21st St: Nearly all striping is done and green paint complete, except for a few spots that were missed. No vertical delineators have been installed. No bicycle signal has been installed at 21st St and I St, and according to a SacBee article (Sacramento to install new bike signal at midtown cross street. How it will change traffic?), will not be installed before late July. The turn wedges are a continuing hazard to bicyclists as they imply that drivers will make safer turns, but they are not doing so.
19th St: Most striping and green paint has been installed from H St to Q St, with a few spots still being worked on. No striping has been installed south of Q St to X St, there are still temporary lane marking tabs without bike lanes. No vertical delineators have been installed.
P St: Repaving from 21st St to 15th St is complete, and white line striping is nearly complete. No green paint yet, no vertical delineators. P St has several of the unsafe turn wedges. In the blocks from 17th St to 15th St, drivers are parking in the bike lane, but to the east, drivers seem to be using the detached parking correctly.
Q St: It has been stripped down, and paving should occur soon.
10th St: ADA ramps nearly complete, but no sign of reconfiguration.
9th St: No work. It is unlikely that 9th St will be completed this year (or next?), as there are three blocks of major construction that block sidewalks and bike lanes, and would prevent completion of any roadway reconfiguration.
5th St: No further work beyond the signal bases that were installed some while ago.
I St: No parking signs have been up for quite some while, but there is no evidence of work beyond a few ADA ramps.
At the June 15, 2023 meeting of the City of Sacramento Active Transportation Commission meeting, agenda item 5 was ‘Stone Beetland Planned Unit Development – Amendments to the Bicycle Master Plan’. The topic was about modifying the bicycle master plan so that the new bicycle facilities in this development connected with other facilities already in the master plan. But since it is the purview of the commission is to address all active transportation topics, several members of the public and of the commission asked questions and commented on the transportation aspects of the overall development plan.
I asked why the streets were so wide, ranging from 42 feet to 74 feet, with the most common being 59 feet. Wide streets encourage drivers to speed, and so are significantly less safe than narrow streets. Another commenter and two commission members also asked about this. A 42 foot right of way should be the upper limit of street width, not the lower limit. When asked, the developer said that they had wanted narrower streets, but City of Sacramento Public Works forced the wider streets. The excuse from Public Works was apparently that as the area developed, there would be more traffic and wider streets were necessary. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy: building wider streets induces more traffic, and so the wider streets are needed to handle the motor vehicle traffic that the wider streets induced.
There were other questions about this development, including whether streets will have sidewalk buffers of sufficient width to host trees as they mature, and whether bicyclists will be able to leave the neighborhood since Cosumnes River Blvd is a high speed (55 mph!), high volume arterial that has paint-only bike lanes (which should not even be legal on a road with 55 mph posted speed limit), that very few bicyclists feel comfortable riding on. No matter what bicycle facilities the developer provides, people will be trapped in their neighborhood, unless they can drive and want to drive.
Public Works is the enemy of safe streets. Again and again the safer streets proposed by city planners and developers are nixed by someone in Public Works. There are car-brained engineers in Public Works that think the sole purpose of streets is to carry the maximum number of motor vehicles at the maximum possible speed. Despite the world changing around it, and the clearly documented hazard of wide fast streets, Public Works is living in the past, dedicated to a cars-first transportation system. I am not denying that there are progressive people in Public Works, and in Community Development as well, but somehow the outcome is always worse and less safe than the public wants.
I attended the SACOG Blueprint Workshop on Friday, June 16, at the Folsom Community Center. So far as I am aware, this was the largest gathering that SACOG has ever hosted. There were electeds, city and county staff, citizens, and a lot of SACOG staff.
