Category: Active Transportation

Walkable Sacramento #2: crosswalks

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This is the second in a series of posts on a Walkable Sacramento, starting with crosswalk policies.

Crosswalks

  • All prohibited crossing locations will be evaluated within two years, and every instance that is not clearly justified will be removed. Locations were infrastructure change is required to accomplish safety will be prioritized for funding and resolved within five years.
  • No crosswalk will be removed without approval of the Active Transportation Commission and the city council.
  • All crosswalk locations with more than 200 crossings per day will have marked high visibility crosswalks, within five years.
  • All intersections with more than 2000 crossings per day will receive an exclusive pedestrian phase, within three years.
  • Marked and safe crosswalks will be provided on all roadways at no less than an 1/8 mile interval, within two years. Pending the installation of safety countermeasures, speed limits will be reduced. Modify ‘complete streets’ policies so that they address this interval of safe crossings, and do not construct ‘complete streets’ that fall short. 
  • All marked crosswalks will be daylighted in the upstream direction with red curb markings and removal of marked parking, within five years, with a goal of 20% per year. All unmarked crosswalks will be daylighted within ten years, with a goal of 10% per year. (Daylighting means to remove the parking space closest to the crosswalk, so that walkers may better see vehicles, and drivers better see pedestrians. Sometimes this daylighted area receives a painted or concrete curb extension.)
  • All crosswalks with at least 2000 crossings per day will receive curb extensions where parking lanes are present, within eight years. 
  • Raised crosswalks or raised intersections will be installed at any intersection where serious injury and fatality occurs after other measures have been taken.
  • Roadway crossing distances will be limited to no more than 60 feet. Where wider roadways exist, median refuge islands with pedestrian activation buttons will be installed to reduce distances to 40 feet or less, within five years. 
  • No roads will be constructed that are more than two lanes in each direction, and all roads with more than two lanes will be reallocated within ten years, with the purpose being to reduce crossing distance. Freeways and expressways with strictly limited access may have more lanes.

Walkable Sacramento

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

With the creation of specific goals and implementation of specific policies, the City of Sacramento can become a walking-first city, in the same sense that San Francisco and Chicago are transit-first cities. 

These goals transcend the built form; they are as applicable to the suburbs as to the central city. Though the policies are in part an attempt to regenerate the suburbs that were built on a cars-first model, they are applicable everywhere in the city. 

Accomplishment of a walkable Sacramento will require that most transportation funding over the next ten years be directed to fixing pedestrian infrastructure that was poorly designed without the needs of walkers in mind. In all policy, investment, and expenditure decisions, the needs of car-free and car-light individuals and families will be considered at least co-equal with those of drivers. Much of current transportation infrastructure was created without considering those too young to drive or too old to drive safely, and who cannot or choose not to drive. A walking-first Sacramento requires that we invert this model, with walkers the top priority. 

Low income communities should receive the first improvements to the walking environment, to counteract previous disinvestment and higher traffic threats in these communities. Neighborhoods with both low-income and high walking rates will be prioritized. However, at the completion of changes in policy and infrastructure, all neighborhoods will be walkable.

Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which requires a reduction in vehicle miles traveled, and public health benefits for physical activity, air quality, and protection from traffic hazards, will be the primary motivators of a shift to a walkable Sacramento. These and other benefits will be clearly communicated to the public to create and maintain support for the necessary changes. It is recognized that the changes necessary may make travel by privately owned vehicle somewhat slower and less convenient, but the emphasis will be on the ways in which walking is superior to driving for many trips. 

The goal of our transportation system for walkers will be zero serious injuries and fatalities, and any policy or practice that does not support this goal will be eliminated. 

Goals

  • Everyday destinations such as jobs, groceries, coffee shops and schools will be available within a 30 minute walk of every residence.
  • Walking, bicycling and transit infrastructure will be planned together so that they support each other synergistically.
  • Walking will be an option for most trips in life, and will be the preferred mode for many trips.
  • Pedestrian infrastructure will receive the majority of transportation funding until such time as it is complete and in a state of good repair.

