State Bike Committee Meets Thursday, Other Bits

The State Advisory Committee for bicycling meets tomorrow, Thursday the 8th, and several items are of some interest, though mostly they appear to be updates and informational only.

From ODOT:

SALEM – The Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee will meet at 9 a.m. on Dec. 8 at ODOT’s Mill Creek Building, Mt. McLoughlin Room, 555 13th St. NE in Salem. Agenda items include a presentation about the Statewide Trails Coalition, discussion about the Safe Routes to School program and more.

The meeting is open to the public. Those who wish to provide comments are encouraged to sign up on the public comment sheet provided at the meeting. General guidelines: provide written summaries when possible and limit comments to three minutes. If you bring written summaries or other materials to the meeting, please provide the chairperson with a copy prior to your testimony.

Here's the interesting bits from the agenda (along with links to relevant notes here and elsewhere):

9:15 AM Statewide Trails Coalition – Stephanie Noll

9: 45 AM Modal Work Plan, OTC Meeting and Workshop – Jenna Marmon, Susan Peithman

10: 15 AM Break

10: 30 AM STIP ’15 -’18 and ’18 -’21 – Mary Beth Olson

11: 15 AM Lunch

1:00 PM Safe Routes To School – LeeAnne Fergason, Lynne Mutrie

1:30 PM Chip Seal Policy Revisions - Luci Moore - State Maintenance & Operations Engineer

2: 15 PM ADA Settlement Agreement and Transition Plan - Bob Pappe – State Traffic and Roadway Engineer

Most of these items appear to be retrospective, reviews of past decisions and projects and planning, and it's not clear that OBPAC is in a position really to alter or improve them. Instead it looks like they are just getting updates. One of them, though, is more forward looking.

The "For Every Kid Coalition" is working on a push in the 2017 Legislative Session for funding dedicated to Safe Routes programming and infrastructure. They're also working on organizing a Town Hall meeting in Salem to talk about and build support here. (Eugene held the first one yesterday, and others are planned for around the state.)

That will be an important advocacy project for the coming year.  So be on the lookout for more details on the Salem Town Hall!

An old logo and branding

In other news, the thing formerly known as the Bicycle Transportation Alliance is starting to share their new logo that goes with the name change and incorporational changes they announced earlier this year.

The new logo

It'll be interesting to see how it all works and what the mood of the branding is. At the same time, as they focus more and more on the Portland metro, it may not matter very much to Salemites.

The name change will be formal on January 1st.