Transit Center at a Cost of More than Coal; Eugene Big Winner in ConnectOregon

You probably saw the headline: "Coal's loss is South Salem's gain."

But the full story of the final round of ConnectOregon V is considerably more interesting - and more complicated.

Corvallis, not Coal, had the Relevant Loss

First off, there's the funding. It's not just about saying "no" to a coal project. Back in December the Portland Tribune reported on the project list:

Among them was the Port of St. Helens, which sought $2 million for reconstruction of Berth 2 near Clatskanie. Ambre Energy, an Australian company, proposed to match it with $3 million to rebuild the 70-year-old dock for ocean-going ships to carry coal to Asia.

But a majority of the commission had questions about the project’s readiness, and by a 3-2 vote, dropped it from the list of 37 projects recommended for $42.3 million in funding....

Since the commission acted Aug. 20, an additional $2 million in savings makes possible $4 million more for projects.

That $4 million grew, in part because a sidepath linking Albany and Corvallis also ran into trouble. The letter to the OTC from ODOT says

In a letter dated February 18, 2015, Benton County formally withdrew the Corvallis to Albany Trail project, making an additional $2 million available and bringing the total remaining from ConnectOregon V to $4.5 million. In addition, $2.45 million is available from savings realized from ConnectOregon I, II, III and IV projects. As a result, the OTC now has $6.95 million to allocate.

ODOT staff had advanced a list of projects that included the coal project - it was out, and staff the Final Review Committee tried to put it back in - and at the meeting the OTC decided against that and slotted in the transit station. In a sense the coal project did lose out - but we have to remember that it was already out!

So the funding isn't exactly simple. As the letter from ODOT suggests, there are three distinct pots that contributed to this new funding:

• Savings from other projects coming in under budget
• Cancelling the coal terminal
• Cancelling the Albany-Corvallis bike path

If new funding had only come from the $2 million coal terminal, the South Salem Transit Center would not have ranked high enough. If the funding had only come from the $4.5 million savings+coal terminal, the transit center didn't rank high enough.

As seemed possible earlier this month, with the deleted coal project was already supplying some of the funds, it's really the cancellation of the Albany-Corvallis bike path that is funding the extra portion that enabled the transit center, wait-listed if you will, to slide up into the funding list.

And that's a bummer. And not nearly as much of an "environmental" win as perhaps we all would like.

OTC Chair Fired; Legislative Update, Week One - Pre-Session Filings

Holy Smokes! If you thought there was a chance that the Oregon Transportation Commission was empowered to exercise independent judgement, think again.

The Oregonian reported yesterday that Governor Kitzhaber has fired the Chair of the Oregon Transportation Commission because she voted against a coal terminal project.

Catherine Mater, a Corvallis civil engineer appointed just last summer by Kitzhaber, told The Oregonian/Oregonlive on Monday that the governor pressured her to approve a $2 million subsidy.

She was the deciding vote in a 3-2 commission motion in August that doomed the grant that would've benefited Ambre Energy, the company proposing to annually export 8.8 million tons of coal through Oregon.

Kitzhaber's action is puzzling because of his outspoken opposition to coal exports. His office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment....

She penned an opinion piece for The Oregonian/Oregonlive Jan. 3, arguing that the state should discriminate against coal and oil projects in awarding transportation grants.

Mater said Kitzhaber's chief of staff, Mike Bonetto, called Friday and said she needed to step down immediately. Mater said she was drafting her resignation letter.

Mater recalled Bonetto saying: "We have a situation that has escalated. We need to accelerate your removal."

Her forced removal clears the way for the grant to be approved when the commission meets again in February and sends a clear message from Kitzhaber to members of the Oregon Transportation Commission to fall in line.

According to OTC site, "The Oregon Transportation Commission establishes state transportation policy."

Guess again! The OTC meets on Thursday and they will reconsider some ConnectOregon funding. It looks like the coal terminal project is going to slide back in. (See below for an update on ConnectOregon.)

And on that note of checks and balances, and of intellectual honesty and independence, the Legislature kicked things off yesterday, and it was interesting to see this:

Disconnecting the Dots on Climate Change

Sunday's Paper - on a carbon tax

June 29th's Paper

The transportation sector accounts for about a quarter of Oregon's greenhouse gases. A half-billion dollar project (and almost certainly more!) to make driving more attractive and convenient is probably not a useful part of how we want to fight global warming.

Lottery-funded ConnectOregon Projects

Also, in not how to fight global warming...

The Oregon Transportation Commission will meet Thursday the 17th at the Conference Center, and on the agenda is public hearing on the priority list of projects for funding with lottery dollars though the ConnectOregon V program.

