New Keizer Transit Station has Nice Bike Racks - But Getting to them? Not so Easy

By Salem standards the bike racks at the new Keizer Transit Station are pretty posh. They're staples, generously spaced, and they're covered. What more could you want?

Decent Bike Parking in Salem!
But located on the sidewalk and a little isolated

Well, it would have been nice if more thought had been given to how reach them!

For there's no approved way to ride up to them.

Coming from Salem, on the approach from the south, things start off inauspiciously, as there is no connection from the corner of Chemawa and Keizer Station Boulevard, and you have to look through the trees to see the station.  It's kinda hidden.

Then, when you try to make a right-hand turn into the station from the extension of Chemawa north that becomes Keizer Station Boulevard, there's a huge lip - a mini-curb and gutter even - on the driveway, totally big enough to catch your wheel and enforce an involuntary dismount.  It's scaled for bus wheels, not bikes.

The lip on the Transit Station Driveway

Once in there, it's not clear at all where to go for bike racks.  There's no directional signage, and it dawned that the designers weren't envisioning people biking in.  It was pretty much for buses only. There did seem to be an outer ring road for cars in addition to the inner ring for the buses.

Poor Connections to Roadway
for People on Bike; Insufficient signage
for regulations and directions

So I continued around the outer ring and finally found a covered group of four racks (top image) on the sidewalk at the south end of an area striped for perpendicular car parking.

Then I went to the center and found two other clusters of racks, for a total of 10 staple racks, all covered.

And some other neat stuff.

Sunday Streets Announcement Contrasts Gloriously with Construction Mess Piece

Love, love, love the front page today!

"Cars, man, why?"

Above the fold with the main headline is a tale of congestion woes and construction and car cares.

Salem Sunday Streets Coming Sept 8th!

And below the fold is the first public announcement about Salem's own Sunday Streets event, scheduled for September 8th.

Lots of work has been going on behind the scenes on this and, as the story suggests, some downtown merchants still apparently haven't been notified so they can be involved, so its appearance in the paper might yet have been premature.

But that's ok. It's a great concept and people are sure to enjoy it.  The matter will go to Council on the 22nd. It also is giving visibility to the importance of State Street as the gateway to Riverfront Park.

And you could hardly ask for a better illustration contrasting the joys of bicycling and the perils and social costs of autoism.

It's an open-and-closed case.

Thanks, SJ!

Update, July 21

Here's the route.

From Wallace to the Capitol - No Cars on State Street!

Ross: Sign Dross for our Loss? Autoist Analysis misses Dimension of Walking

The whole kerfluffle over the Ross Dress for Less sign is fascinating.

Yeah, it's pretty ugly

The sign is mainly visible from Center Street on the bridge heaing east and on Libery heading north. This fact leads a story in the paper, in fact:

Drive into downtown Salem from the Center Street bridge and it’s one of the first things you see: the giant blue letters for Ross Dress for Less, the new tenant in the Salem Center mall.

These are busy roads and they aren't pleasant for walking or biking. They're totally auto-oriented arterals and urban highways.

Uninviting, hard, blank wall that says
"move along, folks, nothing to do here, no reason to linger"

And in today's Winners & Losers, the paper says, "the store’s massive sign is out of character with downtown mall’s brick design."

And the character of that brick design is???

The biggest problem with the mall is not that there's a garish, over-sized sign on the corner, but that there are no doors, no apertures, nothing but a hard brick border along the sidewalk. Sure there are some windows, but fundamentally the environment is not friendly for people who are walking.

These are lousy edge conditions!

The problem with the facade is that it doesn't relate to the sidewalk and people walking on it.  It totally assumes you are driving to the mall.  But since it's downtown in a place where walking ought to be easy and pleasant, and not on a giant suburban parking lot, its isolation this way leads to fail all the way around.

The paper's blurb is interesting, and indirectly contains ambiguous observations about Salem's demographics, and downtown.  (Is perhaps part of the outrage over the sign its reminder of the Great Recession's dominant mode of coupon-clipping and discount shopping?)

Salem’s demographics and population density, as well as the visibility of Salem Center, made the location attractive to Ross, Wong said. It will be the third Salem-area Ross store — one is at 2325 Lancaster Drive NE and the other is in Keizer Station.

Separately, Salem Center soon will begin making at least $2 million in renovations to the mall’s common areas, said Linda West, a spokeswoman for Jones Lang LaSalle Retail, the mall’s manager.

The improvements will include new soft seating, upgraded flooring, additional lighting, architectural highlights, signage and remodeled public restrooms near the Nordstrom store.

Improvements will apparently happen on the inside, but nothing to make for more permeable or inviting edge conditions along the sidewalk.

In the end, the analysis of the sign, as did considerations of the Mattingly Mural, conform too much to a single-minded focus on "what can we see from our car?" and miss the more fundamental question of, "what is it like to walk there?"

