The Week Without Driving is coming up in less than a month. Two headlines from the website pretty much explain the point of the celebration. “What would change in your life if driving wasn’t an option?” “More than one third of people living in the United States are nondrivers.”
To participate, act and think about these questions:
Take transit, walk, roll or ride.
Ask for a ride.
Who has choices, what are your choices?
If you still have to drive, you haven’t “failed.”
The national event is sponsored by America Walks and Nondrivers Alliance. So far as I know, there are no local events or sponsors, but please let me know if you know of any.
A bicyclist was murdered by a hit-and-run driver on Franklin Blvd four days ago. Hit-and-run driver kills bicyclist, 59, as she repairs bike on Franklin Boulevard (SacBee, 2026-09-03, Darrell Smith). I intentionally use the term ‘murdered’, as I believe that hit-and-run qualifies as murder. It is an intentional decision on the part of the driver to not provide any aide to the victim, possibly saving the life. It is the lowest of driver behavior, and that is a low bar indeed. Unfortunately, state law treats traffic violence as less important than other violence, and except in very few circumstances does the driver/murderer suffer any significant legal consequence.
The person killed, Norma Valdez, was in the southbound bicycle lane on Franklin. The murderer drifted into the bicycle lane and killed her, and then left the scene. So far as I know, the driver has not been found. A memorial has been created on the site by friends.
memorial for Norma Valdez on Franklin Blvd
I was initially interested because I thought the crash was within the area of Vision Zero Complete Street on Franklin, but it is south of Fruitridge Road, in Sacramento County rather than the city. The location is opposite 48th Avenue. At this location, the bike lane is a little wider than usual, about 5.5 feet. There is no protection of any sort for the bike lane.
Conventional Class 2 bike lanes should never be installed on roadways over 30 mph, and generally not over 25 mph. The NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, 3rd Edition, Constrained Bike Lanes, has the following table for ‘constrained’ (conventional) bike lanes. Nothing in this table matches Franklin Blvd at this location. It is higher speed, higher volume, and is two lanes per direction. Franklin should never have been designed this way. Caltrans CA-MUTCD and Highway Design Manual conveniently do not provide an upper speed limit for Class 2 bike lanes. Caltrans treats bicyclists with disdain, though with more respect than walkers. It is widely recognized that Class 2 bike lanes on high speed roadways will lead to fatalities. Such as this one.
The roadway is four lanes, two southbound and two northbound. A median is present in much of this section, but there is a gap here for 48th Avenue, which is only to the east, with no street to the west. La Grande Blvd to the west is a little to the south. The posted speed limit here is 40 mph. Readers will know that if a posted speed limit is 40, actual speeds are 50 to 55 mph. Even at 40 mph, and certainly above that, any collision with a bicyclist or walker will be fatal.
Franklin Blvd near 48th Ave
I walked north on Franklin to Fruitridge Road, which is the southern terminus of the city’s project. City and county are mixed in this area. The county portion is actually better designed than the city portion. The city portion has no bike lanes at all, narrow sidewalks, mostly 4 feet, with either a center turn lane (‘suicide lane’) or with opposing posted 40 mph traffic separated by only a yellow stripe.
This entire area of south Sacramento, both city and county, is a place where motor vehicles dominate all other life.
It is worth noting that the bike lanes on Franklin Blvd and 47th Avenue adjacent to the former Campbells factory could have curb separation since there is only one active driveway in 2900 feet along Franklin and one in 2200 feet along 47th. These would not have prevented this murder, but any improvement is valuable.
Though I would have guessed otherwise, in the five years of TIMS/SWITRS data, 2019 through 2024, there were no bicyclist fatalities or severe injuries in the section of Franklin Blvd between Fruitridge Road and Florin Road.
In response to a comment from a reader, I went to look at the area around Sutter Health Park, primarily the intersections of 5th Street and Cabaldon Parkway, and 3rd Street and Cabaldon Parkway. Note that Google Maps and Google Earth photos from July 2024 do not show the current configuration of these intersections with various traffic calming features, and vertical delineators often do not show up. If you want to see or experience it, you’ll need to go out there for yourself.
