2011 in Review: One Step Forward, but Two Steps Back

It sure feels like we lost ground this year. Nothing seemed to catch fire, and everybody seemed tired. For every project that seemed like a win, there were several blanks, duds, and outright losses. Within a year of sharrows going down on Chemeketa, for example, the downtown sewer project took several out.

In a nutshell, that's 2011 for me.

Mostly, it seemed like it was a discouraging year for people who bike. I feel like a real negative Nellie saying this, but it seemed to take too much of a Pollyanna-ish stretch to suggest it was a good year.

So, was it encouraging for you, did you think the City took two steps forward instead? I would especially love to hear about that! What else was important?

West Salem's Bone Property and Colorado Drive Extension at Planning Commission

At the Planning Commission next Tuesday, in addition to the Bike Plan, there will be a hearing on what is, I think, the first application of the Neighborhood Center Mixed Use Zoning. A street will need to be reclassified to accept a busier level of traffic, and some neighbors are not happy.

Chapman Corners, the Straub Property and Condemnation for Schools

The corner of Doaks Ferry and Orchard Heights is pretty old and old-timers will remember it still as Chapman Corners - a name remembered in Chapman Elementary School.

It's on the edge of development in West Salem, and there has been lots of conversation around how best to build here.

One of the parcels holds an historic home, whose core building precedes statehood, that is still held in the family of former Governor Bob Straub.

The school district wanted the land for schools, but in part because of the Great Recession and housing bubble, the property's value declined and the family and district were unable to find an agreeable price. The district subsequently initiated condemnation around the house (the house remains) and built two schools.

School siting can be complicated, but already the decision for suburban land on the edges of development is making it more likely parents will drive their kids to school and deprive them of the benefits of active transportation - walking, biking, skateboarding, and the like.

The West Salem Plan

Concurrently, the West Salem Neighborhood Plan calls for additional density and commercial center development along Orchard Heights (yellow and purple on map), and appropriate development here might yield the kinds of walkable neighborhoods West Salem essentially lacks.

The map is somewhat out of date. Already with the schools and other development, the exact parcels marked here won't be developed precisely as the map suggests - but the larger concept is clear: More density at Chapman Corners.

The Bone Property

Not actually in purple, but one of the first parcels to be in play, is the Bone property.

The Bone estate is on the northwest corner, and it will go before the Planning Commission on Tuesday. The Commission will look at two questions: Should the City rezone the property for higher density? And should the City build a new collector street to serve the property?

NCMU Zone

The zoning question appears to have community support. The City has enacted a new zoning designation, the Neighborhood Center Mixed-Use (NCMU) Zone, which it hopes to apply to this parcel.

The key values the code seeks to instantiate are:

Sense of place
Pedestrian orientation
Compact urban form
Neighborhood vitality
Innovative design
Transit accessibility
Connectivity with surrounding neighborhoods
Accommodation of the automobile

Disagreement on a New Collector Street

But not everything is copacetic.

Part of the project involves a new collector street. Colorado Drive would be extended through the property as a higher-traffic collector street and Landaggard would remain as a quieter local street, with connections to Colorado.

According to a recent piece in the Statesman, the neighborhood association opposes the plan:

West Salem Neighborhood Association co-chairman Don Homuth said the association does not favor the change.

"The WSNA will vigorously oppose running the collector street through the newly-passed NCMU development to be considered for the northwest corner of Doaks Ferry and Orchard Heights, a.k.a. the Bone Property," Homuth said in an email. "We worked very long and hard on the NCMU designation, and throughout the discussion, it was always intended to place a particular emphasis on pedestrian friendly, with cars being allowed into it for parking or convenience, but never — not even tangentially — did we envision that someone would suggest running a 'collector street' through it."

It's hard to know how to analyze this. One the one hand, Chapman Corners is still on the edge of a low-density and hilly development. Even in ideal circumstances, with a higher density development, it is not clear how actually walkable in practice it will be. Sometimes this looks like a planning exercise better on paper than in reality, and it may not be the best place in Salem to pilot the NCMU zone.

On the other hand, when we visit the early 20th century streetcar commercial districts in Portland, like those on Mississippi, Alberta, Hawthorne, Belmont, Division, 28th, and so on, which in important ways at least partially model important aspects of the neighborhood centers, it seems pretty clear they are all served by collector streets. This shouldn't surprise us: The reason they are commercially viable is because they serve multiple uses and are busy across multiple hours. People are constantly going in and out of the core commercial areas.

