SacCity vision zero action plan update survey

2026/02/032026/02/03 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

It is apparent that the City of Sacramento’s Vision Zero Action Plan has overall been a failure. Traffic fatalities in the city have increased, and Sacramento remains among the most unsafe cities in the state. I have written recently about the action plan update process (SacCity Vision Zero Update) and longer ago all the way back to the inception of the program (category: Vision Zero).

I believe that the failure is in large part due to the focus on improving corridors rather than specific points of concern which are mostly intersections, and a reliance on getting grants from federal, state or regional (SACOG) sources to accomplish these projects. The assumption was, and is for all transportation projects, that outside grants rather than the city’s general budget, will be the source for transportation infrastructure. The city spends very little of its own budget on transportation, beyond some basic maintenance and required grant matches. The recent quick-build program is the first time significant money has been dedicated to traffic calming and safety.

The city is offering a survey to gather community input on the action plan update, open through February 22. I just took the survey, and some screen captures are below, but I want to focus on the third page (the others are below). The top of this page offers a chance to rearrange actions in order of importance. Since these are screen captures, the six items in text are:

Planning and constructing large street projects that make big changes to intersections and streets to greatly improve safety, but take longer to build
Planning and constructing smaller projects that are quicker to build but may only modestly improve safety
Implementing traﬃc signal changes that enhance safety for everyone
Enforcement by police oﬃcers to address traﬃc violations most linked to serious or fatal crashes (for example, DUIs, red-light running, speeding)
Automated enforcement to address traﬃc violations most linked with serious or fatal crashes (for example, DUIs, red-light running, speeding)
Education campaigns reminding or teaching people proper rules of the road

My ranking of these is:

Planning and constructing smaller projects that are quicker to build but may only modestly improve safety
Automated enforcement to address traﬃc violations most linked with serious or fatal crashes (for example, DUIs, red-light running, speeding)
Implementing traﬃc signal changes that enhance safety for everyone
Education campaigns reminding or teaching people proper rules of the road
Enforcement by police oﬃcers to address traﬃc violations most linked to serious or fatal crashes (for example, DUIs, red-light running, speeding)
Planning and constructing large street projects that make big changes to intersections and streets to greatly improve safety, but take longer to build

Why?

These small projects are in line with the city’s new Traffic Safety Initiative (quick-build) program. Though there does not seem to be a webpage for this program yet, an article in City Express summarizes the program. It is still not fully staffed and fully active. This kind of program has proven to be effective in many cities, including ones that have achieved vision zero no fatalities or greatly reduced fatalities.
Automated enforcement is the best solution for speeding and red light running. Red light running is particularly epidemic in Sacramento, though a problem everywhere. There are no widely available methods for automated enforcement of failure to yield to pedestrians (people walking in the crosswalk), but this is something that could be piloted and implemented.
On roadways with frequent traffic signals, traffic can be significantly slowed by setting signal timing to award safe speeds and make unsafe speeds awkward. It can even be set to a ‘green wave’ where the signals are timed to the speed of bicyclists, about 12 mph. This would be higher on my list except that the city has, to this point, demonstrated that they use signal improvements not to improve safety for walkers, but to ease traffic flow. They are claim that the entire intersection must be upgraded, at a cost approaching $1 million per intersection. That is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.
Education does not work. Of the millions of dollars spent on ‘education’ programs, there are almost no studies indicating that these programs are effective. They are feel good, but worthless.
Law enforcement bias, which in integral to officers and very very slow to change, makes this an unacceptable solution in nearly all cases. In-person enforcement is as likely to result in officer escalation and harm as to preventing unsafe driver behavior. Particularly in the past, but true today, many ‘safety’ enforcements have actually been stings targeting people walking and bicycling rather than driver behavior. There may be situations in which enforcement is the last but only solution, but it should definitely not be part of the program design.
Large projects are what the city has been doing, and it hasn’t worked. The city has a backlog of poorly designed and unsafe arterial roadways that will take decades (or more) and hundreds of millions of dollars (or more) to fix. We can’t wait that long, or until we find the money, to save lives. That is why small projects are the answer. Of course the projects are nice when complete, and the city has done as well as most cities its size in getting grants for these big projects, but we need to save lives tomorrow, not ten years from now. Writing grants for large projects takes an inordinate amount of staff time.