The city has kept adding vertical delineators to this entire area in an effort to regulate driver behavior around the ballpark. Things have improved but are still not safe. It is a comment on the drivers that pass though this area, and attend games, that so much has needed to be added, but is still insufficient. I can imagine the city saying “Well that didn’t work, lets add more of that”.
The photo below shows 5th Street southbound approaching Cabaldon Parkway. It is the only one that shows both lane delineators (white) and centerline hardening (yellow). The traffic lane adjacent to the bike lane is very narrow, and the bike lane is not protected in any way from this traffic lane. Much of the lane is in the gutter with a linear seam between the two. Which means it is not actually a legal bike lane, despite the message of green paint. This roadway need to be reconfigured to create a safe bikeway with at least a buffered separation, or ‘protected’ by vertical delineators, or best of all, a hard concrete curb. While riding this bike lane, I was passed by a large truck that drifted into the bike lane, forcing me to the curb.
This roadway design is completely UNSAFE for bicyclists, and must be corrected immediately by the City of West Sacramento.
5th St at Cabaldon Pkwy lane delineators & centerline hardening
The next set shows lane channelization delineators (white). Note that they are no longer white and unbent, they have been run over by drivers multiple times. But they do have a traffic calming effect by discouraging drivers from changing lanes in unsafe locations or at intersections.
The reader commented that motor vehicles in lanes to the right of the delineators, westbound and eastbound on Cabaldon Parkway, drift to the right and into the bike lane. I did not observe this in my time there, and I did not feel unsafe, but I am not discounting the reader’s concern. I may have felt OK because these bike lanes are wider, not the barely legal lanes found many places, including the one above.
The longer stretches of bike lanes, particularly on Cabaldon Pkwy eastbound under the bridge, should be curb protected. Except for the bus stop at West Gateway Apartments, there are no driveways in this section.
A side note: the car in the left hand turn lane in Cabaldon at 3rd photo below sat through two signal cycles because it was not detected, and finally went on the red.
3rd St NB at Cabalon Pkwy lane channelizationCabaldon Pkwy EB lane channelizationCabaldon Pkwy WB at 3rd St lane channelizationCabaldon Pkwy EB at 5th St lane channelizationCabaldon Pkwy WB at 5th St lane channelizationCabaldon Pkwy EB lane channelization
The next set shows centerline hardening (yellow). Most of these are more recent installations, so are mostly still yellow. These appear to be installed to keep drivers from turning into and out of the parking lot areas where they are not supposed to.
5th St SB centerline hardening5th St SB centerline hardening
And lastly, the transition point on 5th Street southbound from the right-side traditional bike lane to the left-side two-way separated bikeway, often called a cycletrack. Note the very narrow bike lane between two lanes of motor vehicle traffic, ‘protected’ (not protected) by a line of lane channelizers on the left side of the bike lane. This is a horrible design. The bike lane should have been continued to the intersection, two-stage turn box, and an exclusive bicycle phase light.
The City of Sacramento is working on a secure bike parking pilot program. This was first presented at the February 2025 SacATC meeting (sacatc_2025-02-20_05-bicycle-parking), and an update was providing at the August 2026 SacATC meeting (SacATC_2026-08-20_agenda-04-bicycle-parking-staff). The presentation provided the following graphic for the secure bike parking solution:
BikeLink mini-station or cage
These secure bike parking facilities from eLock Technologies would use the same BikeLink access, by card or app, that is used for the city’s existing bike lockers located at parking garages. Sacramento Valley Station also has two types of secure bike storage, BikeLink lockers provided by Capitol Corridor, and the BikeHub provided by the city, which uses BikeLink for access but has different rental policies. In the region, Capitol Corridor also provides lockers at Davis, Roseville, Rocklin, and Auburn. City of Folsom has BikeLink lockers at its three light rail stations, and City of Roseville has lockers at transit centers. You can view locations on the BikeLink map. Some but not all locations accept ClipperCards for access, but payment is through BikeLink.
Seeing vandalized and stolen bikes (cut locks, wheels missing, or just wheels remaining, missing seats, etc.) at the outside bike racks in many locations where these lockers are available, leaves me scratching my head about why more people don’t use the lockers. At 5 cents per hour for most locations, this is a tiny price to pay for protecting your bike.
