Photo Essay on Third Bridge and the Displacement Euphemism adds Commentary to First Wednesday

In addition to the fun and games at First Wednesday, there's a more serious piece of activism and commentary downtown.

Remember In the Way: Photographing the Human Cost of a Third Bridge?

Salem Weekly Cover and Series

Helen Caswell's photo essay grew into a series, and it goes on display tonight.

Using the vacant Pete's Place/JK Gill Building on State Street, the Salem Photo League hosts one-night exhibitions on First Wednesdays.

The project aptly enough is called "photo diner."

Stop by and add to the fuss about the unneeded giant bridge and highway!

First Wednesday Features Bikes

Don't forget First Wednesday!

Full details here.

Ventis and One Fair World are offering discounts, and the Peddler will have a workstand and repair station.  Mary Lou Zeek will also have cards - art cards to use as spoke cards or to clothes-pin for the buzzing.  (They'll be like those from 2008's Different Spokes!)

FoxBlue has created a poster with details on some of the downtown offerings.

There's sure to be other odds-n-ends.  

West Salem Apartments at Planning Commission; Third Bridge and Transit Implications

Tonight, on Tuesday the 6th, the Planning Commission meets to consider a proposed 13 unit apartment complex in West Salem near the corner of Brush College and Wallace Roads.

Site of proposed 13 unit apartment complex
adjacent to park-n-ride lot

13 units is pretty modest and the applicant is the Catholic Community Services Foundation.  Adjacent, as it is, to a park-n-ride lot, it also ought to be an easy site for a lower-car life.

But almost surely it won't be.  The site plan looks like it has more surface area for parking and cars than for housing and living, and even if you wanted to walk to the bus stop, the frequency of service may not be enough.

Three buildings, even more car surface

More interestingly, the review criteria and response are totally silent on the ways that development here in West Salem puts pressure on the existing bridges.  If new development is what is causing the whole giant bridge and highway rigamarole, then why don't we have systems development charges for the infrastructure to service this new development?

Negative impacts do not include bridge congestion!

Instead, we allow new development to proceed there and punt down the road the cost of transportation infrastructure for drive-alone trips, and maybe most importantly, ask everyone else but the main users to pay for it.

And we tolerate the gradual and imperceptible increase in the conditions that proponents think will make a giant bridge and highway necessary.  Talk about slowly boiling the frog!

River Crossing and Transit

Over at N3B, there's a interesting note about Cherriots.  At a recent Cherriots board meeting, Mark Wigg gave testimony to request Cherriots to ask

the City to prepare a Supplemental Draft EIS that describes the Salem Alternative and includes an assessment of a transit, bike, and pedestrian alternative to achieve congestion reduction goals.

Wigg included an interesting proposal to use Marine Drive and the abandoned Salem, Falls City & Western for multi-modal rapid transit corridors.

Short Track Racing Starts Again at Fairgrounds Tonight

Tonight the Salem Mountain Bike Short Track Series starts up at the Fairgrounds!

2012 Short Track #4 - Matt Haughey

Each year lots of families came to watch dads, moms, siblings, and other friends and family.

Some rest in shade provided by the cars.

Others have sunbonnets and strollers and enjoy the sun at the bleachers.

Many racers come down from Portland and enjoy the intimacy of the Fairgrounds.

The races start at 5:30pm with the free kiddie race.  Juniors start the competitive racing at 5:45.

Racing takes place the first three Mondays in August, the 5th, 12th, and 19th.

The track is in the southeast corner of the Fairgrounds, off of Sunnyview.

At Lincoln Town, Wheat was Big Business; Today, it's Ghost Infrastructure

Willamette Farmer
August 13, 1875

After some rogue GMO wheat was found earlier this year, wheat's been in the news all summer.  It's all about the Columbia River and the east side plateau.

But did you know that there used to be a huge wheat port right here on the Willamette River?  On August 4th, 1875 the Directors of the Lincoln Warehouse and Shipping Company distributed a 20% dividend!  A couple of years later they paid out a 40% dividend.

Wheat was significant business here and Lincoln, just north of Salem on Wallace Road, an important transportation hub.

