The Erasure of "Hit by a Car" In Dashney Obituary

It is sad to read about the death of John Dashney in the paper today. He had led a full life and was an author, and the newsy obituary rightly emphasizes these things.

But it fails to give the right weight and emphasis to the crash that significantly impacted the last few years of his life.

The piece merely notes in passing that he was "severely injured...after being hit by a car." Even with an enumeration of injuries, this is an inadequate description of events. There are space limits, of course, but the passive voice mystifies too much.

From a September 2012 Statesman-Journal piece:

The woman who hit him, Rose Litherland, was high on methamphetamine and marijuana when she barreled through the intersection of 17th and Chemeketa. She did not have a valid driver’s license and is legally blind herself. She has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison.

The median and crosswalk
where Litherland struck Dashney in 2012
You can see the crash investigation paint

It's Sneckdown Time! Pedestrian Safety Committee Should Notice

The snow didn't really stick around on the roads long enough earlier this week, but this morning it's sticking, the schools are closing, and it's time to look for sneckdowns again.

Take pictures!

From the City traffic cameras, here on 12th & State:
Lanes could be narrower, corner bulbs even larger

South Commercial just north of Madrona - SJ video clip (2018)

See here and here for more on sneckdowns.

The City "Safer Crossings" Committee met yesterday, and they're apparently operating - by accident or design - largely in stealth mode.

Neighborhood advocates noted that the SDC committee never posted minutes. But at least they published a few of the slide decks that went with presentations.

Bare bones agenda only!

The Safer Crossing Committee has only a bare bones set of agenda published, no meeting materials, and no minutes.

Only the participants will really know what they are up to.

This morning's snow is an opportunity for field study! They must have generated a list by this time of prospective crossing sites, and the snow gives an opportunity to take pictures of slack road space that could be used to shorten crossing distances for people on foot.

Addendum

There is sad news this morning, and it is a terrible comment on our autoism, and the sensationalism around any kind of traffic "impedance," that the "snarl" has more priority than the death of an important statesman.

The area allocated to each story is mis-prioritized (about 830am)

Bike Parking and Sidewalk Connections at the Planning Commission Tonight

The Planning Commission meets tonight, and they will have a formal Public Hearing on "clean up" code amendments that touch on sidewalk connections and bike parking.

The details have seemed minor, and the bike parking was discussed on more detail here before a work session. The changes mostly seem like a small improvement. But they aren't a very great improvement, either, and with the SRC and other things coming to a full boil this Winter, they did not seem worth a great amount of attention or energy. (But it's also a little dispiriting that such small things can't be pushed farther along without advocacy - we might have to fight on the SRC, that's a big thing, worth a fight, but do we also have to fight on very small things too?)

The explanation from the Staff Report

The sidewalks changes look a little more substantive, but yet also incremental and neither worth criticizing in detail nor lauding in excess. From the Staff Report:

This code amendment establishes a clear standard for developments to provide pedestrian connections to and throughout their development site. The proposed standards do not apply to single-family, two family, or multifamily housing. Multiple family developments are already required to provide pedestrian connections through the City’s design review process.

The proposed standards require a pedestrian connection from public sidewalks to the main entrance of buildings and through large parking lots. If there is a transit stop along the development site, at least one pedestrian connection must connect to the street within 20 feet of the stop. In addition, pedestrian connections must be established between buildings on a site and between a development site and abutting properties if a vehicular connection is provided. When an existing or planned path is identified in the Salem Transportation System Plan or Salem Comprehensive Parks System Master Plan as going through the development site, that path must be constructed, or a public access easement or dedication for future construction must be provided.

Currently, pedestrian connections are required in some zones or overlay zones but not others. The pedestrian connections are also required through the City’s Class 3 Site Plan Review criteria, which calls for safe and efficient traffic circulation into and out of developments and safe and efficient pedestrian movement through parking areas. This code amendment establishes a clear and objective standard for pedestrian connections in areas of the city where existing pedestrian standards do not apply. This removes ambiguity in pedestrian connectivity requirements and ensures that pedestrian connections are applied throughout the city. This change also responds to the City Council and community’s desire to increase pedestrian safety in Salem.

Maybe other advocates will have more to say on these things.

In other matters the Commission will consider a request to "Decrease the minimum parking requirement for the 140-unit senior living facility from 285 parking spaces to 165 parking spaces." That's a clear instance of our parking minimums being excessive.

The Commission meets tonight at 5:30pm in Council Chambers at City Hall.

Addendum

There's some additional changes that either I missed or were posted late.

One of them incorporates a suggestion made here back in November.

Pictures! There will be illustrations for good bike parking

They also carved out some exceptions for public rental bike stations.

Notes on Wednesday's Multifamily Design Workshop

On Wednesday the 27th the City is holding a Public Workshop on multifamily design standards.