Part of the discussion at the SacATC meeting was about whether this secure parking design would accommodate cargo bikes. It appears not. Though the footprint of this design is 84 inches, it seems that the cage or shell only allows the same traditional bike sizes that standard BikeLink lockers allow, with a depth of 67 or 72 inches.
The BikeLink website mentions large and extra large lockers, so I inquired about these and was provided with the following three diagrams. The ‘large’ size has been installed at the Davis Amtrak (Capitol Corridor) station, 12 lockers. I am not aware that this larger size has been installed at any of the other Capitol Corridor stations. As you can see from the diagram, this larger size is designed to accommodate most long-tail bikes and some cargo bike sizes, with a 36 inch width and 85 inch depth. It does not have the wedge design of the standard lockers, so can accommodate bicycles that are wider front and back.
I was told that the mini-station or cage design was a done deal because there was a contract, though the device has not been delivered or even manufactured, so it seems to me that the contract could be modified.
This is a pilot, and as such, it makes sense to explore additional BikeLink options. I recommend that one of the five secure bike parking locations, which have not been identified yet, include at least two BikeLink large size lockers. The city needs to gain experience with these, as do bicyclists.
All of the existing BikeLink lockers in the Sacramento region seem to be underutilized. For the city garage locations, these are not destinations bicyclist think of when planning their trips. Garages are for cars, not for bicyclists. The K Street tunnel locker is accessible from the path, and the city hall parking garage locker was moved to I Street due to the fire, but still, these are not bicyclist destinations. Since Capitol Corridor makes it so easy to take bikes with you on the train, the Capitol Corridor lockers in this region are underutilized, though in the bay area they are much more highly utilized. BART stations have lockers or BikeHubs.
So the key to the pilot program is to identify where bicyclists want to store their bike securely. The best way to determine that is to ask them. City staff could hang out at some existing traditional bike racks, and ask bicyclists how important secure parking is to them, and where they would most want to see it.
For previous posts on BikeLink and secure bicycle parking, see Tag: BikeLink.
The City of Sacramento has been installing temporary curb extensions, with vertical delineators mounted on bases, at intersections. The extension is ‘temporary’ in the sense that it is not a concrete or hardened extension, though in most cases they will not be replaced with ‘permanent’ due to the expense of permanent installations. These curb extensions slow turning drivers, and reduce the crossing distance for people walking, or rolling. These are an effective countermeasure that increases safety, and I am very happy to see them being installed. In the photo below, on the northeast corner of S Street and 27th Street, the crosswalks have also been freshly painted in a high visibility pattern. The marked crosswalk over 27th Street may be new, and seems to be a new pattern for the city to use.
This particular installation also serves as daylighting, by preventing parking in the daylighting area approaching the intersection. I did not measure it, so am not sure if it meets the legal 20 foot requirement, but it does serve the purpose of increasing visibility by precluding parking. However, many of the installations do not set off the daylighting area, for example the northwest corner in the photo. I do not know why the city has decided in some cases to include daylighting in the curb extensions, and in other cases, not.
Though it would increase the materials cost of installations, requiring more delineators, all curb extension installations should also include daylighting, unless the location already has red curbs and/or signing for daylighting. AB 413 (2023), the daylighting law, does not require red curbs, signing, or delineators, however, the city’s intent is to ticket only where there is an indication for drivers of the law.
It appears that these vertical delineators are Pexco FG 300 Turnpike Grade Curb System. The bases discourage but don’t prevent motor vehicle drivers from running over the delineators ‘just for fun’, and provide more visibility than simple vertical delineators. I have so far not seen any curb extension locations where the delineators have been damaged by drivers. Delineators on the bikeway turn wedges have definitely been damaged by motor vehicle drivers.
I wonder if the lane channelizing vertical delineators on 15th Street and 16th Street should be replaced by this type (Hmm. 16th St traffic calming). These installations really do reduce lane changes at the last moment, which endanger walkers using the crosswalks, the ‘multi-lane threat’ that kills people. They are a success story for Sacramento, and should be used in more locations.
temporary curb extension at S St & 27th St, northeast corner
I have a number of friends who are car free. Like me, they have flexibility in their lives, and time to plan traveling. But several of them also have families and manage to be car free. I recognize it is a challenge, and acknowledge them for the effort. I have a larger number of friends who are car light, own and use a car sometimes, or in some cases, do not have a car but rely on ride hail for many trips. They don’t usually drive, but do for several reasons: they are late, they have to haul more than is comfortable on a bike or walking, they have family members who need to get somewhere and don’t drive (kids and elderly), and they want to go to the mountains or the ocean, both of which are possible without a car but more awkward.