Autoism's Relentless Appetite: Third Bridge, Highway 22 Crash, Hospital and Church Parking - updated

A few dozen residents protest outside the Marion County building with signs saying "Stop 3rd Bridge." #Salemor pic.twitter.com/MrGSMGj9Nd
— Stefanie Knowlton (@Stef_Knowlton) June 11, 2014

Whether it was merely in passing or was part of an assignment, at least one reporter tweeted about yesterday's rally.

Interestingly, though, it was a project about 2% the size of the giant bridge and highway that got the front page treatment today.

I think they picked the wrong rally!

Of course the problems are related, and the proposed solutions participate in the same car-logic: It's all about faster travel. Rather than accepting slower speeds, we have to engineer things to maintain or increase speeds and through-put and to engineer things in a way that "forgives" driver error, which includes speeding or errant turning.

Her husband also died

The crash was at the Doaks Ferry intersection, though the cars ended up in the restaurant parking lot and it's not clear that any of the impacted drivers were trying to turn on to Doaks Ferry. Still, with Highway 22 here as one of our worst "stroads," a dangerous hybrid of local street and high-capacity through-road, there are multiple factors that contribute to crashes. (Those who perished were 90 and 91, and it's also possible that slowed reaction times contributed. Our weak transit system also fails seniors as a strong alternative to driving.)

Howard Hall

Old City Hall (with Parking Meters!)
 on Chemeketa and High, 1959
Salem Library Historic Photos

Tonight the Historic Landmarks Commission meets to continue the Public Hearing on the Hospital's proposed demolition of Howard Hall for a parking lot. (Full document library here.)

Local MPO Meets also on Tuesday; Lottery and TGM Grant on Agenda

Tuesday the 27th is full of meetings.  In addition to City Council, the Policy Committee for our local Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Salem Keizer Area Transportation Study, meets at noon.

On the agenda (agenda and full meeting packet here) are ConnectOregon V rankings for all of ODOT region 2 as well as a request for a letter of support for Third Bridge TGM grant.

But first a very brief Memorial Day excursus. The World War II Memorial is nearing completion and will be dedicated on June 6th, the anniversary of D-Day. There have been several stories in the paper about it, and there will be more.

The informal grid of small flags suggested a cemetery plot

It will be a significant public space and plaza on the northwest corner of Willson Park, and it is much larger and more visible than the cluster of other war memorials near the Department of Veterans Affairs on Summer Street.

Bikes were used at the Normandy landings, in fact. Unfortunately for the Canadian soldiers who were using them, they were not very effective and may have caused more casualties.

via The Atlantic

In an earlier time, the US Army 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps is also very interesting. And of course our Interstate system owes much to President Eisenhower.

SKATS

There's nothing really new on the ConnectOregon rankings.  The region has 31 projects total. At the top, the Eugene bike/ped bridges project slides down to #2 behind an Astoria airport project. The Dallas rail hub goes to #3. Locally, the South Salem Transit Center funding is at #6, the Kroc Center path at #17, and the Bike Pods of Oregon at #23. Statewide in the final list, I suspect the line between funding and not funding will be drawn to include the Transit Center, but not the Kroc path. We'll see.

About the TGM grant, probably the less said the better.  For a detailed critique, see here.

Area Transportation Commission to Prioritize Lottery-Funded Projects Thursday

Tomorrow, Thursday the 1st, the Mid-Willamette Valley Area Commission on Transportation meets to make final recommendations for lottery funding under the ConnectOregon V program.

The Commission looks to finalize recommendations from among the 11 candidate projects in the region all competing statewide for $42 million in lottery-backed funding. (For previous notes on ConnectOregon and some of the projects, see here. There are way more applications than funds, and most projects will not be funded.)

Preliminary voting for ConnectOregon V projects
(click to make legible)

In the preliminary voting, the top ranked application is for a truck and rail hub connection in Dallas. The second ranked one is Cherriot's South Salem Transit Center.  The Kroc Center path is in the middle at five, and the Bike Pods of Oregon is near the end at nine, having got only a single vote - but don't feel bad; two projects attracted no votes!

Also interesting in the minutes of last month's meeting was conversation about poor conditions on the Center Street Bridge. The irony is perhaps lost on some: We have money to plan a shiny new future bridge, but not enough to maintain our existing one.

$7 million on the SRC could have funded the pavement.

MWACT meets at 3:30pm on Thursday the 1st at 100 High St. SE, Suite 200 above Bar Andaluz and the former La Capitale.

New Federal Transportation Authorization (mini-round-up)

The League of American Bicyclists has a brief analysis of the proposed federal transportation bill. Also Streetsblog. Apparently there's also some talk about increasing flexibility on tolling. There will be more to say!

Kroc, Pods, Transit at Area Commission for Rankings Thursday

Thursday the 3rd, the Mid-Willamette Valley Area Commission on Transportation meets to consider the applications for lottery funding under the ConnectOregon V program.

