McGilchrist at the Planning Commission Tuesday

The Planning Commission meets tomorrow, Tuesday the 6th, and apart from the consent calendar, they have one item only on the agenda, an information presentation on the McGilchrist project.

the agenda item

I'm not sure there's very much new to say specifically about the project, though we'll review or repeat some points. 

More interesting might be how the project is currently situated at a number of different conversations and shows how the City is or is not addressing them or making progress on them.

Communications

Unfortunately there is no Staff Report, and the agenda item links only to the new "fact sheet" and to the project website. These are canned PR items, a bit of propaganda more than contributions to the debate, very much unilaterally conceived, being units of thought pushed out to the wider citizenry.

But on social media and elsewhere citizens have already raised a number of issues, and City Staff might have been more directly responsive to those comments and critique. Merely to repeat the "fact sheet" and project web page is largely to evade those questions and to assume a sympathetic audience at the Planning Commission. Hopefully in person Commissioners and the citizenry will have good questions. 

Like Councilor Stapleton has!

via FB
(The auto-generated caption is not the best)

There are more problems with communications. Back to the Commission agenda, the link in the agenda doesn't even work!

Busted link

The new City website does not seem to have a good architecture that is easy for Staff to use in updating and convenient for citizens to find information.

Another busted link in the City calendar

It is often the case that meeting notices for neighborhood associations on the City calendar have dead links, and here is another instance on the agenda for the Planning Commission.

I think the link is supposed to be this, in a very different set of directories, /government/shaping-salem-s-future rather than /community/neighborhoods:

https://www.cityofsalem.net/government/shaping-salem-s-future/safety-and-livability-bond/mcgilchrist-complete-street-project

This was the older link that had the RAISE grant application:

https://www.cityofsalem.net/government/departments-agencies/urban-renewal-agency/urban-renewal-areas/mcgilchrist-urban-renewal-area/mcgilchrist-complete-street-project

Here they are as clickable links:

• The old page
• The new page
• The fact sheet

The City shouldn't just delete these, but should organize them in a way that makes clear which is the most recent and should be regarded as primary, and also makes that primary one easy to find.

In addition to more seriously engaging citizen comment and critique, the basic nuts and bolts of publishing City meetings, reports, and other documents deserves more attention. Flashy video clips are no substitute. There are real matters of substance in addition to matters of style and delivery in the City's communication challenges.

City Approach to Safety and Vision Zero

The fact sheet

One of the claims in the fact sheet is that the project will be "safer for all."

"safer for all"

What does "reduce adjacent arterial street volumes" mean? If reducing volumes on Madrona and Mission is what is meant, doesn't that mean an increase in volumes on McGilchrist?

And there is still the matter of intersections. Over on FB, in on a comment on design speed Planning Commissioner Slater said

[W]ith people in vehicles separated from people not in vehicles by a 5.5' planting strip, I'm not sure the difference between 30 mph and 40 mph means much.

But there is the question of turning conflicts and the way the separation reverts to conventional intersection treatments at the intersections. The planting strip helps in between the intersections, but not at the intersections themselves.

McGilchrist at 22nd

The intersection at 22nd is big, has rounded corner radii for fast turns at speed, and with the planting strips may hide people on bike when there is a green light and a driver of a car or truck wants to make a turn. The off-ramp from from the multi-use path combined with a short segment of paint-only bike will in fact create a situation where those on bike must yield for safety, since they cannot assume they will be visible, to drivers and cars passing by and potentially turning.

via Placemakers

At higher speeds people walking in crosswalks are more vulnerable also, and for a person on foot the difference between 30mph and 40mph is tremendous. When a driver makes a potentially catastrophic error to enter an intersection improperly, a slower speed can mean survival for any people struck. Drivers killed Marganne Allen and Denise Vandyke recently at intersections, for example. Speed and safety at intersections deserve more attention.

Mildred Lane and speed

Mildred Lane is a good comparison. It was built to two auto travel through-lanes and one center turn pocket. It has a history of speeding. Even though we consider that cross-section a safety improvement when we reconfigure a street or road from four auto through-lanes in a 4/3 conversion, aka "road diet," when we widen a road from two auto through-lanes and add a continuous turn lane, the new wider cross-section induces speeding.

• Most recently see with links to more discussion, "Remedy on Mildred Lane Misses Real Cause of Problem."
  

Climate and City Budgets

Actually reducing VMT, not just providing "options"

The City isn't showing yet that it is very serious about reducing VMT for a reduction in total citywide emissions. How does a new McGilchrist design actually contribute to less driving? Not just offer theoretical "options" for people to walk and bike, or even to bus, but actually reduce the number and length of driving trips. We're still accommodating traffic forecasts based on 20th century assumptions about increasing driving. When will we plan for our real needs in 2050 and 2100?

