Sharrows on Second Street a Potemkin Bike Improvement, Gap remains to Union Street Bridge

A couple days ago the City proclaimed "West Salem’s 2nd Street NW Improvements Complete Ahead of Schedule."

Sharrow on westbound Second Street (early July)

They bragged it included "bike and pedestrian street improvements" and fostered "a more pedestrian and bike-friendly environment."

There are a few sharrows. That's it.

Better than nothing? Maybe! They could be a minor incremental improvement. But more like the minimum incremental improvement rather than something more substantial.

The crucial decision over a decade ago on Second Street was to accommodate better curbside parking, and then to fit biking into the left-over space. Bike travel was always secondary. 

In addition to the City's own decision for parking, sharrows generally are falling out of favor.

• As Strong Towns HQ, "What are sharrows worth?" They say, "Let's not waste paint on harmful sharrows."
• And at People for Bikes, "We Were Wrong About Sharrows." They say, "Sharrows do, however, accomplish something pernicious which I did not anticipate. They allow officials to take credit for doing something for bicycle safety without impacting car traffic, even though that something is next to nothing. It’s just pretending...."

Sharrows here are an inferior solution, used because the City wanted to prioritize cars, not because the City was making some great bikeway. (The recent vandalism of the intersection painting on Second Street is evidence that more traffic calming is likely necessary.)

Above all, the gap from Second Street to the Union Street Bridge path remains. ODOT's involved since Wallace Road is also a highway, OR-221, and they've been very balky and difficult, unwilling to help the City. There was a temporary crossing in 2022, which was very popular, but it led to nothing. (And we are apparently not going to talk about its success ever again.)

A Century Ago Bigfoot Appears to have Entered our Popular Culture

In yesterday's paper there was a profile on a new cheese shop.

In today's paper

The t-shirts the proprietors are wearing appear to show Bigfoot.

T-shirt detail

Bigfoot is having a mini-moment! Earlier this week the Oregonian mentioned Bigfoot.

Oregonian earlier this week

A century ago might be the very first mention in Salem papers, and it is almost certainly the first extended discussion in popular culture.

The Oregonian in fact had written about the episode in 2018, "How a 1924 Bigfoot battle on Mt. St. Helens helped launch a legend."

The afternoon paper here in 1924 picked up the story and gave it way more attention here than the morning paper. 

July 14th, 1924

But the afternoon paper was also very skeptical, calling it an instance of "the annual fake."

Speeding is the Baseline in Congestion Analysis: At the MPO

The Policy Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Organization, SKATS, meets today the 23rd at noon, and there are just a couple of short notes here.

Earlier this month, SJ and NY Times

The technical committee, you may recall, started the conversation about priority areas in the next short-term plan for 2027-2032.

Completion, Safety, and Climate Friendly rules

They identified finishing projects with completion funding, more focus on safety, and better alignment with the current planning effort for climate-friendly areas.

In the discussion of congestion for the Policy Committee, they also conceded that the baseline in analysis of congestion is speeding, that the "free flow" conditions against which delay, slowing, and congestion are measured assume travel above posted speeds.

Recognition that the baseline is speeding

This is good, but it's still framed up as just something small to consider in the analysis, a minor detail that doesn't really affect the larger picture, and not any fatal flaw in the whole paradigm of congestion relief. So there's still a ways to go in highlighting the contradiction and incoherence between a safety paradigm that calls for slower speeds and a congestion relief paradigm that calls for higher speeds.

The Policy Committee meets at noon today, Tuesday the 23rd. The agenda and meeting packet is at the calendar item.

Driver Kills Person walking on State Street near 47th

Yesterday a person driving struck and killed a person walking on State Street outside the City limits in unincorporated Marion County.

State Street looking west
from 47th (top) to 46th (bottom)

The release was light on details and erased the driver, employing a full "hit by car" trope with passive voice and not disclosing the name of the driver, which has been usual in releases from law enforcement.

From Marion County Sheriff:

Just before 10 AM this morning 911 callers reported a pedestrian had been struck by a vehicle on State Street near 47th Ave SE. Deputies and emergency medical services personnel responded to the scene, lifesaving efforts were attempted at the scene, tragically the pedestrian was pronounced dead at the scene.

State Street was closed between 46thAve and 47th Ave for approximately three hours while investigators from the Marion County CRASH Team processed the scene. Investigators determined a silver four-door BMW was going eastbound when the pedestrian was struck. The 53-year-old male driver remained at the scene and is cooperating with the investigation. No citations or arrests have been made at this time.

The pedestrian was identified as Michael Sissell (61) of Salem.

We offer our condolences to the family during this difficult time.

