‘It can’t continue this way’: One Boise man’s vigilante effort to stop speeding on the Greenbelt

By 7 a.m. on Saturday, Mel Walker was out on the Greenbelt with his radar gun. As cyclists, electric bikers and Rollerbladers approached, he clocked their speed — and if they were going over 15 mph, he flashed a sign that said SLOW as they passed.

His approach got mixed reactions: some confusion, some dirty looks, a couple of middle fingers. Occasionally, it prompted fruitful conversations. Some riders asked: How fast was too fast? And why was it their responsibility to slow down when pedestrians were taking up the whole path, letting their dogs walk off-leash, or just not paying attention?

“I understand your cause. I do,” one biker conceded, after several minutes of a discussion that started as a confrontation. Walker celebrated the interaction, telling the Idaho Statesman in an email later that it was “a classic example of things to come.”

Ada County commissioners recently voted to approve a change to county code that would require users of the Greenbelt to travel in a “reasonable” and “prudent” manner. Officials from Boise, Ada County and Garden City have signed an agreement to streamline and more uniformly enforce the rules on the nearly 50-mile pathway, whether users are in the section controlled by the county, Boise or another jurisdiction.

Boise is working on a plan to replace all of the safety-related signs on its section of the Greenbelt within the next 13 months, and separately planning new multi-use paths to ease congestion.

But for Walker, these initiatives are not enough. He sees the city’s and county’s efforts as lacking in urgency and bogged down by bureaucracy. “They grind slowly,” he said.

He was happy to see a county press release in July that said officials were considering a 10-mph speed limit on the Greenbelt, but when the county walked back that language — telling attendees at a public hearing that such a limit would be impractical to enforce — he decided to take things into his own hands.

“My thing is, do we have to wait until some kid is hurt? The answer is no,” said Walker, 78. “I’m an old guy. I don’t want to be dead before they do something.”

He went out on the path for hours with a radar gun, tracking the speed of anyone on wheels, with a particular focus on users traveling above 15 mph — the first data anyone has gathered on Greenbelt speeds, he said. On three occasions, he found that over 60% of motorized devices, including e-bikes, were traveling above 15 mph, and that nearly 20% of regular bikes were exceeding this speed.

He then ordered his SLOW sign on Amazon and brought it to the path in hopes of raising public awareness and communicating that someone is “actually doing something,” he said.

“People aren’t evil. They just don’t know, and they’re in a hurry, and they want to do what they want to do,” he said. But “it can’t continue this way.”

An army veteran, Walker wears patches from his former unit on a motorcycle vest. He runs a YouTube channel focused on civilian self-defense, survival tips and the Constitution, and he has served for six years as a volunteer Greenbelt Ambassador for the Boise Police Department. (He hastens to note that he is conducting his campaign as a private citizen, not on behalf of the department.)

He said he wasn’t surprised by the data he collected. He’s been hit by people speeding on the pathway, he told county commissioners at a hearing, and he’s seen bad behavior multiply over the years as the trail grows more crowded.

Walker selected 15 mph as his threshold for a dangerous speed after he “did the physics,” he said, calculating what would happen if a 200-pound object traveling near 20 mph collided with a 60-pound child.

“They’re going to come together, and they’re going to keep going at 16 miles an hour,” he said. “It’s bad.”

Traveling at 15 mph is probably a safe general upper limit, said Jimmy Hallyburton, a Boise City Council member and founder of the Boise Bicycle Project; and Don Kostelec, a bike and pedestrian safety advocate. Still, both echoed county officials’ perspective that a firm speed limit would be nearly impossible to enforce, because most bikes are not equipped with speedometers.

“Anybody can … be one of the bad actors” on the Greenbelt, official says

For now, Walker is the only resident taking matters into his own hands on the Greenbelt. But he’s not alone in his frustration.

In response to an online Statesman poll, nearly 30 Boise-area residents shared that they’ve stopped using the Greenbelt in recent years because it didn’t feel safe. Several others among the nearly 125 respondents said they limit their use to weekdays or less-busy times of day.

Most respondents blamed bikers, e-bikers and other motorized vehicles “whizzing by” and showing “no courtesy,” though several also took issue with pedestrians wearing headphones, oblivious to oncoming riders; people out walking in large groups on the path; or people letting their dogs roam into oncoming traffic.

“Anybody can at any time be one of the bad actors,” Spencer Lay, the associate legal adviser at the Ada County Sheriff’s Office, said at the county hearing in August.

At the hearing, about 20 people shared their frustration with bikers traveling too fast on the path, though many said e-bikes had been a lifeline that allowed them to stay active despite medical conditions or other life changes. Others blamed riders behaving poorly, rather than new technology.

“It’s about the drivers,” said Boise resident Bob Hay.

Boise working to bring other pathways online, reduce Greenbelt congestion

It’s also about growth, Hallyburton said during an August Boise City Council meeting. As more people move to the area, the Greenbelt gets more crowded.

“I don’t know if I see people treating each other a lot differently on the sidewalks or the Greenbelt,” he told the Statesman by phone. “I think that sometimes, when you have just more people in general, using the same spaces at the same time, people probably notice those things a little bit more.”

Indeed, use of the Greenbelt has been rising in recent years, according to Compass data . In the first week of 2023, the average daily number of weekend bikers by the Anne Frank Memorial was up 64% compared with the same weekend in 2022. That number for pedestrians was up nearly 20%.

So Boise is working on building out more Greenbelt-style pathways to give bikers and pedestrians more options and take some of the pressure off the Greenbelt. The city has identified more than 110 miles of “off-street pathway opportunities” around the city, many along irrigation canals or power line right-of-ways, Hallyburton said.

These options are “off-street, where it feels safe for families to ride away from traffic in a more recreational or relaxed setting than riding next to a car,” he said. “Now, they won’t always have the Boise River right next to (them), so you don’t have the beauty of riding next to the river, but some of them do have waterways, or some of them are in your own neighborhood, and they might go to the local ice cream shop or coffee shop or brewery” and take “some of that stress” off the Greenbelt.

These efforts are part of the city’s Pathways Master Plan to provide multi-use pathways between neighborhoods, parks, public spaces and roads. One such project underway is the Cassia-Garden Street Pathway , including a bike and pedestrian bridge over the Ridenbaugh Canal, that will connect the Ada County Highway District’s Cassia Street Bikeway and a future Garden Street Bikeway.

Separately, Boise’s urban renewal agency, the Capital City Development Corp., is planning upgrades to River Street, which will provide routes parallel to the Greenbelt, Kostelec said.

The city can’t widen its section of the Greenbelt wholesale because of the different property owners and easements involved, but whenever it refurbishes a section — replacing asphalt when it degrades, or repairing the trail if a section is wiped out by the river — it aims to widen the trail at that point as much as possible.

Kostelec noted, too, that people using the Greenbelt as a commuter pathway may gradually leave that path as the city and county pull together more protected bike lanes on roadways. In those settings, users can travel faster and avoid overlapping with people trying to use the Greenbelt for recreation.

He questioned whether flashing a SLOW sign at passing Greenbelt users would be effective, and said that placing digital speed feedback signs could be more beneficial to show riders how fast they’re really traveling. To date, the city has not put out that kind of sign, though it’s something the city has considered, said Doug Holloway, Boise’s director of Parks and Recreation.

Walker hopes that being out and visible on the Greenbelt will spark conversation and a sense of urgency.

“Now at least, at least people will — something will stick in their head,” he said. “That’s awareness.”

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