The city seems to be OK with a focus on small short-term projects, and these have been promoted by the city’s consultant (Fehr & Peers). But the public will need to support this approach, particularly against pushback from the cars-first lobby and individuals.

If you have the time and inclination, reviewing the seven documents on the city’s Vision Zero Action Plan Update page will deepen your understanding of the issue and possible solutions. If you have time for only one, the Safety Strategies (2025.06.18) is probably the most valuable.

The other pages. Note that I sometimes had started to fill out a page before capturing it.

coffee shops (tea) on the grid: update 2026-01

2026/01/312026/01/31 Dan Allison2 Comments

I first posted on coffee shops on the grid in April 2023, with an update in December 2024. Time for another update, as there are a number of new coffee shops, and a few have gone. The coffee shops marked with a plus (+) are new since the last update.

*table of grid coffee, 2026-01, not clickable*

Though the links in the png above look clickable, they are not. You must use the xlsx or pd f versions for links. The columns are what interested me. Reuse means they offer reusable cups for tea and coffee service, outdoor means they offer outdoor seating, and tea indicates my take on the number and variety of teas offered. I have refined hours with open and close. It should be noted that some coffee shops do not post their hours, either on the websites or on the door, and hours often change, so take these hours with a grain of salt. The ‘checked’ column means that the business was checked for existence, but the details were not necessarily checked.

Disclaimer up front: I don’t drink and don’t even like coffee, but I do drink and love tea, and the majority of coffee shops offer tea as well, but most other businesses do not. So I can tell you absolutely nothing about the variety or quality of coffee at any of these shops.

I have long believed that the frequency of locally-owned coffee shops is a key indicator of livability and walkability. Though I’ve not done the calculations, I think this measure would be just as effective a ‘walk score’ as the WalkScore offered by Redfin, which uses a complicated and proprietary algorithm to determine walkability, measured as distance to amenities. Note that WalkScore does not assess the walking environment such as presence or condition of sidewalks, and safety of crossing streets.

I live in the Sacramento central city, the area bounded by the Sacramento River to the west, Broadway to the south, Alhambra Avenue to the east, and the railroad tracks to the north. I have focused my coffee shop visits on this area. Though there are certainly coffee shops throughout the urbanized county, the number of locally-owned coffee shops drops off rapidly outside the central city. In much of the suburbs, there are only chain coffee shops such as Starbucks and Peets. I do not list national chain coffee shops such as Starbucks, Peets, and Philz.

My new preferred coffee shops are Zoe Coffee and Tacos (yes, an unusual name, but their tacos and samosas are good), mostly for the friendliness of the manager and baristas, and Tupi Cafe, which is on my morning walks to Southside Park.

If you have a place to suggest, or updated information, please comment. There is a fuzzy line between places which are mostly coffee shops, and places that are mostly cafes, but also have coffee and tea. In fact Google Maps and Apple Maps makes this fuzzier by allowing businesses to show an icon on the map that reflects what was searched for, not the primary classification of business. I assume they pay for this.

If you also like to drink tea at home, as I do, I recommend Tea Cozy, 1021 R Street, next to Fox and Goose, with a very large and diverse offering of bulk and packaged teas. And in Davis, Mishka’s Cafe, 610 2nd Street, offers a selection of brewed tea unparalleled in the region, so far as I know.