Erasing the driver, "hit by car" trope

The paper on Tuesday the 23rd just churned the press release that erases the driver and employs the "hit by car" trope.

Active verbs with a driver as agent in Salem Reporter

The story at Salem Reporter is not consistent. The story, perhaps written by a summer intern, says:

The Marion County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the death of a 61-year-old pedestrian, after he was hit by a vehicle Sunday morning in east Salem. At 9:59 a.m. a passerby called 911 to report that a pedestrian was struck by a vehicle on State Street....

But a later subhead uses active verbs, "a driver struck a man."

State Street there has multiple offset intersections, with north and south segments of 46th and 47th making a "T." There's an old crosswalk on one part of 46th and a school zone sign in between 46th and 47th. There are no sidewalks, only the shoulder, and legacy 20th century paint-only bike lanes. State Street appears to be signed for 35mph here.

The Sheriff release says nothing about the person trying to cross the street or walking on the shoulder or anything about where they were walking. It says only the driver was eastbound on State Street.

Right-sized to three lanes

State Street is scheduled for a partial urban upgrade near here. Originally the County wanted to widen it to five lanes, and it was scaled back to a three-lane configuration with two car travel lanes and a center turn lane. It would also get a sidewalk on the south side. The project terminated at 46th and may not extend east of that where the crash occurred. But work at the former mushroom plant will make some changes also.

This post may be updated.

Back in 2015 we said "troubling"
but really, how troubled are we?

Killed in 2024

• Robert Duane Marshall (Center and High)
• David Henten Stockam (Mission Street near I-5) 
• Randall Dale Wilson (Rickey Street)
• Lois Marie Randall (Liberty Street NE)
• Patricia Ann Estrada (Edgewater on-ramp to Highway 22)

Killed in 2023

• Marganne Allen (biking on High Street)
• Julia Aubrey Wade (on Lancaster Drive)
• Adam Joy (biking on Wallace Road near Wheatland)
• Michael Scott Campos-Kegley (on Chemawa Road)
• John Alvin Schwiewek (on Turner Road)
• Ronald Bert Olbekson (Lancaster Drive) and Jose Romero Cruz (Highway 22 near Doaks Ferry)
• Kiristian Murauo (Cordon Road)
  

Killed in 2022

• George Heitz and Moira Hughes (inside their own home)
• Jowand Beck, Luke Kagey, Joe Posada III, and Rochelle Zamacona (camping on Front between Union and Division)
• Unknown person (on Cordon Road)
• Unknown person (on Lancaster Drive)
• Unknown person (on Lancaster Drive)
• Charles Dwayne Hatfield (I-5 in Linn County)
• Wesley James Crossman (RR)
• Vince Edward Fouts (Woodmansee Park lot)
• Cassandra Sullivan (I-5)
• Cynthia Lynn Perry Rizzo (Sunnyview Road)
• Kelly Joseph Fields (Cordon Road)
• Michael Ernest Summers (I-5)
• Denise Marie Vandyke (State and High)
• Linda Louise Wisher (Madrona Ave)
  

Killed in 2021

• Unknown person (I-5 and Market Street interchange)
• Rachel Bunting (while operating a bus for Cherriots)
  
• Blake Saville (on bike)
• Christian Kennedy (on Silverton Road)
• Galina Dvorskaya (south Commercial)
• Marlene Moreno (downtown crosswalk)
• Becky Dietzel (on North River Road)
• Unknown person (on Church St downtown)
• Aleta Pierre-Kelly (Mission Street)
• Eileen Johnson (on bike)
• Unknown person (on bike crossing Salem Parkway)
• Anthony Garza (on bike, crossing I-5)
• Christine Klug (on I-5)
• Samuel Lannigan (Lancaster Drive)
  

Killed in 2020

• Jaime Le Ann Hall (on skateboard) 
• Sharon Pritchard
• Mario Lopez-Lopez (walking a bike)  
• Unknown person via SJ (on I-5 near Market St)
  
• Andrew Otho Polston (biking on Windsor Island Road)
• Jolene Braasch Berry (on bike)
• Richardo Morales Avila (in McMinnville)
• Octavious Calloway (on I-5 near Market St)
• Selma Pierce
• Hermilo Mata Jr.
• Unknown person (on mobility scooter) 
  

Killed in 2019

• Marshall Leslie
• Linda Adamson (south Salem) and Stephanie Ashford (biking on Lakeside Drive)  
• Joseph Rodriguez (Lakeside Drive)
  