Note: This is part one of a series of posts. I’m breaking it up both for my benefit and in the hopes that it will encourage people to comment on specific categories and issues and not just the concept as a whole. More to come…

Caltrans pedestrian killer

Dan Allison4 Comments

Last week I walked from the Arden Fair Mall area to REI. No, there is no bus that covers that route. There is a sidewalk on the north side of Exposition Blvd, not on the south side. At the I-80 Business onramp to to the freeway south, there is a pedestrian crossing of sorts, as shown in the photo below. There are ADA ramps on both sides of the onramp, but there is no marked crosswalk, there are not signs indicating that it is a pedestrian crossing (at a minimum, there should be a MUTCD W11-2 and W16-7 sign set, shown at bottom. But there is nothing. Drivers are accelerating onto the freeway at this point, not thinking in any way about someone crossing the ramp. Making it worse, the overpass leading to this point is convex, so that sight distances are limited and a driver would not see a pedestrian in time to make a graceful yield or stop. Note in the photo that the ramps are newer than the onramp; they were placed after initial construction, without any attention paid to their actual use. This is typical Caltrans engineering, doing what the law requires without thinking about it at all.

Just barely noticeable in the photo is a sign on the ground just on the other side of the onramp. This sign was knocked over by a vehicle (driver) who either was going to fast or decided at the last moment this was not the ramp wanted, and continued straight, jumping the curb, knocking down the sign, and continuing along the sidewalk before eventually returning to the street.

This location is a pedestrian killer, designed by Caltrans for that purpose.

This interchange needs to be completely redesigned. There should be no free onramps or off-ramps. All traffic should be required to make right-angle turns onto and off the freeway ramps, in order to slow drivers to a safe speed. A safe pedestrian route should be installed to that it is motor vehicles rather than walkers who need to go out of the way. All pedestrian crossings should have marked high-visibility crosswalks, with pedestrian signals that allow an exclusive phase for pedestrians.

I haven’t even mentioned bicyclist facilities here. They are just as bad, just as hazardous at the pedestrian facilities.

Caltrans engineers are directly responsible for any and all crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists at this interchange. They have designed and promoted something that can and will kill pedestrians and bicyclists.

unacceptable accommodation

Dan Allison1 Comment

Sacramento City continues its practice of approving construction projects that do not consider the needs of walkers and bicyclists. Here is the latest I ran across, on Folsom Blvd between Santa Ynez Way and 39th St. The construction on the south side appears to be installing cable or fiber. At the west end, there is a sudden ‘sidewalk closed’ sign. There is no prior warning, there is no ramp or marked crosswalk for crossing Folsom to the north side (it requires crossing an offset intersection diagonally to go from one ramp to another, an exceptionally long distance), and there is no indication about how long the detour is.

At the other end, there is the same sort of signing without any prior warning or information provided.

At this location, 39th St, there is a marked crosswalk with traffic signal which could allow people to cross Folsom, but just to make sure the message that pedestrians are unwelcome here is clearly received, a construction truck was parked across the crosswalk. When I asked the construction crew to move the truck, they refused. I reported it to parking enforcement but am not sure of the outcome.

Of course there is a bicycle lane along this section of Folsom Blvd, which is also blocked by the construction. That may be justifiable, but you would think that forcing bicyclists to share the general purpose traffic lane would justify a reduction of the speed limit from 35 mph to 25 mph, but no, that that would inconvenience drivers and in the city, that is not to be considered.

This kind of bias against walkers and bicyclists should be unacceptable in the city. And it would be if the staff of Construction Services were not biased against walkers and bicyclists. Time to replace that staff with people who care about all modes of travel.

Leaf season

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In my neighborhood, about half the trees have lost all their leaves for the year, and the other half are still hanging on. If I listen closely, I can hear the tick of leaves hitting the ground.

So, how have the bike lanes been doing during leaf season? At least for the parts of the central city and east Sacramento that I ride in, acceptably OK. People are putting their leaf piles in the bike lanes much less often than in previous years. I’m not sure why. I haven’t noticed any city effort to educate about this, other than a vague “When possible, avoid placing piles in bike lanes.” on their Leaf Season page. But I really do believe there are less piles in the bike lanes. Maybe people are beginning to clue in. If only there were a similar improvement in trash cans in bike lanes.

A big concern was how the new separated bikeways (‘protected bike lanes’, ‘cycletracks’) on P and Q and 10th (and now 9th) would do. The city has not yet purchased a device for sweeping these bike facilities. Apparently the ‘the claw’, the loader that collects the leaf piles and moves them into dump trucks, can negotiate the bikeways, and this is how they have been kept clear. This is working pretty well, all except for one block, pictured below. This section of P Street between 15th and 14th has a large accumulation of leaves, and the leaves have developed into leaf slime, with is an incredibly slippery mush of decayed leaves. I am not sure what is different about this block, but it certainly is different. It needs to be cleaned now, and cleaned more frequently.

P Street separated bikeway leaf slime

Sacramento among 10 best new bikeways

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People for Bikes just published “America’s 10 Best New Bikeways of 2018” and Sacramento is one of them. Congratulations!

4. Sacramento, California
The J Street Safety Project was designed to calm traffic, improve pedestrian crossings, provide parking-protected bikeways, and make the street more inviting for travel. They chose to add a parking-protected lane to allow people of all ages and levels to bike the grid, separated from moving traffic. Travel lanes were reduced from 3 to 2, encouraging slower vehicle speeds, decreasing pedestrian crossing lengths, and improving corridor safety.
The project came out of the Central City Transportation Plan (Grid 3.0) in 2016, and is a marriage of street maintenance funding and transportation planning. They found that there was a need to calm traffic and improve pedestrian crossings, which was identified by the local businesses and residential community. The project improves pedestrian visibility by moving parking back from the intersection. It also benefits local businesses along the corridor by slowing traffic and increasing ease of crossing the corridor.
So far they’ve built over 25 blocks of parking-protected bikeways this year, and have funding for another 22 blocks.

People for Bikes

21950 and Vision Zero

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California Vehicle Code 21950, failure to yield to pedestrians, is in my opinion the most important violation as it applies to implementing Vision Zero in Sacramento. The Vision Zero Sacramento Action Plan (draft) says “Launch high-visibility enforcement campaigns against speeding, failure to yield to pedestrians, distracted driving, and impaired driving. Campaigns will focus on HIN corridors.” The state code says:

21950.
  (a) The driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, except as otherwise provided in this chapter.
(b) This section does not relieve a pedestrian from the duty of using due care for his or her safety. No pedestrian may suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard. No pedestrian may unnecessarily stop or delay traffic while in a marked or unmarked crosswalk.
(c) The driver of a vehicle approaching a pedestrian within any marked or unmarked crosswalk shall exercise all due care and shall reduce the speed of the vehicle or take any other action relating to the operation of the vehicle as necessary to safeguard the safety of the pedestrian.
(d) Subdivision (b) does not relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection.

VEHICLE CODE – VEH, DIVISION 11. RULES OF THE ROAD,CHAPTER 5. Pedestrians’ Rights and Duties; http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=21950; retrieved 2018-12-15

So, how is the Sacramento Police Department doing on enforcing this code against drivers who fail to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk? Well, from the ‘Sacramento Police Vehicle Stop Data’ (http://data.cityofsacramento.org/datasets/sacramento-police-vehicle-stop-data) of the last two years, there were 101 violations of 21950 recorded, out of 61,151 violations. This is 0.17 percent, or, other violations were 582 times more common.

Anyone spending more than 10 minutes standing on the corner of any busy pedestrian intersection could count a hundred violations of this law. I know this because I do it. It is part of my job and it is also part of my advocacy. In two years the police only wrote 105 citations? I will also add that I have seen Sacramento Police Department officers in motor vehicles violating this very code hundreds of times, on myself and on others. Even the bicycle mounted officers are frequent violators. I will say that officers have yielded to me in the crosswalk, but it is much more common that they don’t. I’m not saying that they are trying to run me down, rather than they don’t wish to be slowed or inconvenienced, and so will cross through the crosswalk when I’m in it. They are, in this sense, just like other drivers.

So what is this disconnect between what is important and what officers do? I’m going to be blunt here. The police not partners in achieving Vision Zero, in fact they are the main impediment to Vision Zero. If they persist in their windshield perspective that pedestrians are the problems and drivers don’t mean to cause harm, pedestrians will continue to die, and drivers will continue to not face consequences for their violations, for their assaults, for their murders.

