Reaction to Winter-Maple Bikeway Revealing in Language

Not long after Council adjourned last night, the paper published a relatively lengthy piece on action for the Winter-Maple Family-Friendly Bikeway - or maybe now, the Winter-Maple Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan.

One of the interesting things to come out of it is the role just of language.

(update - April 11th)

From the paper's early story:

The Salem City Council on Monday approved a plan to construct a bike and pedestrian path connecting the Capitol Mall and Salem Parkway areas.

The decision followed a debate over whether to include last-minute additions proponents expect will slow traffic near the Oregon School for the Deaf.

The bike and pedestrian path, called Winter-Maple Neighborhood Greenway, doesn't appear to have a confirmed completion date, but Monday's decision paves the way for city officials to start early work on the project.

The route certainly is a "path" in the sense of a "way" or "route." But it is not primarily a path in the sense of a paved path off or out of the street right-of-way, which has seemed like it was the ordinary sense of "bike path." We have bike paths in parks, but not on our street network.

It's hard to say whether this use of "path" is a misunderstanding of the nature of the plan and the nature of low-traffic bikeways, which would be understandable since the piece was published last night, or whether it represents autoist bias and a back-handed denial of bike traffic in the street itself.

At the MPO: New Round of Bonus Funds

About $3/4 million in additional Federal funding

The Technical Advisory Committee for our local Metropolitan Planning Organization (SKATS) meets Tuesday the 10th, and they're still talking a lot about the performance measures created by the latest Federal transportation bill. It's a lot of inside baseball and it has seemed like the more important thing was the spirit with which agencies approached them rather than the letter and detail of the measures and rules. Weak performance measures could be implemented assertively, and strong measures might be ignored or satisfied weakly and barely. Interpretive vigor has always seemed more important than letter of the law. Maybe this is wrong, but when "decrease reliance on the SOV" is a high-level policy goal for Salem (I'm switching a little in the example, from the MPO to City of Salem), that is all the direction that should be necessary. Instead, we have all kinds of half-hearted dodges that are meant to satisfy a very weak notion of "decreasing reliance on the SOV" instead of a strong interpretation and strong actions. So the politics of interpretation rather than the technical details of rule-writing have seemed to matter most.

Maybe when the latest round reaches the Policy Committee there will be more to say.

The most interesting thing on the TAC's agenda is an announcement of what looks to be about $3/4 million in unexpected, new funding.

It should be used to "decrease reliance on the SOV"! It should not be used on a capacity increase for drive alone trips. It should be used on capacity increase or safety improvement for walking, biking, or busing.

Meanwhile, and not on the agenda at all, the MPO has had a survey out on the high-level policy goals for the new 2019 Regional Transportation System Plan they are starting to write.

A simple, proposed addition to goal 7 in the RTSP

Our local 350.org chapter proposes some language to add to goal 7. Under this it is easy to nest things like Safe Routes to School, transportation demand management, walk/bike/bus things generally. If people were going to concentrate comment on one single issue, greenhouse gas emissions is an excellent candidate. No other advocacy has emerged around specific other revisions, and so it seems worthwhile to focus and unify on this. If you haven't already, tell SKATS to add "and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions" to goal 7 in the RTSP. The survey goes through April 16th.

Look for the historic sign
next to the entry

You can download the agenda and meeting packet here.

SKATS Technical Advisory Committee meets Tuesday the 10th, at 1:30pm. SKATS is at 100 High St. SE, Suite 200, above Andaluz Kitchen and Table Five 08.

The Hype on Robot Cars Deserves Great Skepticism

In the very same paper with a story about another car attack, this one in Germany, there's two pieces about robot cars. They use the same stock imagery and look like a coordinated PR effort by robot car interests.

But, you know, just wait until robot cars can be hijacked remotely and turned into lethal drones.

In the national news section

City Council, April 9th - part 2

From here of course Monday's Council meeting is dominated by the Winter-Maple Bikeway. But there are several other things to note in passing, and some totally deserve more comment and analysis. There's a lot of meat on this agenda.

Zoning proposal for close-in West Salem

One project, an important project, is the West Salem Code Clean-up for the close-in Edgewater area. I don't feel like it has got quite enough attention. Council looks to set a date for a Public Hearing on it later this month. (And there may be more to say then.)

Some good news? At least theoretically, a full build-out with the new zoning would decrease car trips!