I attended because I was concerned that SACOG would be hearing mostly from electeds and staff, and not citizens. SACOG already hears from electeds and staff, too much. But there were enough citizens there to balance things out. The big surprise to me was that nearly everyone in the room came out of the side of the progressive solutions. Two contrasting scenarios for each of five issues (development pattern, types of housing, transportation expenditures, transit frequency vs coverage, and one I’m not remembering; unfortunately I lost track of the printed material provided, so can’t give you the details). In each case, the consensus of the people in the room was for the progressive idea: infill development, mixed use with multi-family prominent, transportation expenditures on maintenance (fix-it-first; fix the potholes) rather than expansion, investment in active transportation, and better transit frequency. When electeds vote on priorities and projects, they often favor the regressive (low productivity sprawl with a high and unrecoverable investment in transportation and other infrastructure), and many staff support this. But when removed from the direct view of the campaign donor class, it turns out most of them want the right thing. I am hopeful!
When a summary of the workshop becomes available, and/or I get a copy of the printed material, I’ll update this post.
Nothing has changed on 21st Street since the last post.
On 19th Street, some of the striping has been completed as far south at P Street. This is only white, long-line striping, none of the details have been painted. While riding 19th Street today, I was very nearly hit by a driver at O Street. The long-lines lead drivers to think that they have full width right of way, and to not expect bike riders to be coming out to pass the curb extensions at O Street. As I have said all along, I question putting extensions in locations with separated bikeways. It may be less dangerous once the detailed striping and green paint are installed, but it won’t be as safe as it could be if the city had simply not installed extensions on the east side of the 19th Street and O Street intersection.
A friend pointed out that the separated bikeway on 19th Street southbound is more than half in the gutter pan, and that the gutter pan is deteriorated in many locations. Therefore the effective width of the separated bikeway is not six feet, but about two feet. Smooth sailing for drivers, not for bicyclists!
19th St separated bikeway in the gutter pan
As is true of every street that has been repaved, or patched, so far, the lane tabs have indicated that the general purpose lanes are very wide, and there are no bike lanes. Bike riders are now exposed to higher speed traffic (because of the very wide lanes), with not even the slight protection of paint. Though this might be the fault of the project contractor, I doubt it. If the city had told the contractor to keep temporary bike lanes, they would have. I’m almost certain that the city did not say anything about accommodations for bicyclists to the contractor. The city is endangering bicyclists during this construction project, on purpose and with full knowledge. If someone is hurt or killed here, it will be on the city, and I hope they get sued for millions. The city philosophy, overall, for this project and every other construction project on streets and sidewalks, is that bicyclists and walkers don’t matter.
The city has claimed that they are now, finally, working on a construction accommodation policy. I suspect that it will come out very weak, because Public Works still believes strongly in cars-first. Traffic flow and ease for drivers controls all their decisions.
P Street has been repaved, but does not have any marking yet. Q Street has been patched, though I can’t tell if there is more to be done. A reader pointed out that there is some active work on 10th Street, but I haven’t gotten there yet.
A friend mentioned that traffic was a disaster when the city closed Q Street and 15th Street, with traffic backed up for many blocks. Though I did not observe this, I’ve had reports now from many people that the detour signage for this project does not provide drivers (or bicyclists) with any information about which way to go (the detour signs, I have observed, frequently point two directions, and the signage along the detours is incomplete. This could, possibly, be the fault of the contractor, but if the city was not out inspecting the detours and getting them corrected, the city was also failing. I have talked to a number of people on the street for whom this project has left a bad taste in their mouth. They have seen that the city has done a poor job of communicating with drivers, bicyclists and walkers, and there is a lot of doubt being expressed about whether the separated bikeways will actually be safer.
Lastly, I will note that there was no public outreach on this project. There are no plans available to the public. I am sure if there had been outreach, some of the design details would be different, some of the flaws would have been caught, communication would have been continuous and effective, and construction signing would have been done correctly. This was an internal Public Works project, and it was not done well.
