Ada County, Boise say: Don’t be ‘the Tour de France rider on the Greenbelt’

As soon as Mel Walker learned Ada County commissioners were considering new rules about speeding on the Boise River Greenbelt , he went out and bought a radar gun. He stood on a bench by the Greenbelt for two days, eight hours each, to track the speed of “devices” — anything with wheels — going by on the path.

He paid particular attention to people traveling over 15 mph in crowded areas, where even that speed could be dangerous, he said. Many of those riders, he found, were going much faster: over 20 mph in congested spaces.

He wasn’t surprised. As a volunteer Greenbelt Ambassador with the Boise Police Department for the last six years, he has “lots of bruises from speeding people,” he said.

Walker was one of about 20 people, several of whom were bike safety instructors or volunteers, who spoke at a Tuesday hearing in favor of a change to county code that will require users of the nearly 50-mile pathway to travel in a “reasonable” and “prudent” manner. Violators may be charged with an infraction — or, if they put people or property in danger, a misdemeanor.

Commissioners voted to adopt the change in the coming months as part of an effort to streamline and more uniformly enforce the rules on the Greenbelt, whether walkers and bikers are on the 11 miles of trail controlled by Ada County, or one of the portions controlled by Boise or another city.

“Now we’re all singing from the same song sheet in the entire county,” Doug Holloway, Boise’s director of Parks and Recreation, said during a separate Tuesday presentation to the Boise City Council.

During the public hearing, Commissioner Ryan Davidson hinted at additional changes to come based on residents’ suggestions during the hearing. One recommended requiring a safety class for people caught speeding on the Greenbelt; another suggested that the county adopt Boise’s approach of enlisting volunteer “ambassadors” to remind people of the rules.

The change to county code comes after years of complaints from residents about reckless behavior on the Greenbelt, calls by some to ban electric bikes, and constantly changing technology that allows users to travel ever faster on the trail.

With “all the new e-toys, I’ve seen things that seem to defy physics that people are riding on,” Davidson said.

In July, the county created some confusion about its plans for the Greenbelt, disseminating and then quickly walking back a news release that said it was considering a 10-mph speed limit on the pathway. Several residents had in fact pushed to implement a speed limit, but law enforcement officers quickly shut down that idea, said Scott Koberg, the county’s director of Parks and Waterways.

The more broadly worded proposed language would be much easier for officers to enforce than a strict speed limit, since bikers have no real way of knowing their exact speed in any given situation — but they do have a sense of whether they’re using the Greenbelt “reasonably,” said Spencer Lay, the associate legal adviser at the Ada County Sheriff’s Office.

“That’s a prosecutable case,” he told commissioners.

‘People know to be courteous,’ but ‘that’s not working’

During the City Council meeting, Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar estimated that his officers had stopped 65 bikers on or near the trail for speeding or other safety violations since early 2022, which he said was a “relatively modest” number of calls for service, given the thousands of people who use the 25 miles of the Greenbelt that Boise administers.

Reports of reckless behavior on the Greenbelt are widespread, officials say, but data on how many crashes are happening is hard to come by. Unless a car is involved, many crashes go unreported, and police aren’t called, Boise Council Member Jimmy Hallyburton said Tuesday.

“I think there’s a lot of data that we don’t have, and we’ve got to figure out how we can actually make some of these decisions” on enforcement, traffic calming and other possible initiatives, he said.

It’s also difficult for legislation to keep up with rapidly changing technology, including hoverboards and ever-faster e-bikes. Boise’s own code on e-bikes is outdated, Holloway said, noting that it was written at a time when the e-bikes the city allowed on its streets and the Greenbelt couldn’t travel any faster than 20 mph. Now, some e-bikes can travel up to 50 mph, he said.

“They keep making new e-toys that the law really hasn’t seemed to catch up with,” Davidson said.

Several speakers defended e-bikes at the county hearing, calling them a lifeline that allowed them to stay active amid hip replacements or other life changes. Others, including longtime Greenbelt user and Ada County employee Luke Ten Doeschate, attributed bad behavior on the pathway not just to e-bikers, but to people walking their dogs off-leash, or walking across the pathway without looking both ways.

“It’s about the drivers,” said Boise resident Bob Hay. “It’s not about the vehicles.”

Lay, too, emphasized that the new rules aren’t just targeting e-bikers.

For “the Tour de France rider on the Greenbelt” riding “too fast every single day,” as well as others using the pathway irresponsibly, officials are “hoping to raise the floor a little bit, and say that we are aware of this,” he said. “Anybody can at any time be one of the bad actors.”

At the Boise City Council meeting, council members said decades-old signage on the pathway was also contributing to bad behavior — something they aim to rectify in the next year, in part by adding new signs in places with significant congestion, blind corners and high speed, Holloway told the Statesman in an email.

Still, some at the public hearing argued for more “teeth” in the new county code. They said the expectations on the pathway are already clear — but are just being ignored.

“People know to be courteous, and that’s not working,” said Branden Laura, a Garden City resident.

Hallyburton said these problems were only to be expected amid the area’s rapid growth.

“When the entire city is coming to that 25 miles, and the city continues to grow and grow and grow, if there aren’t additional places for those folks to ride around, that congestion is going to continue,” he said.

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