Final Cordon-Kuebler Plan Finally Published

About a month ago the County finally published the final report on the Cordon-Kuebler Corridor Plan. (Find it under "Transportation Plans" here.) The project website hadn't been updated since November 2022, then it was deleted from the web. Meeting notes suggested the plan had been finished early last fall. But here it is, with a February date. Maybe it needed some last-minute edits.

To supersize Kuebler Blvd and Turner Road
(Remember, a big housing project is just south of here!)

Finally out

Broadly speaking it seeks enlarge the road, and in some places to supersize it.

Alarming warming in our ocean (NY Times)

New record

Not only in the introductory "goals and purpose" section, but throughout the whole of the summary report, there are zero instances of the words "climate" or "emissions." It is wholly disconnected from the Salem Climate Action Plan. Since this is primarily a County document, and they had already telegraphed their intentions, this is not surprising, though it is still disappointing.

Driver Strikes and Kills Person trying to Cross Cordon Road

A person driving a delivery truck struck and killed a person trying to cross Cordon Road, where intersections and crosswalks are sparse, and driving speeds high. Night time visibility was likely a factor also.

Crosswalks at signalized intersections
at Gaffin and Lancaster are one mile apart

From Salem Police:

A man was struck and killed by a delivery truck Saturday evening on Cordon RD SE. 

At approximately 7:50 p.m. on December 2, the driver of a delivery van reported he had struck what he believed to be a pedestrian while traveling northbound on Cordon RD SE just south of the HW22E overpass. Salem Police personnel arrived on scene and located a deceased man off the west shoulder of the roadway. 

The preliminary investigation by the Salem Police Traffic Team shows the decedent, Kiristian Murauo, age 23, was attempting to cross Cordon RD when he was struck by the delivery van in the north-bound vehicle lane of travel. No lawful pedestrian crossing, or overhead street lighting exists in the area of the crash location.

The driver, Justin Rodriguez, age 35, remained at the scene and cooperated with investigators....

No arrest has occurred, or citation issued as the collision remains under investigation. No other information is available for release.

This is near the Amazon and Home Depot warehouses and a person might like to cross Cordon Road to the housing on the north side of it. Crosswalks at Gaffin Road and Lancaster Drive are fully a mile apart. A person might be camping also. We don't know.

But we do know that Cordon Road is completely hostile to people on foot and on bike, and with the City working to site warehouses and other new businesses in utterly car-dependent configurations on the outer side of Cordon Road (no longer any "cordon"), some people will not be driving, and this is not some isolated catastrophe. All the ingredients for future catastrophe remain, unmitigated.

• See notes on the Cordon Kuebler Corridor Study also, which is supposed to be working on making this corridor safer, but whose final public plan is overdue.
  

This post may be updated.

Cordon Road Study Thumbs Nose at Climate: At the MPO

The Policy Committee for our local Metropolitan Planning Organization meets on Tuesday the 24th, and in the minutes to last month's meeting are finally some details on the plan for Cordon Road. The Cordon Road website is not being updated, and the draft plan not yet published for public comment. It's a little weird.

Here's a map keyed to minutes from the last meeting. (The map here is a composite from materials published separately.)

South of Silverton Road widened

South of Silverton Road the study recommends full widening to four lanes.

A "hybrid" design is preferred

The recommendation for widening to four travel lanes just utterly ignores our need to reduce driving traffic in Salem.

First level Climate Goals: A 10% reduction

That the study was going to ignore climate was strongly implied from the start:

• "Cordon-Kuebler Corridor Study Already Hinders Climate Goals" (2022)
• "Our CAP calls for Supporting Alternative No. 3 in Cordon-Kuebler Corridor Study" (2022)

They also sprinkle in several roundabouts.

Cordon Road Update: at the MPO

The Policy Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Organization, SKATS, meets today, Tuesday the 26th.

Project site hasn't been updated lately

The main item of interest on the agenda is an update on the Cordon/Kuebler Corridor Study. Unfortunately, there's still no public review draft on the Cordon plan published, nor any materials in the meeting packet. So there's much to say yet.

The reason the City was advertising for a planner

Much less important, but interesting to note, was detail that the former City transportation planner with a focus on biking and walking projects had joined what might be the City's favorite consulting firm for transportation projects, one that would reliably deliver "mild" rather than "spicy."

Our CAP calls for Supporting Alternative No. 3 in Cordon-Kuebler Corridor Study

The Cordon-Kuebler Corridor study just opened a second online open house.

