Details on Center St Bridge Seismic, Bike Rental System, and Climate in MWACT Packet

The Mid-Willamette Valley Area Commission on Transportation, an advisory board to the Oregon Transportation Commission and ODOT, zooms today at 3:30pm, and there are three items to note in passing.

The Center Street Bridge seismic project has been quiet, and it may need more funding. (Or perhaps ODOT wants to shuffle funding to free up money for some other project.) In the meeting packet is a note that the Federal Infrastructure Bill has a "Special Bridge" component, and ODOT is considering assigning money to the Center Street project.

New funding for Center St seismic?

This will hit the OTC in May and there may be more to say later on it. Perhaps more detail will emerge at SKATS or City Council also.

You may have seen the wrap on the OTC's meeting last month at BikePortland, "Transportation Commission makes final decision on $412 million in federal funds." In it was brief mention of a new program, the Innovative Mobility Pilot, whose funding was bumped up from $5 million to $10 million in the meeting. The Street Trust, formerly BTA, called it "a small, but important victory."

It would fund the public bike rental program here

In the packet was a brief on the proposed program (dated before the funding was doubled at the March 30th meeting), and it included detail on the public bike rental program concept. You might remember a year ago a concept for a multi-city rental program involving Forth and Cascadia Mobility. This pilot program looks like it will be the home and funding source for it. RideSalem has not yet commented publicly on those prospects, however.

All about adaptation, not less driving

Finally, there's a presentation on climate and resilience. On the one hand, the presentation is specifically about resilience and adaptation. But it's still very quiet on reducing emissions and reducing driving, the intensifier and cause of things like fire and flood. ODOT is not yet very serious about climate.