If you wish to reply that we all need to work together, and consider perspectives, well, please present evidence that this has worked in the part, or some construct that says it will work in the future. I’m not seeing it. In case you think I am picking on Sac PD, things are actually worse in other jurisdictions, but since this is where I live and observe the issue every day, it is the place I focus on.

By the way, thank you Don Kostelec @KostelecPlan for getting me fired up about all the ways in which our entire system is biased against pedestrians, and that those people whose job it is to consider and act on safety are mostly only concerned about drivers and traffic flow. I encourage you to follow his ‘The Twelve Days of Safety Myths‘ series.

Smart Cycling and LCI Seminar now open!

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Jibe (formerly North Natomas TMA) is hosting two Smart Cycling (Traffic Skills 101) courses, in December and January, and a League Cycling Instructor (LCI) Seminar in February. If you are interested in working with youth for Jibe and other regional programs, or being a bicycling instructor, check the flier and position announcement, and sign up now! Yours truly is a LCI who leads the bicyclist education program in San Juan Unified School District, and cannot speak more highly of this opportunity. Go for it!

Smart Cycling class December

Jibe Bicycle Instructor Position

 

Traffic Skills and Project Ride Smart

Dan Allison1 Comment

Jibe (formerly North Natomas TMA) and partners are offering two Traffic Skills 101 workshops, in December and January. Though the workshops are schedule to train new instructors for the Jibe Project Ride Smart program that teaches bicycling skills and safety in schools, they are open to others. Traffic Skills is a League of American Bicyclists course that qualifies people to go on to take the League Cycling Instructor Seminar.

The first workshop is Thursday, December 6, evening, and Saturday, December 8, daytime.

Please check the flier for more information.

JUMP news

Dan Allison3 Comments

I learned from a JUMP field staff how to deal with U-bars that won’t insert. Just move the rear wheel a bit, and it will go in. The U-bar is hitting the spokes, so rotating the rear wheel removes the block. This happens particularly with the charging rack, since with the front wheel locked into the rack, the rear wheel doesn’t move as much.

JUMP just changed their return to hub policy. Users will get a 25 cent credit for returning a bike to any hub, on that trip, and a dollar credit for returning to any charging hub. The email (graphics below) doesn’t make it clear if this applies to any drop zone hub, or only the charging hubs, but my experience yesterday and today is that it is for any drop zone hub (the green icon with lightning bolt). The credit I got for drop zone hubs was $1.25, both credits together. This could change. It could also vary depending on your membership type. I hope that this will encourage people to return bikes to hubs at the end of their trip. I often see bikes parked less than a half block from hub. Will 25 cents make a difference? Probably not, but it is a start. How about 50 cents, JUMP? In some other cities, there is a charge of $2 for leaving a bike outside a hub, in addition to the trip charge. I hope that we don’t need to go there in Sacramento.

I now have a student membership in JUMP Sac since I’m a student at American River College. At $30 a year, it is a great deal for anyone who uses JUMP regularly. You get 60 free minutes a day. Almost makes it worth being a student! An oddity is that taking a bike to a drop zone hub for credit counts against my daily minutes, until the daily minutes are used up, then the ride time is no longer charged. So it seems I get partial credit while I still have minutes, and full credit after I don’t have minutes remaining. I’m not sure I understand this structure, and I’m not sure it is consistent.

I, and everyone else, had hoped that bike parking would improve over time as people got used to the system, but parking seems to be getting worse rather than better. I’m not talking about parking in the buffer zone or to the side on wide sidewalks, which while technically illegal is practical where there are no bike racks, but parking in the sidewalk. This morning there were six bikes parked on and blocking the sidewalk on S Street. I don’t know why users would do this, as there was a sidewalk buffer immediately adjacent with plenty of space for bike parking (though nothing to lock to). Get it together people! There is no excuse for this kind of parking. It is both rude and hazardous for people walking, particularly if they have mobility issues and can’t go around. I moved the bikes. Yes, they are heavy.

I have been finding a lot of dead GPS bikes, with no display and no lights on the GPS unit. I’m not sure if this is common, or I’m just adept at finding them. If you find a bike like this, that does not wake up when buttons are pressed, please report it to support@jumpbikes.com. Sometimes they have lost track of these bikes, and sometimes they know the last location before the unit went dead, but it doesn’t hurt to report it.