Salem Willamette River Crossing Alternate Modes Study

The Final Salem Alternate Modes Study is available!

The project team refined the revised concepts based on feedback from the project management team, advisory committee, key decision makers, and the public. The final Salem Alternate Mode Study includes 24 Transportation System Management (TSM) recommendations and 20 Transportation Demand Management (TDM) recommendations to help reduce SOV travel over the Willamette River in Salem. View the final maps of the TSM recommendations, which include physical improvements to the alternate mode infrastructure in Salem. Project technical memoranda and appendixes can be viewed in Volume II of the Salem Alternate Modes Study. This project was completed in April 2010.

The City of Salem, the Oregon Department of Transportation, Salem Area Mass Transit District (Cherriots), and the Mid-Willamette Valley Council of Governments (MWVCOG) started a joint effort to look at ways to reduce single-occupancy vehicle (SOV) travel over the river.

The Salem Willamette River Crossing Alternate Modes Study (Alternate Modes Study) looked at ways to decrease single-occupancy trips by offering different ways to cross the existing bridges, or any new bridges that develop out of the Salem River Crossing project. The team considered a mixture of physical improvement projects, operational improvements, and educational/policy efforts to reach the goal of reducing single-occupant trips over the river and to increase the service life of the bridges. The improvements that the project examined include:

  • Transit improvements to offer choices for crossing the river. The study looked at several modes, including carpool/vanpool, transit, bicycle, and pedestrians.
  • System Management improvements to get more use out of what already exists (such as adding priority lanes for carpools or buses).
  • Demand Management improvements to reduce or shift travel demand away from the places and times that are congested (this can include flexible work hours, expanding carpool programs, investigating pricing and tolling options, and changing land uses).

Although this study is separate from the Salem River Crossing bridge project, the study has several of the same stakeholders, and the results of the Alternate Modes Study will be used by the Salem River Crossing team as they move forward with the draft Draft Environmental Impact Statement (Draft EIS) for the Salem River Crossing project.

Who’s involved?

The Alternate Modes Study had a Stakeholder Advisory Committee that met at key milestones to provide guidance to the project team. Agendas and summaries from those meetings are posted below.

The consultant team for this effort is CH2M HILL, with support from Alta Planning + Design and PTV America.

Meetings

Stakeholder Advisory Committee Meeting #3
Monday, November 16, 2009 from 4:00 – 6:00pm

Briefing to Salem City Council
September 28, 2009 at 5:30 pm

Briefing to SKATS Policy Board
October 27, 2009 at 12:00 pm

Briefing to Salem City Council
September 28, 2009 at 5:30 pm

Briefing Cherriots Board of Directors
September 24, 2009 at 5:30 pm

Stakeholder Advisory Committee Meeting #2
Monday, September 14, 2009 from 4:00 – 6:00pm

Briefing to Citizen Advisory Traffic Commission (CATC)
September 10, 2009 at 7:00 am

Project Team Design Workshop
Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 1:00-5:00 pm

Stakeholder Advisory Committee Meeting #1
Monday June 22, 2009, 4:00-6:00 pm

Project Materials

Additional Resources

If you would like to learn more about transit demand or system management, please see the following website:

The Alternate Modes study aimed at reducing auto demand over the Willamette River in Salem by at least 8 percent. This starting number came from analysis prepared for the Salem River Crossing project. The documents below describe that process.