Best-laid growth plans often just gather dust

Local officials say two land-use and transportation plans now being drafted aim to avoid the pitfalls that often doom the best-intentioned government efforts.

Scores of Treasure Valley land- use and transportation plans and studies in recent decades have ended up sitting on shelves or being only partly implemented.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that planners failed or that planning for roads, traffic and growth is wasted effort. But it does mean that the results that impatient taxpayers want from plans often never materialize.

"All the plans are doing is building bigger cities, not better cities," said David Reed, a fourth-generation Idahoan who worked as an engineer for Morrison-Knudsen for 20 years. "We do all these plans but don’t enforce them."

Reed’s sentiment is not new. "Plans are worthless, planning is essential" is a famous Dwight Eisenhower quote often cited by Michael Lauer, a Kansas-based planner working on the Blueprint for Good Growth, a new Ada County land use and transportation plan.

Cynthia Sewell
The Idaho Statesman

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