City to hold Open House on Eola Drive Widening in West Salem

On Thursday, March 14th, the City will hold an open house on the Eola Drive widening project.

Eola Drive is substandard; lacks shoulders, bike lanes, sidewalks

From the City neighborhood blog:

The City of Salem has scheduled an open house to provide information and details regarding the construction of the Eola Drive NW Corridor Safety Improvements for Thursday, March 14, 2013, at 6:30 p.m., in the media center of Myers Elementary School at 2160 Jewel Street NW. The City has received bids and is in the process of awarding a contract to K&E Excavating, Inc. Construction is expected to begin by mid-April 2013. Staff will be available to answer questions regarding the project construction until 8 p.m....

Improvements for the Eola Drive NW corridor will include: two travel lanes, curbs, sidewalks, bike lanes, and streetlights. Improvements will also include left turn lanes at Kingwood Drive NW, Woodland Drive NW, Turnage Street NW, Kaley Avenue NW, Eagle View Drive NW, and Sunwood Drive NW. The project will also construct a new traffic signal at the intersection of Kingwood Drive NW and Eola Drive NW.

Do we really need turn pockets here? I dunno. That's the part of the widening that will increase speeds and through-put.  Turning cars on a two-lane road create breaks in traffic for people on foot to cross, and the turn pockets will eliminate many of these lulls during high volume traffic.

But the sidewalks and bike lanes are desperately needed here, and even if we might dispute significant details - if you gave up the turn pocket, you could have a separated bike lane! - in general it is definitely a project in the road bond that is reasonable and meets an actual need.