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[Tarkus]

This courtesy of the Statesman Journal from a few days ago.

Particularly noteworthy is the quote from ODOT's Lou Torres:

Lou Torres, Public Affairs Specialist for ODOT, said ultimately the entities agreed that safety was the No. 1 concern, and the cameras would be allowed to remain in place.

"In this case, the city of Salem felt the cameras were affecting the community in a positive way, and ODOT agrees," Torres said.

This is the same ODOT that about a year ago, released a 56-page report stating that red light cameras caused a 77.4% increase in accidents at 25th and Mission (OR-22), and recommending that the city rip the cameras out, and chiding the City of Salem and Redflex for selecting an intersection that had a low accident rate (but high number of possible red-light running tickets).  So nearly doubling the accident rate is improving safety?  What planet are these people from?  Is ODOT getting a cut of the camera money in the same way CalTrans does?  

I smell a piscatorial odor.

Edit:  From an OregonLive article about Sherwood's red light camera system, it appears ODOT is getting a cut:

Plus, portions of the money go to the state, the county court system and to Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., the private company that operates the cameras. The city could calculate the numbers, but staff members are too busy as it is, Gibons said.

[NE2]

Did the report look at how serious the crashes were?

[nexus73]

ODOT is just another failed bureaucracy.  Go to work, put in your 30 years, do as little as possible, collect your bloated PERS (retirement) and then see if you can double dip!  ODOT is a far cry from the organization that used to lead the way in modernizing highways.  Now it's bandaids at best and as for the worst, don't ask!  Where's Joe Stalin when you need him?

Rick

 

[xonhulu]

I haven't the foggiest idea what ODOT's priorities are these days.  Needed improvements are in decades-long holding patterns while less-necessary projects go to the top of the list.  I'll concede that they have a lot of aging infrastructure to deal with, but it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that the same inept bureaucracy that neglected it all in the first place is now in charge of its rehabilitation.

The City of Salem is hardly better, though.

[Alps]

Increases in waffles is a good thing.

[Tarkus]

Did the report look at how serious the crashes were?

Yes.  And from the looks of things, the number of injury-causing accidents increased after camera installation.

There's actually an unusual balance in the before/after study periods (the "before" is 50 months/4 years, 2 months, while the "after" is only 21 months).  The "before" showed that there were no serious injuries ("Injury A") at the intersection, though 13 minor/moderate injury crashes ("Injury B/C") caused by rear end crashes, 3 minor injuries caused by sideswipe and angle collisions.  If that figure is averaged out and put into the same timeframe as the "after" period (divide 50 by 21, then divide the accident figures by that quotient), that's 1.26 sideswipe/angle crash injuries, and 5.46 rear end crash injuries.

After the cameras installed, in 21 months, there were no injury-causing sideswipe or angle accidents, but there were 12 minor/moderate injury accidents due to rear end collisions (which, going from the averaged "before" figure of 5.46 above, means the rate of injury-inducing rear end collisions went up by 119%, and injury-inducing collisions total went up by about 78%).  The number of non-injury sideswipes also went up after camera installation (from 1 in the 50 months prior (0.42 adjusted) to 3 in the 21 months after).  Additionally, the number of accidents at nearby intersections on Mission Street (OR-22) also increased.  The number of accidents caused by vehicles traveling on the cross streets decreased slightly, but the number of accidents caused by vehicles traveling on Mission (which the camera was installed to prevent) actually went up.  The amount of property damage by the accidents also increased--again, adjusting for the difference in before and after periods, it quadrupled ($16,296 over 50 months before ($6844 averaged out for 21 months) to $27,738 in the 21 months after).

To me, all this seems to point to the notion that ODOT's "waffling" here is clearly about money.  They're riding the Redflex gravy train (though their incompetence, amusingly enough, ended up with a bunch of people getting refunds in Sherwood after Oregonian columnist Joseph Rose exposed that ODOT "accidentally" deleted the signal timing software at a camera intersection).

Increases in waffles is a good thing.

