Parking Meant Beauty and Landscaping, not Car Storage, 100 years Ago

Park(ing) Day is this Friday, September 20th. It is "an annual worldwide event where artists, designers and citizens transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks."

A Salem parklet with picnic table, hobby horse, and potential for fun

The original Park(ing) Day in 2005,

transformed a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in an area of San Francisco that the city had designated as lacking public open space. The great majority of San Francisco’s downtown outdoor space is dedicated to movement and storage of private vehicles, while only a fraction of that space is allocated to serve a broader range of public needs. Paying the meter of a parking space enables one to lease precious urban real estate on a short-term basis.

In Salem, acceptance for repurposing car parking stalls has been slow.  One First Wednesday attempt was shut down by the City. Creative merchants have put grass on the sidewalk, but not ventured out into the street and its angle parking.  (Portland observes Park(ing) Day in several places.)

You might not know, however, that the word "parking" used to refer to the act of making a park and the parklets themselves, and not primarily to the act of temporarily storing a car.

This was not considered "Parking"!  Oregon State Library
(That's Scott's Cycle first store on the far left, at 252 State Street)

The act and area celebrated in Park(ing) Day is, in fact, a revival, and not a new phenomenon!

NEN Meets Tomorrow the 17th: Marion and 13th, and Center Street on the Agenda - Updated

The Northeast Neighbors neighborhood association meets tomorrow night, Tuesday the 17th.

In addition to an update on the neighborhood plan process, they'll also get a presentation from the City Traffic Engineer on some plans for Center Street and the crossing at Marion and 13th Street.

Back in March, you may recall, one of the items discussed was the possibility of crossing help at the tricky intersection of 13th and Marion, just northeast of Safeway.

And it looks like the City is ready to show some preliminary concepts!

13th at Marion: unmarked crosswalks, one-way + dual turns = difficult!

The intersection is right after Center Street splits into a one-way couplet, and while Center Street south of Safeway has marked crosswalks and a pedestrian median, Marion Street north of the grocery store has neither, and most often cars take the dual turns quickly and without consideration of the unmarked crosswalks and any people waiting to cross.

People walking to the grocery store, including students from Parrish and North, sometimes face great difficulties and even dangers as they attempt the crossing.

On Friday the City didn't have any concept drawings to share, so if you're interested, the meeting will be the first place to see them!

Even the Oregonian Sez: We Hit Peak Driving; also, SJ on Boise

Some choice bits:

[A]n analysis of new traffic data by The Oregonian shows that driving in the state actually peaked in 2004, four years before the Great Recession hit. What's more, for the first time in the history of America's love affair with the automobile, the driving levels nationally aren't tracking economic growth....

[In] the past 10 years, passenger vehicle ownership has increased by only 4 percent, even as Oregon's driving-age population jumped 14 percent, Oregon Driver and Motor Vehicle and U.S. Census statistics show....

[I]n Multnomah County, as bicycle commuting, car sharing and transit use has transpired at a revolutionary pace, the number of registered vehicles grew by less than 1 percent, even as the population grew by 11 percent....

"The long-held belief is that the Great Recession hit and forced people to cut back on their driving," said Michael Sivak, a research professor at the university's Transportation Research Institute and author of the study. "But it's clear that something else was happening with society before that"...

Chris Monsere, another PSU professor of civil and environmental engineering, said the generational shift is positive from a safety perspective.

"Older and younger drivers are the most at risk groups," Monsere said. "Less driving means fewer crashes and injuries, and travel by public transit is generally much safer than other modes."

(More on the Third Bridge here.)

Mayor to Travel to Design Conference

From the SJ:

[Mayor] Peterson is one of eight mayors invited to the event, held Oct. 16 through Oct. 18 in Charleston, S.C. The Mayor’s Institute on City Design brings together mayors and design experts to tackle urban problems, such as downtown revitalization and transportation planning.

It’s the first time a Salem mayor has participated in the event, city officials said.

