Holy smokes, Council has a ton of interesting items on the agenda for Monday. Some of them we've previewed a little this week already, and they'll be in a second post over the weekend.
Fascinating is the return of the Sustainable Cities Initiative this fall for the next school year.
You may recall the project back in 2010-2011. We'll come back to think a little more about it later this summer.
- The City's archived the reports here.
One thing that immediately comes to mind is that the analytical mapping projects yielded more directly useful information than the more free-wheeling vision projects for entire neighborhoods.
One of the smaller projects was "Accurately Modeling Salem’s Bike Network in ArcGIS" by Michael Duncan, Kory Northrop, and Ted Sweeney.
The project modeled
bicycle routes along the parts of roadways where bicycles actually travel, and measures the level of fear associated with each section of the bicycle network. The dataset can be used to compare cycling routes through the city based on how scary they are, which can help guide infrastructure investment to increase the comfort levels of all bicyclists.
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| Anticipated "Level of Stress" analysis |
This general concept is used now by transportation planning consultants, and the students were out in front of that a little bit. Their use of GIS technology seemed to be advanced relative to many professional traffic planners and engineers, and this might be an area for the City to ask SCI to lean into.
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| O'Brien analysis |
By contrast, the ideas for the O'Brien parcel were abandoned with the Police Station, and related projects for Second Street in West Salem and the Epping parcel off Portland Road have not much corresponded to actual redevelopment.
The brainstorming is not totally useless, it's important to say. Also, these are student projects, and it is not right to judge them as closely as we might evaluate professional consultants on more closely scoped projects.
Nevertheless, if we judge things solely on the City benefit, and projects that yield actionable fruit, it might be that smaller, more constrained projects are generally more useful than larger and freer ones.
It would be helpful for the City to say more specifically what was useful and less useful in the project. What led to actual construction or implementation? The summary in the Council agenda is vague. Again, we'll come back to this later.
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| Part of the summary in the Council packet |
In good news/bad news, the City proposes to apply for Federal "Safe Streets and Roads for All Program" grants to fund a Vision Zero Plan and to implement Twenty is Plenty.
That's great news!
But the City also says, "Staff estimates the total cost to develop a Salem Vision Zero Plan and implement a '20-is-Plenty' Program could be as high as $3 million." And rather than seeing these as any core function of the City, they are framed up as an extra, in need of supplemental funding. I know the budget is crunched now, and it is reasonable to seek out these funding sources. Still, framing them this way also gives the City an out. Something to watch.
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| Speed radar on High Street at Bush Park |
Council also looks to adopt the Neighborhood Traffic Management Plan.
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| Speed Feedback signs a level 2 measure |
There's still no comment from neighborhood associations or CATC or any of the stakeholders, and it's hard to say how much enthusiasm there is for this particular plan (as opposed to the general concept of a neighborhood traffic plan).
See Previous discussion here. At that time it seemed like an awful lot of process, cumbersome even, for what should be straightforward traffic calming measures. Neighborhood politics rather than safety might swamp the process.
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| From Technical Memo 4 |
Finally, there is a proposed "Work program for regional scenario planning as required by the new State Climate Friendly and Equitable Community rules."
The City's approach to Climate Friendly Areas remains Potemkinish, on paper more than anything. They are really, really depending on the notion of "potential," using wild estimates for what might, could, maybe happen in the CFAs.
But the goal for CFAs is for actual redevelopment. Things can be a stretch, they should be a stretch, but they should also be more plausible and probable. The City is not positioning us for success.
See:
- "Early Stage Plan for Climate Friendly Areas Seems Awry"
- "Real Outcomes, not Potential on Paper, is Goal for Climate Friendly Areas"
Much of the Scenario Planning will involve transportation:
Staff anticipates that the new regional scenario planning work will focus on transportation changes, including current and future investments in active transportation, fleet and fuels, transit, pricing, parking management, education and marketing, and roads. Specifically, the planning process will establish regional performance targets and local performance measures that Salem will incorporate into its Transportation System Plan.
It'll be interesting to see how this project coordinates with, or stands in tension to, the CFA designation process.
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| LA Times on Water and Fire (earlier this month) |
2 comments:
Safe Routes submitted comment in favor of the Vision Zero and Twenty is Plenty grant app.
West Salem NA had some suggested edits in the Neighborhood Traffic Plan. They suggest it doesn't incorporate new power for local speed limit designation, and also misses the opportunity to be more proactive about requiring traffic calming in new developments from the start.
Councilors Gwyn and Hoy opposed the Vision Zero and Twenty is Plenty grant app. All others, including Mayor Hoy, supported it. Councilor Hoy thought it was a distraction from her core issue of homelessness and Councilor Gwyn seemed to think it would be a drain on City finances, and did not seem entirely to grasp that it would be grant-funded. The opposition was a little odd.
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