Writing about the town of Lincoln for the Oregon Encyclopedia, and drawing on the WPA-writers project, Willamette Landings, Jim Scheppke notes

In Lincoln's heyday in the 1870s and 1880s, there were five large warehouses for storing grain, a grist mill, sawmill, beehive factory, blacksmith shop, tin shop, shoe and harness shop, store, lodge hall, church, school, and residences. By the late 1880s, about fifty people lived in Lincoln. As much as 350,000 bushels of grain were shipped downriver by steamboat annually, more than from any other port outside of Portland. As many as three steamboats a day carrying passengers and freight would leave Portland in the morning, go through the locks at Willamette Falls, and arrive in Lincoln by three in the afternoon.

Farmers harvested and hauled their wheat to Lincoln for about two months in the fall. At the height of the harvest, more than 100 carts and wagons would be lined up for a half-mile west on the road to town, waiting their turn at the warehouse. The harvest had to be stored for some months until the river was high enough for safe shipment in the winter and spring.

The scale of the port is hard to imagine today. There doesn't seem much in the way of  photos or maps online.  (Perhaps there are some buried in archives!)

But historical fiction comes to our rescue.

Writer Joel Redon was born in Portland, but his family had settled in Spring Valley.  His great-grandfather was a veteran of the Civil War.  Redon died young in 1995 and is buried in the Zena Cemetery with many of his ancestors.  His third and final book, The Road to Zena, is about the area and contains a map.

While it is not safe to assume this is completely accurate in its exact details, it does represent the scale of settlement, farming, and commerce in Spring Valley and at Lincoln town.

Spring Valley area, with Lincoln
late 19th century, from The Road to Zena

Here's Lincoln today.  The alignment of of the road may be different.  There is a border between lots or fields that is in line with Zena Road, for example, and it is possible that line traces out the old road. The area is still a settlement, but the houses are modern, and few if any vestiges of the 19th century linger.

Oversight Team Hears about Land Use and Exceptions; Third Bridge may be Difficult

Although the Columbia River Crossing has seemed to be the Dr. Evil to Salem's Mini-Me, in one important way, the Salem River Crossing is different, and this difference adds a new wrinkle that never appeared, I believe, in the CRC maneuvering.

The wrinkle has been pointed out before informally in conversation, but it is not discussed formally in much detail in Chapter 3.2 on Land Use of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

The key fact is that the proposed location for the giant bridge and highway is largely outside of the Urban Growth Boundary of the Salem-Keizer metro area.

By contrast, the CRC is inside the Portland UGB.  Being outside of the UGB adds some regulatory hurdles to the Salem project, and on Wednesday, the Oversight Team heard from the Department of Land Conservation and Development on this.  (N3B has some preliminary notes on the meeting and the approval for additional study and a quasi-supplemental DEIS on the "Salem Alternative.")

(Slides on green and dated, all part of presentation)

Third Bridge outside UGB

A new bridge would require four exceptions to the Statewide Planning Goals, and the presentation outlined the criteria and approval conditions for these kinds of exceptions.

Specifically, the bridge location requires exception for goals with Agricultural Lands, Public Facilities, Urbanization, and the Willamette River Greenway.

Cherriots to Take Comment on Regional Transit Plan

It's pretty much effectively impossible to go anywhere in the mid-valley on a normal schedule without access to a private car.

A little over a year ago, Cherriots started a regional planning exercise.

Regional Destinations Difficult to Reach:
Wilsonville, Woodburn, Stayton,
Independence, Dallas

Cherriots identified and ranked important destinations - or starting points for people who might work in Salem - and have now issued a draft plan.

You can read more about the total process here. At the moment it's very "long-range" - or perhaps, pie-in-the-sky.  It will take great effort to do anything actual.  The region is more interested in a giant bridge and highway than in a functional transit system.  (Saturday, Sunday, and evening service would be pretty neat, too.)

Thursday, August 8th, between 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm, at the Salem Transit Mall (on the SW corner of Church/Chemeketa streets NE) there will be a "listening station" where Cherriots will take public comment.