On a bike ride Wednesday to celebrate the temporary absence of rain, I stopped at Albany’s Bowman Park to take a quick look at the Willamette River. It reminded me that a few days ago, the river got a B-minus on some report card. Why not an A or at least a plain B?
You’re looking at part of the front of the Century Building in downtown Albany, at 117-123 First Ave. N.E., and it won’t look this shabby for long. According to plans reviewed by the Albany Landmarks Advisory Commission on Tuesday, it’s about to be restored to its former glory.
“Sharrow” sets the spellchecker abuzz because it’s not in most dictionaries. It’s a contraction that describes a pavement marking, kind of an “arrow” or chevron, that calls on motorists to “share” the road with bicyclists. Today’s question is whether sharrows should be painted on Albany’s Ellsworth and Lyon streets and on the Ellsworth Street bridge.
Albany is banning recreational marijuana sales after all, for a year anyway. And Councilman Bill Coburn Monday rescued fellow Councilor Ray Kopczynski from causing what might have been lingering bitterness on the council over how the marijuana issue fared.
Now that it’s raining again is a good time to think about — what else? — wetlands, and how Oregon’s approach to their preservation is interfering with our efforts to save farmland and forests.
Albany has been a railroad town since 1870. Some people don’t like the sound of that. Train horns at crossings bother them. But turning the entire city into a “quiet zone” might cost in the neighborhood of $14 million.
Gates, bells and lights, and yet …
In his obituary, his family describes 33-year-old Elliott Duke of Lebanon as a “child at heart.” Maybe that helps explain why he was hit by a car while walking in the Highway 20 traffic lanes before dawn back in July and why his life was cut short when he rode his bike in front of […]
Tags: deaths at RR crossings, Queen Aveue crossing