• Jason Libel (on bike)
• Josephine Watkins
• Rodric Kenyon Drolshagen 

Killed in 2018

• Kirk Daniel Wilcox
• Jack Rice
• Alexandria Tereshka  
• Daniel Tibbot

Killed in 2017

• Srabonti Haque
• Sandra Hill
• Shatamera Pruden

Killed in 2016:

• Olivia Stroup
• Jaren Nash  
• Alex Armes
• Anthony Earnest  
• Baxter Harrell
• Unknown (just outside Salem)
• Bradley Goad (in Silverton)

Killed in 2015:

• James Alton
• Caroline Storm
• William Hatch 
• Travis Lane
• David McGregor  
• Michael and Christine Crossland 
• Rebecca Schoff

City Council, July 22nd - Missing Architectural Details and the Final Boise Corner

Reed Opera House lost an ornament
It was later restored by a grant program

As Urban Renewal Agency, the City proposes to fund a "missing historic architectural grant program."

The City says:

In 2003, the RDURA [Riverfront Downtown Urban Renewal Area] offered a Missing Historic Feature Grant. This funded one project, which was successfully completed, and replaced an architectural feature that had been removed from the Reed Opera House Building. The goal of repeating this special grant is to show continued support for the preservation of downtown historic resources, and their contributions to the community.

In the FY 2025 Budget, the Agency Board approved $200,000 in funding for grants to replace missing historic architectural features that have been removed over time from downtown historic buildings. This is being called the Missing Historic Architectural Grant program and it is anticipated that these funds will support one or two grants.

The Historic Landmarks Commission, with support from staff, will be on point to review and select one or more projects to receive this grant funding. The application process and project criteria are being finalized and will align with several of the existing Riverfront-Downtown Urban Renewal Area (RDURA) Capital Improvement Grant guidelines. To determine if a proposed project will meet historic requirements, anyone who may want to apply for a grant will need to schedule a meeting with City of Salem Historic Preservation staff. Application submittals, review, and grant recipient selection is proposed to be completed winter 2024 with the goal that projects are completed by June 2025.

Adolph Block of 1880 (via Wikipedia)

There must be one or more buildings already with this in mind, and it will be interesting to learn more about them.

One that came immediately to mind is the missing cornice detail on 2/3 of the Adolph Block on State Street.

City Council, July 22nd - Safe Routes to School Better Crosswalks Grant Application

One of the items on Monday's Council agenda is an application for grant funding on two sets of crosswalk improvements near middle schools.

• Market Street NE at 15th Street NE: Install Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons (RRFB) on east leg of Market Street NE at 15th Street NE intersection, restripe existing crosswalk, install ADA ramps, additional lighting, and signage. Estimated project cost is $610,000. Serves Parrish Middle School and North Salem High School. This project ranked 15 out of 89 statewide based on [an earlier] review. 
• Pringle Road SE School Zone Improvements: Install pedestrian median island on south leg of intersection with Tiburon Court SE and Leslie Middle School driveway, construct ADA ramps, install additional overhead school zone beacon, install two variable speed zone signs. Estimated project cost is $690,000. Serves Leslie Middle School. This project ranked 37 out of 89 statewide based on [an earlier] review.

The funding would come from the $26.25 million allocation in the 2025-2026 round of the State's Safe Routes to School Infrastructure Program.

Existing crosswalk at 15th and Market, looking west

Between Barrick Field and the schools

Market Street and Pringle Road are both zoomy and have problems with speeding drivers, so the upgrades to the crosswalks will be real incremental improvements. (Market Street, of course, also needs a 4/3 safety conversation with a median island at that crosswalk.)

Teasing Lost Buildings at the Mill in August

The Mill is teasing a forthcoming exhibit on buildings lost, especially to demolition. The background image on the promo is the demolition of old City Hall.

via FB

It will be very interesting to see how they discuss themes of loss and regeneration. It will be especially interesting to see how they account for our 20th century autoism, since so many demolitions resulted in parking lots, either by design or more passively in a choice not to rebuild. The economics of maintaining and/or rebuilding are also a great factor. Will the dominant note in the exhibit be nostalgia or will it have a stronger grounding in historical urban processes?

From here the most relevant theme is waste. Demolition without replacement.

The modern facade echoes the older buildings
(CBTwo)

When the YMCA and Court Apartments were demolished in 2019, the new YMCA quickly replaced it, supplemented by the new Veterans housing across the street.

Salemites fully used and enjoyed those buildings over a century-long life. It might have been theoretically possible to restore and reuse the buildings somehow, but as a practical matter the YMCA needed a new, modern facility.

We are sad at the loss of those old buildings, but we remember much from them and toast building lives well lived and used.

And now we enjoy the new building.

