Wednesday, April 30, 2014

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!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Regarding the Center St. pavement conditions: what that was about was a discussion of a troublesome and moderately large pothole on Center St. exit ramp that drops down to Front Street (southbound). ODOT had put an orange cone out to alert drivers of the pothole. Sometime during the last few weeks, an ODOT crew filled that pothole.
-Mike Jaffe, MWVCOG staff