While researching the parking meter debate and parking mania in the immediate post-war period, a photo and note that turned up about widening Liberty Street SE at Oxford Street suggested the origin of our one-way couplet system downtown.
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| July 28th, 1950 |
The caption read:
Saddened residents are looking on these days as spreading shade trees, shrubs, parking strips, curbs and sidewalks disappear from South liberty street. The removal is part of a project which will widen the street to make way the one-way traffic provisions of the Baldock traffic control plan. Northbound traffic entering the city on South Commercial will veer onto South Liberty street at Oxford street.
There is a detailed trail on that Baldock traffic plan! It was a significant in Salem transportation planning.
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| February 3rd, 1949 |
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| Marion Street Bridge Planning, 1946-50 Concept as selected |
And yes, it was about a bridge.
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| Jan. 28th, 1949 |
Starting on January 31st in 1949, the afternoon paper published excerpts of a report and analysis written by State Highway Engineer, R. H. Baldock.* Many of its recommendations - though not all of them - were adopted, and our downtown traffic system still is structurally what he recommended. Slowly we are unwinding it. It turned out not to be so great, and certainly not what we need in our 21st century.
These clips will be quick-hits, and this may blossom into a series of posts, as the whole intersects with the State Highway system, planning for the expansion of the Capitol Mall, and the City's own interests in its street system, sometimes in alignment with the State, but not always. As the editorial makes clear, it is a "highway plan" superimposed on the city's streets with the city system subordinate. The City probably did not have in-house the engineering expertise, and they would be glad for the State's expertise. But in privileging the State Highway system, the plan and its boosters prioritized traffic flow over sidewalk life and struck damaging blows to our "main streets" and the businesses that fronted them.
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| January 31st, 1949 |
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| February 5th, 1949 |
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| February 7th, 1949 |
The City adopted the plan after about six months and a protracted debate.
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| Aug. 23rd, 1949 |
Two years later the first streets went one-way.
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| September 29th, 1951 |
When people point out that the Library and Civic Center, and a good bit of the downtown core itself, are contained in an oversized highway median with more lanes than I-5, there are important ways that it was literally a highway, Highway 99.
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| September 24th, 1953 |
The Marion Street Bridge opened on December 14th, 1952, and then with the rebuild of the Center Street Bridge the next year, both bridges opened as a one-way couplet.
The ripple effect of the new bridge with consequences for the north-south highway caused all kinds of distortion and harm to our street system. Our oversized one-way arterials are one important effect.
* There's no convenient and impartial capsule biography online. There is an interested one at a trade organization, the Asphalt Institute. The State Library also has a one-page PDF written as part of the 100th anniversary of the Highway Department/ODOT.
2 comments:
Thanks for the history on the streets downtown.
I wonder why Baldock is commenting on the bus terminal proposals in Downtown Salem? (Sep 1951 clipping) Did the State Highway Engineer have that much influence in local roads in the 1950s?
That is among the topics that might merit a follow-up post! At the moment I think it is because the street in question is a State Highway. There might be more to say later.
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