I’m not judging people for not being car free, or using a car sometimes. Life is what happens. I am privileged to lead a life where I do not want to drive, do not need to drive, and have the time to plan trips by other modes. I have no one dependent on me for transportation. I have not owned a car in 15 years, and have not driven a car in 6 years, and now I don’t even have a drivers license. I save a huge amount of money on not have a car and all the accompanying expenses, but I do spend quite a bit on train and transit travel. And I am happy with the additional time it takes to get places. I am not a stay-at-home person, I’m more active that most of the people I know.
But I challenge everyone to pause before driving. Am I driving because I am lazy, or tired? Am I driving because it seems to hot, or too cold, or too windy? Am I driving because it is more convenient or faster than other modes? Am I driving because I forgot to plan ahead to get there some other way? Am I driving because the car keys were right there by the door? Am I driving because I spent a lot of money on my car, and I feel like I need to get the value of that by driving it? Am I driving because it increases my visibility and stature with others (is my car part of how I define my worth)?
Most importantly, could I defer or cancel this trip? Is is really that important? Could I do it tomorrow, or next week, or not at all?
If you think that driving less is good for you, good for your family, good for your community, and good for the earth, then start now. One less trip a week. And another less trip next week. That is actually how I got to car free over several years, driving less and less each week, each month, each year. One attempt at a mode you don’t use, or don’t usually use. Make a plan and use transit. Plan ahead and bicycle or walk. Stay home and enjoy your home. Walk to the coffee shop or bar and enjoy the company.
As part of the Fix 50 project, which has been going on for an indeterminate period of time, and may be complete sometime in this century, Caltrans tore up sidewalks and curbs under the freeway overpasses so that they could use the area under the freeways to store construction material and equipment. One locations was 15th Street under Highway 50. The sidewalk was replaced by uneven asphalt pavement, accessible for some people walking, but certainly not people with mobility devices.
15th Street under the freeway has never had sidewalks on the west side. As with almost all Hwy 50 underpasses, the design was for high-speed on-ramps and off-ramps which would have made walking there suicide. And bicycling as well. Cars first, cars only, the Caltrans motto.
Caltrans started to repair the damage to sidewalk and curb on the east side of 15th. Sometime before June 3, a fence was put up blocking the sidewalk. The result is that there is no path for people walking to follow 15th Street under the freeway. This is a violation of PROWAG, which Caltrans, along with every transportation agency, is legally mandated to follow. Though the regulations provide more detail, the summary says it well: “When an entity closes a pedestrian access route for construction, it must provide a temporary alternate pedestrian access route with basic accessible features. Alternate pedestrian access routes ensure that construction in the public right-of-way does not prevent pedestrians with disabilities from reaching their destinations.” Caltrans did not do so. It could have done so by closing one of the motor vehicle lanes and providing a protected pedestrian access route (and a bicyclist route as well, which is not required by PROWAG but is required by the California MUTCD).
So far as I can determine (remember, Caltrans has fenced off this area), the work remaining to be done is to patch the pavement between the curb and the existing roadway. This is something that would take one day, at most. But as of today, June 16, nothing had changed, nothing had been done. Two weeks. This is the middle finger that Caltrans is giving to people walking. Thirteen days, or more, of no access for people walking, for no good reason, just because Caltrans can’t get its act together to fix something it broke.
First, what it looks like going south to north on 15th Street. The detour is to… 16th Street, a full block away. That intersection is even more hazardous than this one, with two lanes with high volumes of high speed drivers turning left from 16th Street northbound to W Street westbound. You take your life in your hands there. Actually, you take your life in your hands whenever and wherever you use a facility designed by Caltrans, but 16th Street is one of the worst.
