Most people don’t think about roads until they’re stuck on one. That’s kind of the point, according to the guests on the latest Ever Onward Podcast episode. When transportation infrastructure is working, it’s invisible. When it isn’t, everyone notices. Host Tommy Ahlquist and co-host Garrett Lofto sat down with Jason Brinkman, ITD’s District 3 Engineer, and Molly McCarty, ITD’s Chief External Affairs Officer, to pull back the curtain on what it actually takes to plan, fund, and build transportation infrastructure in one of the fastest-growing regions in the country.

The conversation is candid, detailed, and a little humbling. Here’s what stood out.

Southwest Idaho Has Doubled in 25 Years

Jason Brinkman has spent his entire career at ITD, nearly 27 years, and the growth he’s witnessed over that time is staggering. When he started, the ten-county southwest Idaho district had just crossed half a million residents. By mid-2024, that same area hit one million. The state of Idaho hit two million at the same time.

And the forecasts aren’t slowing down. The current 2050 model projects another half million people in southwest Idaho alone. “We keep looking at that number and saying, can that be real?” Brinkman said. “And we’ve yet to be proven wrong.”

Molly McCarty, who has spent 27 years at ITD herself, noted how dramatically the conversation has shifted during that time. In the early days, she was assembling files full of data trying to convince people there was a problem. Today, everywhere ITD goes for community outreach, the message coming back is the same: people are worried about congestion, worried about safety, and asking what’s being done about it.

There’s No Skipping the Line

One of the most valuable parts of this conversation is the honest breakdown of how long transportation projects actually take. Brinkman used Highway 16, the extension between Nampa and Meridian, as a case study. Planning began roughly 20 years ago. The environmental review, public involvement, right-of-way acquisition, detailed design, phased funding, and construction have stretched across two decades. Opening day is about a year away.

“That’s a long time in our day-to-day lives,” Brinkman acknowledged. “That’s pretty quick as highways go.”

The implication is significant. If the Treasure Valley needs new corridors to handle 1.5 or 2 million residents, the clock on those projects needs to start now. Right-of-way is the biggest variable. Land that’s available and affordable today won’t be either of those things in ten years. And once development fills in around a corridor, the cost and complexity of acquisition can become prohibitive. Getting corridor setbacks identified and protected early, even before funding exists for construction, is one of the most cost-effective things a community can do.

Bonding Isn’t a Four-Letter Word

Molly McCarty walked through the history of Idaho’s Garvey bonding program, and it’s a story worth understanding. Before Garvey, Idaho had never borrowed to fund transportation. It was a bold step for a traditionally conservative state, and it came with plenty of political resistance. But the math was hard to argue with. With an annual construction budget of around $300 million, ITD would have had to freeze every other project statewide just to tackle one major corridor improvement. Bonding made it possible to do the big work without abandoning the rest of the state.

The results were significant in ways that go beyond lane miles. On corridors improved through Garvey funding, crash rates dropped by as much as half. Fatalities fell dramatically. Multiple people involved in the program have pointed to it as a factor in Idaho’s resilience during the Great Recession, keeping construction crews employed and infrastructure improving at the same time.

Ahlquist offered a framing that resonated in the room. A conservative legislator in Utah once told him that bonding at low interest rates is actually the most fiscally conservative approach to large infrastructure: the people who will use the road in the future are the ones paying for it, rather than burdening the people of today. “There is nothing more conservative than bonding at really low rates,” Ahlquist said, “and having the people that are going to use the thing in the future pay for that.”

ITD is applying those lessons now through the Transportation Expansion and Congestion Mitigation program, a state bonding tool that got projects under contract in under three years, compared to the eight or so years it took to get Garvey running smoothly.

Education Is the Work

Both Brinkman and McCarty returned to the same word throughout the conversation: education. Legislative turnover is constant. Community priorities shift. New officials arrive with little background in transportation finance or project timelines. And ITD has to start the process over, again and again, with every new cycle.

McCarty’s advice to the business community was simple: stay in the conversation. Show up. Make sure policymakers know what transportation means to employers, to workforce recruitment, and to quality of life. “They’ve got a million things coming at them,” she said. “Just having a very simple, concise message and continuing to share it, that matters.”

That’s exactly the role Keep Idaho Moving is designed to play. Not to tell the experts what to build, but to keep the business community engaged, informed, and visible as a partner in the process. As Brinkman put it, the public plays a role too. “Let your voice be known. Let them know what they value, what they want them to be working on.”

The people doing this work every day are committed, experienced, and clear-eyed about what’s coming. The question is whether the broader community will stay engaged long enough to help them get it done.