Conversation around Raised Crosswalk Highlights need to De-Stroadify

Over at our Strong Towns group they've got a good conversation going about an apparent refusal by the City to consider a raised crosswalk right at a middle school. This illustrates our problem with unsafe lawful speed, and our problem with looking at system/corridor speeds vs spot speed.

via FB

A raised crosswalk at the school would be a terrific and valuable thing!

You might recall back in July the City's application for funding from the State's Safe Routes to School Infrastructure program:

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.

So it's not like the City's refusing to do anything here, but the further upgrade to a raised crosswalk would offer additional traffic calming. This whole stretch of Pringle Road/Battle Creek Road desperately needs to be reconceived as a neighborhood street, even if it remains a minor arterial. You will remember its place in the debate over the Meyer Farm project. Pringle/Battle Creek is no longer some semi-rural sub-urban quasi-highway. It needs to be destroadified!

Fate of 757 Center Street Italianate a little Careless

Well damn. The paper has a note about a gas leak downtown, and it's related to the demolition of one of the great mystery houses downtown.

Italianate detail (2011)

The house was clearly quite old, its Italianate detail from the 1870s or 1880s. Citing county records, the paper dates it to 1873.

It had been remodeled a lot, was shabby, and increasingly out of place on Center Street and the parking lots.

Maybe it could have been moved and restored, but maybe it was too far gone.

And it might already have been moved at least once.

757 Center St on 1895 Sanborn

The 1895 Sanborn map does not show a house on the alley with the same footprint. So it was not built there, and must have been moved.

Over the years some basic research never turned up much about it, resolving this was not a high priority, and it remained a mystery. Now it might permanently be a mystery!

Hopefully the wreckers saved/are saving trim, fixtures, original windows, anything that might be salvaged and reused.

This is not the kind of old house that demands to be saved, but it's a kind of old house to which we ought to give more care and attention in the process of demolition. It deserved a better send-off.

Public Comment Calls for more Attention to Speed and Speeding in draft Safety Plan: At the MPO

This summer Wes Marshall's book, Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation System, came out.

via the former Twitter

One of its themes was the way safety is absorbed into and equated with congestion relief. High congestion equals low safety; low congestion and free flow equals high safety.

The old bromide, Killed by a Traffic Engineer

At the MPO last month a Salem transportation planner articulated just this notion, which is also a policy of appeasement. The driver stuck in traffic is on this view the safety problem. We must appease drivers in any hint of congestion and make it easier to go faster. The most dangerous thing, the thing to be avoided nearly at all costs, is the pissed off driver.

Rewarding aggressive, bullying driving

By contrast, in a preliminary review of public comment on the draft Transportation Safety Action Plan being presented to the committee on Tuesday, "the majority noted that reducing speeds on the roads is the main factor in creating safe travel...most felt that the plan does not address safety and speeding enough."

Its focus was not on drivers irritated by congestion. Its focus was on drivers going too fast.

More focus on speed and speeding please

Speed and speeding are not the same, and more attention should also be given to the lethality of legal, posted 40mph speed. With the way we enforce traffic laws, we tolerate an ostensibly banal level of speeding up to 50mph on such a road.

Why is this induced, supposedly licit behavior, not also considered "risky driving behavior"?

We really need to face more squarely the tension, even contradiction, between a primary frame of "congestion relief" and a primary frame of "safety."

Ticky-Tack and Smallplex: Kamala Harris' Childhood Homes in Berkeley

A San Francisco Bay area housing advocate this week called the ticky-tack, smallplex childhood homes of Vice President Kamala Harris the "log cabins" of today. They were drawing a comparison between the way a shabby, very basic form of housing has been romanced in 20th century patriotic legend, our American myths of origin, but also inverting that, saying we should take modern equivalent forms of housing more seriously and value them.

via Library of Congress

That is worth thinking about!

via Bluesky

From the thread:

Kamala's first home in Berkeley on Regent Street was a 1940s stucco box. By the time her family moved in in the 1960s, it was already an older building, and would likely have been one of the cheapest places to live in the city....

