Urban Renewal Boards to Discuss Second St NW and Portland Road NE

The West Salem and Northgate Urban Renewal Advisory Boards meet this week. WSRAB continues conversation about the proposed Second Street extension and undercrossing, and NGRAB will receive and discuss a substantial report on the Portland Road study and proposed street improvements.

WSRAB

The latest plan map (Dec 2015 in February packet)

The West Salem Redevelopment Advisory Board meets on Wednesday the 3rd, and there will be more talk about the proposed Second Street undercrossing. In the meeting packet are some notes about possible funding:

Budget items to consider (continuing January 6, 2016 WSRAB discussion)

• Estimated $2 million available to fund projects in FY 2016-17
• Consultant estimates to construct the under-crossing and extension of 2nd Street NW from Patterson Street NW to the Union Street Railroad Bridge is approximately $8.7 million; extension of 2nd Street NW/Marine Drive NW to Glen Creek Road NW is expected to cost around $5 million to $7 million; Agency Board/WSRAB direction to construct full improvement; detailed cost estimate to be completed in the summer 2016
• Anticipate around 10% of the project cost, or $1.5 million, for engineering design and construction plans; Public Works Department is not recommending design next fiscal year until additional funding is available
• Retain URA funds and 2018 bonding capacity could result in around $6 million to $8 million to finance construction
• January 6, 2016 WSRAB discussion leaned toward focusing funds and efforts on the aforementioned larger projects, but there is the option to utilize around $100,000 in unspecified funds to complete design standards and changes to the zoning code; would reduce available funds for the larger projects.
• January 6, 2016 WSRAB action to maintain the grant program, without increasing the funds in FY 2016-17

Mostly these are possibilities, options, hypotheticals, so it's not probably worth comment in detail. But do register, I think, the increasing talk of a transportation bond for 2018.

There's also information on the "outreach strategy" for the next formal phase, the "West Salem Business District Transportation Feasibility Study." You may recall from the last meeting ago that some immediately adjacent businesses had commented that they were unaware of the project. So even with open houses and mailings, things weren't getting through the filters of principals at businesses right on top of the proposed project's footprint. The outreach and communication components look to get more attention in this round.

WSRAB meets Wednesday the 3rd from 7:30 AM – 9:00 AM in the West Salem Public Library, 395 Glen Creek Road NW.

NGRAB

The North Gateway Redevelopment Advisory Board meets on Thursday and - Holy Smokes! - there's a ton of interesting details in the meeting packet. Chief among them is a draft list of projects. On the transportation side, they look a little underwhelming, incremental rather than transformative.

The North section and first priority (see map detail below)

It appears that only the north-most third will move forward for serious planning at this time. Other segments are "on hold."

Transportation in the Neighborhood Associations this Week

Several small transportation bits are at the neighborhood associations this week. West Salem will talk about "a transportation plan," NEN about the median on 17th and Chemeketa, and Grant about a proposed drive-through.

West Salem - Monday

This one is short and a little cryptic, but might be interesting: "West Salem Transportation Plan Update – Salem Public Works Department," as it's listed on the agenda for tomorrow, Monday the 1st.

I suspect this is the West Salem Business District Action Plan for the Second Street undercrossing and the associated projects, but maybe there's some other West Salem Transportation Plan in the works.

Two other items are of interest as well: "Stellers Eagle / Bald Eagle Concern (Hazardous Intersection due to Parked Cars)" and "Student Parking Near West Salem High School."

The West Salem Neighborhood Association meeting is 7pm at Roth’s West, Mezzanine level, at 1130 Wallace Rd NW on Monday, February 1st.

Northeast Neighbors - Tuesday

The median island prohibits a westbound left turn from 17th

NEN meets on Tuesday the 2nd, and they'll be talking about the intersection of Chemeketa and 17th.

Kevin Hottmann, City Traffic Engineer – Possibility of Removing the No Left Turn Sign on the Median Island at 17th Street NE and Chemeketa Street NE

This bears watching. Would it entail the removal of the island? If we are serious about making Chemeketa a fully family friendly bicycle boulevard, we should probably be thinking about ways to discourage even more auto traffic on it.

On the surface, this looks like a move in the wrong direction.

Winter Street Bridge Opening Recalls Church Street Bridge Deterioration

The Winter Street Bridge over Shelton Ditch is open again. The City posted it to social media earlier this month, so this is old news. But it's still interesting, and you should check it out on a walk or ride.

Though the bridge is one of several designed circa 1930 by R.A. Furrow, an associate of Conde McCullough, this particular bridge itself isn't that interesting. It was a minor example, one of the lesser bridges in Salem. (See here for more on Furrow and his set of bridges. Furrow was also handled the Commercial Street bridge that was just replaced by the Civic Center.)

The replacement is historically sensitive and they did match the patterning of the old, vintage style fairly well. (Though it seems like the shim and patch you can see below might have been handled more elegantly.)

