Lottery-Funded ConnectOregon V Could Fund Local Bike/Ped Projects

On Monday the Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee heard a presentation on the way the ConnectOregon program could fund bike/ped projects.

ConnectOregon Project?  Old Freight Depot: University of Oregon

Previous rounds have allocated about $350 million to air, rail, and transit projects, and this year the new ConnectOregon V added bike/ped projects to the eligible list!

In this fifth round about $42 million will be available.

Applications will be due in late November of this year and after several rounds of review, awards made at the Oregon Transportation Commission meeting in August 2014.

One key component is that projects will not be in the road right-of-way or projects eligible for funding from the State Highway fund.

So this means we're talking things like shared use paths and bike parking!

Proposed May's Landing Apartment Complex Back at City; Units Reduced, Still Not Recommended

Tonight the Hearings Officer will deliberate on a site plan review, conditional use permit, and design review of a proposed 54-unit apartment complex located just south of Mission and 23rd.

Last summer a much larger complex was proposed and ultimately Council redirected the developer.

It's back, and the Staff Report notes some of the changes, while also not recommending approval:

The request includes a reduced number of dwelling units from the January 2012 proposal from 96 to 54, and includes a non-residential office building. Access to Oxford Street SE is not proposed with this application.

Staff recommends that the Hearings Officer DENY the request...

Mission Street here is a State Highway, and it is so auto-oriented.  This is not a good place for a traditional auto-oriented housing development.  It's also by the airport, and both the neighborhood association and the airport/FAA have concerns about the site's fitness for more residential housing.   The neighborhood lacks a grocery store also. 

Notice the person on bike going opposite traffic (they're on the sidewalk, though, not in the bike lane) and the right-in, right-out treatments for 23rd, the cross street. There's really nothing multi-modal about this road. It's a highway.  (It's a stroad!)

If we want to create higher density housing in lower-car and more walkable configurations, this is not a good project yet.  The neighborhood association feels development at this site should be more commercial or industrial and not primarily residential.  At the very least it should have some kind of mixed-uses - not more of the same.

Pringle Square Salem Launches Web Site for Boise Redevelopment

You know things are heating up for the Boise Redevelopment project when banner ads are starting to show up around the web!

Aerial Rendering in online advertising

And yet, this is something maybe a little more remarkable.

For nothing is built yet!

The ad is for the concept, the development company and whole development, and not for any individual piece, completed or otherwise.  It is, in fact, marketing for the current iteration of the master plan.

And if you go to the link for Pringle Square Salem, you'll see a pretty fancy website.  It's worth poking around because it has a pretty good set of renderings and discusses many of the individual parts - including more contentious bits.

Has anything been done quite like this before for a development in Salem?

Site Map with pushpins keyed to comments

The site plan offers a significant level of detail.

Click on a pushpin and a detail window zooms in.

City Council, August 12th - Trees, Streets, Minto Island

The headline today is about the prospect of the City acquiring more land on Minto-Brown from Boise Cascade through a BPA Conservation Program.

But with potentially greater reaches, both the recommendations of the Downtown Mobility Study and the Community Forestry Plan could be more important.

Mobility Study

Union St Bikeway out on 25 year horizon

About the Downtown Mobility Study much has been said.  At the moment it is nice enough, but its recommendations have been watered down and its theoretical timeline is awfully far out.  Is waiting a quarter-century for a Union Street bikeway really reasonable?  That punt seems like the opposite of visionary and forward-thinking.  What could have been a transformative plan for restoring two-way functionality and creating realistic choices for people on bike, is instead more milquetoast and aspirational, a set of concepts for "out there" sometime.

The proposal at Council is limited for the moment:

Staff recommends that Council adopt the Central Salem Mobility Study Recommendations (Attachment A) and direct staff to: (1) seek funding to implement the recommendations, and (2) incorporate the recommendations into the Salem Transportation System Plan at the next amendment opportunity.

Forestry Plan

Trees are often the the public right-of-way, and offer beauty, clean the air, enhance property values.  What's not to like?

Old Oak in one of Salem's older neighborhoods

There's been a lot of talk about trees and the way the City does or does not allow people to cut them down.  So it's probably worth paying more attention to the Community Forestry Strategic Plan. (The copy of it in the staff report is a second- or third-generation copy.  Here's a first-generation pdf.)

If you've reviewed it more closely, are there things especially good or lousy about it?

Minto Brown

The City proposes to acquire a parcel from Boise Cascade next to the Minto bridge and path.  It is independent of the bridge and path and would not affect the bridge and path funding or construction.

Bike Recycling Leader named Y's Volunteer of the Year

Just last summer the Second Chance Bicycle Recycling got off the ground as a collaborative venture between the Family YMCA of Marion and Polk Counties and Oregon Youth Authority/Hillcrest.

And after just one year, at the Annual Meeting the YMCA, founder and organizer Aaron Ryals was named Volunteer of the Year!

At the meeting in May, in front of a room full of about 50 YMCA supporters, Aaron recieved the award from Y Board Chair Richard Berger and CEO Paul Manning.