15th St at X St, pedestrian detour sign
Second, what it looks like going south on 15th Street. You can see the fence that blocks access, but you can’t see, from here, the minor fix that would remove this problem. Apparently the person walking had gone around the fence, unwilling to go two blocks out of their way, to and from 16th Street. This is the target audience for Caltrans, and by ‘target’, I mean a person at risk of bodily injury or death at the hands of Caltrans. At least Caltrans put up a small ‘bicycles share the road’ at a locations where drivers are sure not to see it. This should be an illegal sign in any case, as drivers take it to mean, bicyclists should get out of the way and ‘share’ the road with cars. California MUTCD also required bicyclist accommodation in this situation.
15th St at W St, pedestrian access blocked
And this is what it looked like today, June 16. No change, except that the ‘bicyclists share the road’ sign is gone. Again, the suggested detour is to the even more hazardous intersection of 16th Street and the freeway.
15th St at W St, pedestrian detour, sidewalk blockage
I have said before, but it bears repeating, that Caltrans District 3, which includes Sacramento county, is a rogue agency, funded by taxpayers (your tax money) but accountable to no one. Not Caltrans headquarters, not California Transportation Commission, not the governor, not the federal government. And most particularly, not the citizens of Sacramento. They do what they want, when they want. They want you to just accept that they are killing you, using your own money for the crime.
I sometimes wonder if the felon Trump got his ideas for grift, criminality and incompetence from observing Caltrans District 3.
In the 2025 book Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequity (2025; ISBN 978-1-324-13056-7), Deborah N Archer lays out the issues that have long plagued the Black community as their neighborhoods were underinvested, and broken up by transportation infrastructure built for the convenience of white people. She also covers the past legal frameworks that encouraged this, as well as the laws which can be used to fight it and correct it. I am part way though reading the book, but it has deepened my understanding of the racial bias built into our transportation system.
This is not just a problem of other cities. The alignment of Interstate 5 was designed to both erase low income housing and the people of color that lived there, as well as related businesses, and to isolate what remained from the rest of the city. The alignment of Highway 50 was designed to remove low income housing and the people of color that lived there, to isolate the higher income Land Park neighborhood from the city, and erased part of Southside Park. Highway 99 cut directly through south Sacramento and isolated the Black neighborhoods on both sides. And this is just the freeways. Arterial roadways were placed, and widened, and widened again, to separate people of color, and to cater to higher income while people. Many of these were not directed just at Black neighborhoods, but at all immigrant and low income people.
In Chapter 6, ‘The White Man’s Right of Way’, Archer delves more deeply into the issue of sidewalks:
“Even in cities that were not segregated by law, sidewalks in predominantly Black neighborhoods are less common and of poorer quality, often as the result of a legal regime that places greater reliance on private property owners. More than perhaps any other means of transportation, pedestrian infrastructure is highly localized in its construction, funding, and maintenance; the federal government does little to oversee or force accountability on sidewalk quality or even whether sidewalks are required on a particular road. Sidewalks are in some ways “public,” but are also closely associated with adjacent properties or lots. The result is that neighborhood socioeconomic disparities map directly onto pedestrian infrastructure quality, as poorer neighborhoods that are disproportionately Black and Brown are less able to invest private capital into maintaining their sidewalks.”
The City of Sacramento responds to complaints about sidewalk condition such as root heaves by making the adjacent property owner repair the sidewalk, or if the property owner does not do so, doing the repair through a contractor and billing the property owner. This is the city’s policy. State law allows the city to impose this, though it does not require the city to impose it. And just because something is in state law does not make it constitutional. As I have said before, requiring a private property owner to maintain city property is prima facie unconstitutional.
The city could take on responsibility, if it so chose. It is worth noting that some of the most poorly maintained sidewalks in the city are adjacent to property the city itself owns. The city often does not apply the requirement to itself.
The cost of a sidewalk repair does not fall equitably. A commercial property owner or a high income property owner may be able to handle the cost of repair, which can be quite expensive. A low income or even moderate income property owner cannot. So where are low income and moderate income property owners located? In those parts of the city where sidewalks were narrow or nonexistent, where the standards of construction were lower or overlooked, where sidewalk buffers, if they were present at all, were too narrow to allow for healthy trees. In other words, north Sacramento and south Sacramento.
