City Council, March 13th - Ride-booking: My Way or the Highway

Council meets on Monday and the headline item is the proposed rapprochement with Uber. You could also see it as "surrender."

From the Staff Report:

Uber and Lyft recently prevailed in a legal action to prevent the City of Portland’s release of company ridership data and number of TNC vehicles in Portland, arguing those records are exempt from public disclosure as trade secrets. Under the draft SRC, the City will have access to records of this type, and it is likely that TNC and Taxi Companies will seek to restrict the City’s ability to disclose that information in the event of a public records request. [italics added]

Some recent headlines:

• Cherriots' consultant Jarrett Walker warns, Sounding the Alarm about Uber’s Impacts on Transit, and on Cities
• The Washington Post says "Uber hires Eric Holder to investigate sexual harassment claims"
• The New York Times observes "How Uber Deceives the Authorities Worldwide"
• And in an official City of Portland Statement, "Mayor Ted Wheeler is reaching out to mayors across Oregon and the country regarding recent reports that Uber used the Greyball tool to evade authorities in order to operate in locations where Uber service was resisted or banned."

And you might recall some earlier headlines:

• San Francisco Chronicle, "Uber’s self-driving cars stay on SF roads, defying city and DMV"
• National Bureau of Economic Research, "Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies"

And the former Commissioner of the New York Department of Transportation made tart observations about Uber's refusal and then evasiveness about sharing important data:

Talk on Climate Change and "Merchants of Doubt" this Friday

Friday night the 10th, at Willamette is the annual Dempsey Lecture. This year Naomi Oreskes will discuss "Climate Change: What Now?"

The Harvard professor and environmental scientist will share how industry-funded researchers can delegitimize scientific consensus — as in climate change — to mislead policy makers and the public....

Professor Oreskes’s research focuses on the earth and environmental sciences, with a particular interest in understanding scientific consensus and dissent.

Her 2004 essay “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” (Science 306: 1686) has been widely cited, both in the United States and abroad, including in the Royal Society’s publication, “A Guide to Facts and Fictions about Climate Change," in the Academy-award winning film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and in Ian McEwan’s novel, “Solar”.... Her 2010 book, “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco to Global Warming,” co-authored with Erik M. Conway, was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Time Book Prize, and received the 2011 Watson-Davis Prize from the History of Science Society.

100 Years ago: Roses for City Beautiful Project

March 5th, 1917

One hundred years ago, the Salem Floral Society announced a

project of beautifying the parking of Marion Street...another plan will be taken up soon to plant a rose hedge along the parkings of some promenade street leading to the fair grounds this will likely be either Capitol or Summer Street...

You may recall that "parking" used to mean not something for temporary car storage on the paved margins of a road, but instead meant the curb strip planting area and its landscaping.

An old rose on Marion Street at a driveway
between Winter and Summer Streets
DAS Yellow Lot in background (2013)

Here's an old rose bush that might have been associated with one of these beautifying projects. Now it is a forlorn reminder of a time when we valued our urban fabric and land more highly than as a gravel lot for cars.

Bit of Commercial-Vista Plan gets Funding; SCAN and Morningside get Updates

After a planner left the City's Transportation Planning group in 2015, the Commercial-Vista Corridor Study lurched some and even went dormant. It's waking up from the latest hibernation, and SCAN and Morningside will get updates this week.

Late last Spring you might recall a version of the final report, presented to the Planning Commission.

Then it went quiet again.

That version of the report has been tweaked slightly and posted again (old from May 2016, new from February 2017; both are at the old website, and the new City site doesn't appear to have them yet; hopefully the City won't orphan the links and create massive linkrot!) and it looks like the City is setting up a new round of updates.

And there is substantial news to deliver.

From the 2018 - 2023 TIP

The buffered bike lanes and enhanced crosswalks on middle Commercial between Oxford St SE and Winding Way SE are funded and will be completed as part of the ODOT's All Roads Transportation Safety program (full saga here).

City Council, March 6th - Strategic Plan Work Session

Council meets on Monday for a work session on the Strategic Plan, and there is a lot in it! (It would be surprising if Council can land on an approach in just one work session.)

Walking, biking, busing, and No Third Bridge
(Summarized from the Open House)

Both SCV and N3B have already remarked on this, but it is nice to see again the overwhelming public sentiment at the January 31st Open House in favor of more and better options in transportation, as well as the magnitude of doubt about the waste in the Salem River Crossing.

Walking, biking, and busing was consistently mentioned

Those sentiments are summarized with some analysis in the report on the "Stakeholder Charette" and "Community Open House" on January 31st.

Safe Routes and Bike Boulevard Advocacy Next Week, March 6th and 7th

On Monday and Tuesday there's quite a cluster of activities in Salem for walking and biking, with a special focus on kids.

On Monday the 6th, Safe Routes to School is working with other advocates for a Lobby Day at the Capitol:

Join us on March 6th for Heart at the Capitol to advocate for the heart health of Oregon’s children! The issues we will be advocating for include raising the tobacco purchase age to 21, improving the quality of Physical Education in our schools, and funding for the Safe Routes to School program that helps ensure all Oregon children can safely walk or bike to school. There is no previous advocacy experience necessary. Training will be provided on the issues ahead of time and the morning of the event. The day is sure to be impactful as we meet with our lawmakers to make a difference in the lives of Oregon’s children!

It runs 9am to 3pm, and they're asking for an RSVP.

On Tuesday the 7th, there are two events at Broadway Commons.

New City Website went Live Yesterday

Yesterday the City announced full public testing and access for the latest version of the new municipal website.

New Home page - very tabletized for moble users

Have you checked it out? If not, poke around, and the next time you need to look up something on the City site, be sure to use the new one first.

No Planning Commission Agenda Yet

Not everything is populated, so some searches come up empty.

There's some inconsistent navigation. Sometimes the big buttons click through to the next level in the page heirarchy.

Extra clicks sometimes required

Sometimes they don't.

Clicking on "Planning Notices and Decisions" expanded a caption, and then required a second click to "learn more." Two clicks here was annoying.

From the press release. It's interesting they did it in-house.

The site will ask website visitors to submit feedback via an online form if they wish. “We look forward to receiving input from residents as they explore it. ” said website project manager Laura Singer.

To reduce costs and ensure the new site is better able to stay up to date, the City built the site entirely in-house with a team of passionate City staff from multiple departments. That team came together to reimagine the website and created new content with a consistent look and feel. No third - party consultants were used in this project. Krishna Namburi, Information Technology Director/CIO for the City says, “Our goal is to deliver and maintain a site that makes a visible difference in the Salem community.”

We'll come back with more notes after using it more. Between yesterday and today, some things were populated it looks like, so things are also in flux, and most judgements should probably remain tentative and provisional for the moment.