Our local MPO to hold Public Hearing on 20 year Regional Transportation System Plan

Our local Metropolitan Planning Organization, SKATS, will hold a Public Hearing on the draft Regional Transportation Systems Plan for 2015-2035 on Tuesday the 26th at noon.

Carbon is a huge void at the center of the plan
Draft RTSP, with chart from CO2Now

There's a pleasant ferment and amount of discussion going on with related matters, and if you would like to attend and offer comment, here are some themes to consider in your comments!

In an earlier note, we highlighted three things:

• We need more attention to carbon and greenhouse gas emissions
• The Third Bridge remains an enormous folly - that's one project it's totally worth criticizing.
• More and more cities are embracing "vision zero." We tolerate a lot of death and serious injury as acceptable "costs" of using the roads and of road-widening to reduce congestion. If we actually wanted to, we could do a lot more with reducing speeds and better engineering roads for safety.

These remain true.

Here are some additional things to consider:

• The FHWA is now assuming 1.04% annual growth in yearly miles traveled. This still seems too large from here - but if you aren't necessarily persuaded by the larger criticism here, and instead wanted to make a very conservative criticism of our travel modeling, asking SKATS to align projections with this new FHWA figure seems like low-hanging fruit and a very sober request. (The latest that I see - it's hard to find the assumptions in modeling! - is from the Nov 12th memo on tolling: "Traffic is assumed to grow at a constant rate of 1.97% between 2015 and 2035." So what does demand look like when you assume 1.04% annual growth?)
• Salem Sunday Streets has observed that cities are asking the Portland MPO, Metro, to fund Safe Routes to School. A representative from Safe Routes talked to the Technical Advisory Committee earlier this year, and asking our MPO for more focus on sidewalks and safe crossing is a fine thing to echo (though Portland's funding mechanism is different in this case).
• N3B has collated some additional comment on the Salem River Crossing components in the RTSP and they cite great points, which are also appropriate to echo.

Look for the historic sign
next to the entry

The Public Hearing is Tuesday the 26th at noon. SKATS is at 100 High St. SE, Suite 200, above Bar Andaluz and Table Five 08.

And here's more history trivia for the weekend. What was on the corner before the current building, known as the new Bligh Building or Pacific Building, home of SKATS?

Cook's Hotel!

Cook's Hotel the Table Five08 Corner of State and High
Oregon State Library

And here's the corner and its immediate neighborhood from above, probably taken from the tower, now lost, of the Grand Theatre. Cook's was demolished in 1925 or perhaps 1926, prior to construction of the new Bligh Building.

Cook's Hotel on the corner of State and High
The big lawn belongs to the old County Courthouse
Oregon State Library