Pothole Problems Remind us the Gas Tax is Running on Empty

There's a preview of the City budget in the paper today and it mentions Public Works and the Department of Pothole Repair.

Not much highlighted, since it's a piece on the whole budget, is the fact that the gas tax is falling further and further behind on our basic needs for potholes. But not mentioned at all is the way our committment to building new roads and new road capacity exacerbates the whole mess - why are we building new stuff if we already can't maintain the old stuff?

Preview of next year's budget: Fewer resources for potholes

From the piece:

City government still is shrinking. City staff would be reduced by a little more than 6.5 full-time equivalent positions in the draft budget. The reductions primarily are from positions already trimmed, mid-year, and positions left vacant.

Deeper budget cuts — perhaps as much as $6 million over five years — may be needed in future budget cycles if city revenues continue to lag behind costs, Norris said...

Salem Public Works Director Peter Fernandez, who also will give a presentation to the budget committee, said roads that are in bad shape will continue to be in bad shape. Projects to maintain roads, such as applying asphalt overlays, probably won’t get done, he said.

As Fernandez explained, the city will continue to fill potholes. Unfortunately, there may be more potholes to fill with fewer resources. Funds to pay for street maintenance are being squeezed for a couple of reasons:

• The draft budget cuts general fund support for the transportation fund, which pays for street maintenance, to zero, he said. As late as fiscal 2010-11, the transportation fund was getting about $1.2 million from the general fund.

• Revenue from gasoline taxes steadily has dropped because people are driving less and using more fuel efficient vehicles.

No layoffs are expected in public works, but the department will not fill four vacant positions in street operations and maintenance, Fernandez said.

Budget cuts might revive discussions about a streetlight fee. [italics added]

The gas tax and other car user fees don't come anywhere close to full funding for roads. The general fund supports maintenance and a property tax bond is doing all the road bond construction - $100 million worth! - since 2008. This is the trade-off:  If folks want to pay less at the pump, then they end up paying more on their house. (So, equally, if folks want to pay less at the pump, they may pay for streetlights instead.)

A Shabby, Unlucky Neighbor - That Path along South River Road

Holy Smokes!  What looks like a week of nice weather started yesterday, and that means more recreational bicycling.

The route out to Minto Park along River Road is an important one, but it's long been neglected. It's also in a problematic configuration, seemingly built to court natural hazards and to make it difficult to share with fellow humans.

Recently a reader shared their dissatisfaction with the path's condition, and the question is a good one:  What should we do about it?

Falling from the sky, in the fall walnuts narrow the path, create too many inducements to an involuntary dismount, and conceal the already meagre paint and markings.

Reaching up in the other direction, roots heave the pavement into knots and twisted bumps, also creating inducements to involuntary dismounts. (And what about that cut-out? It looks like there used to be a bus stop or something there, but now what purpose does it serve?)

West Salem, NEN-SESNA, and SCAN: In the Neighborhoods this Week

As other bloggers and history entrepreneurs have pointed out, there used to be a big brewery downtown where the "sculpture garden" is today.

You know what the "sculpture garden" really needs?
A beer fountain for thirsty Salemites!*
(Janky composite with an assist: Salem Library Historic Photo)

And that was right next to the city's biggest hotel and on the same block as the armory.  Before zoning, things were a jumble.

How to manage industrial development is the topic this week of "Looking Forward," the update to the neighborhood plan for NEN and SESNA neighborhood associations.

West Salem - Monday

But that's on Tuesday.  First up, tonight on Monday, is the West Salem Neighborhood meeting.

There's what looks like a small street matter on a new development - "2825 Brush College Road NW Revised Notice of Filing – Street Layout Revision" - otherwise the agenda has the usual items.

But of course what is interesting is the perennial question for new development on the edges of West Salem: How is it that the development gets to proceed unchecked if that same development is what is driving the "need" for a billion dollar giant bridge and highway and most crucially gets to offload the cost for that bridge onto everyone else?

Both candidates for City Council in Ward 8 support the third bridge - and support asking everybody else to subsidize it. While Polk County is eliminating Sheriff patrols and emergency response, is building a giant bridge and highway really where community priorities should be?

Count 'em! A bridge will cost at least ten Courthouse Squares

(And even if you are committed to your car, here's why you should care: The cost of the bridge is at least ten times the cost of Courthouse Square or of a new Police Station/Civic Center upgrade. Imagine, demolishing the Derby building, constructing and then repairing Courthouse Square  - and then rinse and repeat ten times! That's the order of magnitude here.)

If you live in West Salem and aren't involved in the neighborhood association, it's a great time to get involved!

The West Salem Neighborhood Association meeting is at Roth’s West, Mezzanine level, at 1130 Wallace Rd NW on Monday, April 7th at 7pm.

Cherriots Route Coverage in West Salem

(Also, remember the Cherriots meeting about improving service in West Salem! That meeting is also at Roth’s West at 1130 Wallace Rd NW on Wednesday, April 9th from 5-7 p.m.)