Archer says: “Municipalities that require private property owners to maintain sidewalks can worsen disparities when they enforce those rules in inequitable or unreasonable ways. For example, when cities pay for the cost of repairs themselves, they often will bill the adjacent property owner. This debt can be enforced through a lien that may ultimately result in foreclosure on the property. It should not be a surprise that Black communities bear the brunt of this practice.”
I used to file 311 reports on sidewalks, before I understood that the financial burden fell on property owns, and not on the city. Once I realized this, I stopped reporting. Archer says:
“A related problem comes when cities rely on private complaints to determine where and when the city should repair damaged sidewalks. Several cities use voluntary complaint systems like “311” phone calls to assess which sidewalks need work. Low-income communities of color are far less likely to call to request help. Seattle, Washington, switched from a 311 system to a fixed repair schedule after officials realized that relying on 311 led the city to make a disproportionate number of repairs in high-income, white neighborhoods. Those residents were more comfortable filing complaints and likely had higher expectations that those complaints would be addressed. When Boston embarked on a citywide campaign to address sidewalk inequities in 2017, it opted not to use a 311 system. Instead, city officials went block by block over Boston’s 1,600 miles of sidewalk to set repair priorities. But not all cities have the interest or the resources to follow Seattle’s and Boston’s leads.”
One can argue about whether these disparities were intentional on the part of the city, or inattention by the city, or the result of private developers, or any number of other excuses. The fact remains that Black, Latinx, and immigrant communities have lower quality walking environments, and lower quality sidewalks, and many of the property owners there cannot afford to maintain these sidewalks.
Placing the burden of sidewalk repair on adjacent property owners is racist, if not in intent, then in practice. It is time to change this. It is time for the city to take on responsibility for maintaining sidewalks. I am not talking about situations where damage to a sidewalk is clearly the result of trees planted on private property too close to the sidewalk, or where driving over sidewalks by private property owners (or their tenants) caused damage. But I am most certainly talking about sidewalks where trees in the city right-of-way, which includes sidewalk buffers (planting strips), have caused the damage, and deterioration due to natural causes or substandard construction led to damage. I have looked at miles of sidewalks in the city, and can say with certainty that the city often accepted substandard sidewalk construction because it did not care about the neighborhoods where this shoddy construction was the pattern.
I have written about Denver’s solution (Denver’s approach to sidewalk maintenance, 2024-11-05), and will have more (much more) to say about sidewalks. They are the neglected part of our transportation system.
One of the many reasons that I travel is to see transportation facilities in different places, ways in which cities have made active transportation and transit better, or worse. I’m in Philadelphia at the moment, and one of the features that has been implemented is…
sidewalk-level bikeway on Market St in Philadelphia
These sidewalk-level separated/protected bikeways are on several blocks of Market Street, the main east-west street in Philadelphia. These are new, and were under construction during my last visit a year ago. NACTO calls these Raised Protected Bike Lanes, with designs on the Separating Protected Bike Lanes page (scroll down for this design section).
These bikeways are visually distinctive from the adjacent sidewalk, composed of different materials and colors, red brick for the sidewalk (many sidewalks in Philadelphia are brick), grey granite for the separation, and black asphalt for the bikeway. NACTO recommends a tactile warning delineator (TWD) between the sidewalk and bikeway. The granite separator and change of texture may or may not meet this criteria for visually impaired people. Though
Philadelphia downtown has a significant bicyclist mode share, but it mostly seems to be on the north-south arterials and collectors, not on east-west streets. But this may be an artifact of the time of day I observed. It has a wide variety of bike facilities: traditional bike lanes, vertical delineator ‘separated’ bikeways, two-way separated bikeways (cycle tracks), parking protected bikeways, bikeways along transit islands. I don’t know the criteria, but I suspect that available roadway width is a determinant.
Sacramento is proposing a sidewalk-level bikeway (2-way cycle track) on H Street between 9th Street and 10th Street, at City Hall. I believe the design is for paint on the existing sidewalk, not reconstruction of that section. It will be interesting to see if this design works.
For previous posts on sidewalks and walkability, see category: sidewalks, and category: walkability.
Almost every complete streets and safety project the City of Sacramento has undertaken has focused on the roadway part of the street, the part where motor vehicles and bicycles travel. They have not focused on the sidewalks.
