You would think, wouldn’t you? But this approach is quite common. Biden’s “deal” to prevent the rail strike was to make it illegal for them to strike. Air traffic controllers were also legally prevented from striking in the 80s, but did a wildcat strike anyway. Reagan fired all of them and then banned them from ever being rehired.

Fucking Mapps, dude.

Glad you had a good time.

I didn’t know there were non-Oregon residents here.

Angels Rest is a pretty good hike if it’s your first time in town. Not super long, though.

The Trail of Seven Falls in Silver Falls State Park is another great one, but again, not super long.

If you want something longer there’s Tillamook Head Trail out by the coast that would give you good views of the ocean and cliffs out there.

Others may have better options. Keep in mind it’s likely to be raining no matter where you go.

Timbers probably sell out more than the Blazers tbh

Not a part of the mall parcel, unlike the movie theater, oddly.

Dude, Salem doesn’t have any protected bike lanes.

They just re-opened a tap room with a pretty great food cart pod attached. I went this weekend. It seemed busy, but I’d guess rent is a lot higher than their old spot.

famously drug-less environments: jails

They say they want fewer overdoses but no mention of supervised consumption sites, which are the easiest and most effective way to do that.

It’s always just more cops. Are there any politicians who can come up with 1 creative solution? Or talk to the people who can?

The issue is that, despite spending more money than any other country by an order of magnitude (excepting maybe the UK) per mile of track, we don’t get it done right the first time.

SF’s Central Subway which was, at one point, the most expensive rail project (light or otherwise) per mile of track in the world had to get the contractor to go in and completely replace the rails because they had tried to sneak substandard steel past the city.

The megacontractors who build these projects do not deliver quality, they do not deliver when they say they will, and they do not deliver for the cost they bid at. They do make a killing though.

Well, the Bay Area is using CAHSR money to upgrade Caltrain already. That project should be done in a year or two.

What Rendon wanted to do in Socal with Metrolink was to use the money to not do any electrification and use battery-electric trains, which would have been useless.

The route selection isn’t that big of an issue. CAHSR was always intended to help connect the Central Valley to LA and SF. Merced, Bakersfield, and Fresno aren’t that small, and they aren’t that out of the way either.

SNCF’s bid did use the I-5 RoW, which doesn’t pass through these downtowns and would have required connecting spurs in the Central Valley. It would have been cheaper most likely, but not passing through the valley cities’ cores would probably have hurt support for the project and limited the impacts it could make for the rest of the state’s economy. (These cities (or at least Fresno) have since rejected having HSR go through their downtowns, but that’s a new problem.)

$200 million for a study I assume. Christ this stuff does not need to be so expensive. Why do we continue to be so bad at this?

It was so obvious at the time and so transparent that it’s truly shocking how well it worked.

So now we’re stuck with this terrible city council that is actively sabotaging the city’s efforts on homelessness and mental health until 2024.

I guess he found out.

I do not care for them. I’m glad they’ll be gone in 2024.

Spoiler: it is because they asked the community there and they felt they’d get more representation that way.