Even with Evidence for Intent, Reporting on Dallas Crash Erases Driver; Note on Macy's

Even when there is clear evidence for malignant intent, our messed up autoism leads writers to employ the exonerative voice.

Erasing the driver in the exonerative voice

Mere days after the cars attacks in New Orleans and in Las Vegas, in the paper today is news of a driver facing charges of reckless endangering and reckless driving, robbery and criminal mischief, DUI, when he deliberately crashed into a Dallas convenience store. There is reason to think investigators will find evidence that it was a hate crime also.

But the headline is "truck crashes," and the caption is "a truck that drove."

Most crashes aren't accidents. This case is particularly unambiguous. Even under the most optimistic of assumptions, there is no possible way to view this as an "accident." It was intentional, an attack with the car as weapon. The first sentence of the story itself does say "he crashed a truck," but the true grammatical subject and moral agent here, the driver, should also be in headlines and captions, especially since people will only read the headline as the story circulates on social media. The exonerative voice is especially misleading and wrong here, but entirely symptomatic of our autoism. 

See previously on erasing driver.

Front page today

On the front page is news that Macy's is going to close.

The owners are talking about more "activities, events, and entertainment for people living and visiting downtown."

This could be a very great missed opportunity for more housing!

Since it has an attached parking garage, and sits in between the Center/Marion couplet, it is ideal for fully car-oriented downtown housing, perhaps the only site downtown where that is true. The City and owners should lean into this!

See "What about the Macys Block?" (2016) for more on this. As the closure details are formalized and as plans for redevelopment mature, there will certainly be more to say.

Back-in Parking Falls out of Favor in 1924

When the article earlier this week on changes to downtown parking for 2025 was posted to reddit, the conversation there was not dominated by complaint. Maybe the tide is finally turning! Several commenters were aware of the difference between a parking supply problem, which we don't have, and a parking management problem, which we do have. Our parking discourse is getting better. That's a striking change from a decade ago, when petitioners forced the City to retreat from parking reform.

Front page earlier this week

Our approach to parking is historical. Different times call for different measures; what seems best for one era is backwards in another. Sometimes what seems best is based on an outright error. The discourse is always changing. One theme from 100 years ago was a call for head-in parking. Back-in parking had been the norm.

December 10th, 1924

You could substitute "paid parking" for "back-in parking" in these discussions!

Salem is held old fashioned. Present system of parking automobiles obsolete...."I was formerly in favor of the [free parking] such as we now have in Salem, but after traveling in 30 states and hundreds of cities, I find everywhere the [paid] system of parking."

December 11th, 1924

The SJ piece briefly alluded to a half-century of free parking, but merely implied that we had had paid parking previously. (It might have been worth a longer discussion of the previous eras of parking, as well as data on actual current occupancy rates in the parkades.)

We have had yet other changes too. There is nothing immutable about our parking arrangements!

Salem Reporter on Downtown should Examine Drive-to Model

Yesterday Salem Reporter published a story on downtown health, "The problems and promise of downtown Salem."

At Salem Reporter

With the photo they highlighted, the first impression was the traffic sewer of Commercial Street at its intersection with State Street. The street was the center and the buildings a little incidental.

The story summary focused on "people coming into their stores" and the photo emphasized downtown as a drive-to destination like a mall. Driving was normative. Driving is what makes downtown.

But the story undercut a good bit of that and some other themes might have been given even more prominence.

[Dino Venti is] hopeful the housing developments downtown will bring in more foot traffic. He’s also looking forward to larger developments, including The Cannery which will add 382 apartments, a brewery, restaurants and retail north of downtown.

“I’m optimistic about downtown,” he said....

[T. J.] Sullivan said that the investments in housing downtown make him feel optimistic.

“The more people we get living downtown, the more eyes you get on the streets, the more there is a sense of safety. And the more people that are right there, for ready-made consumers for the downtown businesses,” Sullivan said. 

