North Broadway Parking Study Open House Tonight - Updated

Tonight at 6:00 PM in Broadway Commons, Grant/Highland Room, the North Broadway Parking Study will hold an open house and community workshop to present the draft recommendations and plan (big pdf, as it includes appendices).

Update Friday - There's a survey out now (and until Sept 10th) to gauge support for each of the recommendations. You can take the survey online here.

In the plan are a lot of short term recommendations, and bike parking shows up in several:

• Consider strategic placement of bicycle parking at key destinations
• Continue to include bicycle parking (racks) with Broadway/High redevelopment
• Provide incentives for business who supply bike parking
• Revise SRC 133.150 (Satisfaction of Off-Street Parking Requirements through Alternate Modes of Transportation) to include objective standards for allowing a reduction in parking due to proximity to transit, pedestrian enhancements, availability of bicycle parking (including covered bicycle spaces or lockers) or other transportation demand management (TDM) measures. Eliminate the need for special review.

Other short-term recommendations include:

• Continue the existing programs and practices Residential Parking Permit program
• Formalize a standard for evaluating the parking supply, the 85% Rule
• Continue Employer Education for reducing parking needs
• Establish parking agreements between weekend businesses and those open during the week (only) to offset weekday residential parking
• Create consistent on-street parking restrictions
• Put metered parking in unrestricted parking areas in southern section of study area along Broadway/High Street
• Improve bus stop locations (increase visibility, awareness and amenities)
• Allow parking to be provided at a greater distance from the development site (e.g., 800 feet)
• As an alternative to a variance, add a new code section that allows reductions of off-street parking requirements on a case-by-case basis subject to a professional study demonstrating that less parking is needed for a specific use than what is prescribed.
• Add an “On-Street Parking Credit” so applicants can count on-street parking that is on the block face abutting the subject land use toward their parking requirement.

North Broadway Parking Study Final Recommendations Out

The final recommendations are out for the North Broadway Parking Study!  (It had seemed moribund, and I thought we might have to bury it, but it was just napping, it turns out.)

The parking management plan and proposed ordinances were published yesterday (NB - the plan is giant, 229pp, though most of it are appendices).

Not a great deal has changed since the August open house and draft was published.  So much that was true in August remains true today.

The plan looks evolutionary and incremental, and is not a game-changer.   It doesn't lead on making the district a walker's paradise.  Instead, it is a modest retreat on the norms of Salem's auto-dependent and auto-centric development styles.

The plan will be presented to Council in late January or early February.

In the plan are the same set of short term recommendations, and bike parking shows up in several:

• Consider strategic placement of bicycle parking at key destinations
• Continue to include bicycle parking (racks) with Broadway/High redevelopment
• Provide incentives for business who supply bike parking
• Revise SRC 133.150 (Satisfaction of Off-Street Parking Requirements through Alternate Modes of Transportation) to include objective standards for allowing a reduction in parking due to proximity to transit, pedestrian enhancements, availability of bicycle parking (including covered bicycle spaces or lockers) or other transportation demand management (TDM) measures. Eliminate the need for special review.

Other short-term recommendations include:

• Continue the existing programs and practices Residential Parking Permit program
• Formalize a standard for evaluating the parking supply, the 85% Rule
• Continue Employer Education for reducing parking needs
• Establish parking agreements between weekend businesses and those open during the week (only) to offset weekday residential parking
• Create consistent on-street parking restrictions
• Put metered parking in unrestricted parking areas in southern section of study area along Broadway/High Street
• Improve bus stop locations (increase visibility, awareness and amenities)
• Allow parking to be provided at a greater distance from the development site (e.g., 800 feet)
• As an alternative to a variance, add a new code section that allows reductions of off-street parking requirements on a case-by-case basis subject to a professional study demonstrating that less parking is needed for a specific use than what is prescribed.

One that seems to have been revised out is the "on-street parking credit":

• Add an “On-Street Parking Credit” so applicants can count on-street parking that is on the block face abutting the subject land use toward their parking requirement.