I changed from a slide show to a gallery for coffee shop photos, so that they could be captioned. Captioning is partially complete, and there will be additional photos to come, so check back. The photos are alphabetical by business name, more of less. For photos of business hours, take these with a grain of salt. They were accurate at the time of the photo, but may not be currently.

photo of Anchor & Tree Coffee outside — Anchor & Tree Coffee outside

photo of Anchor & Tree Coffee counter — Anchor & Tree Coffee outside

Sidewalks are part of the transportation network, and should be repaired as such

2026/01/26 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

California Streets and Highways Code (SHC) Division 7, Part 3, Chapter 22, Article 2: Repairs, states that the responsibility for repairing sidewalks lies with the adjacent property owner. This is, on its face, unconstitutional, regardless of state code. The state is saying that a government agency can require a property owner to maintain property that belongs to the government, without any compensation. It has long been hoped that a public interest entity would sue the state to declare this code unconstitutional, but so far that has not happened. The ability of the public to sue is overmatched by the power of the cities and counties to fight any such lawsuit. Therefore, it is imperative that the legislature remove this unconstitutional requirement from state law.

It is worth noting that this code dates from 1941. Society’s view of the responsibility of governments to its citizens, what characterizes a livable and walkable place, and equitable transportation systems, have evolved considerably since that time. State law, on the topic of sidewalks, has not.

Code defines sidewalk (paragraph 5600): “As used in this chapter “sidewalk” includes a park or parking strip maintained in the area between the property line and the street line and also includes curbing, bulkheads, retaining walls or other works for the protection of any sidewalk or of any such park or parking strip.” The lack of a definition for ‘parking strip’ is concerning. Is it the buffer area, or does it include parking areas on the roadway? Does the use of this term allow people to park motor vehicles in the buffer? The code is vague.

It is not clear that state code should require, or not require, adjacent property owners to maintain the ‘park or parking strip’, most commonly called sidewalk buffers. These buffers are not part of the transportation network, but they are a key part of enhancing walkability and overall livability through provision of shade trees.

Note that this does not address the day-to-day maintenance of sidewalks in the sense of removal of leaf fall and snow. However, neither does existing code. This is left to policy of the individual city or county, as it probably should be.

The replacement language would be very simple. Chapter 22 would read:

“Sidewalks and curbs are an integral part of the transportation network, and will be maintained for the benefit of all citizens using all modes of transportation, in a state of good repair, under the same requirements that apply to adjacent roadways.”

It is worth noting that the most poorly repaired sidewalks are often adjacent to government-owned property. Governments seem to view this code as applying to private property owners, and not to themselves.

Nothing in state law precludes a local government, city or county, from taking on responsibility for repairing sidewalks. They generally have not done so, because by shifting the responsibility for maintaining part of the transportation network onto private citizens, they can spend more money on infrastructure for motor vehicles. That is the real reason for this state law, and its continuance into modern times.

it’s not just transportation infrastructure

2026/01/252026/01/25 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

It has been increasingly common to refrain from blaming traffic violence on drivers, and instead to point to transportation infrastructure which encourages drivers to speed and to act in such a way as to create crashes. There is truth in this, and equity to some degree. But I think the pendulum has swung too far in that direction, and it is time to bring back driver responsibility.

We have invested trillions of dollars to create a transportation system that kills and mains countless people, with an emphasis on harming people who walk and bicycle. This was not an ‘accident’. Traffic engineers knew that their roadway designs would kill people, but absolved themselves of responsibility by pointing to the ‘standards’, which promote these designs, but are based on nothing but speculation and bias. It is always easier to blame crashes on driver behavior than to design safe roadways. Well, here we are. It will cost trillions to fix. We don’t have that money. That is not to say we should not be fixing what we can, with a priority on those designs and locations that have killed the most people, or seem most likely to.

But there are two very, very common driver behaviors which are not really an infrastructure problem. Red light running, and failure to yield to walkers in the crosswalk, both of which I’ve written about before. See ‘how to stop red light running‘ and the list of other posts there, and ‘Yield to walkers? Nah.‘.

Could we move signals to upstream instead of downstream of intersections? Yes, but that is very unlikely in a transportation profession that values tradition over observation and innovation. Could we install raised crosswalks (also known as continuous sidewalks) or raised intersections to let drivers know that they are guests on the roadway, not the hegemony. Yes, and that would cost a lot of money.

