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r--, ~_ i ~`~ ~ ; :i ~;;< "WHAT IS THE NEED FOR COURTHOUSE SQUARE?" Prepared For: The Special Project Oversight Committee By: The Salem Area Mass Transit District January 6, 1998 Y ~~, ~~ ~ ~~~; ~` ~ The Oversight Committee has requested information conceming the "need" for the Courthouse Square project, from the staadpoint of the partners in the project. We have interpreted this to ask the questions, "Why is there a need for a new downtovyn transit center," and "Why should that center be a part of Courthouse Square7" To adequately respond, staff is presenting a brief overview ~f the Cherriot system; a synopsis ot the need for a transit facility; a review of the current station on H'igh Street; and, a look at the proposed Courthouse Square project on the Senator block site. To sum.marize the information that follows, the keys points that define the need for a new downtown transit center, in the District's view, are: Inadequacy of the current Cherriot Station...The eatisting facility is unsafe and physically and functionally inadequate to meet the needs of today's transit customers. Innezibility of the current traasit site to accommodate growth ...population is inoreasing at a 2% per annum rate, and transit ridership over the past four years has been growing at ~uadruple that rate. City and Regional transportation plans depend on public transit to cariy thousands of additional daily riders. We cannot meet those goals, or expect to continue sizable riderslup growth rates, at today's transit facility. ~ T6e District is mandated to leave t6e Cherriot Station...The City of Salem has issued a formal request to the District to vacate H'igh Street, to retuin needed traffic capacity to the downtown area. ~ BACKGROUND The Salem Transit District operates twenty bus routes within the Salem/Keizer Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), an area which comprises the cities of Sale~n and Keizer, and a portion of unincorporated Marion County area east of Lancaster Drive out to Cordon Road. Attachment 1 presents a map of the route structure. The Cherriots service area is fixed in State statute as the 1977 Salem/Keizer UGB. Changes to the boundary are permissible, subject to a public participation process which is prescribed in statute. Nineteen of the twenty routes have downtown Salem as their starting and ending point. These routes depart from a common focus, cuirently the Cherriot Station on High Street between Court and State Streets. They proceed outward in a radial fastnon to the edges of the urbanized azea, and return to downtown Salem.