But it's hard to see this as crucial.

Prospects for State Street look a Little Dim

The Presentation to the State Street Corridor Committee has been published, and it doesn't look very promising.

More than anything, by themselves rents are not high enough to induce the desired redevelopment.

Four stories of retail and housing: Ideal

Doesn't pencil out

So we are in a terrible "between" state: Rents aren't high enough to attract new development and we don't actually want rents to go up because they're too high already. This is messed up.

Grant Neighborhood to Discuss Parking in August

Parking. It's a big issue for neighborhoods and August brings lots of parking talk to the Grant Neighborhood.

On Thursday, August 2nd at 6:15 p.m. in the Outdoor Amphitheater at Broadway Commons, the Grant Neighborhood Association meets and will be talking about the proposed parking lot at Maynard's and the North Broadway Parking Study.

The high level problem is that we are mucking around asking about how to manage car storage instead of asking how to increase personal mobility and customers while also reducing the number of car trips and concomitant car storage.

North Broadway Parking at Planning Commission and Howard Hall at SCAN on Tuesday

Did you forget about the North Broadway Parking Study? Yeah, me too. It's been almost two years since the draft recommendations came out, and it seemed like they languished for a while. Officially, since it represented policy change, it was put on hold during the "clean-up" of the Unified Development Code.

Now that the UDC project is turning to the policy changes, the parking study is back and at Planning Commission on Tuesday.

As we noted,

The plan looks evolutionary and incremental, and is not a game-changer. It doesn't lead on making the district a walker's paradise. Instead, it is a modest retreat on the norms of Salem's auto-dependent and auto-centric development styles.

It's important to note that it's also a response to the fact that our current parking minimums are too big here (and in general), and with the over-supply of parking, developers and owners are seeking many variances to reduce the required minimums. This is market-driven, not city- or planner-driven - though of course it is also consistent with higher-level goals to reduce off-street parking supply.

Bike parking is a part of several of the recommendations:

• Consider strategic placement of bicycle parking at key destinations
• Continue to include bicycle parking (racks) with Broadway/High redevelopment
• Provide incentives for business who supply bike parking
• Revise SRC 133.150 (Satisfaction of Off-Street Parking Requirements through Alternate Modes of Transportation) to include objective standards for allowing a reduction in parking due to proximity to transit, pedestrian enhancements, availability of bicycle parking (including covered bicycle spaces or lockers) or other transportation demand management (TDM) measures. Eliminate the need for special review.

The incentives in code for reducing the required car parking (the SRC 133.150 bit) are helpful:

• 5% reduction for a bus stop
• 5% for covered bike parking
• and up to 10% for walking amenities

See here for a longer list and discussion of the recommendations. The staff recommendation is to send it on to Council for adoption. And see here for all notes on the process and study.

North Broadway Parking Study to Hold Community Workshop

Tuesday from 6pm - 8pm in the Grant/Highland room at Broadway Commons the North Broadway - High Street Parking Management Study will hold a Community Workshop.

The study is intended to develop strategies to manage existing car parking better, to reduce conflicts between residential and commercial parking needs, and to encourage walking and biking trips trips for neighborhood circulation and other short trips to the district.

They're looking for ideas! So if you visit or live in the neighborhood, consider attending.

City to get Grant for NoBro Parking Study

Back in the late 90s, the City trumpeted the North Downtown District as undergoing "revitalization."

It took a while, but a significant chapter in that larger project has been completed. Three sites on Broadway at or near Market street have been sold and redeveloped. Between Salem Cinema, the Broadway Coffeeshop and Commons building, and other businesses, the district is beginning to hop!

With these three large parcels being developed, one of the problems is traffic and the encroachment of parking onto neighborhoods that were developed without attached garages and whose residents depend on on-street parking.

Earlier this year the City applied for two Transportation and Growth Management grants. The Edgewater one was not awarded, but the City did win a grant for the North Downtown study.

TGM grants take a while, and there's a bit of a dance between the State and the grantee as they decide exactly what the scope of the project and deliverables will be. So it may be some time before we learn what exactly the study will entail.