Update 2023-06-19: There are now many more Bird bikes than last week, so it seems to be part of a major deployment. I’m not on Bird’s email list, perhaps they have provide some info through email. I rode a Bird bike twice. They handle differently from the Lime/JUMP bikes, so as with any bike that is new to you, start out slowly until you get accustomed to it. The bikes have a digital speedometer, and they are the 15 mph limit that the city agreement enforces. They have swappable batteries, similar to but not the same at the Lime bikes. I did not ride through any of the slow or no parking zones, so don’t know if Bird has the same as Lime.
Bird Bikeshare bikes in Sacramento
I noticed this morning that Bird Bikeshare bikes have shown up in Sacramento. The ones I saw and show up in the Bird app are in midtown, though there may be ones elsewhere. Bird devices are primarily in the central city of Sacramento, with some further out and in West Sacramento. After selecting a device, the use boundary shows up, a light blue background outlined with a blue line. Though it is more detailed, it is generally east to Power Inn Rd/Howe Ave, south to Fruitridge Rd, west to ship channel in West Sacramento, and north to El Camino Ave.
The app does not seem to have the ability that the Lime app does of selecting for just bikes or just scooters. Since the scooters are far more common, they may cover up the bike icons, and you will have to scroll around and zoom in to find bikes.
Bird has a community pricing membership for low income riders in Sacramento, 50% off rides. The access program with a low cost membership and limited free rides is not yet available in Sacramento. Bird bikes and scooters are $1 to rent and $0.49 per minute. There also seems to be a promotional 25% off.
Lime bikes, after a period of being better maintained, seem to have declined again. I rented five bikes today, and only one of them was in decent shape. All the bikes have been crashed, once to multiple times. Bent wheels, bent handlebars, loose seat posts, single gears (the old red Lime/JUMP bikes are supposed to have three gears, where as the newer white/green bikes have variable responsive gearing). I know riders are crashing bikes, mostly when drunk, but I also wonder if Lime is dumping damaged bikes into Sacramento.
The City of Sacramento Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP) draft has been released. Note that this is the second draft, though essentially unchanged from the first draft. I reviewed my previous posts on the CAAP (category: CAAP) and looked a a few key places in the plan to see what had changed. Nothing.
City staff gave a presentation on the CAAP to the ECOS Climate Committee last night. As with all previous presentations, and the plan itself, the focus was on SMUD zero-carbon (which the city shouldn’t really be taking credit for), electrification of built housing, and EVs. And EVs, and EVs.
57% of Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHGs) are from transportation, so it certainly makes sense that electrification of vehicles is important. However, the the city’s focus on EVs ignores: 1) all the city can do is provide charging, all other aspects of the transition are largely beyond their control; 2) the transition will be slow, and there will be fossil fuel vehicles on the road long after net-zero is intended; 3) it turns out EVs are not the environmental panacea claimed, with battery manufacture, rare earth mining, and battery recycling (or lack thereof, turns out almost no batteries are being recycled); 4) EVs are not and will probably never be affordable to low income people, and nearly all the subsidies so far have gone exclusively to high income individuals; 5) EVs have the same or worse pollution potential as fossil fuel because the main health impacts of motor vehicles are not tailpipe emissions, but road dust, tire dust, and brake dust, which are all exacerbated by the higher weights of EVs; 6) EVs kill pedestrians and bicyclists just as effectively, if not more (higher weight) than fossil fueled cars.
On Wednesday afternoon, the sign below was on 21st Street approaching I Street. The sign was not there on Tuesday morning. If a bicycle signal was intended at this intersection in the design, why was it not signed earlier? Why wasn’t the signal already installed, since there was signal communications infrastructure installed at this intersection several weeks ago? Or was this a design oversight that the city decided to fix after being called out on it? And when is ‘coming soon’?
21st St at I St, sign for future bicycle signal
I observed bicyclist behavior at this location for a while on Tuesday. Every single bicyclist who was headed north on 21st Street crossed against the red light, so as to not be hit by left turning drivers who generally do not yield to anyone in the crosswalk, and then onto the sidewalk on the west side of the street, continuing through the area at Old Soul Weatherstone which is congested with tables and walkers. So the city has trained bicyclist to ride on the sidewalk. Those who have been so trained will be likely to continue sidewalk riding even after installation of the signal. Ouch!