Salem National Forest Blog Chronicles Stroads, not Toads

Lancaster Drive is the wretchedest place to bike and walk.*  Most of the roads in and around there are substandard for walking and biking, and the City and County struggle just to complete legacy remediation for basic sidewalks and bike lanes.  And even when there are 1980s-era bike lanes and sidewalks, as there are on Lancaster itself, the roads are wide, super busy, traffic runs fast, and still just aren't pleasant at all.

So many of us don't get out there much.  And it's something of a blind spot for the blog, which has a distinct bias for downtown and the close-in neighborhoods.

But there's lots of energy out on the east side.  The biggest youth bike event in the city, for example, is the annual give-away at Casa de Adoracion, which last year raised around $20,000 and provided bikes for several hundred kids.

It's also where a significant stock of cheap buildings is.  In a recent post on The Atlantic, Kaid Benfield said:

I do think there has been a resurgence of entrepreneurship in recent years. It is taking place in older commercial buildings with lower rents and, increasingly, that means it is taking place in some locations we may be quick to dismiss as car-dependent and unsustainable. While surely the best way to preserve small business diversity and opportunity is not to preserve some of the most unsustainable architecture in America, my sense is that we – environmentalists and urbanists – have not put enough thought into how best to sustain what that architecture is now nurturing.

If, for example, you want food from the great immigrant cultures here, Lancaster and Silverton roads are where it's at.  More than "melting pot" it's alchemical crucible!  The area is not just the opposite of downtown, but are also its complement.  When we worry about downtown, there are elements of class and ethnicity that are almost certainly not given sufficient weight in analysis and the range of prospective solutions.

So it was with interest recently to discover an established blog on that outer urban landscape. Called the Salem National Forest Blog, it is written and photographed by a local educator, and approaches the main roads of north and northeast Salem ironically, as if they were part of the national forest system and the roads were trails.  In a typical inversion, it treats the ugly as beautiful or picturesque: The urban ramble in the sprawly landscape as wilderness hike.

You might say, "it's not about toads, it's about Stroads" - those nasty hybrid of local road and urban highway.

Leftover farmland...encroaching on
a...nice...new apartment complex

The most recent post talks about older rural forms "encroaching" on newer urban forms.

Photos essays on Fisher Road Trail, Lancaster Drive Trail,
Portland Road Trail, Salem Parkway

There are multi-part photo essays on Fisher Road, Lancaster Drive, Portland Road, the Salem Parkway.

I have not had a chance to look at all of it, and I don't know where all it goes - visually or thematically.  It may not be as ironic as I think it is.  And it may be playing other games as well.

The landscape, urban forms, and entrepreneurial energy near Lancaster are certainly more complicated than the easy antithesis between our lovely historic downtown and ugly, blighty, car-dependent strip development along Lancaster suggests.

Nuance is a good thing!

Anyway, check it out.  What do you think of it?  How do you read its irony?

Carnage Fowls-up Bike Lane and Sidewalk at Foxtrot Intersection

You might recall the graphic of 20 years of bridgehead "multi-modalism" posted to the City's Third Bridge website and first presented in February at a City Club Talk.

One of the key intersections in it was Commercial at Division.

Fowl Carnage in the Bike Lane:  Salem-Style Multi-modalism

Yesterday a spectacular crash with thousands of stinky factory-farmed chickens, which Salem police indicated was caused by a truck driver driving too fast as she tried to negotiate a turn, spilled onto the bike lane and sidewalk.

Fortunately, there was no one on the sidewalk or bike lane, though several cars for sale on the car lot sustained damage.

Commercial at Division, Northbound

While the crash seems to have been caused by driver misjudgment, it is important to note that the intersection is designed with broad, sweeping curves, and is engineered for through-put.  It encourages speed.  It is an urban highway.

It's also a charlie foxtrot.

Morningside Neighborhood Plan out for Review; Vote on Wednesday

Remember, tonight is the work session on transportation for the NEN-SESNA neighborhood plan - the areas around Englewood and Bush Schools.

It's a blank slate.

What about a nearly finished product?

The project to update the Morningside Neighborhood Plan, Morningside 360, kicked-off almost two years ago, and a full draft of the Morningside Neighborhood Plan is out for review.  Tomorrow night, Wednesday the 10th, the Neighborhood Association will vote on it.

There are two reasons it's hard to know what to say about the it.

The first is general, about its meaning and intent.

Most of us approach language with an interpretive charity, right?  As we decide what it means, we want to give it the benefit of the doubt, we assume it is sincere, and we expect action to follow intention.

But almost inevitably, though, advocates and even ordinary citizens in Salem reach the point where they realize that too often plan language is empty gesture, essentially meaningless, a theatrical palimpsest on which others write the script that's actually followed.  It's not always this way, of course, but it seems like the technical details - is a sidewalk necessary here?  How many bike and car parking stalls are required? etc - in a plan are not so difficult to see enacted, but that more general policy goals really tend to be diluted or disregarded.  So what, really, is the value of a plan when its language is not likely to be interpreted very closely?  How cynical should we be?