Yes, if one can eat them.  ODOT waffles, sadly, are not edible--give them time, and I'm sure they'll produce a 50-page study showing that.  (On another note, is it just me, or would hollowed-out red light cameras make awesome birdhouses? )

Ultimately, there needs to be a major house-cleaning in ODOT (and the OTC--which needs to become an elected body rather than governor-appointed).  There are a few decent folks worth saving, but there's a lot of total clowns in there, too.  

[Brandon]

(On another note, is it just me, or would hollowed-out red light cameras make awesome birdhouses? )

Apparently the Brits think they cook up rather well served with a side of tire flambeau. 

[roadfro]

There's actually an unusual balance in the before/after study periods (the "before" is 50 months/4 years, 2 months, while the "after" is only 21 months).  

If that's the case, then that is a serious flaw in the study. I am taking a traffic safety analysis course right now, and one of the tenants of safety analysis mentioned early on is that your before/after studies should be using the same period of data--preferably a 3-year minimum, which helps reduce the impact that randomness of accidents has on the sample data.

[Tarkus]

There's actually an unusual balance in the before/after study periods (the "before" is 50 months/4 years, 2 months, while the "after" is only 21 months).  

If that's the case, then that is a serious flaw in the study. I am taking a traffic safety analysis course right now, and one of the tenants of safety analysis mentioned early on is that your before/after studies should be using the same period of data--preferably a 3-year minimum, which helps reduce the impact that randomness of accidents has on the sample data.

Being of an academic background, it struck me as being more than a bit suspicious as well.  It makes the post-camera period look "less bad" than it really is (in fact, the similarity between the numbers on both sides are really odd--it's like they went far enough back to make the numbers match).  I really have to wonder what ODOT is trying to pull here. 

I've noticed similar imbalances in other ODOT studies (particularly the one regarding the possibility of raising speed limits to 70mph on interstates).

[roadfro]

^ Don't point that one out to ODOT...I'm all for anything Oregon can do to raise the artificially low speed limits on any of their highways.

[vdeane]

I believe the imbalance was in favor of NOT raising the limit.

[Tarkus]

^ Don't point that one out to ODOT...I'm all for anything Oregon can do to raise the artificially low speed limits on any of their highways.

I believe the imbalance was in favor of NOT raising the limit.

deanej is correct.  They showed that the 85th-percentile speed on interstates was 71.4mph, supporting a 70 or 75mph limit, but then they tried to use a bunch of completely non-correlated data comparing the 85th-percentile speeds in states that raised their limits to try to argue the whole "if we post 75, people will drive 85" fallacy, a bunch of bull about "fast trucks" and "proximity to hospitals".  When the initial stories about the study hit the news, ODOT spun it so it looked like the trucking industry was at fault.

They also outsourced much of the study-compilation duties to the university system, and instead of selecting the two highway engineering schools in the state (Oregon State University in Corvallis and Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls), which would have been the natural and logical choices, they selected Portland State University and Oregon Health Sciences University (both in Portland) to do the study--two institutions that are strongly biased against the prospect of raising speed limits, and arguably, don't have the qualifications.  The fix was in, pretty much.  Between this and the Salem camera study, it seems to me that ODOT and friends manipulate data to get the results they want.

Given that Gov. "I'm an ER doctor" got re-elected, barring a recall or resignation (both unlikely), the only real chance for getting the speed limits raised in the next 3 years is for there to be a ballot initiative.

[vdeane]

It's amazing that such an openly corrupt agency could even be allowed to exist in the US.  Normally, American corruption is behind closed doors, not open for all to see!

[J N Winkler]

I wouldn't describe Oregon DOT as corrupt.  In my experience, Oregon DOT employees go to work and do their jobs without asking for backhanders, making inappropriate use of state resources, or treating members of the public who seek information as if they are out to waste state employee time (the latter is my biggest complaint about KDOT, my own state DOT).  What we see here is fundamentally a case of a highway agency being forced to cohabit uncomfortably with a clutch of anti-highway mandates passed down from the Governor's office and supported by an environmentalist hegemony in Oregon politics.  I highly doubt that you will find many Oregon DOT employees willing to admit privately that they think these engineering studies are worth the paper they are printed on.

