SJ's new Green Beat on Climate Change and Hopes for Better Transportation Talk

You might recall from earlier this year a report on water flows, snowpack, and ways our drinking water will be impacted by climate change. The map of anticipated flows and corresponding droughts in 2040 should be sobering.

Creeks feeding the Santiam and Willamette Rivers will be low in 2040!

The Statesman switched up beats in a significant reorganization of the newsroom recently, and Tracy Loew who had been doing data and deep investigative reporting has now moved to a "green" beat as the "Environment and Sustainability Reporter."

Previewing coverage of a recent conference on climate change, she talked about water and singled out Portland's "green dividend," the cash retained in the local economy caused by driving less - study author Joe Cortright says, "The $1.1 billion Portlanders don’t spend on car travel translates into $800 million that is not leaving the local region."

Loew reports

In the Pacific Northwest, the biggest threat is a large drop in mountain snowpack, speakers said. That will impact everything from hydropower to agriculture to stream health.

“This, I submit, is a really big deal,” said Nick Bond, Washington State Climatologist.

I’ll be writing more about current and potential impacts of climate change locally and region-wide in the coming months. Meanwhile, here are a few interesting facts from seminar speakers...

Portland was the first local government in the nation to adopt a climate action plan, in 1993. And the city has the highest percent of residents who commute by bike (7 percent). That gas savings means more money for the local economy, in the form of “lattes and microbrews,” said Michele Crim, climate action program manager for the city of Portland. [perhaps trivializing the magnitude of an extra $800 million!

I know the editorial and news side operate independently, but you'd still like to see some coherence at the paper. Two recent editorials strike diametric opposite stances on road widening, and one hopes that the news side will better inform the editorial side. Too much of the talk about transportation operates in a blissful vacuum about climate change.

Over the weekend, road reduction was a winner!

Road Diet is a Winner!
This Saturdays "Winners" on the Editorial Page

So will we hear more about road diets and about policies and planning to make low-carbon travel easier?

But this road needs fattening up!
Third Bridge editorial from earlier this year

The concepts that worked in Ashland can work in Salem too!

Bikes Everywhere at Sunny Sunday Streets! - Updated with survey link

Families enjoyed weather and the whole street!

Bikes lined up at the Book Mobile

Bike angle parking at Willson Park on Cottage Street

Tyranny of Parking Pringle Square's Doom? Video Posted, Council Likely to Delay to 23rd

Whether it's the petition for preserving free parking downtown or the effort to preserve parking at the Carousel, Salem's mania for car parking blinds us to deeper problems and forces retrograde planning on the community.

Old City Hall with Parking Meters on Chemeketa, 1959
Salem Library Historic Photos
We don't have good historical data on on-street parking,
 surface lots, and downtown prosperity.
It would be too much to say the disappearance of meters
is directly linked to the persistence of a surface lot here,
but it's an interesting coincidence.

Criticism of the Boise Redevelopment from almost every angle has started with 20th century assumptions about mobility and put the car, its movement and its storage, at the center of analysis.

This is all backwards!  Criticism should start with a look to the future in the 21st century, and put the foundational experience of walking at the center.  (We have to look back to look forward!) Even walking to the car is a nearly universal experience - every trip starts and ends with a walk.

The Carousel should be asking - what can we do to give people choices?  To make it easier to choose not to drive?  To make it easy for people to walk, bike, or take transit to the Carousel and to the Park?  Or to park downtown and walk to the Carousel?  How can we more efficiently use existing parking and serve a greater number of people?  And for those who do need to drive from far away or with someone disabled, or with a large family - how can the experience of walking after you get out of the car be better?

Skinny streets actually calm traffic!
But people walking seems to be beside the point...
pringlesquareaccess

Instead, they are asking, what can we do to ensure there is plenty of parking?  They may say "adequate" parking, but in so many ways this means a "surplus."  It's not that the development doesn't need parking, but we aren't thinking about total mobility, which includes non-auto mobility, and right-sizing parking. 

Just off the playground, the wall of buildings looms over the park.
These edges should be the center of analysis and critique!
(still from Pringle Square Salem video)

Myra Albert Wiggins Shoots Home and Flood in 1890

Rain, rain, go away!

Not ready for fall.  (And ready for a pleasant diversion from civic matters.  Maybe you are too.)

A note during Thursday's deluge about a show of Myra Albert Wiggins' photos in Portland brought to mind one of her photographs (as Myra Albert) of flooding here in Salem.