Kamala's second home in Berkeley, a 5-story "ticky-tacky" (a type of building that's the ancestor of today's 5-over-1's) at 1945 Milvia would have been a modern new building when she lived there. At that point, her mother had graduated and gotten a research job.

Today, located close to jobs and transit, and with rent control that keeps rent stable, these 4-5 story ticky-tacky apartments remain popular with recent graduates in the East Bay who now have a decent income but still need to save money to afford living here.

After the 1970s, Berkeley voters banned both new 3-story boxes and the 5-story ticky-tackys, and as a result, soon found itself in a housing shortage, just as the student population shifted towards having more immigrants and their children, creating today's housing crisis.

Driver Fatally Injures Person Walking in Crosswalk on Lancaster Drive

On Wednesday the 14th at midday a driver on Lancaster Drive fatally injured a person on foot in a crosswalk.

A full set of marked crosswalks on
Wolverine and Lancaster

From Salem PD:

A Salem woman fell victim to a vehicle collision on Wednesday morning.

At 11:40 a.m. on August 14, callers reported a pedestrian was struck at the intersection of Lancaster DR and Wolverine ST NE by a sports utility vehicle (SUV).

The preliminary investigation done by the Salem Police Traffic Team determined the SUV driver was in the dedicated left turn lane waiting to make a left turn. After the traffic signal cycled, the pedestrian began crossing eastbound within the marked crosswalk when the SUV driver initiated the left turn, striking the pedestrian.

The pedestrian, identified as Teresita Telesfora Millard, was transported to Salem Health with critical injuries. The driver remained at the scene and cooperated with the investigation.

The 67-year-old Millard succumbed to the injuries she sustained in the collision on Saturday afternoon, August 17.

The driver, identified as Mario Alberto Ortiz, age 53 of Salem, was initially cited for failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, having no operator's license, and driving uninsured. With Ms. Millard’s death, the incident remains an active case and, as with all significant investigations, will be forwarded to the Marion County District Attorney’s Office for review upon completion.

The incident is Salem’s sixteenth traffic fatality of the year. In 2023, the Traffic Team investigated 12 fatal collisions that resulted in 13 deaths.

Since there are four left-turn pockets here, it's not clear where Ortiz started the turn and in which crosswalk Millard was walking. As a commenter suggests, the north crosswalk is most likely, but the south one is also possible, though less probable.

Additionally this is a key intersection for the high school, a medical clinic, and Family Building Blocks, and people on foot should be an obvious priority.

A Caution on Cherriots EV Mania

Today's front page has a story about the new EV buses going into service on the Lancaster route.

Front page today

Salem Reporter yesterday also had a story.

But the hype and EV mania is a little misplaced. The EV buses themselves are not bad, but the emphasis is wrongly placed with them.

From Salem Reporter:

In January this year, Salem Reporter reported that Cherriots received federal money through the “Low-No” emissions grant in 2020, 2021 and 2023. The grants amounted to $22.7 million and, in addition to the district’s investments, funded the purchase of buses and charging stations.

In a grant application, the agency said one electric bus would decrease Cherriots’ annual energy use by 5,234 gigajoules, equal to 87 years’ worth of gas for an average American car.

What matters is not so much the energy use and emissions of the Cherriots fleet, but is the energy use and emissions represented by drive-alone trips not taken. 

Riders and boardings matter more.

Marble Reliefs by Frederic Littman may Finally Reappear after years in Storage

Back in 2017 when the Belluschi Bank was demolished (and Belluschi Crater left, since there were no immediate plans for redevelopment), the wrecking team did salvage the reliefs of Frederic Littman and save them for future reinstallation.

Hop Harvest on the now-demolished Belluschi Bank,
relief by Frederic Littman (2013)

The reliefs formerly along Liberty Street (2013)

After languishing in storage for several years, there is new talk they might reappear!