The other reason it's hard to know what to say here specifically is that the area it covers is way too big and diverse to constitute an actual neighborhood.  It's an administrative planning unit bounded by Commericial, Kuebler, the railroad, and a bit of I-5!  How is this an actual neighborhood?

As a document of compromise and negotiation and multiple interests, it's not something that is necessarily going to be coherent. Nevertheless, like many other neighorhood plans, and perhaps more than most, it is a jumble, more a grab-bag than an articulation of a vision.

According to the plan,

[O]nly the goals and policy statements in a neighborhood plan and generalized land use map may be considered for adoption as a component of the Comprehensive Plan. Accordingly, the goals, policies and generalized land use map...shall be consistent with the Comprehensive Plan Map, Comprehensive Policies Plan and the statewide planning goals....

[these] Goals, Policies and Generalized Land Use Map...serve as the guiding document for the neighborhood association’s recommendations to city boards, commissions, or outside agencies. Likewise the neighborhood plan shall be taken into account by city boards, commissions and agency staff in making any decision or recommendation which would affect the Morningside Neighborhood.

The section on commercial areas shows some of the difficulties.  (One important note of background:  In lawsuits and mediation with the State, the City has contested the language of "activity nodes and corridors" since 2005 and never embraced it whole-heartedly after successfully stone-walling DLCD; some of the ambivalence, or even contradiction, here may in some sense be intentional.)

Part of the main "acitivity node and corridor" -
Will this ever be "a vibrant, transit-integrated...corridor with
design elements promoting usability by pedestrians and cyclists?"
(And will these things ever have decent prose?!)

The introduction to the section on Commercial Development says,

Key neighborhood priorities to promote revitalization retrofit of Morningside’s commercial corridors include support for a vibrant and integrated local business community, urban design elements to provide a diversified and engaging commercial streetscape, and pedestrian safety in commercial areas.

Even though they are on the edges, two giant roads shape the "neighborhood":  Commercial running north and south, and Kuebler running east and west.  These are significant barriers to anything but auto travel, and essentially all non-residential, commercial development is confined along these corridors.

Legislative Update, Sine Die - The Final Recking!

Buy a lottery ticket,
Support bikeways!

The Legislature adjourned on Monday, and a few weeks ago it was looking like nothing significant for people who bike would become law.

In a surprising dark horse win, one of the ConnectOregon bills came through with language making bike/ped projects eligible to compete for lottery funds.

A couple of other odds-n-ends passed as well.

Bills that Passed:

• ConnectOregon V reform - While House Bill 2310 to fund "ConnectOregon" stalled, in a separate effort aided it seems by the BTA, Senate Bill 260 emerged from the back room and passed both houses.  Back in April it seemed dead in committee, but July 7th, it was resurrected and the bike/ped language added.  As introduced SB 260 did not contain the bike/ped language.  BikePortland has more on the bill that makes lottery funds available on a competitive basis for non-highway multi-modal projects.  Bike/Ped projects will compete against rail, air, transit - big projects and big interests.  It might be a step in the direction of "least cost planning."  Here's the BTA's statement.  (But see below for inconsistency with the bill that as I understand it actually authorizes the monies.)
• Celphones, texting, and distracted driving - Senate Bill 294 creates an exception in existing law for taxi-cab drivers to use a hand-held celphone while driving.  Like SB 260, in a last-minute win, Senate Bill 9 filed by Senator Courtney increases the penalty for using a cel phone while driving from a Class D violation to a Class C violation, which means the maximum fine would increase from $250 to $500.
• HB 3047 doubles the length of a motor vehicle license suspension from 10 to 20 years under certain conditions. 
• While bills to enact a carbon tax failed, Senate Bill 306 to study a carbon tax did pass.



It's over!  And I'm thinking of
no more parking garages.

• Bonds and Budgets and Earmarks and Pork:  In bills not followed here previously, HB 5507 allocates $35 million from bonds for a "Capitol Master Plan."  There are rumors that because of - wait for it! - the high cost of parking, DAS has realized they don't want to build more parking garages and instead wants to invest aggressively in alternatives to drive-alone commute trips!  Look for more on this later in the month. It'll be interesting to learn more about the scope of the $35M.  (Update - it's just for the Capitol Building itself; the Capitol Mall Plan will be something else, and it is not nearly so far along.)  The Salem River Crossing planning process has blown $7M, the Columbia River Crossing $170M - so this would seem to be a midpoint in expected scope.  A companion bill, HB 5533, also allocates $42 million for ConnectOregon (see above) - but interestingly does not include the bike/ped language in SB 260.  Will the inconsistency be an issue?  HB 5533 also sends $3.5 million to Cherriots for the Keizer Transit Station.

(Interestingly, HB 2322 contains pork for Multnomah and Washington County transportation projects. Why not other counties, hmmm?)

I think that's it.  The scrapheap of failed bills after the jump.