Somebody emailed a question that sent me on a bike ride out Queen Avenue to Riverside Drive in Albany last week. What I saw was that access to an area off the northwest corner of this junction had been cut off.
“Who is behind the recent change to eliminate parking at the intersection of Queen and Riverside,” the email sender wanted to know. “This follows elimination of parking along Queen in the past. There seems to be a concerted effort to eliminate access to the Calapooia for swimming. It feels very mean spirited.”
The swimming reference was to the little beach on the Calapooia River just upstream of the Queen Avenue bridge, a popular swimming hole going back years. The river marks the Albany city limit. Anything south of the bridge and west of the river is in unincorporated Linn County…