I recently noticed anti-Flock signs at J Street and 5th Street in the City of Sacramento. This made me wonder if the identification as a Flock camera was accurate. It appears not.
If you look the the Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) website and map, it appears that the Flock camera in Sacramento county are in unincorporated Sacramento County and Elk Grove. In the region, Roseville and Rocklin in Placer county have a number, and there are a few in Davis and Woodland in Yolo county. None in the City of Sacramento. Note that this map is very hard to use, but it is still useful.
Anti-Flock signs at J St & 5th St, misidentified
The device on the pole above is a SacPD ShotSpotter, which is not a camera, but a listening device intended to identify and pinpoint gun shots. The only criticism that I have noted of ShotSpotters is that they are expensive and ineffective, mis-identifying sounds, and often resulting in too-late arrivals of law enforcement. By the way, the blank out ‘no left on red’ and ‘turning vehicles yield to pedestrians’ sign below the ShotSpotter is an attempt by the city to reduce the likelihood of drivers running over walkers at this dangerous intersection. I have not had the chance to observe this one in operation, but will.
SacPD ShotSpotter at J St & 5th St
I am in no way minimizing the concerns of the anti-Flock movement (flockout and others). Flock is a disreputable company, and the data gathered has been misused by law enforcement everywhere it is installed.
My concern is that the public’s opposition to Flock cameras, and similar license plate readers from other companies, will be used as an excuse by drivers and organizations who do not want automated speed enforcement and automated red light enforcement to be installed anywhere. These are people who would rather others die in traffic violence, than that their ‘privacy’ be invaded by any type of enforcement.
So, please, anti-Flock people, learn about the different types of devices and their uses, and then correctly identify Flock locations. Don’t label other devices as Flocks.
As I previously posted (SaferSacStreets doesn’t make the ballot), the citizen initiative in the City of Sacramento to fund roadway safety and transit did not gather enough valid signatures for the November 2026 ballot.
Slow Down Sacramento/Isaac Gonzalez sent an email yesterday on the question of ‘Where do we go from here?’. I want to acknowledge that Slow Down often writes more clearly about transportation safety for walkers and bicyclists than anyone else in the Sacramento region. Including me! So I really encourage you to read the email, which I’ve linked: https://mailchi.mp/d31f8ff7a298/thank-you-for-being-a-change-maker-14211892?e=295546f14d. Of course you should be a supporter of Slow Down, and getting the email directly to your inbox. I am a supporter, and have been since the organization launched in 2023, three years ago.
I agree with everything in this email, including the list of ten priorities, and that is why I’m strongly encouraging you to read it. It isn’t short, but it is well written and covers the topic very well.
Tomorrow I’ll post some of my more radical ideas about ‘what now’, but please read Slow Down Sacramento first.
Before Ariane Lange, now joined by Madison Smalstig, the SacBee had always parroted law enforcement assessments of traffic violence crashes, which almost always blamed the victim, and rarely the driver, except in cases of egregious DUI. Law enforcement has a well-known windshield bias, in which motor vehicle drivers like themselves are blameless, whereas walkers and bicyclists, unlike themselves, are assumed to be at fault. Later investigations often reveal that law enforcement had either fabricated information or neglected to report key information, but that was never covered in follow-up articles. The SacBee went along with this bias. As result, readers assumed just what defenders of our car-centric transportation system wanted them to assume, that crashes are just accidents, that are not avoidable. We know better. Since Ariane Lange, readers know better.
The one thing I will comment on is that Ariane let Elk Grove off the hook too easily. “The speed limit on that part of the road is 45 mph. In the immediate area of the crash, Sheldon Road has six general-purpose lanes plus the center turn lanes. It’s wide and fairly straight, with clear sightlines and few reasons to slow down.” “A spokesperson for the city of Elk Grove, Sydney Robertson, said that after Lopez was killed, the Public Works Department reviewed the site and “concluded that the intersection was properly constructed to applicable standards. Although not required, a yield sign was installed.” “The roadway, the city determined, had nothing to do with his death.”
