Man Drives into Home, Kills Sleeping Resident

This is especially terrible. You'd think a home and its walls would offer more protection than a sidewalk or crosswalk. You think you are safe there, but not necessarily.

via Twitter

Cars are dangerous, full stop.

"Dangerous instrumentality" - They knew in 1921!

From the newspaper:

Alan Patrick Jacobs, 54, was driving his 2015 Mercedes SUV southbound on Volcano St SE when he drove off the roadway, according to a statement released by Salem Police Department.

Jacobs continued southbound instead of following the road east onto Sussex Ave....

Srabonti Haque, 36, was asleep in a bedroom of her residence...and was struck [and killed] around 9:25 p.m.

Volcano is a steep downhill and ends in a bulb
with a left-turn onto Sussex
(house and crash site circled)

This will be discussed as some aberrant thing, an exception, but people crash into stationary objects off the road altogether too often. See the extraordinary list here. It's long. Cars are dangerous, full stop.

Urban Freight Corridors and the CMAQ Bonus at the MPO

The Technical Advisory Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Organization meets today, Tuesday the 10th, and there are several items of interest.

At the top of the agenda is something that always seems a little dicey for people interested in walking and biking. The new Federal Transportation law includes something called "Critical Urban Freight Corridors." The magic of, and need for, free-flowing "freight" is constantly invoked to justify hydraulic autoism: Road widening for those in cars and trucks, and second-class facilities on the margins (or not at all) for people walking, biking, or busing.

At the December TAC meeting, there was a short discussion of the Critical Urban Freight Corridors (CUFCs) that ODOT will be defining in Oregon in consultation with the MPOs. ODOT is hosting a workshop on CUFC selection on January 20, 2017. A finalized list will be developed by ODOT by February for submittal to FHWA and inclusion in the update to the Oregon Freight Plan....

The last two federal surface transportation funding acts, MAP-21 (Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century) and FAST (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation), have increased the focus on freight and related issues. This increased focus has led to additional requirements that DOTs and MPOs must address when developing their long-range plan and short-term funding program. Part of this focus is to define Critical Urban Freight Corridors (CUFC) in each state. During the next two months, ODOT and the MPOs will identify 77.53 miles of roads statewide to be designated as a CUFC. Separately, ODOT will also identify 155.06 miles of roads statewide as Critical Rural Freight Corridor (CRFC). Designation, once submitted and approved by FHWA, will allow eligible projects on these roads to apply for National Highway Freight Program (NHFP) funding, which is anticipated to amount to $73.5 million available within Oregon through 2020.

Several candidates for CUFC designation are listed in a table, and here are some that seem particularly worth attention:

• Marion/Center St Bridges
• Salem Rivercrossing aka “3rd Bridge”
• Marine Dr
• McGilchrist St (between 12th and 25th)

Others, like Cordon Road and Kuebler Boulevard, seemed obvious and relatively unproblematic.

Lansing-NESCA Plan meets Tuesday on State Hospital North Campus

Tomorrow, Tuesday the 10th, the Lansing-NESCA neighborhood plan, "Envision," is meeting to discuss the North Campus of the State Hospital.

Meeting Flier for January 10th on the State Hospital

On the one hand, this is yet another "meeting" in a series of them that has never quite seemed to blossom into real collaboration and action on the North Campus. More often it has seemed like they were merely platforms for the State to say "here's what we're gonna do," especially as the neighborhood has seemed mostly to want more single-family dwellings and parky nothingness. The City would like a larger property tax base for it, and the State simply wants to unload and monetize it. Getting everybody's interests to align more or less has been a challenge.

But on the other hand, things have not yet proceeded so far that course-corrections are not possible. So each meeting still has "opportunity," even if that opportunity seems more slender than folks might like.

By now you will have heard of the plan to renovate Yaquina Hall for some affordable housing. The City is purchasing it and plans to create 50 1-bedroom apartments ranging from 420 - 650 SF in size. The latest published budget for this has a total cost of about $9.8 million and $195,000 per unit.

Yaquina Hall, 1946 - to be affordable housing

Let's do a back-of-the-envelope comparison to another project going on right now.

More on 148 North Liberty as Early Fred Meyer

December's storm postponed consideration of the storefront restoration project for the Engelberg Antiks building last month. It's on the agenda for the Historic Landmarks Commission this month. (The agenda and Staff Report's not up yet, however. Here's the Notice.)