Let me say up front that I am not in favor of in-person law enforcement of traffic law. However, we have an epidemic of traffic violence, perpetrated by drivers, which could be greatly reduced with a limited and guardrailed period of enforcement. Automated enforcement of red light running will come to City of Sacramento, probably within five years, and to the entire county, probably within 10 years, but a lot of people are going to be killed and severely injured in the meanwhile. Would law enforcement use this as a pretext for racial and income bias? Yes, they will. It is in their nature. But I want to save lives. Police could write hundreds of tickets a day to red light runners. No, it isn’t about citation income, it is about saving lives.

Automated enforcement of failure by drivers to yield to walkers in the crosswalk is even further away, and may never happen. Nothing short of direct law enforcement may correct this problem. Again, police could write hundreds of tickets a day on failure to yield.

It is not just traffic violence, death and injury, that is the problem. It is that both of these driver behaviors intimidate people who would like to walk and bicycle from doing so. People stay home, or drive instead, or go ahead and walk and bicycle, but live in fear. Of course this is the desired outcome for politicians who support a cars-first transportation system, and oppression of those who don’t participate in the automative paradigm whether by choice or necessity. People who walk and bicycle are truly second-class citizens in our society, and many of them are further so due to racism, income bias, age, and disability.

As you will notice from past posts, I’m not a supporter of the police, and most particularly, not CHP. But police in the City of Sacramento could be forced to actually do something useful. The police work for the Chief, the Chief works for the City Manager, and the City Manager works for the City Council. The council could direct the police to pay attention to traffic violence. If the City Manager doesn’t support, fire her. If the Chief doesn’t support, fire her. And on down the line. The police spend almost all their time responding to things after they’ve gone wrong. Though they give lip service to community policing, prevention is a tiny part of what they do. And so with traffic violence. They respond to crashes, when they could be preventing crashes through targeted enforcement. They document the carnage, and almost alway blame it on the person walking and bicycling, though that is rarely the case. CHP is harder to rein in. It is an agency largely out of the control of the rest of state government. It goes its own way, ignoring laws it doesn’t like, interpreting laws to absolve drivers, and putting its thumb on corrective legislation by encouraging the windshield bias of our governor.

SacCity Vision Zero Update

2026/01/23 Dan Allison1 Comment

There are three opportunities for commenting on the City of Sacramento Vision Zero Action Plan update.

In person: Vision Zero Action Plan Community Workshop Thursday, January 29 at 5:30 pm, Sacramento City College, 3835 Freeport Boulevard registration

Virtual: Vision Zero Action Plan Virtual Workshop, Wednesday, February 4 at 5:30 pm registration

Survey

The city’s Vision Zero webpage for general information, and links for the above.

For prior Getting Around Sacramento posts on Vision Zero, see category: City of Sacramento: Vision Zero, and the more general calegory: Vision Zero.

The city’s Vision Zero effort has failed. We are still the highest traffic fatality city in the state. I believe the reason to be primarily that there were flaws in the original approach to Vision Zerio. Though I’ve written about this before, I will post again, soon.

If you are not already following Slow Down Sacramento, please do. It is the best source of information on safety from traffic violence and the city’s Vision Zero effort.

City of Sacramento Vision Zero Action Plan update graphic

Sac City abandons separated bikeways

2026/01/08 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

The City of Sacramento has installed a number of separated, parking-protected bikeways, including P St, Q St, 19th St, 21st St, 9th St, 10th St, and J St. It is failing FAILING to maintain these bikeways. They have not been swept by the city since the beginning of leaf season, early November.

You can find several blocks, or portions of blocks that have been cleared, but these have not been cleared by the city. They have been cleared by landscape services contracted by adjacent property management companies, mostly for multi-family housing. It is not the responsibility of these companies to clear the bikeways, but they do so both as a community service, and to maintain a higher level of appearance for their housing and businesses.

The city should be ashamed of itself. It has created a hazard of its own making.