Looking Forward, NEN-SESNA - Tuesday

Back to industry, one way to think about this kind of development is to think about breweries and the activity they attract and generate.  

Santiam Brewing on McGilchrist in an industrial park

Right now there's a strong clustering of Salem's nascent craft brewing industry in SESNA's industrial parks.  Gilgamesh (just outside of SESNA), Santiam, and Salem Ale Works are all pretty close together. Since the breweries don't have kitchens, food carts have found customers.  But the railroad and other roads create barriers and it is very difficult to walk or drive to these places.  Chemical or polluting scents and sights may also act as a brake on food consumption and lingering.  Industrial areas aren't places to relax and hang out.

But not all industry is wholly incompatible with residential areas.

Even the Ski Operators might Agree: It's time for a Carbon Tax

Maybe you saw the front-pager today:

[A] growing body of research by Oregon State University suggests snow-challenged years are already becoming more common and are likely to increase in decades to come....

"We're eyewitnesses to climate change - it's real and it's costing us."

Last year, it was interesting that after the piece about changes in subalpine meadows, the SJ ran an op-ed piece in favor of a carbon tax written by a Crater Lake Park Ranger.

The online commenting went nuts, accusing proponents of carbon pricing of being socialists and fans of redistribution.

One Bridge to Rule them All? Issues and the Election

Green is the New Red!

Several folks have emailed about the possibility of doing candidate interviews on transportation. I don't think that's something we'll be able to get to here, and historically it has been beyond the scope of the blog.

Fortunately the Chamber of Commerce has compiled their endorsements and candidate questionnaires, and in some ways they might do a better job than anything we could do here - while a person might draw very different conclusions about for whom to vote, the questions themselves are pretty good:

• What about the proposed third bridge?
• How to allocate extras on the road bond?
• What about the streetlight fee?
• How about the State Hospital north campus?
• Some thoughts on specific Urban Renewal questions

No matter what you think of the answers, these get at some of the important issues in Salem, and the style of the answers also say something about the disposition of the candidates.

William Stafford: Maybe Alone on My Bike

William Stafford, 1980s

Forget policy!  How about some poetry?

April you may know is "National Poetry Month," and this year is the centennial of William Stafford's birth.

His son, Kim, was in town last month to celebrate, and it happens that the elder Stafford biked and wrote a bike poem, "Maybe alone on my bike"!

I listen, and the mountain lakes
hear snowflakes come on those winter wings
only the owls are awake to see,
their radar gaze and furred ears
alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;

And I have thought (maybe alone
on my bike, quaintly on a cold
evening pedaling home) think! -
the splendor of our life, its current unknown
as those mountains, the scene no one sees.

Oh citizens of our great amnesty:
we might have died. We live. Marvels
coast by, great veers and swoops of air
so bright the lamps waver in tears,
and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.

Kroc, Pods, Transit at Area Commission for Rankings Thursday

Thursday the 3rd, the Mid-Willamette Valley Area Commission on Transportation meets to consider the applications for lottery funding under the ConnectOregon V program.

Locally there are two bike/ped projects and one transit project among the 11 total project applications in our region.

Maybe the most interesting thing is in the transit application:  If there's one thing that's clear in the South Salem Transit Center application materials, it's the massive disconnect between land use and transportation.

Proposed transit center on South Commercial

While the area proposed for a transit center site is along the Commercial Street corridor, the big new employment areas highlighted in the application are well off it, on the other side of I-5.

A new cluster of jobs and homes
on Commercial in purple,
but away from other clusters in red and blue.
Notably the others have little housing.

These areas do not have housing, grocery stores, restaurants, or other services nearby. They are car-dependent islands, and even if you took transit, you'd still want a car on your lunch hour to go anywhere meaningful! Without your friends to drive you, you're stuck.

Kroc Center path in red (rotated 90 degrees - north to right)

About the Kroc Center Path and the Bike Pods of Oregon there's little new to say.  Last month the Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee did look at and rank 36 bike/ped applications.  The Kroc path ranked 15th and the Bike Pods 21st - solidly in the middle. A set of Eugene bike/ped bridges ranked first and a Tualatin trail ranked second.

Top ranked bike/ped project:
Eugene's bridges connect streets and bike paths to transit

I don't even know what a Salem project similar to the Eugene proposal might look like:  First you'd need something to correspond to the Fern Ridge path, then you'd need a couple of bus rapid transit lines...and THEN you could come up with a set of bridge connections across a barrier.

In the end the project illustrates just how far behind is Salem.

For more on the bike pods, see here and here, and for more on the Kroc see here. For notes on last month's economic assessment, see here.

(The local packets can be downloaded for a few days from the ODOT ftp site. Usually they don't hang around, however.)

MWACT meets at 3:30pm on Thursday the 3rd at 100 High St. SE, Suite 200 above Bar Andaluz and the former La Capitale.