Useless Turn Wedges
I have ridden 21st Street a number of times, to see how the project is progressing and to see how drivers are responding to the new layout. Most drivers are parking correctly in the parking that provides parking-protection for the bikeway, but a few continue to park against the curb. I’ve reported these to 311 for parking enforcement, but of course as always, parking enforcement reports that the vehicle is no longer there, whether it is or not.
Several times in a row drivers have turned across my path at high speed, left from 21st Street to L Street, over the green paint and the white turn wedge paint. At the times of day I was there, there were few to no parked cars, so I was clearly visible to the drivers, not in any way hidden. In both cases I had to slam on my brakes to avoid being hit by the drivers. They did not slow. The turn wedge diagram provided on the Central City Mobility Project page, shown below, clearly shows bumps and posts (vertical delineators) in the wedge. Without more detail, I can’t say whether these will actually affect driver behavior, but in general only hard curbs or real bollards (steel or concrete) actually affect driver behavior. In the meanwhile, drivers are being trained to turn across bicyclists, with impunity, and will not likely change their behavior when and if something is installed in the turn wedges.
I have been reading Fighting Traffic by Peter Norton, and in Chapter 2 he introduces the concept of the outside left turn, which worked to prevent drivers from cutting the corner on left turns, and was later enforced with ‘silent policemen’, hard structures that provided serious consequences for drivers who insisted on cutting corners. Later, when motor vehicles were given dominance on the roadway, these were removed. It is time to bring these back!
Other
Striping and green paint is very nearly complete on 21st Street. 19th Street has been repaved and preliminary marking installed (the dashed white lines). P Street was just stripped for new pavement (I’m not sure what this process is called, removing 2 to 3 inches of old pavement so that new pavement can be laid), and is being repaved today (Thursday). Q Street has been patched but not stripped. I’m not noticing any active work on I Street, 5th Street, 9th Street, or 10th Street, though I Street has had ‘no parking’ signs up for some while.
The repaving is being done to the full width of the roadway, including the parking lane. This is a waste of materials and money. The parking lane does not need to be repaved, except in a few circumstances where it has been damaged. Nor does it need to be paved to the same standards as the general purpose travel lanes, which receive far more traffic and wear and tear. But the city loves pavement, and loves to add on unnecessary work to projects, ensuring that less is left for actual improvements to the street that would help walkers and bicyclists.
The separated bikeway (protected bike lane) and repaving is mostly complete on 21st Street in Sacramento, part of the Central City Mobility Project. Almost all the white striping and green paint is complete. No vertical delineators (soft hit posts) yet. When I rode the street a few days ago, most vehicles were parked in the correct location in the parking spaces separated from the curb. There are two blocks where the bikeway is adjacent to the travel lane, and parking adjacent to the curb, between T Street and S Street, and between N Street and Capitol Ave. There is no obvious reason for this.
The beginning of the left side separated bikeway at W Street is marked oddly, see photo below. The arrow in the green turn box would imply that one should immediately turn onto 21st Street, when it should indicate to cross 21st Street the the bikeway on the other side. The shadow shows the correct move.
21st Street at W Street, green turn box with incorrect arrow
The ‘turn wedges’ noted in a an update post are is far only white paint, nothing that would prevent a driver from cutting the corner across the bikeway area. In fact, I observed several drivers doing just that.
21st St at T St turn wedge
The big concern is where the separated bikeway approaches I Street. The bikeway is on the left. Travel lanes are in the middle, one left turn only and one combined left turn-through-right turn. I Street becomes one-way westbound at this point, is two-way to the east, and 21st Street is two-way. Before repaving, the left side bike lane had a left turn arrow. The right side bike lane that was there before repaving is not there now, and it isn’t clear that there is intended to be. There is no warning that the separated bikeway ends at I Street, and no bike facility for transitioning to the right side to continue north on 21st St. This would be a good location for a bicycle signal to allow bicyclists to continue through the intersection on a bicyclist-only phase.
