City Poised to Oversize Broadway at Pine Street; Engineer offers Counter

A neighborhood advocate and professional traffic engineer is circulating a critique of the City's plan for Broadway at Pine Street NE.

Josey's at Pine and Broadway
Originally an early 1960s A&B Drive-in (2012)

The concerns are not new, unfortunately. The Highland Neighborhood has been asking about the design of this segment since at least the summer of 2017. With the context of the project a 4/3 safety conversion on the Broadway corridor, they wondered why this particular section was staying in a four lane and less safe configuration.

Broadway here at Pine is four travel lanes
Josey's driveway on right

You might remember Gary Obery from the 2010 Smart Cycling Classes and or know him from Salem Bike Boulevard Advocates. He's also a traffic engineer. While Obery approaches the problem of Broadway at Pine especially through the lens of crosswalk length and safety for people on foot, the City's proposed design also illustrates the systemic misalignment of our street planning with goals on improving all kinds of non-auto travel and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our City road engineering and design practices still are too often stuck in the past century, prioritizing auto capacity and its pollution, and are not catching up with the exigencies of our climate emergency. We could be anticipating a Climate Action Plan instead of bulldozing forward with antiquated 20th century style plans.

The larger corridor project in the 2021 CIP:
"one through lane in each direction
with center turn lanes and bike lanes"

As with the zone change on Hickory, Pine Street here was part of the SRC bridgehead, and there are reasons to be suspicious of the widening on that account also. (This note from 2012 shows earlier SRC concepts that definitely included the intersection itself.)

City Council, July 27th - Urban Trails Plan Grant Application

Council convenes on Monday, and they will consider supporting the grant application to fund an Urban Trails Plan.

But as important as local items are, just now there's a national crisis with a nascent secret police and an escalation of incipient Fascism and Authoritarianism.

Yesterday front page in DC
These are events of national significance

It's not just about rowdy BLM protests and vandalism in Portland, but is about kidnapping and secret police going out to multiple American cities, targeting American citizens, and subverting the Constitution. A couple of days ago Senator Wyden spoke ominously about "fascist practices I never thought I'd see on American soil...If the line isn’t drawn in the sand right now, America will be staring down the barrel of martial law for months to come."

That's far outside our usual scope here, but it's even more urgent now to consider national politics.

The trail system as envisioned in 1999
(black circled segments of particular interest)

Back to Council, about the Urban Trails Plan, see the note on it at the Planning Commission. Travel Salem and the local Safe Routes to Schools team have also endorsed it.

Proposed Urban Trails Plan at Planning Commission

After sitting out a few years, the City is looking to submit a TGM application for an Urban Trails Plan. On Tuesday the 21st the Planning Commission will consider whether formally to support it with a letter.

From the City's memo to the Planning Commission:

The Public Works Department is preparing to apply for a grant to develop an Urban Trails Implementation Plan for the City of Salem. We are seeking a letter of support for our application from the Salem Planning Commission....

Urban Trails Implementation Plan—Summary of Proposed Project
Public outreach has consistently identified urban trails as a priority in Salem. The City of Salem has adopted plans that call for a significant network of future off-street trails. Off-street paths are included in both the Salem Transportation System Plan and the Comprehensive Parks System Master Plan. A recent code amendment (SRC 800.065(4)) increased the City's ability to require connections to existing or planned paths and trails. This new code language has drawn attention to the need for more clarity in the hierarchy of trails, appropriate design standards, and guidelines for trail alignments. Action items include: differentiating between classifications of trails, similar to the classification of roadways; developing design standards; establishing implementation guidance; and possibly refining code language to support development requirements. The goal is to have a unified urban trail plan with clear priorities and a path toward implementation.

If you read here regularly, you'll know about deep mixed feelings on trails and paths.

1. Too often they are offered not as a complement to a complete set of on-street bikeways, but are conceived as a substitute for street connectivity, and function as pedestrian and bicycle displacement systems: To get people on foot and on bike out of the way for zooming cars.
2. Since we have made little headway on housing and homelessless, paths attract camping. Most campers are not threats, but some campers are aggressive, hostile, and criminal. These can make paths unusable or unsafe. Cars are problematic, but other drivers are eyes and ears; paths are sometimes very isolated especially in the dark and in winter and lack eyes and ears.
3. Maintenance is often not a priority, and unless the creation of new paths has ongoing operational budget attached, brush trimming, sweeping, and pavement maintenance is a problem.

via Twitter

Still, paths can offer pleasant connectivity that wide streets cannot.

ODOT Asks for Zoning Change near former SRC Site - Updated

The City's published a Hearing Notice for a zoning change on a block immediately adjacent to the proposed SRC eastside bridgehead. The applicant is ODOT and their agent is the Angelo Group, who was an SRC consultant.