BTW, I don't think traffic analysis requires just that before-and-after comparison periods be of equal length.  There is also a requirement that a considerable length of time (often given as three years) be allowed to pass after the intervention before the start of the "after" period, to be sure that traffic patterns have settled into a stable response to the intervention.  The comparison periods should preferably be lengthy in order to guard against regression-to-the-mean effects.  In the case of traffic enforcement cameras this causes problems because they are a political hot-button issue, which means that the decisionmakers typically demand scientific validation of a decision to install them before enough time has passed to allow a statistically valid evaluation of them to be done.  Later research work, carried out with more respect for statistical method, then undercuts the claimed benefits and leads to policies disfavoring camera installation.  My own perception is that Oregon DOT is on the rising side of a policy cycle which has previously played out on much the same lines in Britain and that the environmentalist coalition in Oregon politics will eventually be forced to accept that cameras just don't produce benefits on the scale touted.

[Tarkus]

I wouldn't describe Oregon DOT as corrupt.  In my experience, Oregon DOT employees go to work and do their jobs without asking for backhanders, making inappropriate use of state resources, or treating members of the public who seek information as if they are out to waste state employee time (the latter is my biggest complaint about KDOT, my own state DOT).  What we see here is fundamentally a case of a highway agency being forced to cohabit uncomfortably with a clutch of anti-highway mandates passed down from the Governor's office and supported by an environmentalist hegemony in Oregon politics.  I highly doubt that you will find many Oregon DOT employees willing to admit privately that they think these engineering studies are worth the paper they are printed on.

I think with any public agency, there's good folks and bad . . . can't really explain the situation with simple broad strokes.  I've had some contact with some folks in the speed zoning department regarding some non-highway speed limits--decent folks who did their job.  But particularly at the higher levels of the organization, it seems like there's either cronies of the state's governing cabal, or people who are forced to go along with it.  I think you're right that this was a factor in ODOT's suspicious behavior on this and other related matters.

[Brandon]

It's amazing that such an openly corrupt agency could even be allowed to exist in the US.  Normally, American corruption is behind closed doors, not open for all to see!

Obviously you've never been to Illinois, much less Chicago.

[Tarkus]

It's amazing that such an openly corrupt agency could even be allowed to exist in the US.  Normally, American corruption is behind closed doors, not open for all to see!

Obviously you've never been to Illinois, much less Chicago.

^Which is also doing sketchy things with Redflex.

[Brandon]

It's amazing that such an openly corrupt agency could even be allowed to exist in the US.  Normally, American corruption is behind closed doors, not open for all to see!

Obviously you've never been to Illinois, much less Chicago.

^Which is also doing sketchy things with Redflex.

Tell me about it.  Today the House passed a Senate bill for speed cameras in so called "safety zones" only inside the City of Chicago.

[sp_redelectric]

I wouldn't describe Oregon DOT as corrupt...What we see here is fundamentally a case of a highway agency being forced to cohabit uncomfortably with a clutch of anti-highway mandates passed down from the Governor's office and supported by an environmentalist hegemony in Oregon politics.

I have to agree here.  I had quite the memorable exchange with one particular ODOT employee (in a division other than the highway division) who said it to me very clearly:  ODOT just does what the Capitol wants.  If the Capitol funds a particular project, ODOT does it.  If it's not funded, it doesn't get done.

Right now the Capitol is too packed with certain groups primarily in the Portland and Eugene areas and certain groups down south that would rather abolish highways and put all of our money in railroads.  That's why we have ConnectOregon which has given huge subsidies to various railroads, and that's why ODOT spent some $35 million to buy two new 14-car Talgo trains that will actually spend most of their time in Washington State.  Looking at WSDOT's most current Amtrak Cascades ridership report (WSDOT essentially manages everything for the two states) only 70 riders on average are on each train south of Portland to Eugene.  70 riders, in a train designed for about 280!!!  Two motorcoaches could do the work (and more environmentally friendly!) than the train that is doing more work hauling its own weight than it is doing any productive work.  But that's because the Capitol would rather spend $35 million on trains than $35 million...say...fixing Highway 99W through Dundee or through Tigard...or turning T.V. Highway into an expressway or freeway...or widening the Sunset all the way out to North Plains (and fixing that awful interchange)...or fixing 99E south of Oregon City that doesn't involve simply repainting the highway from four lanes down to two lanes haphazardly...or turning Powell Boulevard east of I-205 into a respectable highway (or turning it over to the city and being done with it...Powell in Gresham is already under city jurisdiction.)