The Flood of 1890, From the Blind School,
looking out east over Pringle Creek to the Albert House.
Today we'd just be seeing lots of the Hospital
photo by Myra Albert Wiggins

This one, reproduced in Witch of Kodakery, The Photography of Myra Albert Wiggins 1869-1956, has been puzzling. It's identified as her childhood home - and the only way it works, I think, is as photographed from across a flooded Pringle Creek. The photograph must be taken from the rise at the Blind School and looking east towards where I believe was the Albert house (on the greater hospital campus now), though I don't see a current topographic feature that corresponds to the little bluff on top of which the house sits.

Sunday Statesman Article Highlights Walking and Biking Problem - But Lost in Glare of Carousel?

It's interesting - not really in a good way - to see the difference between the hullaballoo over safety at the Carousel and Riverfront Park and the much quieter response to questions about walking and biking to school.

Mostly I just wish people were as worked up over making it fun, easy, safe, and comfortable to walk and bike to school as they seem to be animated about making it easy, safe, and comfortable to drive and unload kids at the Carousel. 

Narrow or no shoulders, speeds too high on long straightaways -
What's wrong with this picture?

It's not that the Carousel and its safety is an unworthy cause - far from it.  But circulation and access at the Carousel has attracted an amount of attention, and even displaced attention, that might better be directed at larger, more systemic problems.

Isn't there something wrong, too, more wrong even, with the paucity of kids walking to school and the conditions under which we either ask them to walk or find so problematic (whether just in perception or in actuarial reality) that we insist on busing or driving them?

Fire Truck at the Park - Pringle Square Access

In order to avoid busy roads with inadequate or missing sidewalks, bike lanes, and crosswalks, parents regularly drive able-bodied kids to school. Some schools are sited along busy roads that the school district won't even ask kids to cross, and so the School District furnishes yellow bus service for relatively short distances.

Urban Renewal Board to See Kroc Center Access Final Recommendations.

Today the North Gateway Redevelopment Advisory Board will meet this morning at 8am and hear about the final recommendations of the Kroc Center Access Feasibility Study.

Basically a big bridge across both the Parkway and Railroad was too expensive, and so they scaled back to a smaller bridge over just the Parkway and two shared use paths along Hyacinth and Salem Industrial/Bill Frey. 

From the final recommendations settled on earlier this summer:

Near Term Improvements:

• Construction of a bicycle/pedestrian connection from Hyacinth Street NE to Bill Frey Drive NE with transit stops on Hyacinth Street NE [red alignment]

This connection could be constructed either as a part of the planned roadway extension of Salem Industrial Drive NE (adopted project in the Salem TSP—not currently programmed for funding) or could be constructed as a separate shared use path through the conservation easement and with a bicycle/pedestrianbridge over Claggett Creek (see map), should funding for the path become available sooner than funds for the roadway extension. The planning level cost estimate for construction of the street extension with transit stops on Hyacinth Street NE is $8.5 to 9 million. The planning level cost estimate for a shared use path with a bridge over Claggett Creek, transit stops, and enhanced crossing of Bill Frey Drive NE leading to the Kroc Center is $1 to $2 million.

ODOT is currently reviewing more immediate bicycle/pedestrian improvement options that can be made to improve safety at the intersection of Salem Parkway/Hyacinth Street NE/Verda Lane (continental crosswalk striping and bike lane skip/colored striping at the right turn sliplanes, shifting the bike lanes to the left of the right turn lanes on the Hyacinth Street NE/Verda Lane and possibly installing truck aprons on the right turn slip lanes)

Mid-term and Long Range Improvements:

• Construction of a shared use path along the south side of Hyacinth Street NE between Salem Parkway and Salem Industrial Drive ($550,000 estimate) with construction of bicycle and pedestrian intersection enhancements at Salem Parkway/Hyacinth Street NE/Verda Lane to increase the visibility and safety of pedestrians and bicyclists (costs not determined) [yellow alignment]
• After the above improvements are made, a bridge over Salem Parkway at Verda Lane/Hyacinth Street NE to completely separate bicycles and pedestrians ($3 - $3.5 million) should be considered to further enhance bicycle/pedestrian safety.[blue alignment]

For previous notes about the study and siting of the Kroc Center, see here.   In the end, when with a different site we could have avoided the problem altogether, it's just dumb, dumb, dumb that they sited this big facility in an industrial wasteland; and having made that dumb decision, it's even dumber that they didn't anticipate this transportation problem and fold paying for the solution into the original construction costs. 