Fred Meyer at 148 Liberty St NE,
undated but no earlier than 1938
(Salem Library Historic Photos)

The building remains a small source of fascination, and it is poorly documented in our downtown Historic District. There is a photo from the 1930s or 1940s, but it has not been dated. We can now date it to no earlier than 1938. The local story of Fred Meyer here and of the building itself is a little interesting, and with the help of some additional research by a blog reader (thank you!), maybe we can start to flesh out more of it. Some of it is secure, some is more conjectural. The outlines seem clear but you might be surprised how windy and braided are some of the details!

Here's an annotated clip from the 1926 Sanborn Fire Map for the half block on the east side of Liberty Street between State and Court. In the upper left is the newly restored McGilchrist and Roth block. The Book Bin's building is on the right. The old Fred Meyer is addressed on it as 140 N. Liberty, but today we use 148 Liberty NE.

1926 Sanborn Fire Map
(Comments in red added)

The Historic District uses a date of 1915 for construction, but in tentative way I want instead to propose 1908.

There is an announcement in September of 1908 for a new building and opening of "Ye Liberty" Theater.

Opening Announcement, September 9th, 1908

Unfortunately for us, Salem was a small town, and it was not necessary to give any addresses! People knew how to find stuff.

Shortly thereafter, in 1910, notice about a business in the Roth building next door confirms the location of Ye Liberty Theater.

City Strategic Planning Process too Opaque, Open House on 31st

Because of the winter storm earlier this month, the City's Open House on a strategic planning process was postponed until January 31st.

At least from here the whole thing has seemed a little strange. If Council authorized it, we all missed it. If Council didn't authorize it, it's being funded by some secret slush fund! It probably originates in the City Manager's office rather than from Council. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing, but it's just a little odd. Usually these kinds of things go before Council first.

Significantly, notes from the November SCAN meeting appear to confirm its origin in the City Manager's office:

Councilor Andersen commented on three items of interest 1) City Manager Steve Powers has launched a strategic planning initiative for the City...

So why is it such a secret?

The project's description, too, has seemed murky, with a lesser instance of word salad:

The City of Salem is undertaking a strategic plan to articulate the mission, vision, values, and goals for the organization to help the City sustain delivery of core services as the community and the organization grow and change.

Anyway, they've conducted some of the proverbial "stakeholder interviews" and also a phone survey. (SCV has some video here from earlier in the process.)

A reader sent along a copy of the phone survey results, and there are some interesting findings in it.

Unfortunately, the City has created no project website or document library for it. (When this is remedied, this post will be updated with links as appropriate. Update: Here it is!)

Community Priorities Telephone Survey (and throughout)

Let's start with the "most important issue."

While in aggregate, transportation-related things rank high, the Salem River Crossing itself is not very important, it turns out! (Though of course it is a little dispiriting to see "public transportation" ranked equally as "most important.") "Homelessness" and "housing" are both more important. Elsewhere, "maintenance" seemed clearly to be more important than new roads like the Salem River Crossing. ("Fix it first!")

City Council, January 9th - Ride-Booking Companies and Monoculture

Last night the Mayor and new Councilors were sworn in. They meet formally on Monday for their first set of actions. Already the Mayor, himself a lobbyist it is perhaps relevant to note, is jumping up to lobby for ride-booking companies. It is a strange priority. Is this really the first, and most important thing to jump on?

Back in 2014, the City tried to apply rules consistently

From Mayor Bennett:

MOTION:
I move that Council direct staff to prepare amendments to the Salem Revised Code to better allow transportation network companies, such as Lyft and Uber, to operate in Salem.

DISCUSSION:
Last year, the City Council considered amendments to the Salem Revised Code (“SRC”) to address transportation network companies (“TNCs”) and app-based technology related to passenger transportation services. Council adopted an ordinance amending the SRC to remove unnecessary regulation, and address the use of a digital, application based, passenger transportation systems. However, the changes were insufficient to accommodate the business model of TNC’s, and as a result that service is not available in Salem.

In order to provide Salem residents with more transportation options, it is necessary for the City to be willing to accommodate different passenger transportation business models. Therefore, I move that Council direct staff to prepare, for Council’s consideration, amendments to the SRC that accommodate the current business model of major TNCs such as Lyft and Uber.

Over at Human Transit, Cherriots' current consultant Jarrett Walker had written "Sounding the Alarm about Uber's Impacts on Transit, and on Cities." He says

cars’ inefficient use of urban space is rarely reflected in the cost of urban driving, and Uber skates through on the same invisible subsidy that all urban motorists enjoy. Transit, which doesn’t enjoy any such subsidy, is unable to properly reflect its efficient use of space in its pricing....

