus stops.) My increased ridership may also help make Boise's public transportation system more viable, particularly if it inspires others to take transit at least part time.
  
• At the same time, I'd like to hold the local transit providers and government officials more accountable as they work toward trying to build support for exapnded local transit. As one of the nation's fastest-growing metro areas, Idaho's Treasure Valley still has a long way to go to become a truly transit-friendly area. I fully support that goal, and if I can play some small part in making that happen, that'd be great.
  

So here it is, the Boise Bus Blog. I invite all Treasure Valley transit users to use this blog to post comments about their own transit experiences (good and bad); small, short-term changes they'd like to see made; and their visions for our area's long-term transit future. Those are the things I'll be writing about, too.

This project is in no way associated with Valley Ride (the local bus provider) or any government entity, though I do plan to tell them what I'm doing.

Welcome, and I hope to see you on the buses in Boise. Click here to return to the most recent post.