Ostensibly it is a parking study. A car parking study. But the goal should be not to figure out how to pack more cars in the neighborhood, but to figure out how to get more people into the district. And a large part of that should be developing ways to make it easier so people feel they have a realistic choice to walk or bike.

North Downtown Parking Study Commences

Do you look to the future or look to what is already accomplished?

An email went out this week with notice that the North Broadway / High Street Parking Management Study has a project website and is about to gear up.

Do you see a fresh sheet of paper, a clean slate?

Because the area is not as highly developed as downtown proper, I have argued that the chance to create complete streets, to adjust the streets for true mobility choice, may be greater here than in downtown proper. Gary Obery has also argued for North Broadway/High Street as a focus area.

As you can see from the map, the orange and yellow are all projects labeled tier 2 and 3. We didn't carry the argument. We were looking too much to the future.

The immediate development along High/Broadway doesn't have the retail and commercial density, doesn't have the concentration of destinations. The new townhouses nearby haven't sold and filled in. Most would conclude that the district is more promising than happening.

Doug's proposal, which has attracted more support, centers on Union, Chemeketa, and Church streets. He's looking to what is already there.

The magic of downtown is in fact what's there: The old streetcar grid and the old commercial storefronts. This historic grid is the most walkable part of Salem.

Salem's downtown has short, square blocks, perfect for walking. This detail is from a 1917 USGS quad. In the horse-and-buggy era, as well as the streetcar era, people used to walk a lot. Even after a century, the street grid and older building stock are still made for walking, still embody the logic of walking. And with restaurants, offices, boutiques, and other business, downtown is full of places you might want to go.

With the right improvements in downtown, there are a lot of short trips currently made by car that could be shifted to walking or biking trips. Think of the Fairmount, Bush, Englewood, Parish/North, and Grant neighborhoods. Folks who live there should visit downtown often and feel they can walk or bike.

Out in neighborhoods from mid-century and later it's not as easy. Land use is critical. Even with good infrastructure for walking and biking, the destinations are spread out, zoned along and confined to wide arterials like Lancaster and Commercial, and in many ways still auto-dependent. The disposition and distribution of businesses and amenities will need to change in tandem with reconfigured street engineering.

This is why it makes sense to focus on downtown, even if there are important ways that the benefits may not be distributed equally.

Even so, the Parking Plan represents an opportunity. Things in the Grant neighborhood haven't been messed up with very many one-way streets, and the residential neighborhoods breathe in more flexible rhythms, not confined to the nine-to-five of an office park, like the Capitol Mall with State offices to the southeast. The future is bright.

In fact, the neighborhood is optimized for walking and biking!

Near Broadway and High streets are lots of homes, in yellow/brown/orange on the zoning map. Many of them are historic, and Virginia Green has captioned several of them.

Many of them don't have attached garages or even a front driveway. Instead they have a generous front porch and a detached garage in back, off of an alleyway.

Interestingly, the newest commercial building, Broadway Commons, has exactly the same structure! It is really a walkable development - but at the same time it accommodates car trips from out of the immediate neighborhood. It serves both near and far - at least in theory.

It's pretty clear, though, that there's not yet a balance for the the businesses there. For Broadway Commons, it has seemed that waves associated with the Church and its worship services have provided much of the traffic. Businesses across the street like Salem Cinema, are also dependent on car trips.

But if the neighbors can find ways to walk and bike to the district! And if the area attracts some other businesses, like a mid-sized grocery store or something!

Hopefully the parking plan won't conclude that large bunkers for free parking are necessary, and it can work reduce the size of surface lots.

It will be interesting to watch the project. The page is blank at the moment, full of opportunity.

What Hath the Studies Wrought? TGM's Example

Even though planners often appeal to the analysis developed by Jane Jacobs, one of her high level conclusions is to be suspicious of big plans. If Robert Moses was a classic Hedgehog, she positioned herself as the canny Fox, and suggested we should as a matter of habit prefer Fox-style thinking and solutions to the Hedgehogian dominion of the Master Plan.