Black Historic Resources Narrative points to Future National Register Nominations

Things are a little slow, and here's an interesting item from June.

Last month the State Advisory Commission on Historic Preservation met in Salem — during Make Music Day, and just two days after Juneteenth — to consider a prelude to what could be an omnibus nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, "Black Historic Resources in Oregon Outside of Portland, 1788-2002."

Prelude to new National Register Nomination(s)

The portion published to the Commission website is a narrative only, mainly the "historic context" statement with six chapters. The document is nearly 200 pages.

About this particular form, the National Parks Service, which manages the National Register of Historic Places, says

The Multiple Property Documentation Form is a cover document and not a nomination in its own right, but serves as a basis for evaluating the National Register eligibility of related properties. It may be used to nominate and register thematically-related historic properties simultaneously or to establish the registration requirements for properties that may be nominated in the future. [italics added]

Even without any list of properties or places, it's a fascinating document and worth reading as it contains an interpretation of and narrative for Black history throughout Oregon, including Salem. It starts to synthesize a lot of bits that had been published and discussed separately.

Here are the summary notes on Salem for the period in which we have the greatest interest here, 1843-1941, eras 2, 3, and 4 in the periodization of six eras. There are individual vignettes and additional materials, of course. There's much more. (Footnotes and some page breaks have been removed for clarity. If the images here are too small, read the whole thing!)

Era 2, 1843-1867

Era 3, 1868-1919

Era 3, continued

Era 3, concluded

Era 4, 1920-1941

Era 4, continued

Again, the whole is very much worth reading and we'll be returning to it as an essential resource.

More Downtown Art, Boise Building, a Lost Cemetery Database - Bits

These are mostly some older news items, but are worth notice.

New Art Downtown

The City and Public Art Commission have installed a couple more utility cabinet wraps downtown. (The first was the art of Robert Schlegel at Chemeketa and Commercial.)

Betty LaDuke, State and Front

The art of Betty LaDuke is at State and Front, by the Boise Building.

Jack McLarty, Court and Front

And the art of Jack McLarty is at Court and Front by the parking lot.

The Art Commission meets on Thursday the 10th, and they are also talking about three more sculptural installations, two downtown and one in West Salem.

Remember the Heat as the MPO Starts Thinking about the MTIP

In Saturday's front page piece about a record-setting potential for five consecutive days of 100 degree weather, the tone seemed more about gee-whiz excitement at breaking the record than warning about the danger. Above all, climate change and the probability of more heat waves like this was wholly absent from the piece.

The paper ignored climate

By contrast, the day before in a piece from OPB, the new agency head at the Department of Water Resources was clear on climate, and specifically pointed to "policymakers and agency leaders."

The day before, a story on water centered climate

Even today, climate is directly adjacent in a national story off the wire, but a little denied in the local coverage by the trope of water play and fun.

City Council, July 8th - Conservation Area at Former General Hospital Site

Has the City made some definite progress on the mystery of the Asylum Cemetery?

Project location, with site context notes added

At Council on Monday there is a set of "amendments to the purchase and sale agreements between the City and Salem Health and between the City and Green Light-Home First, LLC for the sale of the former Salem General Hospital site."

In addition to using bond funds temporarily on a pass-through for the sale, the amendments "allow the City to retain ownership of a 50,000 square foot Conservation Area and develop a park/memorial on the site within the 10-acre property."

Ordinarily the Staff Report would include a separate map of the "conservation area," but it is kept a little inconspicuous on the general site plan included as an attachment to the Staff Report. There it is identified as "archeological preservation area."

Conservation area (yellow added)

Sometimes the exact location of sensitive archeological sites are not disclosed publicly, and downplaying it might be in play here. But information on the area is in fact in the Staff Report packet. It had been part of a second phase for the housing project.

There are possibilities other than the Asylum Cemetery, too. Its significance could be a just a parcel abutting the Jason Lee Cemetery; maybe there's a seasonal waterway or something in there also. There are possibly future trees as in parkland highlighted on the site plan map. Maybe there are other people not previously buried there to remember. It's not necessarily anything related to the Asylum Cemetery. But the language of "park/memorial" is suggestive. Earlier research had suggested any burials might be west of 23rd rather than east of it as had been supposed.

This will be interesting to learn more about. (Update: See below for more.)

Previously:

• "Mystery of the Asylum Cemetery Continues" (2019)
  
• "City Council, December 4th - Redeveloping the old General Hospital Site" (2023)
  
• "Gussie Belle Brown Apartments at Former General Hospital Site in for Site Plan Review" (June)
• And on an existing memorial, the Columbarium at the State Hospital, "Alterations for Cremains Memorial Bridge Past and Future" (2014) and "Cremains Memorial called "Elegant Masterpiece" by Seattle AIA Jurors" (2014).
  

