Lost in Salem: Councilor Bednarz' mile-long downtown bridge backup

One of Salem's city councilors, Warren Bednarz, needs some help. Let's give it to him! I love to be helpful. Don't you? 

He's lost the Mile-Long Rush Hour Downtown Bridge Backup that he assured the Mayor, other city councilors, and attendees at a recent city council work session was regularly happening because Salem doesn't have an unneeded, unwanted, and unpaid-for half-billion dollar Third Bridge. 

The No 3rd Bridge folks were the first to point out the lost Mile-Long Rush Hour Downtown Bridge Backup on their Facebook page.

COUNCILOR BEDNARZ USES THE BIG LIE

At the City Council Work Session on Monday night those of us in the audience were stunned to hear Councilor Bednarz tell his colleagues that traffic was regularly backing up "for a mile" downtown at rush hour because we don't have a 3rd Bridge. 

We've heard this before. It's the party line of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce and their front organization the Third Bridge Alliance. It's a great example of the "Big Lie" that was invented as a propaganda technique by the Nazis in WWII. Hitler himself first used the phrase in his book Mein Kampf. Joseph Goebbels said "when one lies, one should lie big and stick to it." That's what we are hearing from Bednarz and the Chamber.

As we have reported here many times before, the counters on the Marion and Center Street bridges, that don't lie, have recorded Average Daily Traffic counts that have basically been flat for a decade or more.

More evidence can be gathered from the real time traffic cameras that the City has now deployed at the end of both the Marion and Center Street Bridges and on Commercial as it enters downtown from both the north and the south. There is also a camera at Wallace and Edgewater. Below are three photos taken yesterday: at about 5 pm on Marion Street and this morning at about 8 am on Center Street and Commercial St. S. heading into downtown.

Do you see any mile long backups?

I looked at this photo, and the others shown on the Facebook post. I couldn't see any mile-long backups either. So I emailed Bednarz yesterday morning, citing the "Councilor Bednarz Uses the Big Lie" post and saying:

Councilor Bednarz, the No 3rd Bridge folks have called you out on a “Big Lie” that you reportedly stated at the recent city council work session. 

What is your response? I’d like to write about this issue, but want to get your viewpoint first. It seems like there are two basic possibilities.

 

One, you were wrong about what you said. There aren’t really regular mile-long backups of traffic. In this case, one would assume that an apology/retraction is in order.

 

Two, you were right about what you said. In this case, I assume you will be able to present evidence that backs up your claim of regular mile-long backups downtown.

 

I look forward to your reply. Thanks in advance.

     — Brian

As of press time (geez, I love that phrase; it makes me sound kind of like a real journalist; of course, what I mean by it is that I'm about to drink a glass of red wine in my nightly hot bath, and I want to press "publish" first), I haven't heard back from Councilor Bednarz.

I sent him another email today, figuring that he might have been busy looking for the Mile-Long Rush Hour Downtown Bridge Backup and didn't notice my first message. 

Like I told Bednarz, at first it seemed to me that either he was wrong about the mile-long backups and just said this in a desperate attempt to bolster the very shaky case for the City of Salem spending lots of taxpayer money to press ahead with Third Bridge planning, or he was right and has evidence proving that Mile-Long Rush Hour Downtown Bridge Backups occur regularly.

But after some further pondering, I think we need to consider other possibilities. Here's some ideas that I've come up with. If anyone has additional ones, feel free to leave them in a comment on this post. Remember...

We need to help Councilor Bednarz find his Mile-Long Rush Hour Downtown Bridge Backups!

(1) Bednarz could be having some sort of weird flashbacks produced by an unknown cause that's making him see mile-long backups that aren't really there (psychedelics? prior living in Los Angeles?)

(2) Bednarz could be having visions of some other slice of the space-time continuum, such as New York City at rush hour, created by a wormhole that has found its way into his psyche (just watched Interstellar on DVD, which stimulated this notion).

(3) Bednarz could be under the influence of a brain implant surreptitiously installed in his cranium by the Salem Chamber of Commerce which makes him see things that support the Chamber's desire to waste a half billion dollars or more on building an unneeded Third Bridge.

(This also may, or may not, have happened to Sheronne Blasi, who, thankfully, was a city council candidate who wasn't elected.)