I don't know if this is actually a contradiction in city planning, but it is certainly a tension. But it is no great insight to point out that there's a sweet spot somewhere in the middle between chaos and rigid plan.

2013 Report

During the life of this blog since 2008, we've followed a few studies funded by grants from the joint project between ODOT and DLCD, the Oregon Transportation and Growth Management project.

These include:

Bike and Walk Salem
North Broadway Parking Study
Middle Commercial Refinement Plan - forthcoming
State Street Mixed Use Study - forthcoming

Talk about Portland Road turned up the 1999 SINALACS project, also a TGM funded study.

Since the phenomenon of "shelf studies," planning studies that are released with great hoopla, but quickly gather dust on the shelf from inactivity, is a definite "thing," it was natural to ask:

• Just how many TGM-funded studies are there in town? 
• And what generally becomes of them?
• Do we have any way of - or indeed interest in - assessing their success or failure?

City Council, September 10th - Bike Plan; Pretty Words, Pedestrian Deeds

The hearing on The bike plan is continued from August 13th. The current staff recommendation is not to approve the plan, but to ask Council whether to move forward. This new tentativeness should be alarming.

Not sure there's more to say than this:

Other Stuff

Minto Bridge and Path

A couple of updates on Minto Bridge and Path, an update on funding (or the lack thereof), and a note about a new grant opportunity from Oregon Parks and Recreation.

Via City of Salem and Greenworks

Parking Lot Proposed for Market and Broadway

On Tuesday, August 7th, the Planning Commission will consider an application to demolish a house and pave over for a surface parking in the North Broadway District.

Two of the reasons for the North Broadway Parking Study are to

• Reduce the need for parking variances in Project Area.
• Encourage bicycle and pedestrian use in Project Area.

Unfortunately, this seems to do neither.

The house at Broadway and Market is not fancy. But, you know, it's a house.

Plans call for 8 parking stalls.

It will be interesting to learn more about this. It's hard to imagine a neighborhood deli and bakery really needing more off-street parking. But perhaps a new restaurant or something else is going in there. Even so, this should be one of the most walkable neighborhoods in Salem, and leveling buildings for surface parking is almost certainly a step in the wrong direction.

The Market and Old Laundry, the Hoopla, the Urban Highway: Newsbits

After several behind-the-scenes tries, it looks finally like a possibility for the laundry just south of Broadway Commons was ready to go public.

Capital City Laundry: Oregon State Library
Note the Oregon Electric lines and tracks on Broadway!

The paper yesterday had a story about the possibility of the Salem Saturday Market moving from the State of Oregon Green Lot to the old Laundry building across the street from Broadway Commons.

The plaza at Broadway Commons is a candidate for the best urban space in Salem, Salem Cinema is a block down the street, and the Grant Neighborhood is a great place to be right now.  The corner of Gaines and Broadway has fabulous potential.

Interior of Capital City Laundry Today

The building is empty, and there's a lot to like about the idea.

But moving the market activates the space only one day a week. Some of the other possibilities for the space might have used it five or even seven days a week.

This stretch of Broadway just has tons of potential, and it would be great to energize the corner with a greater presence that just on Saturdays.

The Oak and Parking Lot behind Laundry

Parking is also a question. The building is closer to neighborhoods than the Green Lot, and might attract more walking and biking. It's a great opportunity for a high quality, covered bike corral for year-round cycling - either on the gravel lot or using some on-street space.  But wouldn't it be nice to see something on a paved surface, perhaps underneath the old oak?

City Council, February 25th

Is this really that important?

Doom at the airport.  At least that's what the City and airport boosters want you to think. 

The hearing on the airport master plan has been pulled from Council agenda, and it's interesting this coincides with the doom-and-fear in the headlines today - something that looks like it's meant to gin up support for the airport.  (Is it also posturing in the Sequester battle?)