LA Times and NY Times last week

We have lots of talk right now about a structural imbalance with future deficits in City budgets, and there is not a plausible analysis for ways that new development on McGilchrist will generate property taxes to offset the capital investment and provide new revenue for the City. The Strong Towns analysis last year was flippant, but they scored some real points that the City should respond to more directly. The magnitude of drainage issues may mean the project is necessarily costly and really does require subsidy, but that is a reasonable thing to analyze and debate.

Talk or Walk?

A significant part of the debate on McGilchrist is not just on the merits of the proposed project itself, but is on ways that the project does or does not instantiate values the City professes to hold. It's a little bit of a referendum on other questions, and the City is still talking more than walking on many of them.

The ferment of the debate is frustrating to some, but there are real values in question here, and the debate and struggle seem very worthwhile.

From here the City still has not proposed a plan that properly balances:

1. Improved drainage
2. Improved safety and comfort for those walking and rolling
3. Helps induce redevelopment of long vacant parcels
   
4. Reduced overall speeds for total safety
5. Contributes to reduced VMT for our Climate Plan
6. Generates enough new property taxes to offset the cost and magnitude of the capital investment
   

The current plan addresses numbers one through three to various degrees, but so far simply ignores four through six.

Surely there is a better balance to be found, even if trade-offs mean not all can be satisfied fully and equally.

McGilchrist has been an interest for over a decade here. See previously:

• "McGilchrist and Corrals in the News" (2012)
• "Congressman Schrader: Hey Salem, How About Some Sidewalks?" (2013)
• "Kroc Center, new SSA Office, and Proposed VA Clinic all have Access Issues" (2013)
• "TIGER Grant Program to be Discussed Tuesday" (2013)
• "2 Crosswalks, 2 Driveways, 1 Set of Rails: The Epic Journey Down McGilchrist to the SSA Office" (2013)
• A note on the start of planning and the consultant contract in "City Council, November 9th - Bike Boulevard Crossings" (2015)
• First discussion of the TIGER grant application, "MPO to Consider Bridge Seismic Study, Other Projects for 2018-2023 Cycle" (2016)
• First discussion of the 22nd realignment phase, "Vetting for the 2021 - 2026 Cycle Continues at the MPO" (2019)
• On the cluster of breweries on or near McGilchrist, "Salem Brewers Call for Better Walking and Biking" (2019)
  
• The hit-and-run death of Mario Lopez-Lopez walking his bike on McGilchrist near 22nd. (2020)
• On a disagreement with Strong Towns, "Strong Towns: McGilchrist Project 'Not an Improvement'," and a response to their follow-up, "Strong Towns Still Weak on McGilchrist" (2022)
• "Cost Escalation and Overengineering Swamp McGilchrist Project" (2023)
• "City Reply on McGilchrist doesn't Advance Debate Enough" and "McGilchrist with Paint-only Bike Lanes in Places: A PS" (2023)
• "City finally Publishes Updated McGilchrist Plans" (2023)

Addendum, June 6th

In the City's new fact sheet on McGilchrist, they give a sidebar on Public Engagement.

From the Fact Sheet

They cite multiple events in 2016 and 2017 to convey an impression of a robust public process.

Cover on City application to SKATS

This is the information that circulated publicly in 2016 and 2017. It was in the application for Federal funding dated March 1st, 2016 to our Metropolitan Planning Organization. Here it was discussed in May of 2016 and there was little detail. At that time, with the lack of detail, it was reasonable to say

If awarded the project could be done really well or it could fail with ornamental sidewalks and bike lanes glued onto a 40mph arterial.

McGilchrist one of 10 projects, July 11th, 2016

In the July 2016 meeting of City Council referenced, "Council/Mayor discuss design," the sidebar really mischaracterizes the discussion. The agenda item for July 11th, 2016, was to authorize "Applications for Federal Surface Transportation Funds for Ten Projects through Salem-Keizer Area Transportation Study." It was not fundamentally a discussion of the design on that project. In fact, it was about 12 minutes of Councilors discussing prioritization and their favored projects. 

Mayor Peterson favored McGilchrist very generally

Mayor Peterson spoke for McGilchrist, but in very broad terms about business and economic development. 

In person at Council Staff showed no details of design, and none were in the prior Staff Report in the agenda packet. 

Maybe in that meeting with SEDCOR of January 2017 the City shared real details of design, but in the public meetings held by the City of Salem, detail was absent. The context suggests the City also construed "stakeholders" to mean only business interests and not customers or clients, those who might want to bike to the breweries or take the bus to the SSA office or VA clinic, any wider concept of users.

Overall, the City is overstating the quality of public engagement and the level of detail made public on the project. The City did not share project details and did not try very hard to solicit any kind of comment from a broader public in that earlier period.