2016: New concrete (L) and old concrete (R)

From February 2012, a little after the flooding

The railing is a close match and conforms to what ODOT calls a "type D" standard, which was generally used in Salem's bridges of this vintage. (They do insert the cabling to bring it to modern standards.)

But it's not a copy.

McGilchrist Block Parking a bit Careless, and May not be to Code

Coming into downtown, I never use State Street. Outbound for all but two blocks west of Liberty, it goes in the wrong direction and isn't useful. Consequently, I have never used or even looked at the newish bike parking in front of the McGilchrist block on State Street.

But perhaps very few others do as well. (Have you used this set of racks?)

If you wonder why we harp on bike parking here, well it's because it gets overlooked so often.

Code is perhaps ambiguous, and if you don't bicycle, the code is written in such a way that it would not be difficult to misunderstand what constitutes a "stall" or "space":

Bicycle parking spaces shall be a minimum of 6 feet by 2 feet, and shall be served by a minimum 4-foot-wide access aisle.

Staple racks like these are intended for one bike on each side, and so by code a row of them should be installed with four feet of space between each pole mount. (If you place two 6x2 "spaces" side-by-side, you get a 6x4 box; each staple rack, then, would be centered in a 6x4 box, and the racks spaced on four-foot centers.)

I didn't have a tape measure, but the spacing on these is much closer to two feet than to four feet (maybe the concrete seams are on three-feet spacing?). If you considered each staple rack as having only space for one bike, then there would be two feet of space, and it might appear they meet code. But if you intend for each rack to hold two bikes, then they do not meet the intent of code.

Downtown Redevelopment Candidates and Union Street at Commercial: DAB Tomorrow

The Downtown Advisory Board meets tomorrow, Thursday the 28th, and they've got some juicy items on the agenda.

Consideration of "opportunity sites," dormant real estate and candidates for purchase and redevelopment by the Urban Renewal Agency, has been percolating, and they've now got a tentative list and ranking. At the top are the Belluschi Bank, aka former Wells Fargo bank, and Marion Car Park.

Pietro Belluschi's 1946-8 First National Bank:
Approved for demolition in 2008 and 2014

Marion Car Park from inside the Conference Center

They'll be talking more about the list at the meeting. The process would probably look something like what happened on North Broadway, with the so-called "A, B, and C sites" being transformed into Broadway Town Square with Salem Cinema, the YWCA building, and Broadway Commons. This model of urban renewal seems much more powerful than the 1970s style of the Pringle Creek Urban Renewal area, which as far as I can tell is pretty much a bust, generating no new increment of value on top of creating bad public space.

At the moment it is worth registering that the bank and car park are historically significant structures, though of unequal value.

Lord and Schryver Museum Needs Convenient Bike Parking, rules Hearings Officer

On Friday the Hearings Officer published the decision on the appeal of bike parking at Gaiety Hollow, the home, museum, and garden of Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver. The Officer affirmed the City's denial of alternative parking not to code.

Not Lord & Schryver, but maybe a helpful way to think.
Myrtle Card and Ernestine Levy in Salem, circa 1900
(Detail, Oregon State Library)

The Lord & Schryver Conservancy had contested the requirement that the parking be located near the front entry, saying it threatened to violate the historic integrity of the house and garden, which when it was established in the 1930s as the home and offices for Lord & Schryver would not have had bike parking.

Beginning and End of Decision

But the code is fairly clear, and since we routinely allow elevators, drip irrigation, wheelchair ramps, and wireless communication antennae on or at historic buildings, it's hard to see bike parking as any more disruptive.

State: Safety Plan Open House, Advisory Committee Opening, Scenic Bikeway Changes

Entirely unrelated to tonight's Council report on walking crash deaths, but timely anyway, ODOT has released the online "Open House" (really slow to load, it seemed) for the Transportation Safety Action Plan we discussed earlier this month.

Here, at least, though it is buried fairly deep, there is a section on non-auto road users, more vulnerable people on foot and on bike.

Earlier in the presentation they showed speed as the number one contributing factor.

But addressing speed gets caught up in the notion of spot speed reductions rather than a system-wide reduction in speed, at least in urban areas. (It also may not give sufficient attention to the ways that road "design speed" and our engineering standards implicitly encourage said speeding, and in addition to posting lower speed limits, we need to design for lower speeds. There's a structural contradiction between our saying "don't speed" and our design and engineering which says, "if you speed, we will keep you from harm.")

More than this, the biggest harm reduction strategy is almost certainly to make it easy for people not to drive rather than trying on the edges of driving behavior to make driving more safe.

Until we are willing to define auto use as an inherently dangerous activity, we will continue to fiddle on the edges of things and not change things at the level of systems.

Anyway, check it out, and let them know safety for non-auto users is important.

OPBAC Needs new Youth Member

From the Department of Transportation release: