Re: Interstate 95

[Linda Pall <lpall@moscow.com>]

Dear Bill and Visionaries,

About US 95!!! I think an interstate designation is really worth looking at
because the piece meal, heavy on Idaho funding is simply  not getting the
job done, as amply shown by the numbers of deaths and maimings we suffer. We
need and deserve a safe north/south highway! 

I want you to know, the press release I issued Thursday said that the entire
answer was not in highways but requires work in public transportation
(sensible transportation options for people was a group I worked with in the
early 1970s in Portland... STOP?!?) and work on aeronautical communication
(I read when I got back Friday night from Boise that the Moscow/Boise air
link is now history).

Bill, of all people, you know that I certainly am not interested in paving
one more square inch of terra firma than necessary but I am deeply
concerned that we need a safe and reasonable link from Nevada to Canada and
that the entire country could benefit from this! I am also personally
interested in this, having started off for a Wednesday Boise morning meeting
late Tuesday night and, with discretion being the better part of valor,
chose to go via Walla Walla and LaGrande, rolling into Boise at 3:10 AM but
safe nonetheless.

When I was in Boise discussing these ideas with KBSU, the young woman who
did the on-air interview said that she knew personally of the dangers of US
95: one of her best friends had been killed in a winter auto accident on the
road a year or so previous. It is an unforgiving road: make a small mistake
or have someone else do so and you could be activating your estate plan. We
deserve better, without paving the world and without environmental
degradation. I think it can be done with Congressional energy and will. 

So, Bill, consider that an improved north/south road with federal funding
responsibility, plus new public transportation and air transportation
partnerships between federal and local/state governments could put this
state in the 21st century rather than somewhere in the 'auto court' stage of
our transportation history. I know we agree on the need for public
transportation options. I bet we agree that air links should be improved. I
hope we can agree on the need for a safe, effective north-south highway link
for Idaho.

All the best to my recovering friend and the rest of the visionary clan,
Linda Pall




At 01:07 PM 2/5/00 PST, you wrote:
>Sorry, I just can't let this one go by without comment.
>
>I awoke to the Tribune article (Sat 2/5, page 10A) on Linda Pall's 
>suggestion to remake Idaho Highway 95 into an Interstate.
>
>While I usually agree with Linda, I really hope this idea dies a 
>well-deserved death (again, since she is not the first to suggest it).
>
>Keeping in mind that widening and remaking dangerous sections of 95 is a 
>sensible thing, I would hate to see us go overboard and try to upgrade 95 to 
>an Interstate.
>
>Do we want to pave over hundreds of Palouse farmland acres with this new 
>road to parallel the existing highway?
>
>Do we want to blast a huge roadway along the Salmon River between Whitebird 
>and New Meadows?
>
>For me the answer is "nope"--an Interstate would cost both too many dollars 
>and too much ecological damage.  and probably bring us too many Winnebagos.
>
>I would much rather see those kinds of dollars go to public transportation 
>within our cities and between them.
>BL
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