Whatever the reason for the lost Mile-Long Rush Hour Downtown Bridge Backup, we can't give up on looking for it. Warren Bednarz is a Salem City Councilor, one of the top elected officials in this town.

And we all know that elected officials always tell the truth, right? Right?

Comments

[Walker]

I think that, rather than calling him a purveyor of the big lie, we should just note that the Bednarz mile is very different than the mile that the rest of us to use. We could figure the average backup distance at its peak and define that as a BM, for Bednarz Mile, and then we could note some important distances in BMs, such as how many BMs traffic would have to back up to equal a conventional mile, and we could mark that spot on Marion Street, and we could also mark the Bednarz Mile point on Marion and note what fraction of a conventional it is as well.

We could start giving the length of the Bridgasaurus Boondogglus in BMs too, just for fun.

[Brian Hines]

Walker, excellent idea. It's akin to relativity theory, where time and space vary according to the observer.

In this case, they vary during rush hours (or rush minutes) depending on how much an elected official kowtows to the Sprawl Lobby, the Chamber of Commerce, and other special interests in regard to spending half a billion dollars on an unneeded Third Bridge.

Along that line (sort of), this is a comment I just left on my Strange Up Salem posting about this issue:
--------------------
We've got to remember that there are slowdowns all over Salem during the rush hours. Or, rush minutes. I find that far south Commercial is slowed. Kuebler is slowed. Heading north into downtown on Liberty is slowed.

Nobody is talking about building new roads because these and other streets have some slowdowns during certain times of the day. Plus, as others have noted, and I've been told by Third Bridge consultants, the problems with crossing the river at certain times of the day are the approaches, not the two current bridges.

Fixing the approaches would cost way less than building a new bridge, as would adding a lane or two to the current bridges. There simply is no good reason to spend half a billion dollars on a Third Bridge. None at all.

[Geronimo Tagatac]

I'll go for number 3, the Chamber of Commerce implant.

[Salemander]

Why do they want to build a new bridge so badly when it is not needed?

My guess is that it is at the behest of developers and the chamber of commerce, who want to cash in on all of that undeveloped land north of West Salem.

This land becomes much much more attractive if people living there do not have to backtrack all the way south through West Salem to cross the bridge to get to I-5, or go through downtown to get to big box stores in North Salem/Keiser.

It just seems like this new bridge wont do much (if anything) for people living in Salem now, but they will get the "privilege" of paying for it.

[Brian Hines]

Salemander, great analysis. You're absolutely right. The Third Bridge is a way for vehicles to bypass Salem, though, as you said, Salemians will be expected to pay for much or most of it.

A bridge planner told me at a forum/meeting that a big plus of the bridge will be speeding goods from Monmouth, Independence, and thereabouts up to I-5 and thence to points north.

Likewise, trucks will be able to get to the coast more quickly with a bridge that begins close to the end of the Salem Parkway.

So the argument that the bridge is needed to alleviate local rush hour congestion is a scam, as is the Bridge That Should Go Nowhere itself.

What person working downtown and living in West Salem will want to drive quite a ways north, then take a long bridge that leaves them still north of Wallace Road, instead of taking the current bridges? Which are fine, since it is the approaches that cause congestion.

[Jay]

We already have three bridges! I jog across bridge #3 all the time. Now a third vehicle bridge is what they are after. That being said, I think the bridge would be great for: Transport businesses that carry goods from north of west Salem to I-5 corridor, People living in Polk County needing to access Keizer station, people in a hurry that hate waiting in traffic for 5 whole minutes to cross the bridge out of/into West Salem, and of course developers of the land north of West Salem hoping for a shorter commute to Salem proper. In short, it seems that the primary beneficiaries of the proposed bridge are not the citizens of Salem. Have them draw up a proposal where Polk and Marion county pay for most of it, and charge a toll for people to use it. That way, the people deriving benefit from said bridge will be paying for it, not the people of Salem who do not particularly need or want to pay for it. My 2 cents.

[Brian Hines]

Jay, right on!

You've seen through the duplicity of the Third Bridge advocates. They think Salemians are too stupid to recognize their ruse -- passing off a regional bridge as an (unneeded) local bridge, but citizens won't fall for this.

"You pay, others will benefit" isn't a great selling point for the Third Bridge.

But like you said, this is exactly what the Salem Mayor, City Council majority (aside from Tom Andersen) and other elected officials bought and paid for by special interest money are trying to foist on us.