The most important thing for downtown is the increase in residents, in treating downtown as an actual neighborhood and not as a drive-to destination and mall.

"Foot traffic" really means foot traffic. Walking, not driving, is the key!

City Council, August 28th - Parking at the Airport

As we see real signs of our climate crisis in smoke, heat, and fire, and as we debate a municipal budget problem and a deeply contested payroll tax, it is not surprising the City's proposed use of the utility fund to finance parking lot expansion for the airport prompts questions.

Wildfire right here, Friday

Yesterday's paper

Council meets this evening, and a set of four interlocking agenda items to fund more parking at the airport looks a little odd.

• "Resolution No. 2023-26, Fiscal Year 2024 Supplemental Budget (1), increasing Airport Fund and Cultural & Tourism Fund resource and expenditure appropriation authority"
• "Purchase and Sale Agreement and lease assumption"
• "Resolution No. 2023-28 authorizing a transfer of appropriations within the City’s fiscal year 2024 budget"
• "Resolution No. 2023-27, approving an internal borrowing from the City’s Utility Fund to the Airport Fund"
  

Front page Saturday

That our Climate Action Plan contains no provision to evaluate new Council actions and decisions in terms of greenhouse gas emissions shows its designed limits. It's not a very flexible and useful policy document for novel events and future-facing decisions outside of its listed "strategies."

Silent on evaluating novel actions

In the face of the budget problems, if borrowing from the Utility Fund is no big deal, something routine, the City should have made a list of previous borrowings from the Utility Fund and the purpose of each instance. The City merely says, "the Utility Fund has maintained unrestricted reserves which have been used in recent years for other internal borrowings." A little more detail would be helpful.

The whole transaction appears to be structured so that parking rent from meters is supposed to provide an annual payment of $210,620 to replenish the Utility Fund.

But what happens when the airline follows Delta, Seaport, and others who abandoned Salem and parking demand at the airport plummets?

Some have argued that the lot and building would be an asset that could be repurposed or flipped and perhaps this is true. But the City Staff Report should discuss that as a realistic possibility.

Maybe this is a reasonable thing in light of the current commitment to the airport, but the timing and lack of detail make it look like a risky concept in many ways and it deserves more scrutiny.

Housing, Livability, and Cars: Notes on Overlay Zones and Origin of Free Parking

The role of housing lurks in the background of two items at Council, the information report on downtown parking and the formal Hearing on repealing the overlay zones.

See recently here:

• "DAB starts Discussion of Parking Schedule, Previews Council Report"
• "Mixed-Use Project on Commercial and Bush Evidence to Ditch Complexity of Overlay Zones," also with links to more discussion.
  

Here are some additional notes.

Back in August of 1977 free parking in our downtown parking district started.

August 7th, 1977

They were explicit about offering parking for shoppers: "The effort to provide more free parking in downtown Salem...is designed to offer customers the convenience of shopping malls...."

August 1st, 1977

In the lead up to it, the City's "renewal administrator," published a breathless opinion piece. "One can already feel the pulse quickening in downtown Salem...more interesting, stimulating, and just plain fun for people."

October 31st, 1976

It's all so autoist and suburban. There are essentially no residents and no homes in this conception. It's a drive-to destination for entertainment, shopping, and errands. It is not itself a neighborhood. It's for transitory amusement, for a kind of tourism. Downtown is a mall.

It exemplifies nation trends, of course, the flight from the inner city, although it's not really true to say Salem had an inner city.

An important ingredient in the hollowing out of downtown is the expansion of the Capitol Mall, of Willamette University, of the Civic Center, and of the Pringle Creek Urban Renewal Area. Families might voluntarily have moved out of those close-in neighborhoods, but our institutions and big redevelopment projects also displaced them. The loss of Piety Hill is our great image for this.

