City Council, February 12th - Deleting Vacant Positions

Council meets on Monday and the main item of interest here was Councilor Stapleton's proposal for a downtown safety study.

On the rest of it, the lead item for most people was not the safety study but will be the conversation about the City budget. In the near term simply eliminating vacant positions is a reasonable move. But within that there are distinctions to make. One is that the Library is suffering a disproportionate burden.

via FB

Over on FB, Jim Scheppke's on-going series, with installments on Salem's decline from past service levels and under-investment in comparison to Oregon peer cities, has been illuminating.

Councilor Nishioka has an idea about relaxing mural requirements and making provision for time-limited public art to be deployed for less than the current minimum of seven years. This looks like a helpful attempt to simplify some red tape. The discussion in the agenda item remains a little opaque and testifies to our cumbersome regulatory scheme for murals and public art:

Art displayed publicly meets the definition of a “sign,” under the City’s sign code. "Sign” is defined as a thing that is designed, used, or intended to attract the attention of the public. SRC 900.015(f) exempts public art and murals that are owned by the City. For murals, the City obtains an easement agreement for a seven-year period. This motion directs staff to investigate ways to allow for a shorter time period to allow murals and other artworks to be publicly displayed.

There are grant opportunities for temporary art projects. Temporary art projects will increase cultural and community involvement in art projects within our neighborhoods and parks. A thriving arts scene can stimulate economic growth by attracting tourists, supporting local businesses, and creating job opportunities. Community art projects provide opportunities for relaxation, stress relief, and emotional expression, contributing to overall wellness and quality of life.

Hopefully there will be a way for this to move forward. More art should be understood as ephemeral, as existing in time with an end, and we should have a better City legal framework for this and a greater general cultural acceptance of non-permanent art.

Metropolitan Transportation Safety Action Plan should focus more on Speed

At the MPO, after all of 2023 in quiet activity, in the last month or so they finally created a page and then published materials for the Metropolitan Transportation Safety Action Plan. This is great to see finally. 

And in light of Councilor Stapleton's motion for a much smaller downtown safety study, it is interesting to check in on the MPO's discussion of downtown sites as well as a little about its overarching themes and emphases.

October 2023

The the plan has committed to a "safe system approach," which starts in some helpful directions, but the balance does not seem right yet, and is too caught up in false equivalence and both-sidesing. To be very successful in actual results, it needs adjustment in emphasis and proportion.

It says we must "accommodate certain types of human errors" and that "responsibility is shared" with "every individual play[ing] an important role."

You may recall at Strong Towns "The Twelve Days of Safety Myths":

A child, all of 100 pounds, is mowed down by a person driving a 4,500-pound pickup truck. What will you likely hear from police officers, highway safety engineers, Governors Highway Safety Association, and state DOTs? “Now, remember, children, safety is a shared responsibility!”

Bull pucky. Shared responsibility on the road isn’t a valid expectation of people who walk and bike until they are given equal consideration in road design and equal opportunity to move safely throughout the system.

In an October "Safety Analysis and Solutions" memo there is still too much weight on shared responsibility, on forgiving driver error, and not enough on forgiving walking and biking error.

In a review note at the Vision Zero Network, "What We’re Getting Wrong about Vision Zero & Lessons for 2024: 'Why is Vision Zero failing in the U.S.?'" they center speed by drivers, and place that in the context of a safe system approach:

Minding the realities of physics to advance Vision Zero means recognizing the frailty of the human body and re-designing our transportation system to respect these inalienable physical vulnerabilities. Our most promising way of reducing the frequency and severity of crashes is by reducing speeds, especially where there are a mix of people traveling both inside and outside motor vehicles. As the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) states in its 2023 report, Safe System Approach for Speed Management: “To achieve safer speeds, [t]he Department believes it is important to prioritize safety and moving individuals at safe speeds over focusing exclusively on the throughput of motor vehicles.”

For a community serious about advancing Vision Zero, it starts with recognizing the physics: Vehicle speed at the time of impact correlates directly to whether a person will live or die....

Moving past a piecemeal approach to safety requires applying the physics of safe mobility – prioritizing safety over speed – not just in a few token places but holistically.

While there is value, especially initially, in focusing Vision Zero efforts swiftly and pointedly on the most problematic injury locations, this “spot treatment” is only a starting place. Comprehensive change – reducing speed limits and designing Complete Streets fully, community-wide – is needed in all places where people are moving by a combination of walking, driving, biking, etc. This means moving from a project-by-project approach to one that makes wholesale change.

The consultant at an April meeting even highlighted those outside of cars in themes from public comment.

Those outside of cars worry (April 2023)

It's the cars and drivers and speed. Always this should be centered.

Driver Strikes and Kills Person Walking on Mission Street near I-5

On Thursday evening a driver struck and killed a person on Mission Street (Highway 22) between Hawthorne and the I-5 interchange.