26 Townhouses approved on Brush College Road

There's an information item on a set of Townhouses approved for a parcel next to Brush College Elementary School.

Mini Traffic Circles Date from mid-1980s and were Mostly Abandoned

The Grant Neighborhood project to paint around the mini traffic circles just north of Grant Elementary School led to questions about the origin of those traffic circles and how the conversation and debate might be similar or different from our current talk.

It appears they date from the mid-80s.

February 11th, 1985

In February of 1985 the paper published a picture of one and said

Turning some neighborhood streets into virtual obstacle courses has helped solve traffic problems in other cities and would work in Salem, way the authors of the city's new Neighborhood Traffic Management Program.

The tone and focus was very much in sympathy with drivers and not with other users of the road.

An editorial followed a few days later.

February 15th, 1985

They wrote

While the proposed traffic circles and throating in Salem are modest compared with those in Eugene, these are expensive means of fending off traffic. Because of their permanence, they must not be entered into lightly. 

Such devices should suit the overall traffic pattern of the Salem community, and not just be used as a palliative to satisfy a highly vocal neighborhood.

It appears that six mini traffic circles were constructed here in 1985 and four more in 1986.

Morning Paper Serialized Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here in 1936

Back in 1936, through the fall the morning paper serialized Sinclair Lewis' novel, It Can't Happen Here.

September 9th, 1936

September 13th, 1936

In an editorial they wrote:

The Statesman starts publishing today as a serial, one of the important novels of our time, "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis. It fictionizes "America under dictatorship." We publish it not to exorcise a bogeyman; but to educate the people in the technique of politicians without scruple, and even of those who may have good purposes but endanger political security by short-cut political methods. The translation from parliamentary government to a dictatorship may be catastrophic as in Italy with the "march on Rome"; or it may be gradual as in Germany where Hitler edged into power by degrees. In this country the course would be to make the congress subservient to the executive, a mere rubber stamp for his will; to strip the supreme court of its power to invalidate laws; to weaken and then to ignore the constitutional guarantees; and finally to abolish the congress and govern by decree.

The hazard they feared was stripping the Supreme Court of its power to invalidate laws, a weakened Court, but didn't account for an activist Court with too much power.

It's hard to imagine the paper today doing anything similarly principled.

Small Intersection Improvements Throughout the City

Three recent news items highlight incremental changes that will improve safety and comfort at several intersections around town.

Crosswalk Headstart

Back in February you might recall Councilor Stapleton made a motion which included a request for "an analysis of pedestrian lead times at intersections."

Moving with an unusual alacrity, the City is not publishing any study first, but is moving directly to implement the concept, giving people in the crosswalk a head start on drivers in cars. The first phase in the south half of downtown proper will start on July 8th, and the north half in September.

This is great to see! More please!

Early start for people in crosswalks - via FB

The US Department of Transportation features a picture from Salem, at Summer and Center, on their webpage on leading intervals. Note that the walk sign is lit, and the traffic light is red. There's also a sign with "left turn yield to peds on green." The City should consider publishing a list of intersections already employing a leading interval, which at least this one near the Capitol does. There's almost certainly more of them than we know about.

Featured image with the Feds

There was another part to Councilor Stapleton's motion, an analysis of "the feasibility of reducing speed limits to 20 MPH." 

Maybe we'll get to see that also, not merely a "Twenty is Plenty" program on residential, local streets, but speed reductions on busier, bigger streets, including 20mph for downtown.

For the moment, this downtown crosswalk safety project is terrific.

Here we go Again? Forecasts for 110 Degrees Lead into CAP Committee on Monday

The National Weather Service is forecasting a legit chance at 110 degree heat for this weekend.

Forecasting a chance of 110 degree heat

The official forecasts at the center of probability are still closer to 100 degrees, but there's a real chance for more. Plenty of events with a 1/3 chance of happening still and routinely happen.

Front page today

The paper is leading with the higher number.

North Front Street Study Likely to Reveal Interesting Archeology and History

As details about the funding on the north Front Street study come out, it is interesting to consider the archeological details which will complicate it. (In good ways mostly!)

Lots of photos taken from here

One of the biggest is a millrace that ran along Division and turned the corner north onto Front Street. It's under there somewhere!

Millrace on Front Street
(Salem Library Historic Photos)

You can see its course on the 1895 Sanborn map (click to enlarge), photographed from the mill at top and building in pink on the map below.  At the time the map was drawn the race was planked. The photo shows it exposed.