Downtown Board Looks at Replacing Planters on Ferry at Liberty

The Downtown Advisory Board meets tomorrow, Thursday the 9th, and they'll be talking about the lousy crosswalk between the Conference Center and the Liberty Parkade as well as ways to increase usage of the parking garages.

Proposed Screens to replace Concrete Planters

Recognizing that the connection from the Conference Center to the core of downtown is not very inviting and requires crossing a zoomy state highway, DAB proposes to fund replacing a cluster of big concrete planters. These partially block the sidewalk and guard against too speedy turns that depart from the roadway. DAB proposes to replace them with more decorative metal railings consistent in style with our wayfinding and historical signage.

Long Crosswalk with dual turn lanes on OR-22

DAS Publishes Three North Campus Proposals - Let's Look at the Latest

Breitenbush Hall, January 2017

Recently, DAS published the three proposals that were rejected for purchasing the North Campus of the State Hospital. (The project website has several new bits of information!)

• The 2014 Design Build Associates proposal
• The 2016 Chusal proposal
• The 2016 Mountain West proposal

This is welcome and overdue. Now as we debate whether DAS was right to reject the proposals, at least we can have some real facts at hand about the proposals. (See for example the just published Salem Weekly story, "North Campus Historic Buildings Will Come Down.")

The only proposal that has seemed worth continuing to discuss, though, was the Chusal one. DAS can make a reasonable case that the first was premature, and the bare land proposal can still be in play or further refined after the demolition is completed. You might disagree, but from here these don't seem worth dwelling on at the moment.

Demolition plan for comparison

But what about the Chusal proposal, which would have retained all four of the buildings currently being demolished? That sounds like a great thing, right. On the surface there is good reason to give it a very sympathetic reading. It reused buildings and saved trees!

Chusal Concept Site Plan
(Click to enlarge)

So let's consider the site plan. (Comments keyed to numbered site plan.)

Traffic Violence Story Misses Biggest Ingredients: Too Much, too Fast Driving

Front pager on traffic violence

Focus on "distracted" or "impaired" driving

City Council, February 6th - Police Station Work Session

Do you remember that spreadsheet funding tool that let citizens assemble different funding packages for the Salem River Crossing?

$2.00 toll, $1/$1000 property tax, and $0.10 gas tax = not enough
from an N3B pass at the funding calculator

It was ugly, but it let folks walk through difference scenarios and see what a range of possible realistic outcomes might be.

On Monday, Council will have a work session to revisit the prospect of a new Police Station, and Staff have gone down a decidedly constrained path. There are two choices on the menu right now:

1. If Council chooses to refer only a police facility question, the recommendation is a 127,000 sq. ft. building for a $69.1 million bond measure.
2. If Council determines that seismic upgrades should be included with a police facility question, the recommendation is to include the library (at $15.3 million) and reduce the police facility to 115,000 square feet (at $63.9 million) for a $79.2 million bond measure.

This is ridiculous.

The ostensible "thrifty, low-cost" option for a $69.1 million bond measure is still a giant, over-sized "Police Palace."

The more expensive option for a $79.2 million bond measure includes seismic work on the Library - but crucially appears to omit any seismic work on City Hall itself. And while it retreats a bit on size, going for the L instead of XL, it's still nowhere near the 75,000 square foot facility that was originally approved.

Council should instead get a menu of choices that looks more like this:

Legislative Climate Change Report Highlights Reversal of Progress, Calls for Action

Ice loss on Mt. Hood 1984 - 2013

The draft of the 2017 Oregon Global Warming Commission Biennial Report to the Legislature is making the rounds, and it's not pretty.

Exec Summary: Rising Transportation Emissions

From the very top of the Executive Summary:

• Rising transportation emissions are driving increases in statewide emissions
• Oregon will not meet its 2020 emission reduction goal
• [we need] a transportation funding package to prioritize policies and programs that will make material differences in the GHG emissions from transportation

And further in, on a "perilous reversal" of progress:

Transportation Emissions: Reliable 2015 data on transportation GHG emissions – Oregon’s largest emissions sector; see pp. 17-18 of this report – will allow 2017’s legislators to rationally weigh choices to substantially reduce those emissions alongside other transportation policies that provide economic stimulation and congestion relief (of course many clean transportation choices also contribute materially to these other important policy outcomes). The 2015 numbers suggest this debate is timely if not overdue, as the increasing transportation emissions describe a perilous reversal of the progress we’ve made over the last 15 years. This disturbing trend may be resulting from the compounded effects of (1) a 2013-2015 upturn in Vehicle Miles Traveled by Oregon drivers, and (2) a flattening out, since early 2015, of vehicle fuel efficiency (MPG) gains nationally.

As legislators gather for their 2017 session and likely transportation legislation including a gas tax increase, their choices should be guided by both economic and environmental outcomes including these disturbing transportation emissions trends, and by the findings of the 2013 Sustainable Transportation Strategy ODOT analysis that identifies increased transit service levels, and wider deployment of Electric Vehicles (EV’s) reliant on a clean electrical grid as two critical strategies to contain those emissions.

It's disappointing, however, not to see more on walking, biking, and transportation demand management in VMT reduction. Making it easy for people to drive less or not at all!

In any event, it's never too late to start contacting your Legislators about supporting rational transportation for greenhouse gases, for safety, and for livability. (As the session continues, a more specific ask and slate of bills to support may emerge, as well as ways to frame messaging for Rs and Ds.)

