Creating Choices for Going Downtown: Mobility Study Open House Wednesday

On Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 4-6 p.m., in the Anderson Rooms of the Salem Public Library, the City of Salem will hold the next open house on the Downtown Mobility Study.

An important part of the study is reconfiguring some downtown streets so that people feel they have a genuine choice about how to go downtown.

How do we make this
a true everyday option
and not simply advertising confection?

Round two of public comment is coming up, and study managers have posted the presentation given to the advisory committee (42pp pdf).

You may recall the summary from December:  

Simple Fixes: Two-Way + Sharrows

• Cottage Street - just sharrows
• High Street - just sharrows
• Court Street - just sharrows

More Robust Fixes:  Yay, Cycletracks!

• State Street - a cycletrack or equivalent is right
• Church Street - a cycletrack should be considered here. This may require more study.
• Winter Street - see below. Alternative 4, cycletracks on each side.
• 12th Street - add bike lanes!

Need more Study or Detail

• Union Street - a wider range of alternatives?
• North Downtown

Here are the treatments for Church Street. They still aren't considering a cycletrack, it seems, and this may haunt the project as an important missed opportunity.

Church St Alternatives for 2nd Round Evaluation
click to enlarge

On the other hand, there are places that are substantially improved and, maybe just as important, places where complicated fixes are avoided - like on Cottage Street, where opinion seems united that two-way + sharrows is the right solution. Study managers have also reasonably punted off the North Downtown conceptual piece.

There's good and bad, strong and weak - but no stupid or catastrophic!  Mostly it's a range of things on which reasonable people can disagree.  When we are faced with stupid stuff like the giant third bridge and highway, it's a relief to come to something like this.

Don't miss the open house and there will be much more to say afterwards!

(Bike ad from summer 2011.)