Uber’s behavior often looks like an intentional effort to undermine competitors and thus reduce customer choice — in which case you’d call it predatory pricing — but it doesn’t matter what the intention is. Underpricing is a blunt weapon with zero targeting ability. It mows down everything in its path....

But it’s time to quit discussing Uber and similar companies as though they were improving the world in a permanent way, and as though they will necessarily make cities better for everyone. We already know that’s not true.

The scope of underpricing is breathtaking:

A new analysis of Uber's financial data suggests the ride-hailing company is losing as much as $2 billion a year, with passengers on average only paying 41 percent of the actual cost of a trip.

Parsing a set of three private financial statements that were published on three separate occasions, Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism writes that its clear that for the year ending in September 2015, Uber posted $2 billion in losses on revenue of $1.4 billion....

It seems clear that the overall goal is not "more transportation options" overall, and not here in Salem in particular. The overall goal is monopoly as far as possible: To use underpricing to drive out other "transportation options" and to create a transportation monoculture.

Later, once the investors in ride-booking companies force them to maintain actual market pricing - you know, to make a profit - users of the ride-booking services will find much higher fares. And in the mean time, we may have lost the other compensating transportation choices.

It may be that we have a choice in Salem, and we can choose one of these:

1. Develop a plan to fund evening, weekend, and more frequent transit in Salem; or
2. Make it easy for ride-booking companies to underprice the market and to further erode transit or other choices

There are other issues, too:

• The employee/independent contractor question
• Fair wages for drivers
• Adequate background checks for drivers
• Commercial insurance requirements and coverage gaps for drivers who hit people walking and biking
• Equity and discrimination in avoiding parts of town or certain classes of names (more here)
• Fairness and consistency for taxi companies and for ride-booking companies

It is far from obvious that ride-booking companies as they currently operate offer a clear set of advantages for a city like Salem. Mostly they appear to be asking for a regulatory environment that gives them special advantages and unlevels the playing field.

Note that Mayor Bennett asks for "amendments to the SRC that accommodate the current business model of major TNCs." That does not look like much of a negotiation.

Choose wisely, Mayor Bennett and Councilors.

(Previous notes on ride-booking companies are here.)

Other items

• Details on $750,000 in partial funding for affordable housing and the rehab of Yaquina Hall at the State Hospital.
• $100,000 for the "code clean up" project in West Salem, associated with the West Salem Business District Action Plan, which will promote better walking, storefronts, and housing and business in the close-in flats of West Salem. (Strangely, it's identified as in Ward 8, but I think it's Ward 1 instead.)
• At the north end of the Deaf School, folks associated with Capitol Auto Group have got a parcel reclassified from “Community Service - Education” with PE (Public/Private Education) zoning to “Industrial Commercial” with IC (Industrial Commercial) zoning. Out-buildings have already been demolished. This is on a supposed route for a family-friendly bike boulevard to the Kroc Center, and it is slightly worrisome to see more car dealership or other car-oriented business here. One condition of the approval is to construct bike facilities on Cherry, Maple, and Auto Row Streets, but it's not clear how "family-friendly" these actually will be. The conditions also include some intersection widening and new turn lanes for cars, so the area will get worse, not better in some ways for bike travel.

History Notes at Grant Neighborhood Association

1950 Water Street NE has been vacant and boarded up

The Grant Neighborhood Association meets tomorrow the 5th, and in last month's minutes there's a very interesting note about an old house.

There is a small Victorian house on north Water Street that is boarded and slated for demolition. It belonged to some of the extended family of AC Gilbert. [A neighbor] is working on trying to get it moved to Riverfront Park and the Gilbert House Museum complex.

The meeting minutes don't give an address, but it seems almost certain that it is the house at 1950 Water Street NE, currently owned by the Salvation Army.

As you can tell, it's an old house. The Assessor's Office lists a date of 1860 for it! Even if it's not quite that old, it's clearly from the 19th century. (Update - It's a City "local landmark" and that brief listing says circa 1880, which is much more plausible than 1860.)

It's in a shabby condition, and it needs some love and investment. In the image from a couple of years ago, it doesn't seem to be sagging obviously, so perhaps its bones remain sound.

Moving and restoring it seems like a very worthy project.

Capital City Laundry: Oregon State Library

Also, it looks like the old Laundry on Gaines and Market will finally get a regular use:

[A neighbor] spoke about the Aramark building being transformed into Sparrow Furniture. It will provide services for refurbishing furniture and will provide work and training for new refugees.

The Grant Neighborhood Association meeting is on Thursday the 5th at 6:15pm, in the Library of Grant Community School, 725 Market St NE.