City Transit Committee to Meet Tuesday on Draft Recommendations - updated

The City's Public Transit Committee also meets Tuesday the 9th, and once again there's very little information.

October 9th agenda

A draft of the recommendations should be published as part of the meeting packet, but it is apparently secret!

Overall they've been very stingy with information during this process.

One thing that's probably not been discussed enough is upzoning on and near transit corridors. Sightline has a post on this regarding the Barbur Boulevard project in Portland. Trimet is proposing a nearly $3 Billion light rail line, and yet they project only an 8% increase in ridership. That's a terrible return on the investment! Improvements in land use need to be joined to improvements in transit - and those are land use matters policies over which a city has control.

via Twitter and Sightline

The transit committee may be recommending things like spiffing up the bus stops, and other essentially decorative elements, more than structural elements like charging for parking, upzoning along major bus lines, and beginning to plan for a future process to reallocate auto travel lanes to serve as dedicated bus lanes on high demand corridors.

Maybe on Monday or Tuesday they will publish more, and there might be more to say.

Update, Tuesday the 9th

Here are the recommendations:

1. Prioritize transit - supportive considerations as part of updating the Salem Comprehensive Plan, with an emphasis on the transit core network.
2. Review and update the Employee Smart Commuter Program to encourage City employees to use transit and other non - auto modes of transportation.
3. Work with Cherriots to update the 2009 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and develop a common understanding of how the City and Cherriots will work together.
4. Review 2003 Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with Cherriots and report back to Council regarding appropriate action.
5. Coordinate with Cherriots to identify and implement projects to improve transit time reliability.
6. Evaluate the feasibility of a downtown circulator bus.

At this level of generality, they are pretty underwhelming.

In some of the detailed discussion of each of these, the Committee has identified areas for further investigation. Several of these are more promising.

Under the Comprehensive Plan, these recommendations are worth more attention and support:

• Locate low-income housing with good access to transit service.
• Establish a Transit Oriented Development Strategy (focus on ¼ mile buffer to core network) including mix ed use and higher density residential development.
• Prioritize bicycle and pedestrian connections within ¼ mile of core network.
• Create incentives for redevelopment along core network.
• Develop land use mechanisms to guide new multi-family and job centers to areas served by transit.
• Incorporate pedestrian oriented design considerations during development review.
• Update the goals, objectives, and policies included in the Salem Transportation System Plan, Transit Element, and consider implementable actions with goals and benchmarks.
• Conduct a city-wide review of parking minimums and maximums.

It looks like the Committee went with the low-hanging fruit and rather than recommending more structural elements outright, they identified other formal planning processes in which to advance those aims. They kinda buried the good stuff!