In fact, the roadway had everything to do with the death. Six general purpose lanes means that the road is an arterial, designed to carry high speed traffic. An unprotected left turn lane into a commercial area means that the road is a street. This road/street hybrid is called a ‘stroad‘ (Strong Towns), and it is well known by all that stroads kill people, and also kill communities and livability. At 45 mph, as though most drivers are not driving way faster, crashes with walkers and bicyclists and motorcyclists, are almost guaranteed to result in death. Elk Grove designed and built that road. Just because the road meets ‘standards’ (which were written by people who believe the purpose of roads is to carry the maximum number of motor vehicles at the maximum possible speed) doesn’t mean that it is safe, and doesn’t mean that such designs are not malfeasance on the part of the city.
If a roadway is designed for high volume and high speed, it should have no commercial access. If the city wants commercial access, the roadway should be designed for lower volume and lower speed. Yet the shopping center that contains WinCo was permitted with two driveways, and the driveway that the driver was aiming for has two entry lanes, further encouraging drivers to cross the opposing lanes of traffic at a high speed. Just to make the message clear that this is a place for motor vehicles and nothing else, there are three drive-through fast food chains, and a huge parking lot for the shopping center. As a sop to people walking from their cars, there are two walkways in the parking lot. For the west one, at the north side, there is no marked crosswalk. On the south side, there is no safe crossing at all. For the east one, that leads towards WinCo, there is a marked crosswalk on the north side, but on the south side, the walkway does not align with the cross-hatched pedestrian areas, nor is it protected by the stop signs. The shopping center designers clearly do not walk, but more importantly, the city did not question the unsafe design, and permitted it.
It is bad enough that our car-centric culture and legal system largely excuse drivers of traffic violence, but it is even worse, in my opinion, that we give planners and traffic engineers a pass on the roadways they design in a way that they know will result in fatal crashes. This is no way excuses the driver at fault here of both legal and moral responsibility, but if we keep blaming crashes only on drivers, or blaming no one at all, we will never solve the problem.
I wrote a blog post for Sacramento Transit Advocates and Riders (STAR), How to build successful transit, in August 2025, a year ago. It is probably one of the most valuable and insightful posts STAR made, as important today as it was then.
I attended the last SacRT Board meeting on July 27. On the agenda was authorization for SacRT staff to negotiate a grant from the state for a study of bus rapid transit (BRT) to the Sacramento airport (agenda item 2.11 on consent calendar “Authorizing the General Manager/CEO to Execute Agreements with the California Department of Transportation for the Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant Award for the Green Line Bus Rapid Transit to Sacramento International Airport”. The item was not pulled from consent, but three board members commented and said that they were supportive of the study, but still absolutely committed to light rail to the airport. I suspect the other board members felt the same way, but did not comment. The board and many SacRT staff continue to promote light rail to the airport, though they have finally admitted that there is no likelihood of it happening in the near future due to two major issues: lack of agreement with the city and county for crossing the American River, and funding for a bridge at Truxel Road, and the overall cost of the project. The last time it was estimated, it was $2 billion dollars, a cost that will continue to rise and accelerate over the years. The entire capital budget for SacRT, which includes light rail modernization and bus replacement, and fare technology, as well as a large number of other activities, is only $2 billion per year. That portion of the budget includes mostly funding from federal and state sources and grants; it is mostly not Sacramento County Measure A or other local sources. That means, as a practical matter, that the Green Line would zero out an entire year’s budget for everything else, or if spread out over 10 years, 10% of the budget, every year. And the estimate of cost is very conservative.
The public has said, throughout the Transit Idea Exchange process (A Community Collaboration to Shape the Future of Transit), that they did not want huge investments in infrastructure, but instead wanted better and more frequent bus service. How to build better and more frequent bus service? Well, by incrementally improving transit. Back to the STAR model:
I’ve decided to call this incremental transit. As the STAR post noted, the concept did not originate with STAR, but comes from Strong Towns, The Strong Towns Approach to Public Investment, and the ideas presented by Jarrett Walker in Human Transit (the book and the website).
