City Shops Proposed TSP Amendments at Neighborhood Associations

As a housekeeping matter Public Works is shopping a list of proposed amendments to the Transportation System Plan.

Bikes can offer mobility after disaster
Typhoon Haiyan - via the Oregonian
(AP/Aaron Favila)

The process envisions going to the Planning Commission with a Public Hearing sometime this winter and then for Council to adopt them.

Not all of the proposals have enough specificity for informed comment here, but some of them have already been seen before.  In the letter to neighborhood associations, city staff note that "these amendments have been pending for some time or have arisen from recently completed studies."

Proposed TSP Amendments
From an Oct 8th letter to Neighborhood Associations
(click to enlarge)

The Kroc Center pathway has already been discussed here several times, as have the recommendations in the Downtown Mobility Study.

The 22nd street project was briefly mentioned for the bond surplus long-list.

Others are new here:

• The Trade/Front street ROW on the west side looks like it is for the Boise Redevelopment.
• The Strong Road and Hilfiker look like housekeeping matters in Morningside.
• A new local street between 25th and Airport Way, south of Shelton Ditch and north of Mission - apparently right by the post office site.  (This could be related to redevelopment of the old Capitol Auto Group lots.)

And two policy matters:

• Adjusting the policy on vacating right-of-way
• And maybe the most interesting - adopting new policies on "Transportation System Critical Routes," specially focused on natural hazards.  This will bear watching because as we have seen elsewhere, sometimes freight interests or those who forget that bikes are especially useful after a disaster want to use "critical" needs to push road designs inimical to non-auto users.  "Critical routes" too often become urban highways. (Or, you know:  Third Bridge.  The flip side here is an opportunity to stress seismic retrofit of our existing bridges, including one that is structurally deficient.)

From the SJ last summer

The process and hearings in general, and the critical routes in particular, could offer another opportunity to tell the City: More bike lanes, please!