As mentioned earlier, the draft City of Sacramento 2040 General Plan has been released. For transportation advocates, the two most important chapters are Chapter 3: Land Use and Placemaking and Chapter 8: Mobility. Land use and transportation are so closely tied that I’m a little confused at to why the city separated them into separate chapters. Though the text which introduces each chapter (element), and each Goal and Policy section within the chapter, often refers to other parts of the plan, it seems to me that they were written independently and linked after the fact.
Element 3, Land Use and Placemaking, has the following sections:
Land Use Framework
Integrating Infill Development
Thriving Commercial Mixed-Use Centers
Complete and Inclusive Neighborhoods
Industrial Areas
Placemaking, Green Building, and the Arts
Element 8, Mobility, has the following sections:
A Multimodal System
Reduced Reliance on Single-Occupant Vehicles
Safety
Regional Connectivity
Supporting Goals through Data, Technology, and Innovation
There are a number of organizations taking deeper dives into the General Plan draft, and I encourage you to join one of them:
there are not doubt others; ask your organization what it is doing
Or, if you have the time, do your own deep dive. Of maybe transportation and land use are not your focus, there are seven other areas that may interested you.
Though the General Plan is not really a legally binding document, it is a tool that advocates can use when asking the city ‘why aren’t you doing this?’ or ‘why are you doing this?’. So it is important that the final plan reflect the desires of the citizens, and the reality of climate change and lack of equity.
You can expect more posts on the General Plan, as I have time to look into the details.
There are a number of things the City of Sacramento could be doing to better manage parking: Parking reform for Sacramento. But perhaps the most important is removing parking mandates, those city regulations that require developers to put in parking whether it is needed or will be used, or not.
The city council in January 2021 adopted the Proposed Roadway Changes document that had been recommended by staff working on the 2040 General Plan update. This is a very large document, so the relevant section on parking is excerpted. It states, in unequivocal terms:
10. Eliminate City-mandated parking minimums citywide and introduce parking maximums.
City of Sacramento, Council Report 15, 2021-01-19, 2040 General Plan Update – Draft Land Use Map, Proposed Roadway Changes, and other Key Strategies
Here we are, about two years later, and the staff is recommending considerably less in the draft plan, that action ‘could include’. Not will include, not studied on a timeline, not implemented, but maybe we will think about it, if we get around to that. Could that city have come up with any more vague and unserious language?
M-2.17 Parking Management Strategy. The City shall continue to deploy a parking management strategy that optimizes the use of existing supply, minimizes the need for the construction of new parking facilities, and promotes the use of active modes of transportation, public transit, and highoccupancy vehicles. Program components could include the following:
Adjusting parking management strategies based on goals and needs;
Adjusting parking meter hours and pricing for effective management;
Eliminating City-mandated parking minimums;
Implementing parking maximums along established transit corridors;
Allowing unbundled parking in conjunction with strategies to reduce the need for private automobiles;
Incorporating or facilitating technology such as smart-phone apps and wayfinding signage that direct drivers to open parking spaces in real-time, automated and/ or stacked parking systems, or parking technologies that improve parking efficiency in mixed-use centers and corridors;
Supporting the use of alternative modes by providing alternative programs in lieu of monthly parking passes and discounts; and
Improving branding, communications, and wayfinding signage.
City of Sacramento, draft 2040 General Plan
It should be noted that the General Plan language implies that the city has a parking management strategy, or a parking management plan. So far as the public knows, it does not. So the city is referencing something that either does not exist or has never been shared with the public. The first thing that the General Plan must include is a commitment to developing a parking management plan, with public engagement, and then sharing the plan with the public. The plan does not even mention this.
Getting Around Sacramento 