In a crash at 50mph here on Mission St, you are dead
(from ODOT's OR-22 East Facility Plan, 2017 )

From Salem Police on Thursday night:

At approximately 6:15 p.m. this evening, emergency responders were called to the area of Mission ST and Hawthorne AV SE on the report of a pedestrian struck by a car east of the intersection. The caller also reported the driver had left the scene.

Responding firefighters pronounced the male pedestrian deceased. 

Although the call was initially reported as a hit-and-run, the involved driver stopped and called police a few blocks from site of the collision. The driver, identified as Daniel Carmona, age 69, is cooperating with the investigation.

The pedestrian, a 51-year-old man, is not being identified pending notification to his family.

The Traffic Team investigation continues, and as such, no citations have been issued or arrest made....

This evening’s collision is the second traffic fatality of 2024.

Update 02/09/2024 | 11:30 a.m.

Notification of family is complete, and the pedestrian is identified as David Henten Stockam of Salem.

The incident remains an active investigation, and no further information is available for release.

Please note: Mr. Stockam’s death is the third traffic fatality of the year, not the second as previously reported.

The MPO includes Mission Street here as a high crash corridor, ranking it twelfth.

Mission St is No. 12 High Crash Corridor (SKATS)

Speeds are much too high for the urban context, especially as there are stores nearby. There are also, of course, camp sites, and as much as some people crave hobo evaporation, they do have lives to lead and will want to travel places. And a person with car trouble might have to walk some ways also for assistance. There are multiple reasons a person might be on foot here.

Before I-5 was blasted through, and before Mission Street was so dangerously enlarged, it was a frequent picnicking site.

June 30th, 1935

Today the Hager Grove Pear, an Oregon Heritage Tree, is completely inaccessible. Travel Oregon blurbs it, but you can't go there!

This post may be updated.

City Council, February 12th - Better Crosswalk Safety

For Monday's Council meeting, Councilor Stapleton has a motion for a downtown safety study:

I move to direct staff to conduct a study to gather recommendations to increase pedestrian and bicycle safety and access within Salem’s downtown core, specifically including an analysis of pedestrian lead times at intersections and the feasibility of reducing speed limits to 20 MPH. The study should build upon the recommendations from the Central Salem Mobility Study and be coordinated with work on designating downtown as a Walkable Mixed-Use Area, implementation of Vision Zero, and associated updates to the Salem Transportation System Plan (Salem in Motion). This study should also consider impacts and timing for the new paid parking implementation and any needed updates to SRC 95.710, 95.740, 100.230 and 101.100.

Featured image with the Feds!

Though Councilor Stapleton's motion does not use the specific language of "leading pedestrian interval," the motion's language certainly suggests it. 

The Federal Highway Administration's page on leading pedestrian intervals leads with an image at the Capitol. Salem must have some of them! But when I am crossing a street, I am monitoring for cars and drivers, and not paying attention to the light sequencing, so I have no idea how many intersections downtown and elsewhere might employ them. It's not clear whether we need more of them downtown, or whether we need to lengthen the walk-only phase on existing ones.

For more on them see:

• US Department of Transportation (more traditional)
  
• National Assocation of City Transportation Officials (more progressive)
  

The study envisioned by Councilor Stapleton might also consider places where all-way pedestrian scramble signals might be appropriate, where crosswalks should be raised within speed tables, where count-down timers might be prompting last-second speeding by drivers rather than helping people on foot, and other kinds of incremental improvements to crosswalk function. Make walking delightful!

Here are some people killed while on foot or at rest near sidewalk areas in the last few years. Several were within crosswalks. I do not know of any killed by drivers recently while bicycling downtown (one death involved a train), but this may be because very few bike downtown as it is so forbidding.

• Robert Duane Marshall (Center and High)
• Denise Marie Vandyke (State and High)
• Jowand Beck, Luke Kagey, Joe Posada III, and Rochelle Zamacona (camping on Front between Union and Division)  
• Marlene Moreno (Center and High)
  
• Rodric Kenyon Drolshagen (State and Front)
• Marshall Leslie (12th and Center)
  

Using a broader analysis, including car crashes without people on foot or on bike, the MPO lists seven of the top 20 high crash corridors downtown.

Seven of 20 worst corridors (SKATS)

They are:

• Commercial Street
• Wallace Road
• Marion Street
• Center Street
  
• Liberty Street
• Union Street
• High Street
  

They are the usual suspects, with Union and High also. (And you could include Market Street, even.)

The project would also be a chance to make a wider reassessment of the downtown mobility study. Some parts we should accelerate, and others perhaps revise.

The High-Viz Jacket won't Save You: Vision Zero Plan must focus on Drivers and their Cars

High-visibility outerwear and a flashing front light couldn't save Marganne Allen.

via the former Twitter

From Salem Reporter a couple days ago:

Marganne Allen was gathering speed as she rolled [downhill] to the intersection, holding the right of way. She was on her way home to her husband and children after a shift at her state job.

