SacATC 2026-02-19

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The City of Sacramento Active Transportation Commission will meet on Thursday, February 19, starting at 5:30 PM, in city council chambers.

The agenda includes two consent items and two discussion items.

Item 3 is Vision Zero Action Plan Update 2026: staff report | presentation

Item 4 is H Street Bikeways: staff report | presentation

My previous posts on Vision Zero cover many topics related to it, and make some recommendations. A draft plan will be available in the spring, at which time I’ll no doubt have many comments. If you haven’t been following the Action Plan update process, this is a good chance to catch up.

This is the first time preliminary plans for creating a safe bikeway on H Street, leading to and from Sacramento Valley Station, have been presented to the public. I will take a closer look and perhaps post again before Thursday.

High Injury Network Key Questions, slide from Vision Zero Action Plan update presentation
High Injury Network Key Questions, slide from Vision Zero Action Plan update presentation

SacCity Vision Zero Action Plan update: more info

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I am a member of the Vision Zero Action Plan update Task Force (stakeholder) group, which met last week, Thursday, February 12 (meeting #4 presentation). The meeting made some additional information available.

  • On the Draft Actions sheet, the numbers in the left hand column just reference elements, they do not indicate any priority. The only priorities, on which feedback was being sought, are the three ‘buckets’ of high, medium, and low priority.
  • The updated plan is intended to cover a span of five years. Where a number of actions are specified within an element, those are over a period of five years, not necessarily evenly distributed.
  • No information is yet available on prioritization within each bucket.
  • No information is yet available on sequencing of action elements. Some can be completed in a short time, some will be ongoing throughout the plan time period, and some will not start until later.
  • No information is yet available on the cost of each element. For engineering actions, some cost information is in the Top Collision Profiles and Countermeasures memo.
  • The Draft Actions sheet mentions ‘new laws’ in two elements (#2 and #3). References to the legislative bills or state code should be made available.
  • Element #7 adds intersections to the program, which is great, since the original plan largely ignored intersections in favor of corridors. However, it is not clear what criteria might be used to identify these intersections. The draft High Injury Network continued the focus on corridors, so this intersection element indicates some progress towards considering intersections, which are the location of most crashes.
  • Crossing guidelines are not part of the plan so far, but could be the location for prohibiting RRFBs (Rapid Rectangular Flashing Beacons), which have proven ineffective in Sacramento. There is an existing Pedestrian Crossing Guidelines document (2021-04), but it isn’t clear how the two documents will relate to each other.
  • Questions were raised about repaving and pavement condition index (PCI), which is deteriorating in Sacramento (and nearly everywhere). The answer was that there is no clear nexus between pavement and crashes, though obviously there are instances.
  • Questions were raised about the elements that mention law enforcement (#25 & #28). There is consensus among the stakeholders that in-person law enforcement is too subject to law enforcement bias and escalation, and that automated enforcement must be very carefully implemented to prevent racial, geographic, or income bias.
  • I asked that an item #32 be added, to make the sidewalk inventory publicly accessible. It is not available on the city’s GIS Open Data Portal, and another person’s PRA (Public Records Act) for sidewalk data did not produce anything useful. See previous post where the streets have no… sidewalks.

SacCity LPI location update

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In 2018, I posted a list of leading pedestrian interval (LPI) locations (Leading Pedestrian Interval (LPI) signals), which were provided by the city. Today I field-checked those locations.

Two locations have apparently been removed, 29th & K, and 8th & Q. Six of the locations where I only indicated ‘and’ have LPIs on only one of the cross streets, and I have changed those to ‘at’, 9th at I, I at 10th, J at 10th, I at 13th, 15th at K, and Q at 9th. Three locations have LPIs for both cross streets, 10th & K, 9th & P, and 8th & P.

  • 9th Street at I Street: across 9th only
  • I Street at 10th Street: across I only
  • J Street at 10th Street: across J only
  • I Street at 13th Street: across I only
  • 15th Street at K Street: across 15th only
  • 29th Street and K Street: removed
  • 30th Street and K Street: both directions
  • 9th Street and P Street: both directions
  • Q Street at 9th Street: across Q only
  • 8th Street and P Street: both directions
  • 8th Street and Q Street: removed

The intersection of J Street at 13th has LPI across J. However, this intersection is unsafe for walkers since the signals allow southbound drivers on 13th Street to turn left across the sidewalk while the walk sign is on. This is the most common vehicle movement, and this is one of the most heavily used crosswalks in the central city since the convention center is on the southeast corner. This must be fixed. I have written before about this intersection (13th & J intersection), but nothing has been improved.