Aaron congratulated by Richard Berger (Chair of Board)
and Paul Manning (CEO) of
the Family YMCA of Marion & Polk Counties

In her nomination, Senior Director of Health Innovations Janice Naimy wrote:

Aaron is our bike mechanic for 2nd Chance and has been volunteering his Wednesdays for the past year to help get the program off the ground. He has spent countless hours teaching the youth at Hillcrest how to repair bicycles, maintain a shop, orders supplies and delivers bicycles to be given back to the community. Aaron always insures that the safety is put first before returning a bike back in to the community. [He] works part of the year as a bike mechanic for Santiam Bicycle...He volunteers... as much time as possible to the project even during the busy season because he wants to see the success of the program, give back to the community and teach the youth at OYA that taking pride in your work and giving back matters.

Aaron is also a Y kid. [H]e spent many hours here as a child while his Dad worked.

Janice and Aaron collect bikes last June

Aaron and Cory

This year the program has grown, and Aaron needed to add a second mechanic. Aaron and Cory look forward to continuing growth and the next step in the Recyclery's evolution.

Congratulations, Aaron!

State Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee Meets Monday; Kenji Sugahara Appointed

The Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee meets on Monday here in Salem, and one of the main agenda items is that it's the first meeting for several new members.

Kenji Sugahara's "My Passion: Cycling Offers Many Benefits"

And one of them is from Salem!

Executive Director of the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association and current Chair of the West Salem Neighborhood Association, Kenji Sugahara has been appointed to the committee. (BikePortland has details on the other new appointments.)

So it looks like Salem has two members now.  Kenji joins Wayne Baum on the committee.

From the meeting announcement:

ConnectOregon V:
Buy a lottery ticket,
Support bikeways!

SALEM – The Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee will meet Monday, Aug. 12 from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. at ODOT’s Mill Creek office, 555 13th St. NE in Salem. Agenda items include presentations on the Pedestrian-Bicycle Modal Plan Update, ConnectOregon V and other topics. It will be the first meeting for several new appointees to the advisory committee.

All Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee meetings are open to the public. Time will be available at the meeting for committee members to hear public comments. Those who wish to testify are encouraged to sign up on the public comment sheet provided at the meeting. General guidelines: provide written summaries when possible and limit comments to 3 minutes. If you bring written summaries or other materials to the meeting, please provide the chairperson with a copy prior to your testimony.

Accommodations will be provided to persons with disabilities. To request an accommodation, please call ODOT’s Bicycle/Pedestrian Program office at (503) 986-3555 or statewide relay, 7-1-1.

Figuring out lottery-funded ConnectOregon will be interesting.  It's a high-risk, high-reward kind of thing, it seems to me.  On the one hand, mandates look to be on the way out:  In this program at least, bike/ped stuff will have to compete openly against the big business of transit, rail, and air.  On the other hand, if the State is serious about greenhouse gas reduction, least-cost planning, and livability, good bike/ped projects should offer terrific returns-on-investment and be very competitive.

We'll see.  The proof is in the pudding, as they say.  

The Bicycle and Pedestrian Mode Plan probably sounds more grand than it is - given our propensity not to follow-through in funded action with plan rhetoric.  But again, things start with a blank slate, and if the State is really serious, it could be a significant step! There are real high-level policy opportunities.

Former Chair of the Committee, AJ Zelada, has said he thinks this is an important transitional moment.  In an open letter he wrote:

I don't want you to paint white bike lane stripes as the only answer; I want you to think in life-cycles where infants, children, school age, young adults, working stiffs, retired people and aging individuals are traffic. Not cars or bikes. But communities of people on the move.

So it'll be interesting to see how it all turns out.

Transportation and Place at First Wednesday: Downtown Salem Rides, but can We All Ride?

Officially the theme for First Wednesday was "Downtown Salem Rides," but another theme ran a loud counterpoint: How do we ride with the little people?

N3B Magister Scheppke talks about bridge alignments and
Helen Caswell's photos of people in the way

Helen Caswell's show at the Photo Diner highlighted some of the ways proponents of a giant bridge and highway seem ok to ride roughshod over those they consider the "little people" in Highland and in West Salem.

Of course a family bikes on the sidewalk to downtown -
are they going to bike in the road, on High Street? -
they locked up to the first staple they found

Earlier, on the way to downtown, a family was riding on the sidewalks.  There was no place safe or comfortable on the road for their little person.

Both were reflections of the prevailing priority for cars, and illustrate why sometimes people flee more than flock to downtown.

Though there was a bike corral at the Elsinore just two blocks up from Pringle Plaza, after dismounting for the pedestrian zone, the family locked up to the first staple rack they saw. Between the one-way grid and the sidewalk prohibition, there wasn't really a family-friendly way to bike to the  corral. The staple racks offered better security, anyway.

It is interesting that we'll block off a full road for a concert, but we still can't wrap our minds around a single lane for people on bike.

You can hear Amerititle Idol concert, but you can't see it without a ticket. #sjnow #fundraiser #SalemOR pic.twitter.com/RMTnaEgYkK
— Michelle Maxwell (@MichelleAtSJ) August 8, 2013