On Wednesday the 14th the Public Art Commission meets, and in last month's minutes was discussion of them:

Kathy De Rosa from Deacon Development discussed the preservation and potential relocation of eight marble reliefs created by Frederick Littman. These reliefs represent different Oregon industries and were originally part of a bank building that was demolished in 2016. Deacon Development is in the design phase for new projects on High Street and Liberty Street in downtown Salem and is considering how to incorporate these reliefs into the new buildings. The reliefs, each measuring 6x5 feet and six inches thick, were carved by Frederick Littman, an influential artist and instructor at both the Portland Art Museum and Portland State University. Deacon Development has not yet closed on the property but will own the reliefs once the purchase is finalized. Commissioners expressed interest in the reliefs being integrated into Salem’s public spaces, noting their historical and artistic significance. Suggestions included incorporating them into the design of the new buildings or finding prominent public locations where they could be displayed together. There was a consensus on the importance of keeping the reliefs in Salem to preserve local history and culture. Kathy De Rosa will follow up with the city's archaeologist and the Public Arts Commission regarding potential locations and plans for the reliefs. [OE link added]

The developer at that time had not closed on the crater and former bank site, and the conversation is very preliminary and tentative. But at least it is starting!

In the packet for this month is also a memo proposing a well at the northeast corner of the intersection of Patterson and Second in West Salem for a sculpture installation.

This seems to exemplify the approach of ornamenting a slack and empty sidwalk space rather than boosting an already lively space. We should put art where we know people will see it, not where we hope people might see it!

About both, the reliefs and the sculpture well, there will certainly be more to say as plans mature.

The Public Art Commission meets on Tuesday the 14th at 3:30pm.

Renovation at the German Baptist Church and the Planning Commission

The renovated German Baptist Church on Cottage & D Streets has been in the news early this month. A week or so ago DevNW held an open house for the new housing and Salem Reporter had a note this past week, "Veterans housing opens in Grant Neighborhood."

Cottage & D (but closed the corner entry, alas)

Of much lesser importance than the facts of housing and for veterans, but interesting and significant nonetheless, are three interpretive history panels on Cottage Street.

Church building history

There's only so much you can say and show, and the panels seemed to strike a reasonable balance. The second one even hightlighted conflict, with a section "contested homelands."

Through the Donation Land Claim Act, the government allowed non-natives to "claim" lands in Kalapuya territories.

Larger site context

Still, there might be adjustments to make in future interpretive signs. David Lewis has a discussion of the problem in "Integrating Tribal Perspectives into an Oregon Trail history."

History of McKay Chevrolet Deserves more Attention

On Sunday the paper had a story about expansion by a long-time auto dealership.

August 21st, 1927

On Sunday

Even as something of a puff piece and advertiser service, it benefited from a long-time reporter, and had a short history section in it, "McKay Chevrolet opened in Salem in 1927."

August 28th, 1927

But there is so much more to say about Douglas McKay, who as Mayor, State Legislator, then Governor, and finally Secretary of the Interior under President Eisenhower, was very likely the most powerful car dealer in Salem, shaping Salem in ways we have not really surfaced and made very explicit.

Salem-Keizer Transportation Safety Plan needs more on Speed, not just Speeding

Yesterday our Metropolitan Planning Organization announced the release of the draft Metropolitan Transportation Safety Action Plan.

On Monday they will start taking comment on it.

We will have an online Open House outlining the major plan elements and asking for your feedback which will be listed here when open. The Open House runs August 5th through August 14th.

Draft Plan, August 2024

While one of its 16 recommendations is for more automated photo speed enforcement, it does not give enough attention to speed generally, including lawful, posted speed. The seed of the idea is there, but it is not developed and centered enough.

"Kinetic energy" sounds like military talk

The plan employs a "safe system" structure, which on the whole is a positive development. But it still bogs down sometimes in jargon, and this often corresponds to weakness in the analysis itself. One moment of jargon is the shift from talking about speed to "kinetic energy." From a pure scientific description of the energy in collisions this might be reasonable, but it also sounds like something borrowed from military jargon and a euphemism for warfare.

When we talk about speed and anything kinetic, we are talking about the speed of drivers and cars. We are not talking about the kinetic energy of a person on foot or even a person on bike. This jargon obfuscates, and diffuses responsibility from the drivers and the safe operation of motor vehicles onto "shared responsibility."