Mayors present a case study about a problem facing their city and participants suggest possible solutions. City of Salem officials haven’t yet decided what case study Peterson will bring to the group.

Presumably the Boise Project is a leading candidate for her to take!

Editorial on Boise

Meanwhile, the paper has a great editorial on the project:

[T]hroughout the community, there remains a strong consensus that the old factory site must be developed and that the city and the property owners, Mountain West Investment Corp., need each other in order to get any project done.

What is needed now is a break, for a few months, to let frustrations fade so people can return to the conversation later with renewed vigor, renewed commitment, renewed cooperation — and maybe a few new ideas.

(All notes on the Boise Project here.)

Arts Commission Installs Finger Jello in ODOT's Swale - Will it Melt in the Rain?

Why did they do this?

Knox Blocks at ODOT

When they could have done something like this?

Cyclepedia show at Portland Art Musum

According to the Statesman, for a new piece at the recently renovated Highway Department headquarters,

Walla Walla Foundry did a three-dimensional computer scan of an abstract painting by [James] Lavadour, “it looked like the Columbia Gorge,” said Megan Atiyeh, public art coordinator for the Oregon Arts Commission, which chooses art work for state buildings.

“It was from that scan that the foundry took portions for a model and molded it. The resulting sculpture is a transfiguration of his painting.”

The full panorama

Sure, the geology of the Columbia Gorge, formed by the epic Missoula floods, and other geology exposed in road cuts - yeah.  I get that and the relation to stormwater run-off and ODOT's road construction work.  I can see the rhymes and reasons the piece might be appropriate in the abstract.

But it looks like cast-off candy here floating above the grasses!  It's gonna dissolve!

More importantly and more seriously, the State keeps missing opportunities to say something about transportation in the 21st century. (Though the kerfuffle over Barbur Boulevard suggests they may have little interest in being serious even in the bike-nirvana of Portland!)

Walk and Bike to School Day is October 9th - Register Now!

A little over a week ago Statesman Journal reporter Stefanie Knowlton wrote about the dearth of kids walking and biking to school.

Last October you might remember she also wrote about Walk + Bike to School Day:

Only four out of Salem-Keizer’s 65 schools signed up for International Walk to School Day Wednesday. And two of them already pulled out.

“People aren’t into it for some reason,” said David Lemons, the PE teacher at Salem Heights, one of the two remaining schools.

“I don’t understand it,” he said, “to me it’s a no brainer.”

 

Lemons is right.

It's a no brainer!

And it's time to register your school!  (And get swag!)

Walk + Bike to School Day is Wednesday, October 9th.  Click here to go to the Walk + Bike Oregon Safe Routes School page to register.

On the blog, LeeAnn has a series of plans tailored to whatever level of commitment you want to make - from testing the waters to whole hog!

Check it out and register your school!

New Police Station Project Heating Up? Tid-bits from CAN-DO - Updated

The draft minutes from the last downtown neighborhood association meeting (CAN-DO) contain an interesting bit about movement on a new police station:

City Hall campus hopes to build a new police facility in Peace Plaza. A bond will be proposed. Seismic retrofit of City Hall is needed. New buildings in Peace Plaza will extend the life of the complex. Cost is 50 cents per 1K for bond. The plan to start a year from this coming November. Visit the police department to see how poor the facility is for our men in blue. Plans are on the drawing boards over the next year.

Back in December 2011 Council reviewed concept plans for the current preferred Civic Center site option, in a rendering by collaboration between CB|Two and ZGF architects.  (You may also recall the more general concept boards from December 2010 that the University of Oregon Students generated!)

At that time, the preferred concept Council saw was for a new police station, identified by A2, that would sit across from the Boise project. Here's a corresponding aerial view (awkwardly snipped and rotated from the google):

The building in Peace Plaza (E1) was going to be new Council Chambers.

The notes from CAN-DO may represent a change - locating the Police Station itself there in Peace Plaza - or might just loose reference all of the expansion work envisioned in the preferred concept, which does include a new building at Peace Plaza in addition to the Police Station building further north.