It would probably be better if the city returned these streets to their previous configuartion, with traditional bike lanes. At least these could be swept by the city, and to some degree are swept by the wind of passing motor vehicles.

photo of SacCity P St separated bikeway; yes there is a bikeway under the leaf piles and leaf slime — *SacCity P St separated bikeway; yes there is a bikeway under the leaf piles and leaf slime*

SacATC 2025-11-20

2025/11/192025/11/19 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

The Sacramento Active Transportation Commission (SacATC) will meet Thursday, November 20, 2025, at 5:30 PM. The meeting will be at Sacramento City Hall, council chambers. The meeting is livestreamed from the Upcoming Meetings Materials page at the time of the meeting. Comments may be made in-person, or via eComment on the Upcoming Meetings Materials page up to the time of the meeting, but should be submitted well ahead of time if you wish the commission members to see the comment before the meeting. No comments are taken online.

Agenda (pdf)

Open Session

Roll Call

Land Acknowledgement

Pledge of Allegiance

Welcome New Commissioner – Justine Recio-Patel

Consent Calendar

Approval of Active Transportation Commission Meeting Minutes
Active Transportation Commission Log File ID: 2025-00201 Location: Citywide Recommendation: Pass a Motion adopting the Active Transportation Commission Log.

Discussion Calendar

Commission Staff Report

Commissioner Comments – Ideas and Questions

Public Comments-Matters Not on the Agenda

Adjournment

SACOG Board 2025-11-20

2025/11/192025/11/19 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

The SACOG Board of Directors will meet on November 20, 2025, at 9:30 AM.

Attend: SACOG’s offices, 1415 L Street, Suite 300, Sacramento, CA
Watch: https://www.sacog.org/meetings/meetingagendas, at the time of the meeting
Comment: In-person, or submit via email to the clerk at lespinoza@sacog.org at least 24 hours prior to the meeting. (see agenda for details)

Agenda (pdf)

Pledge of Allegiance

Roll Call

Public Communications

Disclosures

Consent:

Approve Minutes of the October 16, 2025, Board Meeting
Approve the Transportation Development Act Claims for City of West Sacramento, County of Yolo and Yuba-Sutter Transit Authority
May is Bike Month Contract Extension
SACOG Flexible Funding Program Grant Extension Request and Funding Transfer for the City of Isleton
511 Traveler Information Systems Consultant Services — Contract Terms Standardization

Action:

Approve 2026 Meeting Schedule
2025 Blueprint Adoption: Certification of the Final Environmental Impact Report and adoption of Findings of Fact, Statement of Overriding Considerations, and Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program; Approval of Amendment #11 to the 2025-28 Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program (MTIP) and Conformity Analysis, associated with the proposed Metropolitan Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy (MTP/SCS); and Adoption of the 2025 Blueprint (MTP/SCS); there are 10 attachements, which can be viewed in the html agenda or meeting packet at https://www.sacog.org/meetings/meetingagendas

Information:

Tracking Blueprint Implementation through the Regional Monitoring Program

Reports:

Chair’s Report, Board Members’ Reports and Executive Director’s Report

Receive & File:

2026 Regional Trail Implementation Strategy Update – Governance and Funding
Quarterly Report on Contracts
Land Use Implementation Activities for October 2025

SACOG Transportation Committee 2025-11-06

2025/11/06 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

The SACOG Transportation Committee meets today, Thursday, November 6, 2025, starting at 10:00 AM. This is a thin agenda, but may still be of interest for the trails strategy.

Agenda (pdf)

Consent:

Approval of the October 2, 2025, Transportation Committee Meeting
May is Bike Month Contract Extension
SACOG Flexible Funding Program Grant Extension Request and Funding Transfer for the City of Isleton
511 Traveler Information Systems Consultant Services — Contract Terms Standardization

Information:

2026 Regional Trail Implementation Strategy Update – Governance and Funding (Summer Lopez) (Est. Time: 30) • Governance and funding options for trails

Other Matters

Adjournment

transportation funding update on SacMoves Coalition

2025/10/26 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

transportation funding update