The SacRT Board and many of the SacRT staff want to jump from step 1, or actually, step 0.5, since the frequency of bus service to the airport is hourly, not 30 minutes, to step 5, bypassing all steps in between. That is a mistake. Not only does the approach put any solution off for years, it risks turning the public off to any service to the airport since nothing so far has been successful (the bus is mostly empty). Light rail might be mostly empty as well.
It is interesting to see SacPD and Downtown Sacramento Partnership acknowledging the correlation between crime and private motor vehicles. Causation? I’ll speculate yes.
Why is there motor vehicle access to Old Sacramento, at any time? I’d suggest no motor vehicles at any time, except access for handicap placards, and delivery, off hours.
Drive-by shootings, sideshows, crashes killing bicyclists and walkers, red light running. All of these require private motor vehicles and their drivers. Crimes, all.
For other posts on Fruitridge Road, see category: Fruitridge Road.
In my main post on the Fruitridge Road Safety and Mobility Plan, I used the collisions map from the existing conditions report. On further reflection, I should have also used the Bicycle and Pedestrian KSI map, below. KSI is ‘killed or severely injured’, so addresses more serious collisions, and not the abundant but less severe collisions that occur on Fruitridge.
Fruitridge Road Safety and Mobility Plan – Bicycle and Pedestrian KSI Collisions
For this ten year period, there are four bicycle collisions and 17 pedestrian collisions shown. The pie chart in the existing conditions report certainly justifies a focus on bicyclists and walkers, given that they are a much smaller portion of roadway users than motor vehicle drivers.
Fruitridge Road Safety and Mobility Plan – KSI by mode
Yet the project as proposed focuses on bicyclists and not much if at all on people walking. In many cases, roadway reallocation gives wider and/or protected space to bicyclists, but it is not clear if sidewalks will be improved at all, and I was unable to find any reference to more frequent safe crossings of the roadway.
While the existing conditions report does not provide detail about these collisions, one could speculate that the two at the Fruitridge Park and Community Center pedestrian crossing is due to drivers ignoring that signal. This crossing is within the county, not the city. Another speculation is that the high density of collision just west of Stockton Blvd is due to the high density of driveways with turning in and turning out conflicts, 53rd Street, and likely people crossing outside crosswalks between the many businesses on the north and south side of Fruitridge, recognizing that the distance between safe marked crossings is too long and encourages crossing in between.
I had thought that I could gather more information on the collisions in the city’s Vision Zero Dashboard and Map, but unfortunately that map and the existing conditions report do not match closely. I don’t know why.
A map in the existing conditions report for Fruitridge Road Safety and Mobility Plan shows the location and nature of 20 crosswalks, including which legs of the intersection are present, or not. Of course these are the marked crosswalks. Under state law, there are crosswalks at every intersection, which is about 55 intersections. Of course on a high speed roadway, 35 mph or 40 mph posted and much higher actual speeds, it may not be safe to use legal but unmarked crosswalks.
It may be that the section between Martin Luther King Jr Blvd and 44th Street is over-signalized. Though I’m not against frequent safe crossings, a high density of signals just frustrates drivers and reduces the usefulness of the roadway for all modes. It is sort of like Trump passing out paper towels – you get one, you get one, you get one. Too many signals slow everyone.
I wasn’t happy with the detail of the map, and did not find in the existing conditions report distances between marked crossings. So I modified the map, below, to add distances for every segment over 1/4 mile, 1320 feet, and add street names. Two of the signals are pedestrian signals, not intersection signals, one for Fruitridge Park and Community Center, the other for the Del Rio Trail. These are greyed on the map.
Though obviously ignoring the existing street pattern would not make sense, the distances of more than 1/4 mile do deserve more analysis, since this exceeds the recommended distance for safe crossings on any collector or arterial roadway.