Eugene's "Working Flats," a very fine 1909 Craftsman 4-plex
on the National Register

According to the City's "background" blurb, it seems to be aimed at "missing middle" housing:

The existing design standards are generally geared toward large, suburban-type projects and are therefore not well suited for smaller multifamily housing projects. The standards have thus been identified as potential barriers to development.

The City's image: Cookie-cutter three-story walkup and parking lot

But the image they chose to illustrate the project page is a large, cookie-cutter three-story walkup set on a large parking lot - that "large, suburban-type project." So it's not wholly clear what is the focus here.

From the City again:

The community is invited to a public workshop on the design of multifamily housing on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. at the Salem Public Library, Anderson Rooms, 585 Liberty Street SE. The public will have the opportunity to provide input on ways to improve the City’s housing design standards.

The workshop is part of the Multifamily Housing Design project, which seeks to update the City’s regulations on housing developments with three or more dwelling units. The project aims to help meet Salem’s housing needs by removing barriers to multifamily housing development and ensuring new development is compatible with neighborhoods.

The City kicked off this project in December and has since held focus groups with neighborhood association representatives, City officials, and developers. Based on this feedback, initial concepts for updating the City’s multifamily housing regulations are being developed and will be presented at the Feb. 27 public workshop.

So I guess we'll see. There are no documents published to the project website yet.

Safe Routes to Schools at the MPO

Our local Metropolitan Planning Organization meets on Tuesday the 26th, and mostly they've got a bunch of administrative housekeeping on the agenda. We've talked about project scoring for the 2019 RTSP, and that debate and analysis continues, but I'm not sure there's anything new to say. (See previous notes from the Technical Advisory Committee and discussion.)

For all the mania the MPO has had for the Salem River Crossing, it's crickets now! Maybe it's merely a superficial observation, but it's interesting that on the agenda there is nothing about the finality of Council's vote on the SRC earlier this month. Maybe there will be informal conversation - or maybe there is only secret plotting now. The silence is a little strange and seems worth noting.

What is on the agenda and new, is a proposal to support Safe Routes to School personnel.

The agenda item

The end of a draft letter to Cherriots
Why is SKATS telling Cherriots about Bend?

And it too is a little weird.

As I read it, the tone and language is less about supporting an existing application for funding, but is rather more like a pitch to Cherriots to make the application. It doesn't actually read like everybody's on the same page quite yet. Instead they're trying to talk Cherriots into making this "non-infrastructure grant" application, which Cherriots has already once declined to do. The whole things just feels a little unsettled rather than firm. ("Come on, Cherriots, you can do it!" It's also not clear yet how much of a committed partner is the School District. The McNary/St. Edward mess suggests the District remains committed instead to autoism and to larger parking lots. A District fully invested in Safe Routes would have managed the problems at McNary very differently.)

Latest YMCA Plans Show we are Failing with Chemeketa Street Downtown

In the paper today is a story about reduced ambitions for the new YMCA downtown. They have some funding commitments apparently in hand, but the total amount means they have had to make the building and total plan a little smaller. Instead of a three-story building, it's now two stories. Where the IKE Box is, they were going to put in housing to replace the Court Apartments, but that's postponed further and perhaps even deleted now.

Here's the previous, three-story corner view
 - via CB|Two

City Council, February 25th - New SDCs, Fairview, HLC

Council meets on Monday, and they'll have a new scheme for System Development Charges to consider.

New proposed SDCs

Changes to the schedule of System Development Charges require an interlocking set of agenda items:

• A report and Hearing on the new formulas and "metholodogy"
• Associated Code Amendments
• Associated new Rule Making

But, dang, they remain opaque! Perhaps it was a mistake not to have followed this more closely from the start. Now, taking the proposal in absolute terms, without any notion of the debate and underlying analysis, and without any comparison to other possible schemes, it's very hard to say how much of an improvement this proposal really is. The rhetoric probably oversells the benefits, and it's hard sometimes just to take the language at face value.

On transportation there's some split with a majority report and a minority report, but to outsiders the way it's presented is not very meaningful. Transparency on the support, saying who voted for which proposal, would have shed more light. Here is a situation where potential bias or ideological preference would illuminate helpfully as citizens evaluate the proposal.

Why wasn't variable pricing/incentives
included across the board?

The transportation fees

It is a little disappointing not to see more variable pricing. The transportation burden of a multi-family dwelling in downtown on a redeveloped lot near the transit center is very different from the burden imposed by a single-family dwelling on new greenfield development near the city limits. And the burden of a new multi-family development on a greenfield near Cordon Road very different from that redeveloped lot downtown.

It seems like we could make SDCs a stronger policy instrument, better aligned with planning goals, to incent development where we want it, and make it more costly where it is less helpful or is explicitly a luxury development.