DAB starts Discussion of Parking Schedule, Previews Council Report

The Downtown Advisory Board meets tomorrow, Thursday the 22nd, and they've got a tentative schedule for more parking reform and a preview of an information report at Council on Monday the 26th.

A tentative schedule!

From the memo:

At the February 27, 2023, Council meeting, Mayor Hoy directed staff to return to Council with a plan to implement paid on-street parking in the downtown parking district and phase out the parking district tax.

At the June 26, 2023, City Council meeting, an information report will be shared with City Council outlining the on-street paid parking implementation plan that is outlined in this memo.

The Downtown Advisory Board has recommended converting the free parking district model to an on-street performance-based system of parking and elimination and/or phasing out the parking tax for several years. Ten years of downtown parking utilization studies have recommended replacement of the current Downtown Parking District model with a performance based on-street paid parking management system....

The timeline as you can see suggests it will take three years to implement. In the meantime Staff will also be recommending a reduction in the current free parking arrangement with a limit moving from three to two hours.

In order to manage the increased demand for on-street parking until such time as the on-street paid parking system is implemented, on-street time restrictions will need to be changed from three hours to two hours. Third party data collection results indicate the average on-street parking time limit is less than two hours and a change would increase available on-street parking options. [italics added]

The parking garages would remain free now, and remain free under a right-priced system.

Free parking promo - November 2020

There may be more to say in the Council preview here, as the information report to Council looks to have a little more detail - but also, the conversation might be exhausted, at least here, and there might not be more to say.

See previous notes here tagged "downtown parking."

City Council, February 27th - Civic Center and downtown Parking

Council meets on Monday, and Mayor Hoy finally makes the move to initiate right-priced parking downtown. Hooray!

The Downtown Advisory Board has been asking about it for years.

Request to move to right-priced parking last year

The Climate Action Plan calls for it.

Time for TL24 and right-priced parking!

The Congestion Relief Task Force called for it.

Congestion Relief Task Force called for it

There are so many studies and policy aims that call for right-priced parking. They all converge.

Parking Piece Shies Away from Data

It was nice to see a partial discussion of parking on the front page today.

Front page today

But it skated along the surface a little and did not investigate enough, merely reporting what people say and not asking whether claims are true.

A stronger observation than "the parking issue seems to be more perception than reality" is possible. There is data!

For example, the image for the piece focuses on Chemeketa Street, identified as a bikeway, but it never shows a parking lot or the parking area of a parking structure. This month I have walked through the Chemeketa Parkade twice, and there were many empty stalls.

Downtown is a freakin' swiss cheese of parking lots. This image is a few years old, but the general picture is accurate.

Downtown Surface Parking Lots in Red
Parking Garages in Solid Brick Red
On-street parking stalls not included
click to enlarge (1 mb total, 1874 x 1114 px)

The City also conducts parking counts. The last study I saw was from 2017, and I have not seen the City publish a more recent one. But at that time, the parking structures were only utilized about 50%. Tons of empty stalls! There is likely a newer study and count of utilization.

Our parking garages have had plenty of room

Maybe things have changed. It would be good to know more specifically what are the current utilization rates, and how they have moved in the last decade or so. How has more housing downtown affected parking permits?

In any case, our parking discourse is shifting some, and it may be we will finally build momentum for a better parking policy.

See previous notes here on downtown parking, and of course Strong Towns has lots also on the general case. A newer group, the Parking Reform Network, also has resources. And a book, Parking and the City by Donald Shoup, who originated so many of the insights on parking.

Opening Installment on Downtown in the Sunday Paper: Nostalgia and Churn

The paper's cranking up a big series on downtown. When they had announced a poll earlier this month, it seemed like they were going to stoke the parking mania, but at least in today's introductory survey and background discussion, they represented things reasonably and alluded to oversupply.

The parking issue seems to be more perception than reality, at least based on numbers. Downtown has thousands of free parking spaces with additional metered spaces.

[Jim] Vu said the free parking garages, which have hundreds of spots, are underused. People often don’t want to walk that far, not realizing if they’ve ever parked at Costco, they are walking much farther, he said.

The comparison with big box parking lots and walking distance is a good one.

Hopefully they will drill more into the reality behind parking and discuss the "high cost of free parking."

Another line they touch on is the need for people living downtown.

More people living and visiting downtown will bring an increased demand for entertainment, specialty stores and eateries.

But living and visiting should be separated analytically.

Historically we have stressed attracting and serving visitors too much, and not stressed creating housing and downtown residents enough. 

We have had decades of the model of downtown as a drive-to destination to visit. It has not succeeded. Any "golden age" of downtown, the one we celebrate in all the old-time black and white photos, had a much higher proportion of downtown residents and close-in residents. Downtown was lively because people lived in it and very near it. The loss of "piety hill" symbolizes this and deserves more attention as harm to the downtown ecosystem, not just the loss of grand old houses we might wish we had preserved.

The foundational element for downtown health is not copious parking, but is copious downtown residents.

Maybe too much nostalgia

Finally, there is the way history is handled.

The piece scatters photos of various age throughout the piece. But it seems to use them for atmosphere and to invoke that lost golden age more than to argue a point about current policy or future policy.

Just on the front page there is so much more to say. The crane and building under construction seems to be one side of a "dichotomy" and the old historic buildings the other side. It sets up a now-and-then dichotomy, the history we should preserve and the threat of new disruption or demolition. The text of the piece limns a more subtle dichotomy, but the imagery points this way.

And it's not really very accurate.

A Better Parking System might have kept Whitlock's Downtown

In the Sunday paper was a piece about a long-time downtown business moving out. It is an interesting case, but since the story genre was a little nostalgic and a kind of business feature, a column more than straight news story, it did not need to be particularly analytical. But peeking through is perhaps a way to thread the needle on our parking debate.

This week both the Downtown Advisory Board and the Citizen Budget Committee have parking on the mind, and the business and its move might be a good case study for the way we have thought about parking and better ways to think about it in the future.

Blaming parking

Vacuums and sewing machines are awkward and sometimes heavy. If it is reasonable to ask most customers to walk a block for a meal or cup of coffee or for light retail items, it is more difficult to make the same request of people lugging a heavy item to repair or one just purchased.

This is a business that has a reasonable need for a supply of car parking near their front door or by a service entry.

DAB Again to Recommend Parking Reform

Back in 1945 the City approved the first parking meters downtown. The decision was protested, litigated, and even voted on. 

A group calling themselves the "Salem Civic Improvement League" ran ads for meters, against an initiative banning meters in 1946.

Many of the arguments
for paid parking still hold true
Nov. 4th, 1946

Though we might not agree with all of their arguments in particular, and we now have better analyses of the harms of underpriced and free parking, in a lot of ways they got the big picture right. Right-priced parking is a key part of a solution for better traffic, better parking itself, and for revenue to fund positive goods.

The Downtown Advisory Board meets on Thursday the 24th, and they look to recommend  to City Council that the City finally move on right-priced parking downtown. This has become a refrain for them, but the situation might be more promising now.

Request to move to right-priced parking

City Council, October 25th - Thinking about a Bond

Council convenes on Monday and they lead with a formal Work Session on concepts for a bond measure.

Cooking up a bond and figuring out the best ratio of bond sweetener to healthy food and good medicine seems tricky.

Still, the report on focus group testing has two things that just seem odd.

Nothing on climate

One is an omission. They didn't ask about climate projects. If this is the big bond for a decade's worth of projects, why aren't we planning for climate? This just seems like a very significant omission and lack of foresight. Of course, it is not too late to introduce that into the process.

The other is the decision to ask if people wanted free parking. Of course people like free! How is this useful information? Is the City considering a new parking structure a "bond sweetener" to make the whole package more palatable?