In the legislative positions it is interesting to read that the City is apparently ok with increasing the tax on aviation fuel, as

the additional revenue would be used to support Oregon Department of Aviation grant programs for both State-owned airports as well as other public-use airports across the state, including Salem. The funds are anticipated to be used towards deferred maintenance projects that are not federally eligible and also to provide grant match assistance. The benefit to the Salem Airport is it would provide access to additional funds to help improve the airport that federal dollars are not authorized for, and also to offset local match requirements for federal grants.

But the City's not ok with any increase in the gax tax for deferred road maintenance and other transportation improvements.

Other stuff

Two property owners on Second St. NW are unable to reach agreement with the City in "cordial, ongoing negotiations, but the owners have not been willing to sign and complete a transaction."  The City wants land for the Second St parking lot project.  (It's a lousy project, far from the bike boulevard and rail-to-trail conversion they might have done.)  So the City's going to invoke Eminent Domain. 

Second Street Parking Lot Project

As part of the path connecting the Minto Bridge to Minto Park proper, the City needs to transfer $48,000 for a survey.

City staff has not been able to identify a source of Urban Renewal Agency or other Funds that qualifies to pay for land survey services outside of the General Fund, thus making the transfer from General Fund contingencies necessary.

$48,000 isn't that much, but is pulling something like that for a survey from a contingency fund actually the best use of what look like "rainy day" funds?  I wish the City pursued other transportation matters with the same zeal, sometimes.  Too many resources are being used on the bridge and path at the expense of other projects that would better improve the City's transportation network.   It's not that the bridge is a bad project - indeed, it's a very good one - but its benefits are overstated, and other projects might offer a greater return on investment right now.  (It's also an example of the City "loving" bikes as long as people on them don't impede those in cars.)

The North Broadway Parking Study will be pushed off a few months in order to coordinate its recommendations with the Parking Task Force, whose zone of study was expanded to include the North Downtown area.  

The Parks Master Plan update will go to a public hearing before the Planning Commission.  The plan documents were updated a couple of days ago, and draft v2.2 is now available here. 

Finally, in what looks to be a gesture related to the City's termination of the contract with the Salem Downtown Partnership, Mayor Peterson is introducing a motion to "remove Carole Smith from the Downtown Advisory Board property owner/business owner position with a term expiring 12/31/2013."  No matter what has happened, it is an unfortunate setback and unwanted turmoil for downtown.  The Partnership was trying to effect some change, and impartial observers might well find entrenched interests resistant to change behind whatever other very real difficulties there might have been.   Hopefully more will come out about the struggles in implementing the Economic Improvement District - and will help folks who want to cheer for downtown in discriminating between substantive and collateral (or political) matters in the dispute.

City Council, July 27th - Urban Trails Plan Grant Application

Council convenes on Monday, and they will consider supporting the grant application to fund an Urban Trails Plan.

But as important as local items are, just now there's a national crisis with a nascent secret police and an escalation of incipient Fascism and Authoritarianism.

Yesterday front page in DC
These are events of national significance

It's not just about rowdy BLM protests and vandalism in Portland, but is about kidnapping and secret police going out to multiple American cities, targeting American citizens, and subverting the Constitution. A couple of days ago Senator Wyden spoke ominously about "fascist practices I never thought I'd see on American soil...If the line isn’t drawn in the sand right now, America will be staring down the barrel of martial law for months to come."

That's far outside our usual scope here, but it's even more urgent now to consider national politics.

The trail system as envisioned in 1999
(black circled segments of particular interest)

Back to Council, about the Urban Trails Plan, see the note on it at the Planning Commission. Travel Salem and the local Safe Routes to Schools team have also endorsed it.

City Council, June 25th

The alley and cemetery leads Council on Monday, but that required a separate note on its own.

A Different Vacation

But there is another proposed vacation on the docket, and while I'm not sure that it is intrinsically very interesting - unless someone points out something tricky about it, it looks unproblematic - its process looks very different than that of the alley/cemetery matter.

To wit: It is a petition-initiated vacation, which is probably what the alley should have been, rather than a City-initiated vacation. (There's still no reason for the City to want to vacate that alley; it's the developer who wants it - just like this case.)