Other intersections of note are

  • 29th Street and K Street which has ‘wave or press’ pedestrian signing, but pedestrian signal is on auto-recall, which it should be.
  • L Street and 29th Street has no LPIs, but it does have an exclusive pedestrian phase on north leg only.

The Pocket Greenhaven Transportation Plan (2023-11) recommends three LPIs

  • Florin Rd & Rush River Dr
  • Greenhaven Dr & Rush River Dr
  • Pocket Rd & Little River Way

I don’t know the status of this project. It is odd that only three locations were recommended, out of dozens of location with new or modified traffic signals.

If readers know of other locations with leading pedestrian interval (LPI) signals, please comment on this post or email allisondan52@icloud.com.

SacCity LPI background

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Previous posts on Leading Pedestrian Interval (LPI), in the City of Sacramento and more generally, at available at tag: LPI.

The Strong SacTown Street Design Standards Working Group has a team working on Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPI) at traffic signals. If LPI grabs your interest, I encourage you to join the working group. Meetings are posted on Luma, a calendaring application. Go to Luma (app or website: https://luma.com/strongsactown). The next working group group meeting is not listed there yet, but it is normally on the third Sunday of the month at 1:00 PM. Meetings are open to the public; one need not be a member of Strong SacTown or Strong Towns to join in (though you should be!).

The City of Sacramento has a Traffic Signal Operations and Standards page. The prose is garbled, to say the least. The linked documents have nothing to do with operations. It does not include a Traffic Signal Operations Manual (TSOM). Though the plan is supposed to be updated, it is not clear if it even exists.

Streets for People Active Transportation Plan (2025-08, page 105): “An evaluation of best practice to establish guidelines for leading pedestrian intervals (LPIs) at signalized intersections is currently (2025) underway and will be included in the updated City of Sacramento Traffic Signal Operations Manual (TSOM). The TSOM and the guidelines for LPIs will be presented to the Active Transportation and Disability Advisory Commissions to allow for public discussion of the proposed standard practices.”

Vision Zero Action Plan Update Safety Improvement Strategies presentation includes the following graphic:

graphic for Leading Pedestrian Interval (LPI)
SacCity Vision Zero Action Plan Update, Safety Improvement Strategies, presentation, page 48

The Vision Zero Action Plan Update Top Collision Profiles and Countermeasures memo includes the following graphic, which has more detail. It is identified as Tier 3, Engineering Countermeasures, Managing conflicts in time.

SacCity Vision Zero Action Plan Update, Top Collision Profiles and Countermeasures, memo, Leading Pedestrian Interval (LPI), page 44

The Vision Zero Action Plan Update draft recommendations includes #9: “Update City Traffic Signal Operations Manual (TSOM) to reflect complete streets and designs reflective of reducing exposure, likelihood, and severity. Include application of Leading Pedestrian Intervals, No Right Turn on Red, Protected Left-Turn Phasing, Rest on Red, and other similar strategies.” Items 19 and 26 might also include LPIs, though they are not called out there.

barricades

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An article in the MinnPost makes me very happy, and engenders thoughts of what citizen action could do on the streets of Sacramento.

In occupied Minneapolis, neighborhood barricades rightly slow injustice, MinnPost, 2026-02-11

Here upon these stones
We will build our barricade
In the heart of the city
We claim as our own!
Each man to his duty
And don’t be afraid.

Les Miserables, Upon These Stones (At the Barricade)

Though nothing currently happening in Sacramento rises to the level of government initiated violence and oppression in Minneapolis, it is true that motor vehicle hegemony here creates a hostile city for people who walk and bicycle. Law enforcement, both CHP and SacPD, are either supportive of this hegemony, or indifferent to its effects.

There are parts of the city government trying to change this, but the cultural norm is still an acceptance and celebration of car dominance. It is not just the people killed and injured, but the intimidation of walkers and bicyclists that denies them their right to the city, and to the streets of the city.

Is it time for citizens to rise up, and erect barricades?

Horace Vernet: On the barricades on the Rue Soufflot

SacCity Vision Zero Action Plan update: draft recommendations

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The recent City of Sacramento meetings on the Vision Zero Action Plan update, both virtual and in-person, included slides with draft recommendations for the Action Plan. This same information is also available as a chart (pdf). The three categories, high priority, medium priority, and low priority, are presented below.

