City Council, July 24th - Salem Heights Ave and 12 Foot Lanes

On Monday Council will see the refinement plan for Salem Heights Avenue, a collector street that during the Wren Heights approvals process had generated a great deal of criticism and concern with speeding and safety. The street lacks sidewalks and bike lanes and does not meet current standards.

With interest in preserving existing trees, it is not surprising a multi-use path rather than bike lanes and sidewalks were preferred.

Multi-use path is preferred

As a collector street Salem Heights serves few apartments and mainly serves people living in single detached houses. The average daily traffic is more like a local street than a collector. 

Count range for collector streets

Traffic counts have it at about 1,500 car trips, and the City gives the range of collector streets at 1,600 to 10,000. 

It's really going to serve local travel mainly, and whatever local residents think is best seems right.

Problem of speeding (red, yellow added)

There is also a speeding problem, and the Refinement Plan addresses only the problem of walking and rolling. It does not contemplate any changes to the road for traffic calming.

 In particular, the City appears to be sticking with 12-foot car travel lanes, and these are much too wide. 10-foot travel lanes should be sufficient. Other calming measures might have been discussed also.

The Salem Heights Plan might have coordinated with the brand new Neighborhood Traffic Management Plan, for example.

Countermeasures in new
Neighborhood Traffic Plan

That Plan has a list of traffic calming countermeasures for just such "residential collectors." Why Salem Heights wasn't run through this analysis and program is baffling.

The only time the Neighborhood Plan
is mentioned in the Salem Heights Plan

A plan for calming also could have anticipated a forthcoming Vision Zero safety plan and Twenty is Plenty speed plan. This is a real omission. 

So this plan is much less than it might have been.

It is interesting to consider the Refinement Plan also in light of the debate on McGilchrist. 

There was much more public process on Salem Heights and no plan on McGilchrist was ever presented to Council. And as we've argued here, multi-use paths on busier streets will actually bring conflicts between users and user types. The sidewalkification of biking is problematic. On a low-volume street like Salem Heights it doesn't matter much, but on higher volume streets it will.

Most recently, and with links to the Wren Heights discussions, see:

• Salem Heights Proposals offer Bike Lanes and Sidewalks, but no Taming of Speed
• And with recent pictures, "Checking in on Wren Heights and Salem Heights"
  

Council will also hear an appeal on approvals for 436 apartments at Doaks Ferry and Orchard Heights. The appeal seems a little squishy. Mostly the West Salem Neighborhood Association seems to want a forum to "propose constructive remedies for consideration as additional conditions of approval," mainly on tree preservation and Wilark Brook.

See previously, with further links to a decade's notes on the parcel, which joined the first and only instance of Neighborhood Center Mixed Use zoning a decade ago (now it is MU-II):

• "City Council, May 22nd - Apartments near Doaks Ferry and Orchard Heights"

Once there is more detail on WSNA's appeal, their critique, and also "constructive remedies," there might be more to say.