City Council, September 13th - Prep for Climate Work Session on 20th

A little buried perhaps on Council's agenda for Monday the 13th is some preparatory material for the formal Work Session on the 20th.

The one new item is the "Benefit-Cost Analysis of 10 Strategies for Salem's Climate Action Plan."

Analysis of 10 Strategies

It is worth more attention and there will be more to say.

Here are four quick hits, one on overall approach, and three on the analysis.

First off, it just exemplifies the way the process has been structured to avoid engaging the central goals, that of reducing our emissions by 50% in 2035 and the other goal of being carbon neutral by 2050.

Instead, this is all about how expensive or how difficult a very small subset of 10 actions will be. It shifts the focus from actual reductions to efficiency.

This kind of analysis belonged earlier in the process, and is misplaced now at the end of the process. It should have been a preliminary SWAG done at a very early stage that then guided further refinement in an iterative process designed to get us to that 50% reduction for 2035.

Within the limitations of this approach, then, the number one strategy is not very surprising.

Right-priced parking at the top

Over and over we keep circling around and avoiding parking. It's a third rail. That needs to stop. The evidence against free parking is overwhelming. It's time to end it.

City Council, June 12th - Funding Downtown Parking District

On Monday Council will likely reaffirm our commitment to free downtown parking and the polluting car trips it induces.

Free parking promo - November 2020

The Parking District is not Self-Funding

You may remember earlier this year a memo from the Downtown Advisory Board that argued it was time to transition to a right-priced parking system for downtown. This is a perennial theme for DAB.

Maybe next year

Apparently we are not there yet.

But we should be there, because we can't wait for a thing like this to become popular. Very few want to pay for parking, but it is something that is necessary to implement.

People ask why Salemites don't use the bus more, and are quick to blame Cherriots for poor levels of service.

But instead we should ask about the elaborate and interlocking system of subsidy we use to prop up driving and cars as the preferred mobility choice.

When you get free parking but have wait at a bus stop and then pay a bus fare, that's an inducement to drive! When we widen roads for "congestion relief" but insist buses must wait in traffic and do not build housing close to transit, we induce driving trips.

The question to understand isn't "why isn't the bus more popular?" The question is "how do we subsidize and induce driving, guaranteeing it is the popular choice?" We are making a whole lot of policy choices that steer people to drive, and it is time to change or end them.

Moving to a paid parking system downtown is one important step.

Parking, Gas Stations and Gas Tax, City Maintenance Bond: Meetings this Week

Is this the year we finally get real about parking reform?

The Downtown Advisory Board meets on Thursday the 27th, and they are looking again at our broken downtown parking system. Since the last pass at reform, more big box stores have closed and are no longer paying into the parking tax fund. Cleaning and maintenance costs have also risen. The current parking tax system is broken and unsustainable and City Staff propose we transition to a paid parking system. This deserves very serious consideration.

Is this the year?

We should remember that both Liberty Plaza and the JC Penney building were connected with covered skywalks to the Chemeketa Parkade, full of free parking. Free parking can't get any more convenient that that! And yet copious free parking has not been any guarantee of success for those businesses and sites. 

We should not be afraid to eliminate free parking so that we can focus on resources that actually improve the prospects for downtown business. 

Things like housing! If we want more customers downtown, we should have more people living downtown. Downtown should be a live-in destination rather than drive-to destination.

Moving to paid parking is the right move. Maybe this year we can finally do it. (See previous notes on downtown parking here.)

Back-in Parking Valued in 1920, and Free Bike Repair - Bits

July 8th, 1920

Back in 1920, some "Salem autoists" preferred back-in angle parking as safer.

[A]t present a car while starting is moving in the same direction as are other autos...Drivers of machines traveling along the street will never know when a car is going to back out.

Here is it is on State Street in the early 1920s.

State Street circa 1920-1925: two-way travel,
back-in angle parking, streetcar in the middle
(unknown postcard source - via Strong Towns group)

July 20th, 1920

Photos dated to about 1930 show head-in angle parking, so some time in the decade it changed.

