I work for Strong Towns and sometimes even I don't know what the Strong Towns approach is.
Last year, Strong Towns’ articles and podcasts reached millions of people across the world and from a variety of personal and professional backgrounds. We’re all part of a growing conversation about how to build stronger and more financially resilient cities, and we got here in different ways.
This week, I’m writing a series of posts on my own Strong Towns journey. On Monday, I told the story of how everything changed for our family when my wife decided we needed to get to know our actual neighbors. On Tuesday, I described how I found Strong Towns by asking some very big questions. For example, “Does God care how wide this road is?”
Today, I tell a story about the time I did nothing.
If you’re looking for my town of Silverton, Oregon on a map, “X” marks the spot. Two state highways crisscross here: OR-213 traveling from Salem to Portland, and OR-214, which runs perpendicular on its way from Silver Falls State Park to Woodburn.
Locally, both these two-lane highways have reputations for being dangerous. Between Silverton and Salem, OR-213 is well-known for its speeding drivers and aggressive passing. A few years ago, my pastor’s parents were in a horrific accident on this stretch of road; they are fortunate to be alive. And if you’re a cyclist—as many of my friends here are—what little shoulder there is feels even smaller when a semi-truck barrels past you, inches from your elbow, at 60 mph. Heading the other direction out of town, the dangers of 213 include high speeds, winding roads, and an abundance of deer. It seems like every year there is another fatal crash on this road, including last December, when a Silverton man was killed on Christmas night between Silverton and the town of Molalla.
OR-214 has a bad reputation for other reasons. North of town, the highway splits Silverton in two. There are no streetlights, stop signs, or pedestrian crossing facilities of any kind on 214 above C Street (“E” on the map below). The speed limit doubles from 25 to 50 before you’ve left city limits, although it does increase in increments rather than all at once. Traffic isn’t heavy on OR-214 but it is steady. In 2018, the average annual daily traffic volume was 8,400 — or about one vehicle every ten seconds.
What makes this stretch of highway so much trouble is that kids in northeast Silverton can’t cross it safely when they walk or bike to the high school (“A”) or middle school (“B”). What makes it dangerous (not to mention terrifying) is that many kids still try.
A Highway Runs Through It
I used to work for the local school district as a grant writer. During my tenure I helped the City of Silverton submit several grant applications to the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Safe Routes to School program. Though we couldn’t submit infrastructure requests directly for OR-214, the highway was always on our minds. Right now, the safest way to walk or bike home from school to northeast Silverton is to loop towards downtown, but that adds an extra mile of travel for some students. District and City officials knew that kids were sometimes sprinting across 214, either at Jefferson Street (“D”) or — even more often, I believe — at the McDonald’s (“C”). Kids cut across the district football field, go through a hole in the fence, and emerge in the McDonald’s parking lot. After grabbing some hash browns, they time their move and hustle across two lanes of highway traffic (three, if you include the turning lane).
The “official” crossing point at Jefferson Street and OR-214. (Source: Google Maps)
Where many students actually cross, out of the McDonald’s parking lot.
By the time I finished working for the district, improvements hadn’t yet been made at the Jefferson Street crossing, let alone near the McDonald’s. But I thought about this problem all the time, and not just when I saw kids waiting to bolt across the highway.
I was still thinking about it when I came on staff at Strong Towns. I was immersed in the Strong Towns conversation more than ever before, but I couldn’t figure out what a “Strong Towns approach” would be to solving this issue. My internal conversations went something like this:
“Obviously the goal is to #SlowTheCars in order to prioritize pedestrian safety over vehicle speed... But how to do it?”
“We believe it’s more effective to design your way to safety than to simply regulate it… But I’m not a designer.”
“Some sort of pop-up traffic calming measure could work, at least to demonstrate what’s possible… But is tactical urbanism even legal on state highways?”
