Eugene City Council candidates for Ward 3 Jennifer Smith and John Barofsky discussed ways to improve transportation around Eugene’s campus and Fairmount neighborhoods at a community forum hosted at Edison Elementary School by Better Eugene-Springfield Transportation.
Barofsky has been on the Fairmount Neighbors Board for over 20 years. He also has experience on the Eugene Budget Committee and the Eugene Planning Commission.
Smith is the President of the University of Oregon’s Service Employees International Union. She holds a master’s degree in urban planning and is on the City of Eugene’s Active Transportation Committee and Lane Transit District’s Budget Committee.
The forum centered on improving bus access in Ward 3 and discussions on whether building roundabouts would create a safe and functional Franklin Boulevard.
There are no bus routes east of university property until Highway 99, and none south of Franklin Boulevard until East 30th Avenue. The candidates pointed out that the sparse public transit creates challenges for residents that don’t drive.
“We have (bus routes) on just the outside edge of our ward on Franklin and Hilyard, and within the ward we really have nothing,” Smith said. “There are a lot of options for smaller communities like our ward. We don’t need to have the standard size bus; we could use vans.”
Barofsky also said that he would like to focus on improving public transportation in the same area. He reiterated Smith’s idea of smaller vehicles, and suggested riders’ bus tickets also pay for Uber ride-shares.
A redesign of Franklin Boulevard was another key component of the forum.
The city has drawn up proposals to create two-lane roundabouts on Franklin Boulevard at Walnut Street and East 13th Avenue at Matthew Knight Arena.
The intersection of Franklin Boulevard and Walnut Street has been identified by the City of Eugene as a high-crash intersection — one fatality and three injuries occurred there between 2014 and 2022. Since 2022, there have been at least two additional unconfirmed injuries reported by the Oregon Department of Transportation.
The city has been working to build roundabouts on the boulevard since at least 2018, but has met resistance from the owner of Hirons Drug, which has a location on Franklin Boulevard, and some local residents.
Kathy Frazer, a resident of Ward 3, said the proposed roundabouts would cause “incredible chaos.”
“Lower the traffic speed and that would be perfect,” Frazer said. “This is the wrong place for them (roundabouts).”
Fliers signed by John Hirons, the owner of Hirons Drug, were distributed by an attendee at the forum. The fliers expressed concern for residents and businesses, announcing that the roundabouts would be “eliminating the yeast and west accesses to the shopping center.”
Despite several attendees’ opposition to roundabouts, neither of the candidates immediately opposed them.
Smith said it might not be a perfect solution, but it would be better than doing nothing.
“Something has to happen. It is not a pleasant place to cross; it is not a pleasant place to walk along; it is not functional to bicycle along. So, this is not a street that works for all users,” Smith said. “This (road) works for a subset of users and that is primarily people in their cars.”
Smith said the solution may be roundabouts, partly because of the short crosswalks proposed between each section of road crossing for pedestrians.
Barofsky was more hesitant towards the boulevard changes on account of the scale of the project.
“It’s a big enough community concern that it should get brought back to the city council for a community discussion,” Barofsky said. “This is a community-wide issue that has a lot of stakeholders that have been interested in it, and if I were on city council, (I) would lean into the city manager to bring it back to us for consideration.”
The city brought in a third party transportation research team, Kittelson & Associates, Inc. to analyze the effect of a potential roundabout on Franklin Boulevard because the “corridor is complicated,” according to a spokesperson for the City of Eugene Public Works Department. The firm partly specializes in roundabout safety and efficiency.
In a statement to The Daily Emerald, the spokesperson said the analysis in progress “includes several factors, but extensive modeling of various options as well as a deep dive on accommodating transit needs (LTD in this case) are some of the main ones.”
To turn proposals for better roads into action, the city uses state and federal funding. Barofsky and Smith both argued they would be the best councilor to get that money to where it needs to be.
“There are only so many opportunities that we have to pull down free money. This achieves goals, and it also is a job creator, and it also helps with our climate goals,” Smith said.
Barofsky said he would advocate for more money toward bicycle and public transit infrastructure.
“Making sure we advocate for state road funds and making sure that those are allocated in a way that betters our community is something I look forward to doing,” Barofsky said.
