transportation and May is Bike Month thoughts (guest)

2023/11/082023/11/19 Dan Allison2 Comments

This is a guest post from reader Sonya Hendren. Sonya is a bike advocate and educator in the Sacramento region.

In looking back at this year’s May is Bike Month, two comments during meetings have left an impression, informing my current opinions on the efficacy of our bike advocacy.

During a neighborhood association meeting about walking/biking safety, a panelist emphasized that transportation projects are funded by competitive grants. It’s a fixed-sum game: if Sacramento gets a grant, all the losing cities’ projects are left unfunded. If another city’s project wins, Sacramento’s project doesn’t happen, at least not in this funding cycle, from this source. Of course our first instinct, mine included, is to cheer for Sacramento; we get funding, we do projects.

My revelation is that I don’t want Sacramento to win competitive grants. In the Freeport Blvd Transportation plan, the city never considered a road diet (reduction in lanes), despite it being a prominent request during the community input phase, because their goal is to maintain previous ADT (average daily traffic count.)¹The city works to maintain current levels of private-car use. The city’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, companion document to the General Plan, reduces the MCCC (Mayors’ Commission on Climate Change) goal of 30% Active Transportation, down to 6%. Under these practices and policies, Sacramento would use transportation funding to further cement car-dependency. Grant funding would be better spent in another city that is actually trying to shift transportation mode share away from private-cars, trying to reduce VMT (vehicle miles traveled). The project in another city would do more good to Sacramento by serving as a positive example, than spending the money in Sacramento under Sacramento’s current practices and policies.

Second, during a debrief-and-next-steps meeting on school “bike buses,” I learned that after Safe Routes to Schools programs end, feedback of continued walking/biking is the rare exception, not the norm. The norm is that Safe Routes to Schools programs are funded for one to three years, they get a group of kids walking or biking during those years, and when the funding ends, all the families go back to driving. Current infrastructure and incentives are such that without a paid person there helping, even students/families who have been taught how to walk/bike to school and practiced it for years, do not. That’s so discouraging: if “holding people’s hands,” not just teaching them the routes, but traveling those routes with them regularly, sometimes for years, doesn’t convert people to using the routes, how can any of our encouragement projects have any affect??

Caltrans likes killer interchanges

2023/10/042024/01/21 Dan Allison2 Comments

See Caltrans Readies Guidance for Complete Streets, with a Giant Exemption (StreetsblogCal, 2023-09-29) and Caltrans: We Need Complete Streets at Freeway Interchanges (CalBike, 2023-09-28).

I worked for 10 years as the Safe Routes to School Coordinator for San Juan Unified School District. Three of those years were focused on Citrus Heights schools, and the rest on schools in unincorporated Sacramento County (Orangevale, Fair Oaks, Carmichael, Arden-Arcade, and Gold River). The interchanges with Interstate 80 presented barriers for students who lived on one side and went to school on the other. They could not walk or bike across the freeway, because the interchanges were designed to be safe only for motor vehicle drivers (and not really even those), not to be safe for walkers and bicyclists. Crosswalks over on-ramps and off-ramps were placed where drivers would cross them at freeway speeds, with poor visibility due to the curves. Bike lanes were usually non-existent, and when they were there, exposed bicyclists to high speed merges at on-ramps and off-ramps. If you have ever had the ‘pleasure’ of walking or riding across one of these interchanges, you will know how scary and unpleasant they are. Generally only ‘fearless’ bicyclists and people who have no other choices will walk or bicycle here.

Since these horrible interchanges were designed and constructed by Caltrans, you might think that they are responsible for fixing them. They deny responsibility. They say to cities and counties, if you want a better interchange, you build it on your own money, or with grants. One of the interchanges in Citrus Heights, Antelope Road, was repaved by Caltrans, and they removed the bike lane from the westbound direction. Of course that bike lane was not safe to begin with, but removing it was criminal.

Same Caltrans denial of responsibility for ped/bike bridges over the freeway. There is one ped/bike bridge over I-80 in the entire stretch between Sunrise Blvd and Watt Ave, a distance of about eight miles. One. And it is no a pleasant crossing to use, often full of trash and graffiti. Again, to the cities and counties, Caltrans says, if you want it, you pay for it, don’t expect it to come out of our budget.

Given this, Caltrans will not even allow the application of complete streets designs to these interchanges. They want them to remain as they are, barriers to travel, and killers of the few walkers and bicyclists who use them.

All of this after spending four years developing a new complete streets policy, which could have been done in a year if Caltrans were not dragging its feet. Caltrans says that it has changed its ways, and is now concerned with people who walk and bicycle. Their actions say otherwise.