• Senator Peter Courtney
• Senator Kim Thatcher
• Senator Jackie Winters 
• Representative Teresa Alonso Leon
• Representative Bill Post
• Representative Paul Evans
• Representative Jodi Hack
• Representative Brian Clem

Go Gas Free: It's a Patriotic Thing

Does it bother you that our new Secretary of State is an Oil and Gas Executive? Worried about that 19% of Rosneft? Wonder about what will happen if an SEC rule requiring oil and gas companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments is canned?

In addition to protesting and writing letters and calling electeds, if you're not doing it already, it might be time to consider in a more serious way making a commitment to not-driving on a regular basis.

The car's a useful transportation tool, but we overuse it, and the more we are dependent on fossil fuel dollars, the more chicanery there will be.

The winter's not a very good time to try to start walking, biking, and busing more, alas. But here we are. Nothing about this moment is very good timing. So think globally, act locally. You know. It won't be realistic to shift all your trips, but maybe you can do one a week - think something like Fuel Free Fridays.

Something to help? Mark your calendars for March 7th.

To support Safe Routes to Schools funding and programming at the Legislature this year, the entity-formerly-known-as the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, now the Street Trust, in coalition as the For Every Kid Coaltion, have been holding a series of Town Halls around the state.

In March, it will be Salem's turn.

Bolted on to that Town Hall will be an Open House for the Winter-Maple Bike Boulevard. Word is there will be door prizes in addition to several speakers!

So Save the Date! Tuesday, March 7th:

• 3/7 - For Every Kid Town Hall @ Salem (4:30-6pm)
• 3/7 - Salem Neighborhood Bikeways Open House (6-7:30pm)

The Town Hall will be in Broadway Commons, 1300 Broadway St NE #100. RSVP here.

Slipping a Reminder by the Ignition!

You might remember the clinic last fall put on by Salem Environmental Education. This spring hopefully they will put it on again. Just Walk also has lots of walking resources, and in addition to scheduled loop walks, it's good to consider walking to work or to the grocery store.

Our incipient klepto-authoritarian moment isn't just going to go away, and it's going to take deeper, more difficult action to dislodge it.

So take a moment and give some real thought to driving less and to walking, biking, busing more, and adding that as part of your advocacy and patriotism.

Oregon Transportation Commission to Discuss ODOT Management Audit Thursday

The Oregon Transportation Commission has scheduled a special meeting for tomorrow, Thursday the 2nd. They'll be discussing the management "audit" of ODOT.

agenda

The Portland Tribune had to make a public records request for it, but at least for a little while a slightly redacted version is now posted to the OTC website. So if you want to read it, you should download it right now! It will probably disappear very shortly.

Mostly the internal assessment of ODOT management is not very interesting for our purposes.

audit

The moments where they discuss strategy and vision is a little interesting, though, and point to ways that it has seemed like so much of project selection, notwithstanding all the scoring and prioritization exercises at one level or another, was truly ad hoc and driven by politics more than a real commitment to a strategy:

Capital Strategy (p22)

ODOT sets an overall strategy for capital allocation and then solicits “Enhance” and “Fix It” projects to fit into those buckets, creating an ‘optimal’ portfolio. In the most recent budget, this balance was set at 15 percent “Enhance” projects and 85 percent “Fix It” projects. Interviews with stakeholders reveal that ODOT’s process for arriving at that balance is unclear, so ODOT could improve the transparency of how it arrives at its overall capital allocation strategy.

Strategy and the OTC (p51)

While OTC has written long-and short-term strategic plans for state-wide transportation, the strategy has not been effectively internalized. Today, commissioners and ODOT leaders are not aligned around a consistent vision of agency priorities. In interviews, commissioners and ODOT senior management expressed a wide variety of priorities for ODOT. A clear and shared strategy, supported by metrics with a meaningful reporting cadence, could make the commission more effective.

If we are going to commit to "fix it first," to greenhouse gas reductions, to reductions in VMT, to multi-modalism - if we really are going to do all these things, high-level strategy should be driving and better aligned with project selection.

In that light, the section on rubber stamping (p48) was relevant:

However, many of the members of the five-person commission indicated that they are unsure if they have complete information to make informed decisions during meetings. They described meetings as times when ODOT updates them and asks for approval, rather than settings for debate with a fact base on both sides of the decision.

And while the OTC might feel this way "at times," the public also often does! Just look at the messed-up process for the Salem River Crossing, which has always seemed to be driving to a pre-determined conclusion, not something genuinely responsive to criticism and comment, and not something actually consistent with strategy/goals to reduce VMT, emissions, and drive-alone trips.

Focused as it was on "management" the audit seemed to miss one important element: managing change. It seemed to be based on a fundamental notion of how to do business as usual better, not how to adjust business to changing realities. The audit doesn't much touch on the structures - and predicaments - of road funding, like the increasing inadequacy of the gas tax and increasing debt service, or touch on the changing nature of mobility. I guess that would be a substantially different audit or report, and you can't fault a text for not being what it doesn't set out to be. Still, by not addressing these in more detail, it may be more shallow and optimistic than the conditions originating the audit really called for. I expected more forensic discussion of the problematic management of the CRC, the Highway 20 Eddyville mess, and the fiasco around the low-carbon fuel standard numbers at the Legislature, for example. (Maybe these are separately in a redacted/confidential portion, I suppose.)

It will be interesting to see what others have to say about the report.

The OTC meets Thursday, February 2nd, at 10am in the Gail Achterman Conference Room 103, in ODOT HQ, 355 Capitol Street NE.