Each of these items deserves discussion, and possible movement from one category to another. The one item that I would add to the high priority list, consistent with item 11, is ‘implement speed camera program’ when authorized by state law. I feel strongly, and hopefully, that the state will include Sacramento in the pilot program, and will authorize a permanent program within the span of the Action Plan.

chart of High Priority draft recommendations for Vision Zero Action Plan
chart of Medium Priority draft recommendations for Vision Zero Action Plan
chart of Low Priority draft recommendations for Vision Zero Action Plan

SacCity Vision Zero funding

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The approach of the previous Vision Zero Action Plan (2018, with minor update 2023) was to seek grants from federal, state and regional (SACOG) sources to implement complete streets projects on corridors. For some corridors, grants were received and implemented, or are in progress. For other corridors, the grants were not received and nothing has occurred. As presented in previous posts (category: Vision Zero), I believe this approach is why Vision Zero has failed in the city. We have far too many dangerous roadways to ever fix, with grants or without. We must use other methods, though continuing to implement major projects, so long at they don’t take away a focus on what can be done now, and best use of staff time (it takes hundreds of hours of staff time to write and submit a grant application).

Instead, the city must fund Vision Zero directly. A good start would be an allocation of $20,000,000 in the 2026-2027 budget. That amount would be increased every budget cycle until there is a documented downward trend in fatalities and serious injuries of at least 10% per year.

Where would the money come from, in this time of budget deficits? Let me be blunt. Out of the police department budget.

The police department received $256,280,944 in the 2025-2026 budget, including $9,156,810 from Measure U, which should have been spent on other priorities. This is more than the entire Public Works budget of $237,586,768, which includes everything the city does to maintain and enhance the transportation network, including efforts to improve the safety of our roadways. Fatalities related to violent crime, and fatalities related to traffic violence, are about on parity in the city, competing for the top spot, with traffic violence usually coming out on top. We should be investing just as much to reduce and prevent traffic violence fatalities as we do to respond to – not prevent – violent crime. Is a life claimed by mis-designed and unsafe roadways, particularly of vulnerable users, walkers and bicyclists, of less value than a life claimed by violent crime? I don’t think so, but our existing budget priorities say yes.

A shift of $20,000,000 from the police budget to Public Works, specifically allocated to Vision Zero, would be a minor reduction of the police budget but a major step towards reducing traffic violence and fatalities.

City Council has consistently increased the police department budget while reducing the budget of other departments. That seems to be the politically expedient thing to do, but it is not the courageous action necessary to address our real problems in the city.

From the 2025-2026 budget: “The Public Works Department is dedicated to maintaining safer streets, sustainable infrastructure, and innovative mobility solutions. Over the past year, we have implemented tens of millions of dollars in transportation improvements, expanded electric vehicle charging and transit access, enhanced traffic safety, and completed critical road and facility upgrades. Additionally, the department has strengthened parking management through expanded permit programs and automated enforcement, while continuing to improve operations at the Sacramento Marina to better serve the boating community.”

SacCity Vision Zero priorities: 80% quick-build

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The City of Sacramento is updating its Vision Zero Action Plan. Both the in-person and online meetings have passed, but the survey is still open through Sunday, February 22. See SacCity Vision Zero Update for my comments on the survey, as well as other posts on vision zero (category: Vision Zero).

I believe that the most effective short term approach for reducing fatalities is quick-build projects at locations which have seen fatalities, or are likely to have fatalities based on poor roadway design and driver behavior. The city has implemented a quick build program, with a transportation safety team and some funding. Still no webpage that I have been able to find.

This is not to say that other elements should not be included in the action plan, but I believe that 80% of the funding, and 80% of staff time, should be devoted to quick-build.

What should not be included is education and in-person law enforcement. However, given that we have an epidemic of fatality-inducing red light running and failure to yield to people in crosswalks in the city (and the county, and the region, and the state), a limited period of in-person enforcement of these violations, with strict guardrails to prevent pretextual stops and law enforcement bias, may be appropriate. Research has proven that education is ineffective, though a favorite of people who don’t really want to solve problems.

I am not sure what the other elements of the action plan should be. Therefore, I’d want to see a commitment to minor updates to the plan on a frequency of about every two years, to reflect lessons learned and evolving legislation about what cities are permitted or required to do to reduce fatalities and address traffic violence.

speed control now

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David Zipper, a journalist who frequently writes on transportation safety, just wrote for Bloomberg CityLab The Best Tactics for Tackling Speeders. The article summarizes his research briefing on MIT Mobility Initiative Tactics to Reduce Urban Vehicle Speeds.