Locally there are two bike/ped projects and one transit project among the 11 total project applications in our region.

Maybe the most interesting thing is in the transit application:  If there's one thing that's clear in the South Salem Transit Center application materials, it's the massive disconnect between land use and transportation.

Proposed transit center on South Commercial

While the area proposed for a transit center site is along the Commercial Street corridor, the big new employment areas highlighted in the application are well off it, on the other side of I-5.

A new cluster of jobs and homes
on Commercial in purple,
but away from other clusters in red and blue.
Notably the others have little housing.

These areas do not have housing, grocery stores, restaurants, or other services nearby. They are car-dependent islands, and even if you took transit, you'd still want a car on your lunch hour to go anywhere meaningful! Without your friends to drive you, you're stuck.

Kroc Center path in red (rotated 90 degrees - north to right)

About the Kroc Center Path and the Bike Pods of Oregon there's little new to say.  Last month the Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee did look at and rank 36 bike/ped applications.  The Kroc path ranked 15th and the Bike Pods 21st - solidly in the middle. A set of Eugene bike/ped bridges ranked first and a Tualatin trail ranked second.

Top ranked bike/ped project:
Eugene's bridges connect streets and bike paths to transit

I don't even know what a Salem project similar to the Eugene proposal might look like:  First you'd need something to correspond to the Fern Ridge path, then you'd need a couple of bus rapid transit lines...and THEN you could come up with a set of bridge connections across a barrier.

In the end the project illustrates just how far behind is Salem.

For more on the bike pods, see here and here, and for more on the Kroc see here. For notes on last month's economic assessment, see here.

(The local packets can be downloaded for a few days from the ODOT ftp site. Usually they don't hang around, however.)

MWACT meets at 3:30pm on Thursday the 3rd at 100 High St. SE, Suite 200 above Bar Andaluz and the former La Capitale.

Grilling ConnectOregon Links: It's Sausage Time at Area Commission on Transportation

It's not just the Legislature whose activities sometimes might look like making sausage!

The evaluation process on applications for the lottery-funded ConnectOregon V program is underway. On Thursday the Mid-Willamette Valley Area Commission on Transportation meets and a large item of interest will be the update and overview of the local applications and the administrative process for reviewing them.  Also on the agenda is an update on the draft 2015-2018 Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (all 244pp here).

Also, last month the parent Oregon Transportation Commission met and there's interesting news about several plans there.

ConnectOregon V at MWACT

The Kroc Center Path and the Lottery

Maybe most interesting - but to be clear, not the most important - element in the application process is the packet on the Kroc Center path.

The Salvation Army declined to address gambling

It contains the letter of support for the Kroc Center path written by the Salvation Army.

Buy a lottery ticket,
Support a path

Here again is what the Salvation Army has to say on gambling:

The Salvation Army is opposed to gambling. The nature of gambling lends itself to exploitative, deceptive and manipulative practices. It is contrary to Christian principles of love, freedom from oppression and concern for others.

As such it should not be a means of income generation or economic development, whether by government agencies, charitable organisations, churches or commercial interests....

Gambling is becoming increasingly common and accessible, often promoted and enabled by governments. Gambling may be large and sophisticated – such as lotteries, casinos, slot machines, online gambling or sports betting – or small and loosely organised informal games of chance. [italics added]

It's really hard to see how this stance can be consistent with the lottery and video-poker funding mechanism behind ConnectOregon.

At the same time, a different source of funding will be pursued if this one doesn't work out, and it's not like this project couldn't have switched places with a different project on another funding track.  So again, this isn't that important, but it's very interesting as a measure of how screwed up is the whole Kroc Center siting and total funding package.

Scoring and the Evaluation Process - Biased for Air and Rail?

More important, but not very interesting at all, is the preliminary scoring on the local projects.

Bike Poddery and Update on ConnectOregon V Projects

What, you're not interested in administrative rulemaking and street engineering details???

Here's a slightly more interesting update on the ConnectOregon applications, the lottery-backed multi-modal fund. The State has published a list of all of them, and here are the local ones:

ConnectOregon V projects for Marion County
ODOT full list by County

The "Bike Pods of Oregon" was unfamiliar, and it turns out they're a project to locate water, repair, and shelter around the State's Scenic Bikeways:

Bike Pods of Oregon locator map - Oregon Parks and Rec
Notes, map, and elevation rendering from presentation to
Historic Columbia River Highway Advisory Committee

Deluxe Bike Pod

The pods would provide:

needed amenities for the long distance cyclists including water, cell phone charging, maps and wayfinding information, shelter, bike parking, and seating in the State Park setting associated with popular hiker biker camps. 7 Bike Pods are to be located along the Oregon Coast Trail on State Park's property. One Pod will be constructed in Champeog State Park in the summer of 2014 and will be funded by OPRD as a portion of the ConnectOregon V match funds. Two Bike Pods will be located along the Historic Columbia River Highway Bike Route in Ainsworth State Park and Viento State Park. Two additional Pods are planned to be located along the Old West and Transamerica Trails at Bates State Park and Clyde Holliday State Park.

