Bike Club Publishes Letter to Mayor and Notes on New Advocacy for Safe Streets

With the September newsletter, the Salem Bicycle Club strikes a new tone of urgency in calls for safer urban streets.

September Spokes

This represents a new level of interest for the club and should be noted! Historically this kind of local, urban advocacy has not been a strong emphasis for the club.

The tone and focus may be the result of club politics, however, and it will be interesting to see if the tone evolves. 

Reasonably they center the death of Marganne Allen, but they also pivot away from the Police coverup that followed an instance of a law enforcement officer apparently speeding and blowing a stop sign. They focus instead on a call for investing in safer road design.

Included in the newsletter is a letter to Mayor Hoy, who in the 2010s had served on the board of the club and even been Vice President of the club.

It has been a little disappointing to see, by what the Mayor has chosen to say and not say, more apparent sympathy for the Police coverup than for Marganne Allen. The same was true for the City Manager, who has conspicuously joined Salem Bike Vision on at least one ride. They were taking sides, and the side did not look very much like protecting people on bike.

• See in particular the information at Salem Reporter in "New details emerge on how Salem police managed DEA crash information"
  

The club's communications suggest that they see a real opportunity to improve that intersection. They apply the general and true observation, "Salem roads were not designed for bicycles," and apply it specifically to this intersection, saying "We are requesting the City of Salem make it a priority to identify and implement changes to improve the safety of this intersection...." They frame the cause of crash as primarily a problem of infrastructure.

In their pivot, they minimize that the driver appears to have been speeding by not just a little but by a very significant amount; was not driving prudently for neighborhood, local street conditions; blew a stop sign; and then participated in an apparent coverup. It was a cop! You expect better from a law enforcement professional.

Today, in fact, the driver was charged with criminally negligent homicide, placing fault squarely on the driver and his actions. (Hopefully qualified immunity will not derail justice.)

• See at Salem Reporter, "DEA agent charged in cyclist's death."
  

It would be interesting to know what specific changes the club would make to the intersection. It has not seemed like a strong candidate for a redesign or countermeasures, but maybe someone will see something new.

High Street southbound at Mission:
"Local traffic only"

The one change for the High Street corridor we've argued for here is traffic diverter near Cross/Lincoln/Leffelle/Howard to impede users of the "High Street bypass" and return High Street to local traffic only. The City has a small sign on the signal standard, but it is inconspicuous, and nothing about the actual road design enforces it.

The countermeasures that have seem warranted would be for calming traffic on High Street.

• Most recently, and with links to previous notes, see "SCAN Floats Advisory Bike Lanes for High Street" (2020)
  

And just as cars might need calming on High, equally bikes, especially battery-assisted ones, might need calming in some places also. In another note on the crash in the newsletter, a club member writes:

I have often rolled down that High Street hill without pedaling or breaking, easily reaching speeds more than 20 mph at the bottom (where users on Leslie have a stop sign).

Well...There's an advisory 15mph speed sign there!

Heading south on High Street near crest of hill

A slower speed right there is prudent for people on bike also, even though it is annoying to brake on the downhill side. 

It had been a real worry that once any details from the investigation are made public, they would focus on any biking speed over 15mph downhill, and give insufficient attention to a driver speed of 35mph (or more) and blowing a stop sign on Leslie. The charging revealed today by Salem Reporter suggests a Grand Jury was not interested in the downhill speed.

Even so, what would you do on Leslie? It's stopped every block between Commercial and Church, so it really takes an effort to build up the kind of speed the driver had. Chicanes, diverters, or other calming elements seem superfluous (and diverters or medians also difficult with the nearby one-way couplets). A more visible kind of bike lane on High Street would not have mitigated the high speed the driver had already built up on the short segment of Leslie.

Again, perhaps the club will have more to say later.

Still, questions on this particular intersection do not at all qualify their general point. They cite People for Bike's network analysis and corresponding low rating for Salem. They are right that the City has not been very passionate about improving safety for those traveling outside of automobiles in any systematic way or building up non-auto travel as a meaningful primary mode of travel (as distinct from some fringey "alternative mode" that only the weirdos use).

• See "Salem Continues to Rank Poorly in Latest People for Bikes Rating"

Somewhat related, and is convenient to mention here, over at our Strong Towns group, they comment on the Portland Strong Towns' group project to advocate for bollard placements. Strong Towns national had picked it up and praised it.

via FB

As it happens, BikePortland had a story this week about a hit-and-run crash (since deleted for privacy concerns) on a bridge over I-84 near the east edge of the Lloyd Center area. The plastic "delineator" wands defining the bike lane area were wholly insufficient:

The driver crossed over the bike lane, knocked over several plastic flex-posts, and the right front bumper of their car sent the bike rider flying into the air.

Earlier this summer a driver hopped the curb and killed Librarian Jean Diaz while she waited at a bus stop alongside the street.

Instead of protecting those outside of cars, our road engineering and design standards continue to optimize for forgiving driver errors, protecting cars and those inside of cars.We don't install bollards because we seemingly want to protect paint and finish rather than people.