Bike Week in 1918: Thrift, Health, and Pleasure in War Time

Bike week is coming up, May 14th - 18th, with Bike to Work Day on the 18th.

A century ago, Salem bike shops advertised National Bicycle Week extensively.

Half-page ad, May 8th, 1918

Full-page ad, May 4th, 1918

The marketing and arguments today really aren't so very different, though the valence around "patriotism" has changed in multiple ways. It's not important to dig into that too far other than to note that at one time it was possible to see a need to be more thrifty about driving and fuel, and it was plausible to position bicycling as the more thrifty and fuel-saving choice.

When we decide finally to get serious about climate disruption - if we ever do - we might be able to recover more of this particular expression of patriotism.

via League of American Bicyclists

See posts tagged "old time biking" for more on Harry Scott, Paul Hauser, Arthur Moore, and Watt Shipp. And one of these days we'll get to Loyd Ramsden!

City and Rotary Announce Plan to Relocate Amphitheater

Proposal to relocate Amphitheater to "Park Parcel"

Well, this is interesting and moderately big news. The City and Rotary Club just announced a substantial revision to the Amphitheater plan and the Riverfront Park Master Plan:

[The two parties] have agreed that a better location for the Gerry Frank | Rotary Amphitheater is in the currently undeveloped 3.8-acre park property at the southeast end of Riverfront Park.

The new location will be incorporated into the new Riverfront Park Master Plan, which is in its final stages of completion. Only a small distance from the original site, this new location provides additional opportunities to use open space when performances are not taking place.

It looks to offer better loading and access from the parking lot, retains better views of the river and slough and birds, and it's hard to think of ways right off the bat that the proposal is bad. So, it passes the first test and might even be a major improvement. It will be interesting to hear of meaningful critique, if there is any.

Commissions and Restoration Projects at Public Art Commission Wednesday

The Public Art Commission meets on Wednesday the 9th, and they've got several commissions in the works as well as a couple of substantial restoration projects. (Most of these notes are from the minutes to the last meeting. Agenda and minutes here.)

Hopefully more like this - by Henk Pander
And less like the sculpture at Riverfront Park

After an initial request for proposals, the Bottle Bill piece has a short-list and probable location:

The Salem Public Art Commission received 11 proposals from artists in response to its call to artists, a collaboration with the Oregon Environmental Council, for an Oregon Bottle Bill commemorative sculpture....

Per the Selection Committee, the following artists were recommended for conceptual design contracts:

• Ditroen
• Sean Healy and Joe Thurston
• Horatio Hung-Yan Law
• Hilary Pfeifer
• Lillian Pitt, Mikkel Hilde, Saralyn Hilde
• Rhiza A+D

The group confirmed the conceptual design contract would include an honorarium of $750 and will result in a design for the Bottle Bill commemorative piece. If the artist is selected for the commission in June, the budget for the completed art work and installation is $30,000.

The group then turned their attention to the three possible locations featured in the RFQ. Following a discussion of the merits of each proposed site, the group determined the best site for the work to be at the park-like setting, at the intersection of Trade and High (between SAIF and 295 Church).

Maybe a piece commemorating the Bottle Bill will go here
At the moment, it's a real ornamental emptiness
a failure as a "stroll garden"

That site is very much an ornamental emptiness, an underused space. Given the Bottle Bill's focus on litter, maybe a park setting is the right place. But it seems like so many of the art installations are attempts to add decoration to ornamental emptinesses rather than leverage popular places where people already congregate and often walk.

Parking on Church, Cottage Demolition for Cars - at SCAN and Highland

The Bush Park area neighborhood association, SCAN, meets this week, and they are in the middle of several interesting transportation items, including parking and crosswalks.

Demolition on Jerris Avenue at Commercial

It was a cute pastel green cottage - via Streetview

At the March meeting of SCAN, a neighbor said

that his CPA firm is purchasing the commercial building at 2150 Commercial St. and plans to tear down an existing building to add parking. There are currently only 12 parking spaces to serve the building and they need 29 parking spaces. He hopes that SCAN will support this.

