Our dire situation

Salem seethes with discontent about its livability, most of which is traceable to our sprawled-out footprint and our failure to overcome the consequences of auto-sprawl, which reduces quality of health and enjoyment of life throughout the city. The only answer the traffic engineers and planners have to the problems they have caused by putting the needs of cars ahead of everything else is to do more of it --- more lanes, more bridges, more signals, you name it. If you were to look at how Salem and most other cities actually spend money and set priorities, you could be forgiven for thinking that USA stands for United States of Automobility.

The folks who choose to live in Polk County, many in West Salem, deem themselves entitled to a $600+ million dollar bridge because, for a short period each weekday, traversing the Marion/Center span isn't instantaneous. Yet, stand at those bridges at rush "hour" (closer to 1/2 hour) some weekday and count the number of cars with just one occupant -- it's the vast majority.

Meanwhile, a city resident thinks that keeping some weekend bus service is a "frill."

So in the same paper we have folks complaining about the costs of providing transit services with property taxes and yet calling for hundreds of millions to be taken from all property owners to build a new bridge.

Luckily, the collapse of the Ponzi-economy has probably eliminated the fantasy that Salem can afford any part of the bridge scheme. Thanks to the credit collapse, it will be quite hard to fund anything--- even worthwhile projects that would reduce our carbon footprint and provide meaningful investment for the long term (rather than just a short term bump for bridge building). So a new Willamette River Bridge is probably not in the cards. The only question is how long it takes for ODOT and the local folks to wake up from the dream of ever-expanding pavement and to start facing up to the real task of the 21st C.: how to modify and improve the infrastructure left over from the massive buildout of sprawl in the last half of the 20th C. so that cars become optional again.