The scope of the problem also felt overwhelming. How can I be an agent for change when there are so many entities involved—ODOT, the City of Silverton, the district, private landowners, I think even a defunct railway line—and I didn’t work for (or have leverage with) any of them? I hadn’t stopped believing in the bottom-up revolution, yet I was being confronted firsthand by the power of inertia.
#SlowingTheCars Is Slow Work
One day I decided to finally get these conversations out of my own head and talk about this problem with others in the Strong Towns movement. I made arrangements to chat with our senior editor Daniel Herriges. I explained to him the issue, and why I’d been so daunted to act. After listening well and asking clarifying questions, he walked me through what he saw as some next steps we could explore locally. He talked about working backwards from what you want, about possible design interventions to create the friction that slows cars, and how helpful it can be to have a champion in state government when departments of transportation are involved. He reminded me of all the resources we have on this topic (just a few of which I’ve sprinkled throughout this piece.). Daniel also acknowledged how common it is to feel intimidated by the scale of change. “This is slow work,” he said.
That night at dinner, I brought everything I’d learned to my family and housemates. The whole house got engaged. We talked about who we knew in state government and how we needed a local champion. My twelve-year-old daughter, a force to be reckoned with, said she wanted to be the local champion, and she started taking notes. One of my housemates has lived in Silverton for decades, was once on the planning commission, and used to be a teacher in the district. She gave us more background on the problem. I got up from the table feeling empowered and energized.
A half-hour later, I was continuing my research online, and then I saw it: a notice saying ODOT is beginning construction in June 2020 (next month!) on its portion of improving the Jefferson Street crossing. This includes a pedestrian island, flashing beacon, better lighting, and more.
By itself, this doesn’t seem like enough. I didn’t see anything about reducing the speeds, and I’m concerned that this bit of infrastructure will encourage more kids to cross without also compelling enough drivers to slow down.
Still, it’s a start.
I’ve been reflecting on this sequence of events, and there are two simple reminders I want to take away from this experience. I offer them here in the hope they’re helpful for other Strong Towns advocates too.
1. It can be hard to take action.
In North America, we’ve all inherited a particular way of building cities that makes us less prosperous and more fragile. One of the hallmarks of this suburban development pattern is how inflexible it can be, especially when compared with the highly adaptable traditional development pattern forged over millennia by our ancestors.
The scale of what needs to be changed can be intimidating—not just nationwide or citywide, but sometimes even with just one project. I work for Strong Towns and for the longest time I couldn’t figure out what the “Strong Towns approach” would be, let alone how to act on it. I don’t think it was only lack of imagination on my part; there is an insidious inertia to the status quo.
2. I’m not alone.
The conventional way of building cities applies a one-size-fits-all, top-down formula that can be imposed pretty much anywhere with little thought of context. But for the bespoke Strong Towns approach, context is everything.
In retrospect, what I could have done was to bring the issue to the broader Strong Towns community. And not just in a private conversation with a colleague. I could have tapped into the collective wisdom, experience, and creativity over at the Strong Towns Community site. The Strong Towns staff—Daniel, Chuck Marohn, Jacob Moses, and others—are all active there. But so are hundreds of people who are taking the Strong Towns message and applying it to their own particular places. Almost daily, I see people crowd-sourcing solutions to seemingly intractable problems. I could have done the same.
And hopefully next time I will. Because OR-214 still presents a challenge for kids who want to walk or bike to school, and because there are other places I see people struggling in Silverton.
This is part three of a four-part series. You can find the other articles here:
Part One: We’re Not in Mayberry Anymore. And That’s a Good Thing.
Part Two: “Does God care how wide a road is?”
Part Three: I work for Strong Towns and sometimes even I know don’t know what the Strong Towns approach is.
Part Four: Finding the Good Life on Danger Hill
This is Member Week at Strong Towns. Each spring, we use this week to celebrate our sustaining members and to ask for your help growing this movement even further. Every time you advocate for change in your community, thousands of us are standing with you. Imagine what would be possible if there were thousands more. Consider become a sustaining member today.