The demolition permit was issued April 25th, and they didn't waste any time.

Michael Wolfe to Retire, Close South Salem Cycleworks

We're late to this news, but it deserves more notice.

At the Monster Cookie 2012

Long-time advocate and bike shop owner Michael Wolfe is retiring and closing South Salem Cycleworks.

A 2013 profile in the paper

In a message on the shop's website, Wolfe says

I’m retiring and closing the shop, effective the 31st of May....

We have offered rentals in the form of XC-skis, snowshoes, bicycles, tandems, and kid’s trailers for nearly 30 years. I don’t hesitate to say we’ve been the major player in rentals during this period of time, and paying the insurance premium for that as well. I hope someone steps up and carries that forward for tourists, or just folks out for a lark.

We’ll be offering our rentals for sale at very discounted prices, along with much of the store’s inventory of new parts and bikes. More exotic items will not be reduced, but will continue to be available via the shop’s gallery on this website.

I’ll miss my regular customers, many of which have enjoyed their free lifetime tune-ups, as well as introducing new riders to the sport. But I’ll also enjoy telling, instead of listening to, tales of riding, whether locally or more exotic locations.

I hope to see you on the road...

South Salem Cycleworks, near the corner of Liberty and Browning, has been the only major shop outside of the downtown core and, at least until the Hub came and focused totally on reusing and recycling old bikes, might have been the most deeply green. They never had dumpster service, and Marion County featured them in press about the EarthWISE program. In 2015 the shop won "Recycler of the Year" at the Mid-Valley Green Awards.

1.5 out of 5 Stars: Places for Bikes New Ratings

Last night Places for Bikes announced their latest city ratings for 480 American cities.

1.5 out of 5 stars for Salem

As in the first iteration, Salem didn't do so well. Salem scores 1.5 out of 5 stars:

• 1.7 on ridership - how often and how many people ride
• 2.1 on safety
• 1.4 on the bike network of low-stress routes (not old-school bike lanes on busy streets)
• 1.8 on reach - how consistently the network reaches everyone in the community
• 0.5 on acceleration - how quickly we are improving the network and adding new riders

It's not surprising to see the low mark in acceleration. That contests directly any claim that we currently have "balance" in our system for people who want to bike.

State Street Plan Continues at Planning Commission Tonight

The Planning Commission meets tonight, May 1st, at 5:30 in Council Chambers for the continuation of the Public Hearing on the State Street Study and Plan. (Agenda, and Supplemental Staff Report.)

Why Staff chooses not to support a full 4/3 safety conversion

I don't think there is very much to say about it - very little new or interesting comes to mind. The Staff Report - and crucially, the public comment to which it is largely responding - is repetitious. (See below for links to previous notes.)

So I just want to underline one small detail.

If we object to the consequences of a set of projected traffic volumes for 2035, then broadly two approaches come to mind:

1. We can wring our hands, bewail and moan, and accommodate those future consequences with partial mitigation (and sometimes new roads), but mostly just manage with sighs and acceptance; or,
2. We can make a determined effort to head off those projections and actually try to reduce traffic counts

So why is there so much acceptance of door #1?

If we don't like traffic, why don't we make every effort to reduce the frequency of driving trips and to reduce the length of driving trips?

Instead our current approach is fundamentally incoherent: We say we don't like congestion and traffic, but systematically we do nearly everything we can to accommodate and subsidize driving. We induce more traffic while we make futile and largely symbolic gestures to try to ward it off.

No wonder we fail. Until we are willing to grapple explicitly with this incoherence, we're just going to keep failing.

For more detailed comment on the State Street Study, see these main posts:

• "State Street Study Already Hamstrung by 20th Century Mobility Standards?"
• "Draft State Street Plan Disappoints"
• "Understanding Safety: Crash Rates vs Counts on State Street"
• "Prospects for State Street look a Little Dim"
• "State Street Study at Planning Commission Tuesday" (last month's first meeting)

(For all previous notes on the State Street Study see here.)