According to the current drafts of SRC 532.005 and 532.010, NCMU zone is

A district...located within one-eighth of a mile of a major intersection, as measured from the center of the intersection to the point in the district that is nearest to the intersection....Major intersection means the intersection of two streets, one of which is designated in the Salem Area Transportation System Plan as a major arterial or minor arterial, and the other designated as a major arterial, minor arterial, or collector.

I believe a "major intersection" has always been part of the zoning, and it unclear where the communication breakdown occurred with the neighborhood association.

It is likely that a higher density commercial center at this location in West Salem will perish without provision for significant volumes of auto traffic and the people they bring. There simply will not be enough close-in neighbors walking and biking to support business. Presumably, if the district were already walkable, more schoolkids would be walking and biking to the new schools. With time, as a center prospers, more people may walk and bike, but at first, the district will remain auto-dependent, and long-term success requires acknowledging this in the nearer-term.

What to do here is not necessarily clear. The City and community generally has an great interest in making development under the NCMU zone a success. Perhaps West Salem residents with a better understanding of the zoning and history, or others who have followed the NCMU zoning more closely, can comment and clarify. It's likely there are other factors not included in the SJ piece. Much depends on an actual site plan: Maybe the intersection of Doaks Ferry and Orchard Heights is enough, and Colorado would be a superfluous addition - though it's hard to see Doaks Ferry and Orchard Heights with parking here.

In any event, this is a new direction in Salem planning, and it deserves substantive conversation and debate with a view towards making a pilot project a success.

Holiday Travel Offers Reminder of 12th and Mill's Difficulty

Holiday trips to the train station and bike rides past Mission Mill for the holiday lights have reminded me how lousy is the crossing at 12th and Mill.

You might remember the City's plan for the crossing.

It's complicated, of course, by the train tracks. On 12th, the right-of-way width also makes a median more convenient on the south side of the intersection. But most crossing takes place on the north side.

Plans to finish the 12th Street Promenade and add a pedestrian median to 12th are dormant at the moment. The City has tried to fund it, but it never seems to come together. Grantors, for example, haven't found the plan competitive, and the City has declined to fund it straight-up, preferring to build out auto capacity.

But crossing 12th street here is very difficult, and Willamette University and Tokyo International University of America together funded and built a private footbridge across 12th street. Initially the bridge was open, but vandalism and theft led the universities to close the bridge to the public. Crime diminished by 90%. It's hard to argue with that!

Nonetheless, the crossing remains difficult for the public, and the bridge is not very bike friendly.

In fact, in a 2002 Strategic Master Plan, Willamette identified it as a key east-west corridor:

Many pedestrians still find it necessary to cross Twelfth Street at grade to reach the eastward continuation of Mill Street, across the rail tracks, and into the neighborhood beyond. With plans for a tennis center west of 14th Street on Mill, more pedestrians will want to cross Twelfth Street...Safe and convenient access across Twelfth Street at Mill will help to reconnect what is now a rather isolated area around TIUA.

Interestingly, in the current 2008 Master Plan, connectivity at this intersection is not as urgently discussed. If nothing else, Bush School was built rather than the tennis center, and this might be seen to diminish the walking demand. Maybe there's more to learn about this, but for the moment it's interesting to see the crossing called out in the 2002 master plan.

And there's still a need for it.

The crossing is difficult for lots of people, not just Willamette staff and students, and it's not surprising the City's proposed Bike Plan identifies the intersection as an important "tier 1" intersection improvement.

(Both the 2008 and 2002 plans are interesting, and there might be more to say on them.)

Girdling Downtown: Institutional Growth and the Etiolaton of Business

Walking around over the holiday, and talking with folks, it was clear that something we just don't talk about enough when we talk about making downtown more lively and healthy is the extent to which the harm is self-inflicted.

For we've girdled downtown.

Downtown used to be a residential neighborhood itself, and connected to close-in residential neighborhoods. The people who lived nearby were customers for business.

No more! As institutions - important Salem institutions - have expanded, they have removed homes and replaced them with larger buildings and superblocks. Since there are fewer nearby customers, businesses must chase after driving customers who live much farther away.

The bark that would nourish the trunk and core is gone, cut away.

In nearly every direction, downtown is separated from residential districts by many barriers. With the growth on the west side and the difficulties crossing Wallace, Edgewater, the river, Front, Liberty, Commercial, west Salem is psychically far from downtown. The Mission cluster-frack, Pringle Parkway, Pringle Creek Urban Renewal Area, Bush Park, Salem Hospital, and Willamette University form barriers on the south side. The Capitol Mall, 12th Street, and the railroad form barriers on the east side.