City Council, February 24th - Win on Parking

Earlier this month Council made a strong move towards comprehensive parking reform when at first reading they strengthened the multi-family and missing middle housing code amendments. The ordinance is up for second reading and enactment on Monday, and this is a great step.

From the updated Staff Report on parking:

The proposed code amendment would calibrate parking requirements according to the type of units provided in developments with 13 or more units. For example, one space would be required for each studio and one-bedroom unit, but 1.5 spaces would be required for each two- or more bedroom unit. This recognizes that dwelling units with more bedrooms are more likely to house residents with more than one car.

The proposed code amendment would also reduce off-street parking requirements for smaller multifamily projects. Specifically, the requirements for housing with three to 12 units would be required to provide one space per unit. Currently, a three-unit project is generally required to provide two spaces per unit, and a four to 12-unit project is required to provide 1.5 spaces per unit. Reducing these requirements would make it easier to develop smaller developments by providing more space for housing units instead of parking stalls. (Developers could build more parking than the minimum requirement.) The current parking requirements have made it very challenging for property owners to develop smaller projects on smaller lots, with many often abandoning their plans.

As mentioned above, the City Council voted to eliminate minimum parking requirements for multifamily projects in the Central Salem Development Program (CSDP) area and Cherriot’s Core Network. The CSDP area is generally located between Hood Street NE to the north, Mission Street SE to the south, the Willamette River to the west, and 12th Street to the east (Attachment 7). Salem’s downtown is more likely to support multifamily units with little to no parking than other locations in the city. It is an urban environment where goods, services, and entertainment are generally within walking distance, and there are multiple options for alternative forms of transportation, including frequent transit service. There are also City-owned parking facilities in the downtown that could provide additional parking spaces to residents that want to lease an off-street parking space.

The Core Network is a network of bus service corridors where frequent service is prioritized. The corridors include, in part, Commercial Street SE, Liberty Street SE, Lancaster Drive NE, Market Street NE, Center Street NE, State Street, Edgewater Street NW, and Salem’s Downtown (Attachment 8). Reduction or removal of service in the corridors cannot occur without the Cherriots’ Board of Directors holding a public hearing and taking action. This Planning Commission recommendation is reflected in the ordinance; it further incents transit-oriented development and workforce housing.

In addition, the proposed code amendment would allow a 10 percent off-street parking reduction for developments within a quarter-mile of a transit stop, and it would allow reductions for multifamily projects that provide additional covered bicycle parking or a shared car/van service on site. This provides an incentive for multifamily housing to be located near transit stops and encourages alternative forms of transportation. A 20 percent reduction in required parking spaces would also be allowed for multifamily developments within a quarter-mile of stops with 15-minute transit service, as recommended by the Planning Commission.

Under the proposed code amendment, parking reductions would also be allowed for affordable housing units, which are those affordable to household with incomes equal to or less than 80 percent of the median family income for the county in which the property is located. This would incent the development of lower-priced housing and workforce housing. [italics added]

I'm not sure everything is cleaned up and consistent?

But look at the two italicized passages from the Staff Report. Aren't the 15-minute service bus stops essentially identical with the Core Network? I'm not sure it's clear on when a 20% reduction is allowed and when there is no minimum required. Separately, the summary chart also uses 25%, not 20%. There might be a little clean-up and clarification needed yet on the support materials and perhaps even in code itself.

But the overall policy goal remains clear.

Causes of Downtown Struggle: Insufficient Free Parking or Loss of Residences?

"There are problems the market can't solve.
Parking isn't one of them"

It was nice to see this Strong Towns post circulating on local discussion groups, but some of the responses are strange.

