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| Site of proposed 13 unit apartment complex adjacent to park-n-ride lot |
But almost surely it won't be. The site plan looks like it has more surface area for parking and cars than for housing and living, and even if you wanted to walk to the bus stop, the frequency of service may not be enough.
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| Three buildings, even more car surface |
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| Negative impacts do not include bridge congestion! |
And we tolerate the gradual and imperceptible increase in the conditions that proponents think will make a giant bridge and highway necessary. Talk about slowly boiling the frog!
River Crossing and Transit
Over at N3B, there's a interesting note about Cherriots. At a recent Cherriots board meeting, Mark Wigg gave testimony to request Cherriots to ask
the City to prepare a Supplemental Draft EIS that describes the Salem Alternative and includes an assessment of a transit, bike, and pedestrian alternative to achieve congestion reduction goals.Wigg included an interesting proposal to use Marine Drive and the abandoned Salem, Falls City & Western for multi-modal rapid transit corridors.
Cherriots has really missed the bus on the whole Third Bridge thing. The answer to Mark's question is likely to be that a 2007 memo already assessed transit/bike/walk alternatives and found them wanting and that an appropriate transit/bike/walk assumption has already been built into plans. This conclusion was folded into the Alternate Modes Study. And it has cascaded in a chain of ostensibly unassailable conclusions: We need a bridge!
But it's a house of cards! And Cherriots should have pressed a critique and asked for an honest and more robust analysis - and they still can do so.
For example, as has been noted several times the TSM/TDM analysis of transit was profoundly flawed and, by a straw man argument, concluded transit was helpless to alleviate congestion:
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| Sloppy or Intellectually Dishonest? |
Here's the relevant TSM/TDM memo from the Task Force proceedings and an earlier discussion of it on the blog.
Interestingly, the study actually found that metered parking would be helpful! (I know, if you reject one part of the study, can you turn around an accept another?...yeah, that's a reasonable critique, but we're talking generalities here - see below for conceptual nature of the thing.)
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| Metered parking could reduce auto trips on the bridges by 10% |
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| Modeling shows metered parking increases transit use Nevertheless, study recommendations are "preliminary" and "conceptual" |
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| The "preliminary" recommendations didn't stop the project team from formalizing them into an 8% reduction swag |
The Alternate Modes Study could have been a whole lot more robust and included at the very least more detailed modeling and analysis beyond the "preliminary" and "conceptual" nature of the TSM-TDM memos.
More usefully, Cherriots could have been a force for not just more detail, but a thorough-going critique and robust set of alternatives.
They missed the bus.
It's not too late for the next one. Mark's got a fine idea.
4 comments:
I think I heard Bob Krebs tell the SRC Oversight Team at their meeting on July 31 that he thinks better transit could reduce traffic on the existing bridges by 10-20%. He also distributed copies of the Mark Wigg email. Of course all this fell on deaf ears and the Oversight Team voted to spend $300,000 to study the Salem Alternative. Krebs is a good man, but he's way too nice.
I should have explained that Krebs is a member of the Salem Keizer Transit District Board and their representative to the SRC Oversight Team.
Here's the decision on the apartments. Interestingly, because Wallace is a state highway, a new driveway and curbcut requires an application to ODOT. So this is a fine example of Wallace being turned into a stroad.
Jim - as you say, Krebs is a very sweet man! It was with great delight a year or so ago that I saw him when the Oregon Electric rails were turned up in the paving at State and High, and he was also taking pictures of them.
Part of the problem may be that the board of Cherriots has given its representative direction much too tentative or agreeable; the board probably needs to stiffen its resolve and not cave to the bridge mania.
Apparently there's a tree removal variance in process now for cutting down a 25-inch Oregon White Oak where the driveway onto Wallace needs to go per ODOT.
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