The barriers aren't always stops. In fact, in many instances the barriers are constituted by single-use buildings. Pringle Creek Urban Renewal zone has SAIF and the City of Salem; the Capitol Mall has State government. Both areas empty at 5pm and on weekends. At 7pm or on Saturday, there's nothing to lure you to the districts, and there are no residents in them. So it's not surprising people don't walk or bike to them or through them to downtown. The superblocks even make driving less attractive.

If you want to know why there aren't enough people in downtown....maybe planners and politicians should give more though to the barriers we ourselves have created.

There are plenty of other issues, of course. The problems don't reduce to a single master narrative of one variable.

But land-use and zoning are implicated in the problems downtown faces, and it's hard to say that conversations around downtown vitality give enough attention to this part of the problem.

Happy Holidays

Policy and planning are important, but, you know, the nuances of a Transportation Improvement Program aren't always the most exciting.

Here something completely different. Two great emotional appeals for biking. Not great because of what they say, but because of how they say it: They express moods, one wintry, one summery. Both have stuck with me: Both say something ineffable, maybe something you can't say in words.



Who cares it's a beer ad! It captures cheer and a little chill - just like a real holiday jumble.

And! "That's the way, Patriot. Let the OPECs keep their gasoline. We'll just tap into a far more efficient energy source. Manpower." It's amazing a national account went with this, however briefly.

This next one's almost ecstatic - it's a gloriously lyrical take on biking and its pleasures.



Have fun, be safe, enjoy the knowledge the days are getting longer.

West Salem Wayfinding Says Where but not How

Signs matching the downtown wayfinding went up recently in west Salem. While they are great for telling you where, they aren't very much help with how.

The Map Doesn't Give Direction

If the maps work for people with some knowledge of the area, a reliance on implied knowledge means the maps likely fail for people unfamiliar with the area - their target audience! Because the maps are dominated by auto-centric busy roads, and essentially ignore the logic of walking, their mode-blind presentation misses details key for people on foot or on bike.

Suppose you are from out of town and attending an event at the Conference Center. You are out for a walk and you encounter the map on the far end, the west end, of the Union Street Railroad Bridge. The map marks three destinations outside of the park:

• West Salem Shopping
• Westgate Shopping
• Edgewater District

Your location - and the map's - is marked by the red arrow.

There are no straight connections to any of these from the map's location. The best alternative routes are indirect - but they are left to the viewer's imagination. The maps fail to show you how to go there.*

Open House and Comment on Regional List of Transportation Projects

Earlier this month our Metropolitan Planning Organization announced the public comment period for the SKATS Draft FY 12-FY 17 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) and Air Quality Conformity Determination (AQCD).

The six-year TIP (2012- 2017) lists projects which will be funded in the near term with a combination of federal, state, and local funds.

Why care about this wonky topic? Getting projects onto the list is an essential procedural step in getting transportation projects built when they rely on more than just local funding (the bond projects, for example, aren't on the list unless they have a federal or state component). Basically, if a project is not on the list, it doesn't get funded. Projects from the new Bike Plan, then, will in many cases need to get on this list. The list also shows how we prioritize travel modes.

Open House
Date: Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Time: 7:30-10:00 a.m., 4:00-7:00 p.m.
Where: MWVCOG Conference Room 109 High St. SE Salem, OR 97301

Public Hearing
Date: Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Where: Chemeketa Center for Business and Industry, Room 102 626 High Street NE Salem, OR 97301
Time: Noon

You can also send comments via email to Mike Jaffe, MPO Program Manager at the Mid-Willamette Valley Council of Governments/Salem-Keizer Area Transportation Study.

Look for a more detailed analysis in January!

The List Sorted by Dollar Amount
Project numbers are keyed to the map. Projects in italics are clearly good for people on bike. Some projects may add bike lanes and sidewalks, but because they are fundamentally car-centric road widening and capacity increases, with incidental bike lanes and sidewalks, they may not be all that friendly for people on foot and on bike. Transit projects are good too, but that's not our focus here.

If you know more about a particular project, and are able to offer detailed criticism and analysis, please don't hesitate to comment!

Tens of Millions
4 I-5 @ Kuebler Blvd. Interchange. $18,625,000
2 OR22: Overcrossings and Overlay pavement. $17,590,000
5 Hwy. 150 (OR 221) Wallace Rd. @ Glen Creek Rd. $10,375,000