Additionally, the project will fund the construction of 7 Bike Hubs in and around communities along popular destination cycling routes....These hubs will allow local communities to capitalize on the recreation lands they are surrounded by and the economic benefits bicycle tourism provides by welcoming the bicycle tourists into their communities. Each Pod and Hub is located along designated bikeways which represent the "best of the best" road bicycle riding in Oregon. Every type of rider can find the ride that fits their style and mood- from family friendly to remote and challenging.

So, they're an interesting project, but outside of the proposed installation at Champoeg, they don't have much to do with Marion County.

In conversation with local planning staff, it turns out the Salvation Army has written a letter in support of the Kroc Center connector path. (Apparently they felt the issue with benefiting from gambling wasn't relevant.  It'll be interesting to see how that all turns out.)

On the statewide picture and balance of bike/ped to other projects, BikePortland has more:

ODOT announced they received 108 applications for this year's round of ConnectOregon funding. Of the $129.4 million total requested funds, $47.5 million are categorized as "Bicycle/Pedestrian" — more than any of the other four eligible modes and more than the requests for Aviation, Marine, and Transit projects combined.

Lottery-backed Funds for Kroc Center Path? Salvation Army Opposes Gambling!

Wednesday's online note and Thursday's front page article on the proposed path at the Kroc Center have brought out the usual cries of "no tax-payer-funded frivolities," but even if you think a path would be a boondoggle, it wouldn't exactly be funded by taxes - the proposal on the table is to use ConnectOregonV funds, so would it be ok if funded by video poker, lottery, and scratch-off tickets?

Buy a lottery ticket,
Support a path

And more interestingly, what would the Kroc Center think?

Here's what the Salvation Army has to say on gambling:

The Salvation Army is opposed to gambling. The nature of gambling lends itself to exploitative, deceptive and manipulative practices. It is contrary to Christian principles of love, freedom from oppression and concern for others.

As such it should not be a means of income generation or economic development, whether by government agencies, charitable organisations, churches or commercial interests....

Gambling is becoming increasingly common and accessible, often promoted and enabled by governments. Gambling may be large and sophisticated – such as lotteries, casinos, slot machines, online gambling or sports betting – or small and loosely organised informal games of chance.

Kinda interesting, don't you think?

And what kind of public investment in infrastructure is appropriate for a what is, in addition to being a youth center, a church enterprise, a high-gloss Mission of the Salvation Army?

Area MPO Meets Today; Rideshare to Refund 3 Parking Stalls Worth of Funding

Our area Metropolitan Planning Organization meets today at noon, and there's a couple of interesting items on the agenda.  The first item of interest, a refund of $72,000 for transportation demand management activities, shows the inconsistency - even insanity - of our current funded priorities (as opposed to unfunded policy rhetoric, however sweet).

Back in 2009 in a discussion of the local allocation of STIP funding, the meagre amount we formally spend on programming that supports trips other than drive-alone stood out.  Back then, according to Cherriots,

The amount allocated is the entire budget for the Rideshare program. It does vary from year to year but it has been around $225,000 (total) each year which must cover all of the Rideshare program activities, salaries, benefits, marketing and outreach.

What was true then is true today:  That's crazy! They work to promote and facilitate essentially all transportation options other than the drive-alone-trip. And that's all we give them.


By comparison, In 2009 the widening at Wallace and Glen Creek was projected to be about $9M. 


So RideShare was getting about 2% annually of the total cost of the Wallace and Glen Creek project. 

Since then, the Wallace and Glen Creek project seems to have climbed to around $15M, maybe even heading to $16M.  The exact numbers aren't important.  It's a lot more than $9M.

Lottery-Funded ConnectOregon V Could Fund Local Bike/Ped Projects

On Monday the Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee heard a presentation on the way the ConnectOregon program could fund bike/ped projects.

ConnectOregon Project?  Old Freight Depot: University of Oregon

Previous rounds have allocated about $350 million to air, rail, and transit projects, and this year the new ConnectOregon V added bike/ped projects to the eligible list!

In this fifth round about $42 million will be available.

Applications will be due in late November of this year and after several rounds of review, awards made at the Oregon Transportation Commission meeting in August 2014.

One key component is that projects will not be in the road right-of-way or projects eligible for funding from the State Highway fund.

So this means we're talking things like shared use paths and bike parking!