$5 billion, or reduce cars

2023/08/31 Dan Allison3 Comments

The number of $5 billion (or more) has been bandied about recently as the amount of money we need to fix all the poorly designed and dangerous roads in the City of Sacramento. The number seems reasonable, and I myself have estimated that sidewalk repair alone is $1.5 billion. This is just the city, let alone the county or region. The county and region are in most cases much worse off than the city. I support more funding for this work, some via sales taxes, but more via property taxes. After all, it is property that requires our transportation infrastructure and benefits from a good system.

But what if there is a better way? A less expensive way?

I encourage you to watch the latest (August 24) episode of Not Just Bikes (by Jason Slaughter), titled ‘Even Small Towns are Great Here (5 Years in the Netherlands)‘. He has collected video clips from visits to small towns across the Netherlands. He has two main points about small towns: almost all of them are served by good rail service, and many of the small towns and suburbs don’t need extensive bike structure because there are so few motor vehicles that it is safe and comfortable to ride on any street. My favorite quote from the video is:

“To make a place friendly for cycling, it was more important to restrict cars than it was to build a bunch of expensive bicycle infrastructure. After all, protected bike lanes are just an extension of car infrastructure, right. You don’t need bike paths if you don’t have a lot of cars.”
Not Just Bikes (Jason Slaughter)

A related quote, that I will have to paraphrase, since I can’t find the original source is: We have plenty of space for bikes on our streets, its just that it is currently occupied by cars.

The point, for me, is that we could make much more effective investments if we greatly reduced the number of cars on the road rather than trying to make all our roads safe for bicycling and walking. We need to make car drivers pay the true cost of their transportation choice: fossil fuel extraction, climate change, air pollution, expensive highways, foreign wars and fossil fuel subsidies, and a long list of others. Yes, and making it necessary to build protective infrastructure for walkers and bicyclist to protect them from those drivers. We need to make is more expensive and less convenient to drive, so that people will make other choices.

If we actively and directly reduce car dominance, we might only need $1 billion to fix everything. Still a lot of money, but not out of reach.

Jason moved to the Netherlands from Canada, but the car dominated ‘no places’ that he left are the same car dominated ‘no places’ of the United States, and of Sacramento. In fact, Canada tried to imitate the US, and left themselves impoverished, both economically and mobility wise.

Imagine for a moment, someone saying “Carmichel, where there are so few cars that it is safe to bicycle and walk on any street, and the are great transit connections to all the regional destinations.” They would be laughed out of the room. Yet Carmichael, and unincorporated town in Sacramento County, is about the same size as many of the small cities called out in the Not Just Bikes video. We have designed a horrible world in service of the idea that we can and should drive everywhere. We if we flip that and make it hard and expensive to drive everywhere, places will begin to heal. Even Carmichael.

Central City Mobility update

2023/08/16 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

This is Central City Mobility Project update #21.

I have been backpacking and traveling, so not keeping up as much with the Central City Mobility Project. I may do updates on my days back in town, about once a week.

19th St: Paint and vertical delineators are mostly complete from H St to W St. Nothing has happened in the two blocks from W St to Broadway. Though pavement has been patched from Q St to W St, no other work has occurred.

21st St: Paint and vertical delineators are complete from W St to I St. No bicycle signal at I St, so the intersection of 21st St and I St remains extremely hazardous to bicyclists (and walkers).

P St: Paint and vertical delineators are complete from 21st St to 15th St.

Q St: Paint is mostly complete from 14th St to 21st St. Vertical delineators have been installed on some blocks but not others, probably due to materials shortages. Some crosswalks are missing.

10th St: Paint is mostly complete from W St to Q St (Q St to I St was already ‘complete’ before this project). No vertical delineators yet. The block from Broadway to X St has a traditional bike lane on the right, but no changes. The block from X St to W St, under the freeway, has a wide right side shoulder, but it is not a bike lane, nor is it marked as such. The parking-protected separated bikeway on 10th St is on the right side, because 10th St does not have bus service to be accommodated by a left-side bikeway.

9th St: Other than some patching, nothing has happened on 9th St. The new bikeway from L St to Q St will be on the left side. A construction project from L St to Capitol Ave closes the left side bike lane, and there is no accommodation for bicyclists. Though there is a bus area on the right, followed by a parking lane, it is not marked as a bike lane, nor is it safe as a bike lane. There is no signed on 9th St approaching L St to indicate that the bikeway ends, nor how to ride south. See photo below.