The pieces in this project will linger around competing for dollars (about $5 million total) that could fund other projects that didn't arise from such obviously preventable problems.  And kids from Grant, Highland, and Hallman neighborhoods will still face formidable barriers in reaching the Kroc Center from the other direction.

Pretty much EPIC FAIL all the way around.

New Details on Salem Sunday Streets Schedule of Activities - Updated and Hashtagged

More info on Sunday's Open Street Festival! It's a whole bunch of carfree goodness from 11am - 4pm, September 8th, along Wallace and Riverfront Parks and in town on State Street to the Capitol.

Sunday Streets Map for September 8th

Here's the schedule at the moment - more may be added! - keyed to the starred activity sites.  The local music looks very nice!

The route itself is really going to be too small for bicycling, except perhaps for the littlest ones, for whom the carfree streets will be a great boon  Don't let that stop you from biking to it, but for circulation it will probably be best to lock up and walk around the route instead of trying to bike along it.

Wallace Marine Park Activity Center

• 11:00 Yoga – Courthouse Fitness
• 1:00 Music – Jeremy Crofoot
• 3:00 Music – Tonya Gilmore

Riverfront Park Activity Center

• 11:00 Yoga and Zumba – The Lotus Studio
• 12:00 Music – Find Your Smile
• 1:00 Walking Tour – Just Walk!
• 2:00 Music – I Am A Zombie
• 2:00 Walking Tour – Autoist Attack walking tour

State Street

• 11:00 Laughter Yoga – The Nest
• 12:00 Laughter Yoga – The Nest
• 2:00 Laughter Yoga – The Nest

Capitol Steps

• 12:00 Zumba – YMCA
• 1:00 Dance – Tokyo International University
• 2:00 Zumba – YMCA

Salem Sunday Streets Participating Organizations:
Marion County Public Works Environmental Services, Salem Creative Network, DIY Studio, Northwest Human Services, Kaiser Permanente, Willamette Valley Music Company, Interface Network, Amaxyng Health, Salem Chamber Orchestra, Salem Bicycle Club, City of Salem Recreation Services, YMCA, Family YWCA, Salem-Keizer Transit District, Willamette Humane Society, AdvoCare, The Bike Peddler, The Lotus Studio, Salem Health Community Health Education Center & Salem Cancer Institute, The Nest, Salem Bocce League, Santiam Bikes, A.C. Gilbert’s Discovery Village, Salem Library, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Tokyo International University, Salem Area Trail Alliance, Be, Resiliency Action Network, LifeSource Natural Foods, Venti’s, Friends of Straub Environmental Learning Center, Salem Riverfront Carousel, Habitat for Humanity, Oregon National Guard, Willamette Valley Physicians Health Authority, and more...

(Isn't it great to see all the different organizations?!)

Update, Saturday, Sept 7th

Here's more detail on the organizations at the activity centers!  Looks like a terrific mix of groups, something for everyone.

Wallace Marine Park
Salem Area Trail Alliance
City of Salem Recreation
Capital City Disc Golf
Pedal Powered Stage

Riverfront Park
Salem Creative Network
Oregon National Guard
Riverfront Carousel
Just Walk!/City of Salem Neighborhood Services
Friends of Straub Environmental Learning Center
LifeSource
AdvoCare
Willamette Humane Society
Amaxyng Health
Children's Educational Theatre
Marion County Environmental Services
The Lotus Studio
The Bike Peddler
Mosaic Salem
Habitat for Humanity
OSU Extension Services
A.C. Gilbert's Discovery Village

Waverly Street and East Capitol Park
Bike Safety Skills Course
Resiliency Action Network
Salem Bicycle Club
Salem Bocce League

Cottage Street
Salem Saturday Market
Northwest Human Services
Interface Network
Kaiser Permanente
YWCA
YMCA
Salem Health
WVP

State Street
Salem-Keizer Transit
BE
DIY Studio
Salem Public Library
Hallie Ford Museum of Art
Willamette University, Archeology
The Nest
Salem Chamber Orchestra
Willamette Valley Music Co.
Salem Summit Co.
Zena Forest and Farm

Farmer's Market at Willson Park

Hashtaggery - you know what to do!
#SalemStreets

And of course Thanks to the Sponsors!

FoxBlue
Kaiser Permanente
City of Salem
Salem Health
Cherriots RideShare
ODOT

Update, Thursday, Sept. 12th

The City wants your feedback! Take part 1 of a survey here and part 2. Let them know what you think!