The crosswalks at Freeport are 101 and 111 feet long, with no refuge island and no pedestrian actuators on the medians. At Franklin, they are 106 feet and 125 feet, with no refuge islands or even usable medians. At Stockton, they are 82 feet and 100 feet, with no refuge islands or even usable medians. These are unacceptably long crossing distances, and must be shortened in the project. Reducing travel lanes from four to three, and eliminating dedicated right turn lanes and double left turn lanes will help with these crossing distances, but even when the roadway width is reallocated, it may be necessary to provide median refuge islands with pedestrian actuators.
The City of Sacramento charges fees for it’s ‘Al Fresco’ dining program, where restaurants may apply for an encroachment permit, and an ongoing revocable permit in order to provide a dining area within re-purposed parking spots. The city used to have hundreds of these setups, and during the early days of the pandemic, several streets were closed completely so that restaurants could offer outside safe dining. The number of such setups has shrunk considerably. Many businesses did not find it worthwhile to go through the process, and the expense. The city established strict criteria, that some locations could not or did not want to meet. They ‘grandfathered in’ existing sidewalk dining, for a while, but those locations must transition to the new program, which was established in 2023.
Al Fresco dining often removes sidewalk buffers and street parking. As such, the city charges, for use of the space (though the city does not maintain sidewalk buffers, it does own them) and loss of parking revenue. Though the fees are not posted anywhere on the city website, a presentation to city council on October 14, 2025, provides the fee structure for fees adopted in January 2023. So far as is known, the fees have not changed. (Note that this does not include the encroachment permit fee, a one-time fee.) pdf of the entire SacCouncil presentation
SacCouncil 2025-10-14 presentation on Al Fresco program, page 14
So, the city is giving away space for a 30 foot wide driveway on R Street, including loss of about 1.7 parking spots and the income therefrom. Note that this parking area has access through Rice Alley; the R Street curb cut and driveway is not actually needed.
On the other hand, the city is charging the business on L Street for the Al Fresco area, about $455/month, for the same curb space and parking spots. Note that the two areas are not the same size, L St is about 90 feet long, so the Al Fresco cost is estimated for the same size area.
How does the city value curb space and parking spaces?
Dewey is a high speed, very wide road, that is empty much of the day, but extremely congested during school arrival and dismissal times. Though there is a signal at the school entry/exit, with pedestrian signals, those previous improvements have not made the street safe or comfortable for anyone. More needs to be done, and the students came up with a plan, working with county transportation staff, to calm traffic and make crossing safer and more welcoming. The county will apply for a grant to implement the plan.
I was the Safe Routes to School Coordinator for San Juan Unified for 10 years, and tried several times to interest the school in improvements, without success. It took motivated students, motivated teachers, and county staff enthusiastic about working with the school to make the difference. And the participation of the new Safe Routes to School Coordinator, Natalee Dyuduyk.
The City of Sacramento, Department of Public Works, has an map or dashboard of transportation projects available online, Public Works Transportation Projects. You can select by project phase (planning, preliminary engineering, final design, in construction, and construction complete), and by council district. You can zoom in or out on the map.
Public Works Transportation Projects map/dashboard
Clicking on a project line or point opens a popup with details. Some of the data seems a little out of date for Project Manager and project phase, but this is nevertheless the best source of information on projects that I am aware of.
For transportation advocates, selecting planning will probably be of the most interest. Once a project is past the planning stage, it is unlikely that it can be improved by community input.
Public Works Transportation Projects map, selected for ‘Planning’
Sacramento County does not seem to have an equivalent map/dashboard, but it does have a project page.
Folsom does not seem to have an equivalent map/dashboard.
Rancho Cordova has a robust set of GIS data, but does not seem to have an equivalent map/dashboard.
Elk Grove has a robust set of GIS data. It has a CIP (capital improvement program) map, which may contain similar information, but does not seem to be working at this time.
Getting Around Sacramento 