Asphalt soteriology and asphalt socialism

While some people say that free parking was key to downtown survival in the late 20th century, I think this is wrong. Downtown never really prospered during that period and people constantly fretted and complained there wasn't enough parking. People who make this claim about free parking "saving" downtown can't point to a golden age of downtown when it was actually "saved," a period when we had enough parking and businesses were thriving. Instead, in the 80s and 90s and thereafter there is a constant refrain of complaint about imperiled downtown vitality and always wanting more parking as if that was the solution. But even with the devotion to free parking, and with the free garages that remained only 50% full, downtown struggled.

In the second half of the 20th century we hollowed out the city, and people would have gone further, killing the patient to "save" the patient.

City Council, April 8th - Downtown Parking

Council meets tonight, and you might recall a front-page piece from a couple weeks ago on proposed changes to downtown parking for residents of downtown.

Downtown Salem is experiencing an increase in private development. Currently proposed projects include a mix of uses including housing, which will increase the demand for on and off-street City parking resources. In addition, future development of the Union Gospel, Saffron sites, and the former Nordstrom Building may also increase the demand for parking resources in downtown.

The Commercial Business District (CBD) zoning district requirement for buildings with housing is one parking space for every housing unit developed. Because it can be challenging with site constraints and financial costs to build on-site structured parking and recover those costs through rental rates, developers are requesting parking adjustments or considering City structured parking resources through an agreement as a solution to meet their on-site parking needs.

Without a paid on-street parking system that would incent utilization of the free off-street parking resources, or a permit requirement for residents currently utilizing the parking garages for long term parking for free, these users are not contributing to the cost to operate and maintain the City parking resources. If the proposed revisions are approved, residents who live within one-quarter mile of the Downtown Parking District boundary will be prohibited from parking in a City garage without a parking permit. This boundary includes Pringle Parkade which is a City parking resource outside of the Downtown Parking District but within the one-quarter mile parameter.

We're just basically incoherent on parking. Separately, in the Legislative positions, there's an argument against reducing parking. The City opposes a bill that would make transit work better and help reduce the cost of new housing:

SB 10 would require the City to increase the maximum density allowed for housing to 50 units per acre within 1/4mile of bus routes with 15-minute service (e.g. Commercial, Center, Market, Lancaster, Broadway) and 25 units per acre within a 1/2 mile. In most cases, this would be higher than the densities currently allowed, though developers rarely build to the current maximum densities due to parking or other requirements. SB 10 would also prohibit the City from establishing parking minimums in these transit corridors

As advocates, the Budget Committee, and Council consider moving forward on a Climate Action Plan, it's increasingly clear we will have to read our debates on parking, on congestion. and on transit in light of our developing understanding of greenhouse gas emissions.

Parking Reform Should Lead Congestion Task Force Recommendations

In advance of the November 5th Council Work Session, the final materials for the Congestion Relief Task Force have been published. (Summary here; final report, which is mostly appendices here. The Work Session immediately follows the Our Salem meeting at the Library.)

A quickie plus/minus assessment

The menu of "short term actions" has 15 items, and on the whole, if Council actually commits to them equally, and does not shuffle some off for inferior implementation or for greenwashy signalling by words only, it's possible to conclude this is a reasonable and balanced compromise. It's far from perfect, and still doesn't address greenhouse gases sufficiently. But if you squint and look at the totality, it's in the range of things on which reasonable people can disagree and has nothing outrageous in it.

Finally, there is a plan on the table
that is responsive to these policies

And, in fact, it looks like something that it should not have taken a decade and a failed process to yield. It looks like a plan that fairly directly follows from policy J.12 on transportation in our Comprehensive Plan:

The implementation of transportation system and demand management measures, enhanced transit service, and provision for bicycle and pedestrian facilities shall be pursued as a first choice for accommodating travel demand and relieving congestion in a travel corridor, before widening projects are constructed.

The proposal here is solidly in the range of the kind of program that should have been first out of the gate during the SRC process! It's what we should have developed between 2006-2008 and started to implement at the start of the Great Recession.