Gil Penalosa shows Salem how to become a more vibrant city

A week ago noted urban designer Gil Penalosa gave a talk at a Willamette University law school lecture hall that should have gotten a lot more attention than it did.

I sat through Penalosa's two-hour presentation thinking, "Everybody in Salem should be hearing what he's saying. But pretty much, only those who already believe in his 8-80 vision are here tonight."

By 8-80 is meant: city streets should be designed to be safely and pleasantly walkable/bikable by a child of eight or an elderly person of 80. Along with everybody in between. 

I first learned about Penalosa and his brother in a great book, "Happy City." Blogged about it here.

Penalosa accomplished a lot in Bogota, Columbia, of all places. Which, he said, has a per capita income that is 1/8 of Salem's.

Yet Bogota has a hugely better bus, bicycle, and pedestrian transportation system. Given that fact, you'd think City of Salem elected officials and staff would have attended Penalosa's talk in droves. But they weren't much in attendance, from what I could tell. 

(See this Breakfast on Bikes post about who the intended audience for Penalosa's talk is/was.)

I found the guy's energy, passion, and knowledge about smart urban design highly appealing. Wish someone could have bottled it, then mainlined it into the brains of our Mayor, City Manager, Public Works Director, and City Councillors.

Sure, he gives his PowerPoint talk often all around the world. You can't fake the sort of enthusiasm he showed at the Salem talk, though. Here's a much abbreviated version:

 

I took lots of notes. Penalosa made so many good points, and said so many interesting things, it's tough to summarize his message. I'll content myself with some bullet point sharings.

-- There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. Quoting a Danish "street philosopher" regarding how people in Copenhagen, which has a climate a lot like ours, are extremely avid bicycle commuters.

-- Change doesn't happen by consensus. Change is hard. Educate children, and they will educate their parents.

-- Goal is vibrant cities, sustainable happiness.

-- We've got to stop building cities as if everybody was 30 years old and athletic (which is just about the only sort of person who dares ride downtown Salem's bicycle unfriendly streets).

-- We humans have learned to survive. Now we must learn how to live. 

-- Every trip, by car or otherwise, begins and ends with walking. One-half of trips in North America are within a 20 minute bike ride.

-- People walk. Birds fly. Fish swim.

-- Why are children only safe in front of their school? Have a 20 mph speed limit in all residential areas. This is a symbol of respect for people. Speed kills.

-- Cities must have (1) a lower speed limit on all neighborhood streets, and (2) a network of protected bikeways.

-- It is time to be BOLD. 

-- Downsizing from two cars to one, or from one to none, saves someone $9,000 a year. This money stays in the local economy. It only costs $1,800 a year to get around without a car.

-- We are unique, just like everyone else. Quoting Margaret Mead. Need to compare with the best cities, not the cities doing almost as poorly as Salem.

-- Salem needs a good quality of life to attract the best people, people who can choose to live anywhere they want.

Salem Breakfast on Bikes asked a good question in another post: "After Gil, what next?"

Great question. The City Council and other leaders in our semi-fair town need to get off their carcentric butts and start making Salem much more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

Otherwise, as Penalosa said, people who want quality of life and can choose where they live will pass Salem by, as so many professionals and executives already do (working in Salem and living in Portland is a common lifestyle choice).

Comments

[Breakfast on Bikes]

Thanks for writing up your thoughts!

[Susann Kaltwasser]

So how bad would it be to take out a bit of parking on one street in downtown so a bike lane could be put in? And why did Salem ever create the 'no bikes' on sidewalks so far out of the core? Last, the whole idea of the bikes sharing the car lane idea (sharod or something like that) is totally bogus. The whole lesson learned from Copenhagen is that you have to separate cars from bikes to get people to feel safe enough to use the lanes. If Paris can take cars off the streets at least on weekends, so can Salem.

"Paris Respire (literally "Paris breathe") is a car-free scheme where certain roads are closed to vehicular traffic on Sundays and public holidays between the hours of 9am and 5pm. The roads closed include those by the River Seine, in the Marais, the Canal Saint Martin, Montmartre as well as roads elsewhere in the city."

[Breakfast on Bikes]

In defense of sharrows, the way Salem has used them on Commercial Street is non-standard and really pushes the envelope. Their use on Chemeketa is much closer to standard (though some things about Chemeketa could still be tweaked) and is helpful. Even the ones on Commercial are helpful for those who are willing to brave bicycling on Commercial. So to say they are "bogus" is, at least for people who bike, not true. What is true is that the way Salem is currently using them, they are useful to a much smaller slice of people who bike than the way they are used in some cities elsewhere.

Also, some people who bike are able to keep up with downtown traffic and would like to retain the ability to bike with cars. So it would be nice to have the option - to have wholly separated lanes for families and people who aren't comfortable mixing with cars, and to allow fast cyclists to mix with cars.

An important reason for using sharrows here is that people are exceedingly uncomfortable taking out parking. They were kindof a plan B. The attachment to parking is certainly is part of the sentiment behind the tremendous support for free, unlimited parking downtown, don't you think? People want lots of parking.

In any case, it would be great if we could look at the examples of other cities, as you say, and create some car-free times or car-free zones. I bet downtown merchants would be surprised at the additional kinds of foot traffic they'd experience.

Glad you're thinking about Paris and Copenhagen!

[Susann Kaltwasser]

I believe that if Salem is to become an 8-80 city we are going to have to think not like someone who is currently a biker, but to the people who have the potential to become a biker...if only conditions would change a bit. Portland has had big success with closing streets at least once in a while to let families bike together. Recreation is the beginning of thinking about stopping to shop and then we can move on to the concept of commuting. Baby-steps for the novices, so that they become proponents of doing more.

When my in-laws lived in Utah they biked everywhere even in their late 60s. When they came to live in Salem they feared even biking in their neighborhood streets, let alone use their bikes for errands. Too bad, it was great exercise. Finally they moved to a gated community in Florida and returned to riding their bikes up into their late 70s. If other US cities can do this, what is wrong with Salem?

I say sharrow (thanks for the correct spelling) are bogus because the truth is that most people are intimidated by them and cars do not understand or respect them. They are an excuse for doing the right thing for bikers.

[Breakfast on Bikes]

Ah. Totally agree. As you suggest, it's true that sharrows have been used here as a temporizing measure - an incremental measure, a stage hopefully preliminary to better things (but still better than nothing) - and as you say, they will not be effective for families, newbies, and casual cyclists. They really serve only a small fraction of people who bike, those who are already pretty confident.

To serve the larger proportion of people who are interested in more transportation choices, different kinds of street treatments will be necessary, usually involving separation from car traffic.

But until we get to that point, sharrows still have some value!

Here's a piece about funding that shows how Portland has used sharrows in a significantly different context than most of them in Salem -
http://bikeportland.org/2014/02/28/special-report-how-portland-stopped-funding-neighborhood-greenways-102274
I think it would be difficult to say the sharrows are "bogus" in the contexts shown in the photos.

(As a practical matter, right now it looks like Union street may be the closest to a pilot full-on family-friendly bikeway. Some other street could jump the queue if there was great support, but I'm not seeing that right now. Council and the Urban Renewal Agency look like they are working on the first segment, the intersection of Commercial and Union, and then will start working east up the street. Councilor Bednarz has business offices on Union at Church, and he was anxious about losing street parking on Union. So to get a full family-friendly street, it will be helpful to lobby both him and Councilor Bennett. Please consider sending them a note in support of an 8 - 80 treatment for Union and other streets in Salem!)