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A multimodal, car-light district - and the faster-than-car circulator that ties it together.
Compared with other US cities, downtown Salem scores in the bottom 20% on a cluster of measures that are all, at root, about how people move: air quality and asthma, traffic, unemployment, life expectancy, and the experience of disabled residents. A better mobility system reduces emissions and asthma, eases traffic, attracts jobs, supports an active and longer life, and gives wheelchair users a genuinely better trip. It is the rare intervention that moves every one of Salem City Council's stated priorities at once.
The plan stacks four mobility layers. Each is useful on its own and proves out cheaply; together they make the default district trip something other than a car. The sequence follows the evidence: start with the inexpensive active layer, integrate the transit already running, add a faster-than-car circulator, and turn the whole district into a place that grows the companies building the future of movement.
Walk, bike, and scooter on protected, connected streets with mobility hubs at the edges.
Integrate Cherriots so the district anchors the bus network instead of islanding from it.
A Swyft Cities Whoosh circulator - autonomous, electric, zero-wait, faster than a car.
A living lab that pilots and grows mobility companies in a real mixed-use setting.
The cheapest, fastest layer to stand up - and the one that proves the district wants to be car-light before any rail or cable is committed. It is also the feeder that makes every other layer work.
The district should make the existing bus system better, not bypass it. A district mobility hub lets Cherriots run its spokes more efficiently and reach far more riders.
Whoosh is an emerging transit mode: autonomous, battery-electric vehicles suspended from lightweight cables, with stations set offline from the main cableway so every trip is nonstop, origin to destination, with zero wait. Created inside Google to solve the last-mile problem and spun out as Swyft Cities in 2021, it is three times faster than a ride-hail trip at a fraction of the cost - and it leaps exactly the obstacles that divide West Salem from downtown.
A Whoosh network quietly surmounts the barriers that make West Salem feel cut off: State Route 22, the Willamette River, Pringle Creek, the railroad, arterial streets, and the hills. It enables car-light living, optimizes parking - its capital cost can potentially be justified by the parking structure it lets you avoid - and is an iconic ride that is an attraction in itself, drawing the economic development Salem needs.
Using Swyft's Podaris tool, an illustrative network of 16 stations was connected in a distinctive "three spines with ribs" shape measuring 4.5 route miles. The siting rule is simple: find a city block with three-story or taller buildings, give the block a station, then skip two blocks. Planning can deliver a short, viable first alignment while mapping the larger system for later phases.
Irvine's independent travel-demand forecast projects Whoosh will carry 27,000 daily riders across 12 stations and 4.2 route miles - which would make it the third-highest-ridership circulator in the US - at four times the ridership and one-sixth the operating cost per trip of a traditional circulator. In April 2025 the Irvine City Council chose Whoosh as the Great Park's primary transportation technology, with the city building a roughly $6.1M initial operating segment alongside a Swyft Cities donation.
Honest caveat: Whoosh is not yet proven in production - to date there is only a quarter-scale demo. That is precisely why Salem would phase a short, viable segment first and let it earn the network behind it.
A new district is a rare thing: a real, mixed-use environment where mobility technology can be piloted in the wild rather than on a closed track. West Salem can be a living lab and a cluster - the place where mobility startups test, demonstrate, and grow, putting Salem's bottom-20% unemployment number to work.
Michigan's Mcity and American Center for Mobility proved the value of a dedicated proving ground; Smart Columbus showed a city becoming a mobility lab. West Salem offers something neither has - a real neighborhood of residents, workers, and shoppers to pilot within.
The interim live-work and innovation space in the 400 Patterson campus becomes incubator and demonstration space, steps from a live Whoosh deployment and an integrated transit hub - a magnet for AV, micromobility, EV, logistics, and mobility-software firms.
Under the same patient OpCo-to-PropCo model as the rest of the activation plan, Now City provides the real-world environment, the tenancy pipeline, and the long-term stewardship a mobility cluster needs - turning innovation into jobs, identity, and a tenant base.
The mobility plan follows the same activate-anchor-populate-complete logic as the district itself. Each stage de-risks the next, so the inexpensive active layer up front is what eventually makes the circulator and cluster investable.
Open-streets pilots on interior district streets, bike and scooter share, a district mobility hub, and a pop-up mobility lab in the Patterson campus.
Cherriots spoke optimization, the district transit hub, EV and charging, and a first incubator cohort.
A Whoosh initial operating segment - a short, viable alignment linking key district nodes across the river and SR 22.
Expand Whoosh toward the 16-station network, scale the incubator, and complete a genuinely car-light district.
Whoosh is a new mode not yet in any planning curriculum, so a Salem alignment will take a unique shape and require iterative work with Swyft Cities, the City of Salem, and key partners. A focused work scope can identify and analyze potential alignments, benefits, costs, challenges, and viability - enough to inform the decision to proceed.
City of Salem, Cherriots, the Salem-Keizer Area Transportation Study (SKATS), the Mid-Willamette Valley Council of Governments (MWVCOG), FUND, Swyft Cities, and Now City with its partners.
A car-light, transit-anchored, innovation-rich district advances Salem's Comprehensive Plan update, its climate-action goals, its affordable-housing aims, and its financial stability - all at once, and with a robust transit financial model behind it.
See the global evidence on District Mobility, or the broader interim strategy in the Activation Plan.