Cost Escalation and Overengineering Swamp McGilchrist Project

From March 2023 Bond meeting
(comments in red added)

Mostly we love Strong Towns, but last Fall they swooped in seagull style on the McGilchrist project. They failed to do their own first step: Humbly observe and ask what people need. Had they done so they would have learned about the Social Security office, the Veterans clinic, the brewery district, the poor east-west connectivity in this section of town, lack of bike lanes and sidewalks, and the drainage problems in routine high water. 

Drainage is a real problem (2022 RAISE grant app)

Instead, they looked at a map and saw a different drainage problem. They seem to have got seduced by the opportunity for some bathroom humor:

You probably would not have guessed (I certainly didn’t) that it is a one-mile stretch of nondescript industrial road that currently serves 3,600 vehicle trips per day, mostly people going to line dance at the Honky Tonk Bar and Grill or rent a porta potty from Honey Bucket.

They still haven't fixed the image of 12th street they labeled as McGilchrist.

The critique moved directly to the second step and faulted the City for not iterating, for not doing the smallest thing that can be done today. They seemed to want more straw bales and traffic cones first. They saw only a giant and expensive engineering project.

The process and joking rhetoric by Strong Towns was bad. And it is astonishing, honestly, that the Salem Strong Towns group hasn't pushed back, and has seemed ok with it all. It's not a kind of mocking or betrayal? Apparently not.

Nevertheless, Strong Towns identified real problems: The project is too expensive and overengineered. They are totally right about this - and it's got worse.

Last month the Bond Implementation Oversight Committee saw a cross-section (at top, with notes). Just what part of the street this is is not specified. It could be anywhere between 12th and 25th, and trades on the assumption that it is "typical."

5' sidewalk, 6' planting strip, 6' paint-only bike lanes
(60% drawings in 2022, click to enlarge)

You may recall drawings from the Federal grant application that showed some paint-only bike lanes.

Paint-only bike lanes, big widening at 22nd
At Council, January 2023

The drawing at Council in January for the intersection with 22nd also showed paint-only bike lanes.

The words "cycle track" in the cross section (at top, again) are doing a lot of unearned and heavy lifting. First off, in the drawing shown to the Bond Implementation Oversight Committee, it's more a multi-use path, not really a cycle track, which should be distinct from the sidewalk. Second, it does not appear to run the full length of McGilchrist. At least in public, we have not yet seen a set of drawings with a strong bike lane treatment that is continuous. Note those paint-only sections. Any separation is only in segments. For such an expensive project we should get best-in-class bike lanes the whole length! There's more than a little bit of bikewashing here.

Two rules on 10 foot lanes!
Jeff Speck, Walkable City Rules

The travel lanes are really wide and will induce speeding. The street is not being built for urban speeds. It's more than a little stroady. With the 2 foot "shy lane" and 11 foot travel lane, there's really two 13 foot travel lanes and a nearly continuous 12 foot center turn pocket. Even allowing for freight trucks here, it is too big. On lane width, NACTO concedes 11 feet might be necessary in some cases, but cautions against anything wider:

For designated truck or transit routes, one travel lane of 11 feet may be used in each direction....Lanes greater than 11 feet should not be used as they may cause unintended speeding and assume valuable right of way at the expense of other modes.

Since there is the turn pocket here, striped 11 foot lanes might not even be necessary. Any width in the travel lanes beyond 10 foot striping could be absorbed instead by the turn pocket as a kind of "advisory" lane. (Or do we even really need a center turn lane with traffic volumes as low as around 4000 daily trips?)

Finally there is the budget and cost escalation.

Doubled cost

In February the Bond Implementation Oversight Committee saw the funding, and the budget just keeps ballooning, apparently doubling in a year or two.  This table (above) was not included in the agenda and packet the City posted for the February meeting, and the City is generally not publishing any notice of the meetings on the City calendar. It may be that the committee is structured not to require formal Notice. But with the magnitude of the bond, they should provide more transparency.

Budget in the 2022 RAISE grant application

Since the realignment of the intersection with 22nd Street has been broken out in some items at Council, it should be more clearly folded into the greater McGilchrist project and included as one or more separate line items. What is the true total estimated cost on the corridor package and what are all the funding sources?

The McGilchrist project really needs much stronger public oversight and community conversation, even debate. It's very hard right now to see the project as right-sized, proportionate, and with the right community benefits.

See previous notes on McGilchrist, including responses to Strong Towns, here.