As folks think about this development, they would remember that the Civic Center is currently a dead zone outside of business hours, a mono-use office park that empties out at 5pm and on weekends. It would be neat to have some ground floor retail or restaurant, something unrelated to police and other City or emergency services, that would relate to the Boise project (also currently being designed by CB|Two) and create a richer zone of activity here. It's also an opportunity for a lovely building as opposed to the brutalist fortress now there.

Peace Plaza is also disconnected from the street, and is not a very well functioning public space.  Hopefully the memorial to Peace can be replaced/recreated elsewhere at a more lively location - something that would make it more known, and also make it more generally available to the public for other gatherings, both organized and impromptu.

In thinking about this, we should remember that when the earthquake hits, City Hall will be toast, so it's not like this is a frill. This is an essential infrastructure project, and hopefully the City will do it well and do it right.

Updated rendering, October 2013
(click to enlarge)

The Capitol Seismic Retrofit and the Capitol Mall

Also in the minutes is a brief note about the Capitol Mall Plan and the Capitol's seismic retrofit.  You may remember that the Legislature budgeted $35 million for this.

On Monday earlier this week, Salem City Council also held a work session with the State on this.

The retrofit will likely require closing the Capitol building for a while.  As you would imagine, this would displace lots of people, including legislators, who will need offices and meeting spaces elsewhere for a while.

There may be a cascade of significant land-use and transportation implications!

This will likely be one of those inconveniences that also offers an opportunity for some meaningful downtown transformation. 

Public details are few at the moment - but pay attention to this, as it is likely an opportunity for advocates working on several different problems to seize in coordinated fashion!

The Next Meeting

CAN-DO next meets Tuesday, September 17, 2013, at 6:00 p.m., in the First Christian Church, 685 Marion Street NE.

Council Streets and Bridges Bond Committee to Select $8M in Projects from $36M List

I don't really know where this falls in the priority list, but dang it was nice to see and feel this brand new pavement late yesterday afternoon!

One day old pavement overlay on 14th Street
smoothes over rough spots where rails
had been removed on the Geer Line wye.
That driveway looking part?
That's where rails were!

The former asphalt patches where the rails from the Geer Line had been ripped up made for awful bumpy biking on 14th Street between Oak and Mission Street. Since 14th here is a great alternative to 12th Street for north-south travel, the bumps were a frequent annoyance.   For cars too.  So for whatever combination of reasons, the City rolled a new overlay on a little less than a block of really crappy pavement. 

I don't remember seeing this on a project list, so I wonder if it was a "fill-in" project with left-over asphalt from a bigger project.

Whatever the case, the new smoothness was sweet! Hooray!  Thanks, City of Salem!

A City employee happened to drive past and I yelled "When did you do this?" and he said Monday.  So yeah, brand new.

This isn't a project that increases connectivity in any way.  But it's a meaningful increment in bicycling pleasure!

Council Streets and Bridges Bond Committee

And that's a meandering, even dilatory, way to introduce today's Council Streets and Bridges Bond Committee meeting at noon in the Public Works office at City Hall.  Councilors Clausen, Clem, and Nanke are the members and deciders.

The grand topic is identifying a list of candidate projects that might be funded with another chunk of bond surplus.  Because of the Great Recession, the road bond projects have been coming in consistently under budget, and it's very nice to be able to expand the number of projects it funds.

In the previous round of expected surplus from savings, Council adopted

Resolution No. 2013-46 authorizing use of Streets and Bridges Bond proceeds to fund improvements at the Commercial Street SE/Kuebler Boulevard SE intersection ($2, 187,000), Fairgrounds Road NE/Hood Street NE intersection ($325,000), and 25th Street SE/Madrona Avenue SE Intersection ($5,000,000).

And there's more savings!

So staff have identified a whole bunch - about $36 million worth - of new projects.  These will need to be whittled down to a list of about $8 million, with expected completion in fiscal years 2016-18.