There's a lot of detail, but if we take our Climate Action Plan seriously, Salemites should strongly support a framework based on Alternative No. 3.

There are two other alternatives, but they are very much in a 20th century and autoist mode.

Summary cross-sections (red, yellow added)

The framing associated with the third alternative is unfortunate and skeptical: Look at this hard goal we have set. But if you really want to, we can try.

The mode shift goal in the third alternative

But a different framing, one with a climate lens, might say, here is our mode shift goal and VMT reduction goal, which alternative helps us get there?

Look! Our CAP has the same 10% reduction

As it happens, in Scenario No. 1, our Climate Action Plan contains a very similar goal for a 10% reduction in car driving and traffic volume.

Summary assessment on function (red, yellow added)

That is our policy goal, and the framework in Alternative No. 3 is most consistent with that.

We should manage the whole of the Cordon-Kuebler corridor to that goal.

We should adopt some version of Alternative No. 3. That's the nutshell.

Here are some other considerations.

Open House and Survey Commences on Cordon Kuebler Study

The County's published the first survey and open house for the Cordon-Kuebler Corridor Study, and it's a little awkward.

It's a map and as I used it, I first went to the pushpins on the top navigation. It's really structured around an atomic notion of discrete hotspots that require attention.

The survey is a map

It also requires agreeing with "terms and conditions," but they didn't display them. Who knows what you might be agreeing to, and what level of privacy this offers. It is, after all, a third party website. These seem to offer new modes of engagement and ways to gather and analyze information, but they also represent leaky privacy.

The Terms and Conditions are not "set out below"

The survey itself was concealed a little in what looked like a map legend on the left side navigation in green.

No. 4 is pretty autoist

Some of the questions are more-or-less mode neutral, but some of them seem biased for car travel.

Cordon-Kuebler Corridor Study Already Hinders Climate Goals

The City's teased the first Open House on the Cordon-Kuebler Corridor Study, which will start on the 23rd.

The study area in teal

The whole is classified a "parkway" and currently intended for four auto travel lanes and high speed as a near-highway. This study is very likely merely to refine that and also to green it with a multimodal wash. At the moment, it does not appear consistent with our climate goals.

Current City of Salem Parkway standard in TSP

The "parkway" classification calls for
four auto lanes and highway auto speeds
(photo from project site, comments added)

The City frames it up as "planning for future growth" and improving "current conditions, safety, and capacity concerns." The post is very popular with lots of sharing and comment. The algorithm selects "Cordon road need to be a 4 lane road with middle turn lanes and not reducing the speed limit" and puts this comment at the top. At a glance, all but one comment share this basic frame. A need to widen Cordon is an article of faith for many.

via FB

However, now that we know the proportion of emissions from driving, and we know we need not just to electrify the fleet but also to reduce total auto miles driven, it makes no sense to plan for this large capacity increase with the old assumptions.

City Council, February 8th - Transportation and Climate

There's not a lot on Council agenda for Monday, but a couple of items show that we remain misaligned in our climate talk and our climate walk.

Front page, summer 2019

The Mayor announced the Council appointments to various regional bodies, and in that list is a renewal of Councilor Lewis on our regional transportation planning and coordination group, the Metropolitan Planning Organization. Over on FB last month there was some criticism of Councilor Lewis' 20th century autoism, skepticism on climate, and discussion of making a different appointment to the MPO.

If the City of Salem is serious about climate and making the necessary changes to our transportation system, Councilor Lewis may not be not best suited to represent Salem. On previous debates over the Salem River Crossing and on a Goal 7 in the RTSP, Councilor Lewis has had difficulty representing the formal City position and has free-lanced a little, undermining the formal City stance. There is reason to think he will not advocate very forcefully for new climate initiatives or for projects that better align with our climate goals. Council should consider overriding the Mayor and making a different appointment (and to MWACT also), someone who is more passionate about climate and about transportation for the 21st century.

But there are formal, institutional problems also.

Summary of Cordon Kuebler Study
in draft MPO Work Plan
(not in the Council agenda)

Also on the agenda is an intergovernmental agreement for the Cordon Kuebler Corridor Study.

The ultimate cross section for this corridor is intended to include four travel lanes, a landscaped median with turn pockets, and a multi-use path. This planning study will help prioritize future investments in this corridor and identify management strategies to promote safe and efficient operation for all modes of transportation.

But there is nothing about climate here, and there are very real questions whether any expansion to "four travel lanes" will induce more travel, induce more carbon pollution, and be inconsistent with our climate goals. It's all premised on assumptions for more driving. Any "multimodal analysis" is very much a side matter. The basic frame for the study is wrong, inadequate to our 21st century needs.

Our most recent GHG assessment:
It's still the cars

We say we are engaged in a Climate Action Plan, but our policy actions yet are often misaligned. 

This is not to say that the City should not engage the Cordon Keubler plan, but it is to say that our engagement should be more critical and steer it to include greater consideration for climate. Right now this is not coming from the MPO, which remains resistant to thinking about climate, and the City should lead on this. It is important also for the City to align policy actions like this more strongly with our more general words on climate. We need to start doing what we say we are going to do.

Safe Routes to School, Cordon Road, Draft 2021 TIP on Agenda at MPO

The Technical Advisory Committee for our MPO meets next Tuesday the 10th, and there are a few things to note in passing.

Last month at the February meeting they got updates on several planning projects, and one of particular interest is the Cordon Road plan.

Walking is a problem - February 2020

Last month a driver hit a person walking and you might also remember last year the horrific, high speed crash involving Christmas Tree workers.

End of November last year

The project will have a heavy emphasis on capacity and speed, but it needs also to include safety and provision for people on foot and on bike.

Update on the plan

Shifting to the current agenda, more happy to note are a couple of things in the Safe Routes update.

Why a Beltline Concept for the Bridges was Eliminated

With Councilor Andersen's proposal for a Work Session on the SRC adopted and in motion, in some quarters there is new talk of trying to build support for a beltline concept with bridges farther north and south.

River crossing at Lockhaven (1984, from below)

Such a plan has its own problems, and it's worth thinking a little about them. One set of problems arose through several planning processes and analyses, and accounts for why it did not appear in the draft Environmental Impact Statement among the vetted, formally recognized Alternatives. A different set of problems would not necessarily be recognized by any traffic study, and instead is more of a consideration about housing and land use, something that a Comprehensive Plan would address. Of course, they really are linked, not separate!

A Beltline doesn't Solve Traffic

You might have seen this "Salem Beltline" map recently. 

This concept may be from 1979 - via Facebook

It dates the concept back to a 1979 SATS Study (SATS being a predecessor of SKATS). The 1973 Comprehensive Plan does not show a beltline. It would be nice to find the earliest instance of it. It could date earlier than 1979. The relevant documents are mostly not archived publicly online, so here we will just sketch an outline. (And definitively establishing its origin isn't important just now.)

Proposed Maple-Winter Bikeway Leads Area TGM Grant Applications

You already knew about the Bike Boulevard project. But there are a couple more applications from area governmental agencies in the works for Oregon "Transportation and Growth Management" project grants. (Complete list here.)

From the Parkway to Court Street

 But first, the official summary on the City's $110,000 bike boulevard request:

The Winter-Maple Family-Friendly Bikeway is identified as a Tier 1, high priority project in the Salem TSP. While the general alignment for this Bikeway has been approved, specific operational and signage improvements are necessary to create a safe and convenient special route for riders of all ages and abilities. Design considerations will include managing traffic volumes and speeds, addressing specific bicycle and pedestrian safety issues, intersection treatments, neighborhood livability, and access to destinations. This project will result in proposed amendments to the Salem TSP which will make the recommended improvements eligible for funding and enable the City to advance projects to final engineering and construction

The application focuses on crossing treatments, and notes that there are 32 intersections, with 4 major arterials, 3 minor arterials, 6 collectors, and 19 local streets. The City of Keizer wrote a letter of support, but since "parkway" is not included in this list of 32, the intersection of Cherry and Salem Parkway may not be included.

Interestingly, traffic calming or traffic diverters are not discussed. It also says "the project will also include a slightly larger secondary project area to ensure that speed and volume management treatments do not result in higher volumes and speeds on neighboring streets." There's a little bit of have your cake and eat it too here perhaps. A recent study in Portland showed that significant speeding remains a problem on their bike boulevard network. Additionally, the City of Salem has shown a striking lack of interest in a 20mph speed limit on neighborhood streets, and the application makes no mention of using this tool, either. This stance on the car traffic side of the equation bears watching and may be a sign that the resulting bike boulevard design could still be on the timid side with bike traffic insufficiently prioritized and protected. Are we really going to make something on which parents will feel comfortable sending their kids on their own? Or is this going to be a design that ends up mainly just serving more experienced people on bike, the commuters and recreational cyclists who are already using this route?

The others?