Anyway, at the Boise site, Pringle Square South LLC proposes to use a 10-foot strip along Bellvue to site a PGE vault. The existing right-of-way is 80 feet, and current standards call for a 60-foot ROW on a local street. At least initially, I'm not seeing how this would be a problem. But all Council is asked to do is set a public hearing, and there will be more analysis, I'm sure.

City Council, September 22

Council meets Monday, and mostly it's old items that have been mentioned before, and from the perspective here aren't all that interesting at the moment. Not that they are trivial, as indeed a couple of them are far from trivial, but that there's nothing new to say, and it does not seem important or interesting to dwell on them. Maybe you will disagree, but today's rallies about Climate Change seem so much more important.

Check out the Earth Fair this afternoon at Riverfront Park from 2pm to 6pm. A Kidical Mass ride meets at the Capitol Fountain at 1:30pm.

Scale: Too much toilet paper, not enough bridge collapse

(Did you see yesterday's "disaster fair"? It's interesting that "multiple agencies" might be gathered, but the scale still is all wrong: At the park in the shadow of our two critical bridges likely to collapse in the big earthquake, it's still all about making sure you have a flashlight, batteries, and toilet paper. It's all about disaster on a private, personal, and household scale, but not about regional, national, or global disaster and risk-management, things so big they are inherently scaled for governments rather than households. It might be too much for a fossil fuel company to care about carbon, but they could still talk about the scale of a big earthquake or flood and our aging infrastructure.)

McGilchrist Block in better times, circa early 1950s
Salem Library Historic Photos

One item on Council agenda is a little interesting, a small form of public subsidy or what is sometimes criticized as "corporate welfare" or "sweetheart deals."

Do we Really Need more Committees?

The idea of a Environmental Advisory Committee got some press in yesterday's paper, and it's an interesting one. Apparently Councilor Tesler has some interest in it, and as the concept "percolates" through Council, perhaps it will gain enough traction for a formal proposal.

But here's the thing. We already have a bunch of advisory and even quasi-judicial boards, and it has seemed difficult for them really to lead.

• The Citizens Advisory Traffic Commission doesn't even have a meeting posted for 2014 (but I believe they have met at least once this year) and in the last decade seems to have met on average about 4 times a year. It is a badly underused resource, fairly neglected by the City.
• The Historic Landmarks Commission does a great job policing vinyl windows, new garage doors, and wireless antennae on historic buildings, but is seemingly helpless on actually preserving buildings that owners are trying to demolish. Even when the HLC takes a principled stand, Council feels free to disregard the stand and enact its own veto.
• The Planning Commission is more difficult to nutshell, but it seems relevant that it wasn't able to maintain the integrity of the Fairview Master Plan in a proposed refinement plan for a third development at Fairview.
• The Public Art Commission looks a little too clubby and insidery, and it tends towards institutionalizing and decorating our ornamental emptinesses.
• There are also temporary committees, like the "Stakeholder Advisory Committees" for Bike and Walk Salem, for the Downtown Mobility Study, the North Broadway Parking study. You will think of others. The committees seem to start with vision, but between the necessary politics of compromise and unnecessary weight given to objections based on maintaining the status quo, the final recommendations always seem so pallid, so watered down. And sustaining funded action on them a near impossibility.
• Of the commissions we've followed here, the ones that have seemed most effective are the boards advising on the Urban Renewal Areas: The Downtown Advisory Board, West Salem Redevelopment Advisory Board, and North Gateway Redevelopment Advisory Board. They've got real budgets and get to help develop real projects. But I don't know if anyone would say they were strikingly effective.

These are just what we have followed here. Maybe you will know more about Parks, the Library, the Budget, Police, Tourism, Human Rights - there's a bunch more Boards and Commissions.