DKS Consultants prepared a memorandum for the City of Salem, dated February 14, 2018, analyzing the traffic impacts of the proposed zone changes....The results for trip generation analysis indicate a decrease of approximately 4,155 daily trips for all three areas under the reasonable worst-case development under the proposed zoning compared to existing zoning. Furthermore, each area has a decrease of daily trips individually: 154 daily trips for the West Salem Central Business District, 3,017 daily trips for the Edgewater/Second Street Mixed-Use Corridor and 984 daily trips for the Second Street Craft Industrial Corridor under the proposed zoning compared to existing zoning.

The memo's not included in the full packet, so maybe this is a little obscure. But, hey, if the traffic modeling projects a decrease, that's good news.

Do we really have zoning that will fill in these gaps?
So much car storage and empty space!

It looks like the plan rationalizes off-street parking a little, but it does not remove minimums and fully let the market determine the amount. That's a disappointment, but the plan would offer incremental improvement. (Ordinary standards for multi-family housing are 1.5 stalls per unit, but in a couple of places, including here, the City uses 1.0 stall per unit, so that's a 33% reduction from the usual, I guess you could say.)

City Council, April 9th - Winter-Maple Bikeway

Council meets on Monday and there's a surprising number of things that might be worth a comment. Chief among them is formal adoption of the Winter-Maple Family Friendly Bikeway Plan. (I'm splitting this into two posts, and I'll update a link here later for part 2.)

Coffee Shack, Drive-thru, 10 foot path
Intersection of Cherry and Auto Group Avenues

And if you wanted a nearly perfect metaphor for its execution, the plan for a coffee shack and drive-thru at one of its important intersection treatments shows a certain incoherence in land use and lack of urgency about its completion.

New Paint for the Dome Building? A Crosswalk on Division? - Walking Bits

Did you get out for a walk on Saturday last weekend? The weather was good, and in the afternoon the sun came out and it became great. The Cherries at the Capitol and elsewhere around the city were in full bloom and just beginning to drop petals. Here's one slide show from midday, before the sun was fully out.

Elsewhere there were other things to note also.

It looks like the Dome Building is getting a paint job to match the Kirkbride Building.

A new paint scheme for the Dome Building?
Would match the Kirkbride!

Dome Building in winter 2013, South facade

The main Kirkbride Building in 2012

That color scheme on the Dome Building would really unify the two buildings across Center Street. I look forward to the finished state.

State Street Study at Planning Commission Tuesday

The zoning and street concepts generated by the State Street Study are going before the Planning Commission tomorrow, Tuesday the 3rd at 5:30pm, and the boo-birds are out. It will be interesting to see just how much criticism the Plan attracts and how forceful it will be. (Agenda and Staff Report)

If State Street were fully built up, some winter shadows
might fall on the south side of Court Street

Earlier, an architect recently moved into the Court-Chemeketa Historic District submitted comment to City Council. They offered several very detailed criticisms of the plan and the process, and generally seemed to want to delay it, hoping perhaps to invoke a higher level of federalized process. In particular, they want lower building heights on State Street:

Shadows on properties where the owner wishes to harness solar power to save monies on utilities could have a significant financial impact on the ability to save monies and/or make the decision to make a capital investment for solar equipment. Although there is no right to light statutory framework within Oregon, it seems that before something is going to reduce a property owner's ability to conserve electricity, an analysis should be made. Under the current zoning, such information could be weighed in by the Planning Commission in deciding whether or not to approve a proposed project and/or propose mitigation measure, but under the proposed zoning, an administrative approval could be issued and then the property owner would have secured rights to eclipse a neighbor's property risking disputes and potential claims and litigation....

Since the proposed zoning changes will permit, by right, 55 foot tall buildings and potentially cast significant shadows into the National Register District located north of the State Street Corridor, causing a change in the character of the District's use or setting and introducing incompatible visual, atmospheric, or audible elements; we request that a Section 106 review be conducted. We further request that the City of Salem Historic Landmarks Commission be designated as the consulting party for the City of Salem and that neighbors directly affected or the North East Neighborhood Association (NEN) also be designated a consulting party.

This is interesting because an important element in opposition to the Salem River Crossing has been stalling afforded by the requirements of process. So you might say "what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." But here the process is still unfolding, and the stalling on the SRC was necessary only because the process was so profoundly flawed. It was a tactic of last resort. Since the process is still unfolding here, and since the proposed changes are nowhere near as monumental as the SRC, this seems like a disproportionate response.