It wasn’t yet dark. Allen wore a bright yellow jacket. A white light on the front of her bike flashed. She was traveling an estimated 25 mph – the speed limit....

[Slowing down to about 20mph from his 37mph on Leslie Street, and peeking around the corner Samuel Landis] saw nothing – no car, no pedestrian, no cyclist.

He drove his pickup into Allen’s path. She struck the front fender and crashed to the ground.

And to underscore this, today in a summary note of "five takeaways" they wrote on one of them:

The cyclist tried to ensure she was visible to drivers

Allen wore a bright yellow jacket. She rode with a flashing white light attached to the front of her bike. She was traveling an estimated 25 mph – the speed limit. Landis said after the collision that he didn’t see the cyclist.

The problem here isn't any lack of prudent walking and biking. By all accounts Allen modeled exemplary bicycling safety, over-and-above even. 

I suppose an indirect benefit is that it shows more strongly the jaydriving and careless neglect by Landis. A person in black biking a night without a headlight would not have prompted the same level of scrutiny, and more people would have felt a driver who in fact stopped at the stop sign and then proceeded was more-or-less blameless.

But as it was in the reality of this particular crash, Landis still killed Allen. The personal bicycle safety gear didn't protect her.

The fundamental problem here is a person jaydriving under the too-popular expectation blowing a stop sign was trivial. No big deal. Everybody does it. Except it turned out to be a catastrophic big deal.

The primary burden for safety must be on drivers. They are the ones who employ lethal speed and lethal force.

At the Capitol on Court Street (2015)

We cannot place the primary burden for safety on people walking and biking.

"Doing everything right" couldn't protect Allen.

As we head into the development of a Vision Zero plan, we need to make sure we don't get hung up on false equivalence, ostensible balance, and both-sidesing. It's the cars and their drivers.

High Street is a problem downtown

As part of the MPO's safety plan development, they identified a list of high crash corridors. High Street is one of them. In addition to this crash, drivers struck and killed three people who might have thought they were employing the protection of marked crosswalks:

• Robert Duane Marshall (Center and High)
• Marlene Moreno (Center and High) 
• Denise Marie Vandyke (State and High)

There may be small, incremental design changes to these intersections to make them safer. It's possible the downtown intersections need more squared off corners to slow down drivers. Leslie might need a diverter and an end to through travel across High and left-turns from High.

But the key is: What more can people on foot and on bike do in these cases? There's not room for any demand to walk better or bike better. 

The room, the space for intervention, is for drivers to drive better and slower. That's the solution and what any Vision Zero plan needs to focus on.

Curbside Gas Pumps Downtown: Quackenbush Auto in the Eldridge Block

Even before parking lots, gas stations started cannibalizing key corners. In the ongoing project here to consider the ways our autoism shaped and deformed the urban fabric, it was interesting to see this week over at the Mill a photo of the Eldridge Block at the southeast corner of Chemeketa and Commercial.  It's a view from the early 1920s of the Quackenbush Auto Supply store, which I hadn't seen before.

Curbside gas pump on Chemeketa
at corner with Commercial Street, c.1922
(detail, WHC 2022.044.0322)

Particularly interesting were the curbside "Red Crown" gas pumps in a configuration other than a gas station. They are in the public right-of-way, even with little curb extensions!

Eldridge Block, corner Chemeketa and Commercial
c.1922, WHC 2022.044.0322

You'll recall a Union Oil station from the same period, built in 1920, at the corner of State and High, right where Epilogue Kitchen is today.

Union Oil gas station, c.1920-25
(detail WHC 2016.090.0001.041)

It is in the form we recognize as a service station, with a small interior office and a covered drive-thru bay, like a modified porte-cochere, for the gas pumps. There are no curbside pumps.

Though I am not 100% certain, it looks like the pumps for Quackenbush were immediately opposite an existing filling station on the corner.

Frank Southwick House Makes Way for Capitol Shopping Center.

Frank B. Southwick, brother to Milton Southwick and uncle to Amasa R. Southwick, had a home near 12th and Marion, and it was natural to wonder if there were any photos of it and if it had survived nearby development.

Capitol Shopping Center remnants today

More than one house show up, in fact.

A birthday notice for Frank's widow, Helen, gave the address for the "old family home at 1179 Marion," her current residence in 1936 of 1163 Marion street, and the claim that Frank had built several houses "in that block."

March 29th, 1936

With a reasonable degree of certainty, we know what happened to the two Southwick houses.

August 8th, 1947

In a piece about the displacements caused by clearance for, and then construction of, the Capitol Shopping Center, they noted "Ralph W. Southwick has lived 55 years at 1179 Marion St." Most other people had lived there a much shorter period of time, generally "from three to seven years." 27 houses and 32 homes (a few houses were divided into two or more apartments). While making the ritual obeisance to "progress," the piece also drew attention to a current "scarcity of housing."

The Southwick house evidently was purchased for demolition.