Reconnecting Oxford Street ignores foot traffic patterns

Editor,

Just finished reading the East Bayside Neighborhood Study and was greatly disturbed by two items in the report. Three photos in the report show the path crossing Franklin Street following the discontinued Oxford Street. This "desire line" is used as evidence to support the idea of reconnecting Oxford Street.

The report states that East Baysiders "vote with their feet" and that participants in the study identified this path as the most desired route across Franklin Street. This same path is used in the Franklin Street Arterial Study Committee's report "Reclaiming Franklin Street" as evidence for reconnecting the old street grids. Unfortunately both reports failed to mention the also well worn path that runs from just above The Boyd Street Urban Garden to the intersection at Cumberland Avenue and Franklin Street. This path has ten times the weekly users the Oxford path has and shows the foot traffic without the erosion from rain running off Franklin Street that the other path has. This is to blatantly obvious to let pass as something overlooked by both study groups.

Because this path shows the willingness of people in East Bayside to walk 200'+ to use a signaled crosswalk it was ignored by the studies because it did not support their "new urbanist" agenda of reconnecting Oxford Street. I find this doubly troubling because the East Bayside Neighborhood Study was a project used by the Muskie School to teach students about community planning. Is it ethical to ignore evidence to the contrary when doing community planning? Nine months of the year you can stand in one spot and watch the foot traffic on both these paths from 7-8 a.m. and see the majority of pedestrians using them. Instead of teaching students to only look for what supports your (or their) predetermined conclusions maybe you should teach them about real research and how community planning most often requires going house to house (instead of just business to business) to get real involvement and input from the neighborhood. Also a discussion might be in order for the Muskie students to fully understand the effect of eminent domain proceedings that would be required to take the end of Oxford Street that was sold to and used by a neighborhood business for the past fifty years.

Jay York

Portland