At least ODOT is doing some serious work to U.S. 97.  After all, Amtrak doesn't go out there, and all the Portlanders who claim they hate cars happily drive out to the various recreational areas and resorts out there without giving public transit any thought.

[nexus73]

ODOT is not allowed to lobby the Legislature.  Seems strange doesn't it?  If I am governing, I would want those who implement policies that I came up with to speak truth to power so I can make the best decisions. 

Rick

[Tarkus]

and that's why ODOT spent some $35 million to buy two new 14-car Talgo trains that will actually spend most of their time in Washington State.  Looking at WSDOT's most current Amtrak Cascades ridership report (WSDOT essentially manages everything for the two states) only 70 riders on average are on each train south of Portland to Eugene.  70 riders, in a train designed for about 280!!!  Two motorcoaches could do the work (and more environmentally friendly!) than the train that is doing more work hauling its own weight than it is doing any productive work.

Having ridden Cascades between Eugene and Portland a fair bit in the past, I'd even say those estimates are a bit on the high end.  Outside of holiday travel from students leaving UO, you're lucky to have 20 on the train when it leaves Eugene.  Additionally, the reliability of it is not particularly great.  It's routinely late.  The Coast Starlight is even worse--the one time I took it from Portland to Eugene, it took 4 hours as it broke down 3 times--once, completely blocking Silverton Road in Salem for about 20 minutes.  OCW provides a far better service with the Amtrak Thruway program in general down there (better than Greyhound, too).  If I were the state government, I'd stop basically handing money to WSDOT to satisfy train delusions and instead support OCW.

But that's because the Capitol would rather spend $35 million on trains than $35 million...say...fixing Highway 99W through Dundee or through Tigard...or turning T.V. Highway into an expressway or freeway...or widening the Sunset all the way out to North Plains (and fixing that awful interchange)...or fixing 99E south of Oregon City that doesn't involve simply repainting the highway from four lanes down to two lanes haphazardly...or turning Powell Boulevard east of I-205 into a respectable highway (or turning it over to the city and being done with it...Powell in Gresham is already under city jurisdiction.)

Don't forget 217.  If the capitol was actually smart, they'd look into seeing if they could get 217 into the interstate system as an x05, rather than the whole "we can't widen it until 2089 without tolls or HOT lanes" racket.  Their priorities are completely messed up and delusional.

I also think that the Oregon Transportation Commission needs to become an elected position rather than appointed by the governor.  Judging by the number of cars I routinely see driving 70mph or faster on I-5 with Kitzhaber stickers on their bumpers, I have a feeling that even many of his otherwise supporters may not share his draconian view on speed limits.  Tri-Met positions also need to become elected rather than appointed.  The nonsense needs to stop.

ODOT is not allowed to lobby the Legislature.  Seems strange doesn't it?  If I am governing, I would want those who implement policies that I came up with to speak truth to power so I can make the best decisions.  

Agreed fully there.

[sp_redelectric]

Don't forget 217.  If the capitol was actually smart, they'd look into seeing if they could get 217 into the interstate system as an x05, rather than the whole "we can't widen it until 2089 without tolls or HOT lanes" racket.

You mean, after $165 million plus $30,000 in monthly operating expenses ($3.6 million/annually), WES doesn't work?  You can't be honest...



The planners continue to be delusional about pushing "high speed rail" to Eugene, via Lake Oswego and Tualatin, and somehow combining it with WES.  Whatever happened to the plan to fix 217 by widening it and closing off some of its unnecessary ramps (Walker and 72nd in particular; Walker just got a new northbound on and off ramp as part of the 3rd lane addition north of Canyon)?  The Beaverton-Hillsdale merge is still a mess at all hours of all days...$165 million would have gone a LONG ways to fixing that problem, and about a half dozen other problems along that freeway - and yes, it could have turned Oregon 217 into Interstate 305. and then U.S. 26 west could be Interstate 505...