Rail Meeting tonight at Chemeketa Center for Business and Industry

Don't forget the rail meeting today!

It should be repeated often that almost exactly a century ago, in the summer of 1912 Salem had 8 daily round trips to Portland on the Oregon Electric. The Southern Pacific line had 6 northbound and 10 southbound.

That's 14 total to Portland and 18 total from Portland!

And that's not even high-speed rail - it's a model of regular-speed rail we ought to think long and hard about.

For the next phase of the Oregon Passenger Rail project, there's an open house tonight the 17th:

Jan 17, 2013 - 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Chemeketa Center for Business and Industry, 626 High Street NE, Salem, OR, 97301

The open house materials have been posted and they look pretty good.  So if you can't make it to the meeting, you can easily submit comments online.

And if you'd like to do some homework before the meeting, you can do that too!

The chief question seems to be which alignment.  In Salem that means a choice of three:  The existing Oregon Electric tracks along River Road and Front Street, the existing Union Pacific tracks along 12th street, or a new set of tracks along I-5.  Of course trips have destinations, too, and each of these alignments offers different end stations for trips originating in Salem.  It's not necessarily a simple matter, and each alignment has different advantages and disadvantages. 

Along the way there are other policy and project goals you can assess and prioritize.