Friday, July 29, 2016

Bike Lane Striping on High and Church to Start Monday!

via Twitter
From the City:
The contractor...will begin at the north end of High Street on August 1, 2016. The work will be complete by September 15, 2016. Both High and Church Streets will have lanes closed at night from 8 p.m. to 5:30 a.m.
(For more detail see the City site.)

Also on Monday is the Council Work Session on the Salem River Crossing.

via the official calendar
But there's nothing posted on it yet. (Update: It was hidden! See comments for more on the unintentional hiddenness, most likely just an artifact of the awkward calendaring system.)

The City shares information on downtown bike lanes far more readily than it does on a billion dollar bridge and highway. It also solicits dissent and critique on the bike lanes more readily than it does on a billion dollar bridge and highway. It has already said to the downtown neighborhood association: If you don't use it, you might lose it.

But this is a basic bike lane on a downtown street, legacy remediation to 1980s standards! There shouldn't be any controversy, any debate. This is merely a baseline. We should be able to assume stuff like this!

As we currently process things, though, there is more opportunity to criticize and throw up road blocks on two measly bike lanes than to hit the brakes on a project with risks and costs several orders of magnitude larger.

The bridge and highway will cost something on the order of 1000x the bike lane project.

In round terms, even at the risk of too much information, why isn't there 1000x times the public information and outreach and analysis? (To say that the process has been going on for a decade is not the same as actual analysis, by the way! Much of that has been churn and pre-determined outcome, not something course-correcting with actual feedback.)

If the City posts any materials on the Work Session there may be more to say over the weekend or on Monday. N3B will also doubtless have more.

Update

Here's the the very brief Staff Report and agenda.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Try changing your selection to August, your filter is set to show July meetings only.

Salem Breakfast on Bikes said...

Interesting...

From this page on the city website -
http://cityofsalem.net/CityCouncil/Pages/MeetingsofInterestRSS.aspx

There is a meeting listing and a link - "Agenda: Click here"

When you click through you go to -
https://salem.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx

And it defaults to July - or, presumably the current month.

So the "meetings of interest page" should also pass a date parameter/variable or whatever to the new calendar page so that it will default to the relevant date range.

So, again, the calendar interface is complicated rather than simple!

Thanks for the info and correction.

Jim Scheppke said...

The only reason there is a work session on the 3rd Bridge on Monday night is because Councilor Tom Andersen kind of sprung it on the Council last Monday night when the Mayor was out of town. Way to go Tom! The Council was not even planning to hold a work session (after 19 months since the last one) before starting the process to add the 3rd Bridge to the Salem Transportation System Plan and Comprehensive Plan. Now the the Mayor is in a sweat to get 'er done before she leaves office and Cara Kaser, Sally Cook and Matt Ausec join Tom Andersen on the Council in January. All campaigned in opposition to the bridge this year. Their opponents were for the bridge. Their victories were due in part to their position on the bridge. This rush to judgement on the 3rd Bridge is very authoritarian and will be a terrible legacy for Anna Peterson.