The ‘complete streets’ concept (note that I’ve placed it in quotes) emphasizes travel along corridors, not local travel and life. Lanes are narrowed or reduced. Bicycle facilities are added. A few safer crossings are added. Sometimes parking is reduced or eliminated. This is all good. But by designing and building this definition of ‘complete streets’, sidewalks are usually neglected. If a sidewalk is present, that is considered good enough. ADA ramps are added at corners, which is good, but the sidewalks in between corners are often untouched. There is a reason for this: repaving a street and then re-striping for different roadway width allocation is cheap (relatively). Replacing and widening sidewalks, and moving curb lines, is expensive. The result of a ‘complete street’ is a street that eases, and perhaps makes safer, travel by bicyclists and motor vehicle drivers, but does little for people walking.
It is bad enough that sidewalks are not improved, but by refusing to move curb lines, and/or to remove private development within the public right-of-way, the common issue of sidewalk buffers (which the city calls planting strips, though they may be used for many purposes in addition to planting) is perforce neglected.
Sidewalk width
Sidewalks should be a minimum of six feet, with widths up to 16 feet where the frequency of people walking justifies it. Many city sidewalks are five feet, and there are relict sidewalks of four feet. And of course there are many streets in the 50’s to 70’s developments that have no sidewalks at all. If a sidewalk is less than six feet, on a roadway that is being reconfigured or reconstructed, the sidewalk should be widened to at least six feet. Wider if justified by walking.
Driveways
In locations with sidewalk buffers, the slope of a driveway in often across the sidewalk, which makes the sidewalk dangerous for anyone in a mobility device, and uncomfortable for all walkers and rollers. Much of south and north Sacramento suffer from this design. Where it is present, it must be corrected. There is a correction available which ramps the sidewalk down and then up again across the driveway, and this is legal in PROWAG, but it is and should be the design of last resort. The better design is to slope the driveway across the buffer. And to remove unnecessary driveway. Strong SacTown and I will write more about this.
Sidewalk buffers
Sidewalk buffers, where they are present, are almost always too narrow to support healthy, mature trees. A healthy tree needs a sidewalk buffer of eight feet or more. If the buffer is six feet, as is common, an assessment should be made about the health and type of trees, to determine whether a wider buffer is needed. If the tree is healthy, and the sidewalk not heaved by roots, probably best to leave it alone. If the buffer is narrower than six feet, it should be widened, with curb line moved if necessary. And if a buffer is absent, it must be installed. Sacramento is the ‘city of trees’. Unfortunately, it is also the city of constrained and unhealthy trees that have heaved sidewalks, because the city and developers did not care to create a safe, healthy place for them to grow. In neighborhoods of north and south Sacramento, where buffers were not created, there are often almost no trees at all. The trees on private property have died and not been replaced, and the city has not provided trees. These are miserable places to live and walk.
Funding constraints
So, given that curbs and sidewalks are more expensive than re-striping a street, what is the solution? The city’s solution is to neglect the sidewalks, and thereby neglect the trees. My solution is that corridors being reconstructed need to be shortened in order to free up money to do the sidewalks, and sidewalk buffers, right. This is a long term investment. Streets usually only last about 40 years before needing significant work. Sidewalks and sidewalk buffers are a long-term investment, that pays off for livability and reduces city liabilities every day, every budget cycle. The sidewalks and 12 foot sidewalk buffers in the Poverty Ridge area of Sacramento (see sidewalk buffer widths) are in good condition after 100 years or more. Sidewalks have required minor repairs in a few places, but most of the work was for utilities. The buffers have been used for a variety of purposes: trees, gardens, seating areas, play equipment, etc. Not just planting.
If a street is being reconstructed, do it right. Make sure there are wide sidewalks and wide sidewalk buffers. If that means that 10 blocks can be completed instead of 40 blocks, so be it. Do it right, and it will last, and will contribute far more to livability and walkability that a roadway reconfiguration.
The photo below shows a section of Stockton Blvd with a sufficiently wide buffer (wider would be better), and healthy trees (at least until they mature). But this is an unusual section of Stockton. Much of Stockton has narrow sidewalks and no sidewalk buffers. The city is planning to spend a lot of money on reconfiguring the roadway on Stockton, but is not fixing the sidewalks nor adding sidewalk buffers except in a few places.
Getting Around Sacramento 