This is timely as the City of Sacramento is updating its Vision Zero Action Plan.

The main point of the article is that speed control for safety is way more popular with society than the impression one would get from reading media, which has both a bias to highlight controversy when there really isn’t much, and the windshield bias of those who drive rather than walk, bicycle, and transit.

“What I learned surprised me. With rare exceptions, these strategies to reduce speeding are effective, often to a striking degree. And contrary to common perceptions, residents generally support them.”

He also lists a number of speed control measures, in the article, and more in the paper, which are probably familiar:

  • speed humps: The City of Sacramento has certainly put in a number of speed humps. Problem is, the design slows motor vehicles only momentarily, and drivers return to their previous speed over a very short distance. The literature is variable as to whether speed humps or speed tables are more effective, but my own hours of observation indicate that tables are more effective. A speed table with crosswalk, matching the height of the curb at six inches, is far more effective than a hump at 3 inches.
  • automatic traffic cameras: The City of Sacramento once had red-light running cameras, but the program ceased when the county program ceased. The city has said it will install cameras and implement a program in alignment with new state laws, however, no time frame or budget had been identified. Speed cameras have been authorized for a few cities as a pilot program, and Sacramento is not one of them.
  • conversions to make one-way arterials bidirectional: The City of Sacramento has made one conversion, of 5th Street, which was converted last year. It seems successful. However, the city used this project as an excuse to install completely new signal heads and signal controllers, rather than reusing any materials. At upwards of $1M per intersection, this approach guarantees that few conversions will be done.
  • adjusting traffic signalizations: The City of Sacramento has talked about this, but not done so. The ‘green wave’ used in other cities, where signals are set to average bicyclist speed of about 13 mph, are very effective at calming traffic. In the central city, signals are set to 28 mph, which encourages drivers to speed in order to beat the next signal.
  • posted speed reductions: The City of Sacramento has done this for some school zones, but has refused to do it anywhere else. “Simply lowering speed limits works, too. Boston’s 2017 move to reduce its default speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph produced a relative 29% decline in vehicles exceeding 35 mph…”
  • road diets: The City of Sacramento has implemented road diets on several arterial streets, reducing the number of lanes and sometimes reducing the width of lanes. However, these are major projects that require a lot of money, grants from the federal, state or regional agencies. This greatly limits the number of roadways that can be ‘fixed’.

The article concludes with: “The missing link: policymakers courageous enough to do the right thing.”

where the streets have no… sidewalks

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Where the Streets Have No Name, U2, 1987

The City of Sacramento has a GIS database of sidewalks, but has not made it available to the public. The Sacramento Active Transportation Commission has requested that the data be made public. A number of active transportation advocates have requested that it be made public. The response is usually vague, but includes the excuses: the quality of the data is too low to make public; it is incomplete, as some streets were never surveyed; it was developed by the consultants and the city doesn’t have permission to publish.

It was shared in Streets for All Active Transportation Plan (Appendix 2, Gap Analysis, page 13). But this is a screen capture of a map, and can’t be zoomed in for detail. (pdf)

The Neighborhood Connections Network Map probably has sidewalk information, and can be zoomed in, but it shows only recommended improvements to create a network, not sidewalk details, and a legend is lacking, so it is not possible to say for certain what the lines indicate. It may be the same information as the Neighborhood Connections Network map that is in the Neighborhood Connections Existing Conditions appendix. (pdf) This map does have a legend, but can’t be zoomed.

The final Streets For People Active Transportation Plan includes the ‘Recommendations for People Walking and Rolling in Sacramento map on page 67 (pdf), but again, it can’t be zoomed in, and includes recommendations, not existing sidewalk conditions. One could assume that the New Sidewalk on Both Sides indicates that there is no existing sidewalk, and New Sidewalk on One Side indicates that a sidewalk exists on the other side, but not both sides. The plan contains six detailed maps, so it is easy to pick out streets, but again, no information about existing.

There is also a recommendations map that was part of public outreach in developing the plan, the Streets for People Draft Network Recommendations. It can be zoomed in, but it is not clear whether the street designations came from the city, or the public, or both.

All of this uncertainty could be resolved if the city would post the data to its GIS (Geographic Information Systems) portal. If the data needs a disclaimer, this is easy to include.