But in general, as a group the Boards and Commissions don't look like they actually are very powerful or very effective. As institutions and by the city ordinances that establish and govern them, they don't look like they are meant to be very powerful or effective. For the volunteer members without staff resources of their own, it is not always easy to develop alternatives to or detailed critique of the staff-driven agenda. Sometimes the committees just rubber-stamp; sometimes they give the illusion and "blessing" of debate, dissent, and deliberation; in all cases they seem like they are meant to sand down and tame any distinction and vision so it's smooth and easy.

August 2014 vacancies

Some have observed the large number of vacancies on boards and commissions. Is part of the problem a lack of interest in the citizenry? Instead, I wonder if the lack of interest is a consequence of the seemingly nugatory nature of the positions. It doesn't seem possible to make a real difference.

This is why it has not seemed useful here to advocate for a Bicycle Advisory Committee. Would one help us get a full family-friendly bikeway any faster? Or would it just provide more greenwash and cover, the soothing reassurance of "process"?

If you've been reading BikePortland lately, you'll see even Portland isn't living the dream right now:

• "Something has Gone Wrong in Portland"
• The political process is like "whack-a-mole" to grind down support
• The BTA isn't adequate and more assertive activism is necessary
• Portland's Bicycle Advisory Committee needs new blood

It has seemed like the two absolutely necessary ingredients are leadership at the top rank of electeds (which Portland especially lacks right now) and a robust grassroots advocacy. The middle level of advisory committees and their staff handlers look mostly impotent or irrelevant without the two other ingredients.

Maybe you have a different analysis of it all. (Certainty's not possible!)

And it's true that the "the proposed advisory committee would have less clout than the old environmental commission. The advisory committee could only make recommendations, not issue decisions." Its proponents don't argue for much in the way of real power or influence.

Still, I really wonder if an effective solution to our dilatory interests in environmentalism and sustainability really is another committee.

2011 in Review: One Step Forward, but Two Steps Back

It sure feels like we lost ground this year. Nothing seemed to catch fire, and everybody seemed tired. For every project that seemed like a win, there were several blanks, duds, and outright losses. Within a year of sharrows going down on Chemeketa, for example, the downtown sewer project took several out.

In a nutshell, that's 2011 for me.

Mostly, it seemed like it was a discouraging year for people who bike. I feel like a real negative Nellie saying this, but it seemed to take too much of a Pollyanna-ish stretch to suggest it was a good year.

So, was it encouraging for you, did you think the City took two steps forward instead? I would especially love to hear about that! What else was important?

2012 in Review: Sidewalks and Viaducts - Miniatures and the Giant, but where's the Middle?

The sidewalkification of bicycling and the Third Bridge dominated 2012. It was a year for thinking too small and for thinking too big, with grandiose, even delusional, ambition.

Salem Tries to Kickstart the Bridge

An intermediate zone of mid-sized, right-sized, and more meaningful projects was largely absent. And while some of the small things weren't bad, many weren't great either, and in general there was a deficit of things to cheer for.  It was a year where too many things deserved refusal, boos, or critique rather than praise and cheers.  This was a little demoralizing, seemingly more of the "one step forward, two steps back" from 2011.

Planning - Lots of Talk, but Sustained Action was Elusive

Planning efforts seem to start with optimism and vision, and attracted commensurate praise - and end with indifference and silence.  After a little over a year of public hearings, Bike and Walk Salem was finally adopted, but there seemed to be no momentum behind its recommendations.  Vision 2020 came to a quiet end, and the North Broadway Parking Study seemed to stall.  The latest in the series is the Downtown Mobility Study.  It kicked off in style - but will its burst of creativity and vision stall out in 2013 like the others did in 2012?

Tell Rep. Schrader to Kill the Bill; Cherriots starts Long-Range Plan

Transportation for America sent out a note yesterday about the House Transportation Reauthorization.

"Kill the bill," they say. It's true: It's lousy.

Take a moment to send Rep. Schrader a note. Or call or write snail mail.

Salem District Office
494 State Street, Suite 210
Salem, OR 97301
Phone: (503) 588-9100
Fax: (503) 588-5517

Let Rep. Schrader know you support robust transportation choices with safe facilities for people who walk and bike.