The SRC was proposed to use Hickory and Pine here.

Innocent or nefarious? Hard to say, but it will be very interesting to read the full Staff Report when it is published and to learn more about the proposal.

SRC in blue and bridgehead footprint (and changes) in grey,
lots proposed to be rezoned in red
(Description of Preferred Alternative, January 2019)

But even aside from any possible entanglement with a zombie SRC is the fact that it would be a subtraction of land zoned for apartment housing, and therefore the proposal deserves extra scrutiny, since we have a shortage of that according to the Housing Needs Analysis.

More to say later.

Update, July 28th

The Staff Report is out, and it is one after another instance of "Staff does not concur" for Findings. They recommend denial.

A strong recommendation for denial across the board

In this case, the obvious analysis is in the Staff Report, and it does not seem necessary or very interesting to drill into it.

City signs onto Crypto-NIMBYism from League of Oregon Cities

I'm not sure how far to dive into this right now, but Michael Andersen of Sightline, whom you might have seen quoted in the recent Salem Reporter piece on the German Baptist Church project in Grant Neighborhood, earlier this week shared notes he made on comment offered by the League of Oregon Cities, and cosigned by the City of Salem, on the rule-making for HB 2001 on housing choice and missing middle housing.

"revisit...current approach" or maintain exclusionary policies?
Scholia from Sightline's Andersen on LOC letter
that Salem signed onto

The State is trying to make it easier to site and build more abundant middle housing, and the City has endorsed efforts to make that more difficult. The City is participating in the League's attempt to drape and retard the effort with a kind of "city's rights" argument, saying that the State should not preempt local regulation.

If the City had shown they could actually make progress on this, the argument for subsidiarity might be proper. But the underlying desire is for more exlusionary zoning and exclusionary neighborhoods. It's "don't tell me what to do, because I don't want to do it."

The letter follows from this statement
of Legislative "policy statements"
(at Council last Monday)

At the City of Salem, opposition to preemption in general have been in Legislative policy statements for a while, so it's not like this is something totally novel or unexpected. But it is something that deserves more discussion. If we are serious about climate, if we are serious about anti-racism, if we are serious about more housing and better housing affordability, why are we offering static and resistance to the State's rulemaking effort for more and easier middle housing?

Why do we not lead with values instead of leading with self-interested bureaucratic process as if bureaucracy itself was the end? The end is fairer housing, and since local self-determination and home rule has failed to bring this about, we have the State intervening. The City should welcome the State's clarity.

Intro to Biking Class, Woodmansee Park Update, Councilor as Cidermaker - Bits

via SBC

The Salem Bicycle Club is offering a "basic bicycling class" on Sunday August 2nd. If you just got your bike out of the garage in the Pandemic and want to commute or bike more, this class is for you! It's free, but registration is required.

Woodmansee Park

Existing Conditions at Woodmansee Park

The City announced an update for the master plan for Woodmansee Park. It's linked to the project for upgrading water storage in the fractured basalt far below ground. They've got an online Open House and survey.

Maybe we'll get an update on the Safe Routes project from a year ago. There was a grant to improve access to the park, but the thing just disappeared, and there has been no public update.

A year ago, past event, via Facebook

Safe Routes and the MWVCOG is also advertising for a part-time assistant:

The SRTS Program Assistant works under the direction of the SRTS Coordinator and may act as lead instructor in the absence of the Coordinator. This is a part-time, non-exempt position. Weekly hours will vary dependent on outreach activities and event opportunities and workload demands, as determined by the SRTS Coordinator. Maximum hours are expected to be ten (10) hours per week, although some weeks may have zero (0) hours.

See the full job notice all the details

Power and Wealth at Bush Park and Deepwood: A Cultural Landscape Plan at the HLC

The Historic Landmarks Commission convenes on Thursday the 16th and they've got an unusually meaty agenda.

The most interesting item on it is the outline and work plan for a Cultural Landscape Management Plan for Bush Park and Deepwood. Beyond the practical aims of a management plan for the two parks and associated houses, it will be a chance at a deep dive on urban ecology, geography, and history. Beyond setting policy, it could be fascinating! The area is such a layered mash-up. Indeed, collage might be one of the best ways to look at it.

Oaks and Camas in Bush Park, a Kalapuya legacy,
 the second week of April 2014

There are two major Oak groves, one of them with Camas, and these have direct and indirect links to First Peoples and their own technology of pyroculture. These were never "natural" and already depended on human intervention.

Not far away, the Lord & Schryver formal garden at Deepwood
via Oregon Encyclopedia &
Univesrity of Oregon, 2010_VRC_06197

Less than a block away, just across a creek bed, is a European formal garden, with its roots in early modern fortifications.

That juxtaposition is a little amazing, really.