9th St at L St, no bicycle accommodation

Another construction project from O St to P St closes the right side of the roadway, but the existing bike lane on the left hand side is still open. As previously noted, it is unlikely that the bikeway on 9th St will be installed until both construction projects are complete.

I St: Other than pavement patches, no other work has taken place. No-parking signs continue to be up even though no active work is occurring. Most blocks from 21st St to 12th St will be reduced from three general purpose travel lanes to two, but from 20th St to 19th St, and part way to 18th St, the three lanes will be retained. It is not clear why.

5th St: No further work has occurred.

Nothing has changed about the ‘turn wedges of death‘. A closer look at the design diagrams (thanks to the person who provided them) shows that the wedges at intersections of the separated bikeways are intended to have hard curbs, 4 inches with sloped sides (regular curbs are six inches or more) with stamped concrete interiors (style 3), but the other intersections will have ‘rubber speed bumps’, and vertical delineators. The bumps are apparently as shown in the photo below, though the photo shows a bump in the travel lane, and these are in the turn wedges. The bumps are 2.25 inches high, which won’t be even noticed by trucks and SUVs, though might be noticed and respected by passenger car drivers.

9th St bikeway finally open again

2023/08/092023/08/09 Dan Allison2 Comments

The parking-protected, separated bikeway on 9th Street between K Street and L Street is finally open again, 2-1/2 years after it was closed for construction conversion of the Capitol Park Hotel by Mercy Housing. Though the area was occasionally used for active construction, mostly it was used for long-term storage of construction materials.

The sidewalk is still not open.

9th St separated bikeway K to L reopened

19th St gutter fix

2023/08/092023/08/16 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

This is Central City Mobility Project update #20.

Apparently it does help to complain, at least sometimes. The city is fixing the root heave and gutter on 19th Street between Matsui Alley and N Street, which I posted on recently (hazardous bikeway on 19th St). I had submitted several 311 reports on this issue, and so had other people, and it seems we got through to Public Works.

The gutter is being replaced at the root heave, and other deteriorated locations in that half block. The photo below shows a night-time view, and I’ll add a daytime view and a view when the project is complete. Note that the bikeway is being appropriately diverted into the parking lane. It is unusual for the city to provide an equivalent accommodation for bicyclists.

gutter fix work on 19th St bikeway between Matsui Alley and N St

Of course there are several more blocks on 19th Street where the gutter pan is deteriorated enough that it doesn’t provide a bikeway surface and the bikeway therefore does not meet standards. However, this was the worst and most dangerous location, so there is progress.

hazardous bikeway on 19th St

2023/08/052023/08/09 Dan Allison4 Comments

This is Central City Mobility Project update #19.

I have mentioned the problems with the gutter pan on several blocks of the new bikeway on 19th Street being so deteriorated that the effective width of the bikeway is only about two feet. It is clear that the city did not look at the existing conditions of the gutter before deciding to place the bikeway in this gutter. But, this is not an easy thing to fix. There are at least four blocks that are unacceptable, but it will probably require reconstruction of the gutter pan to fix it.

What can be fixed, but has not been, is the root heave in the 19th Street bikeway at Matsui Alley (note that Matsui is discontinuous, and is present only on the west side of 19th Street; the alley does not exist on the east side.) The photo below shows the root heave, but doesn’t really emphasize how big it is. There is a four inch displacement. This is a pavement flaw that could easily cause a bicyclist to crash. I don’t know whether the orange paint marking is from the city or bicyclists, but orange paint is not visible at night, and even in daytime it doesn’t make clear what the rider should do to avoid the hazard.

19th St bikeway at Matsui-Alley root heave — 19th St bikeway at Matsui Alley root heave

I have reported this issue to the city 311 app several times. I know of at least two other bicyclists who have reported it multiple times. The city 311 incident map shows only my latest report (230805-1907594), which means that the city has closed all the other reports without any action.

Allowing this type of hazard to exist, when it is a known hazard, particularly in a location designed to attract bicyclists, is criminally negligent. Let me repeat that for the idiots in Public Works, who seem to be hard of hearing – CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT.

If you are a bicyclist who is using 19th Street, I encourage you to NOT use the bikeway in this block between Capitol Avenue and N Street. Ride in the middle of the general purpose travel lane instead. And if you have the time, file a 311 report on the hazard. It will become increasingly difficult for the city to claim it didn’t know about this problem (by closing the reports without action), the more people report it.

parking and bikeways

2023/07/102024/01/12 Dan Allison2 Comments

A number of people have commented, here and other places, that my idea of converting parallel parking to diagonal parking is wrong. There should be bike lanes instead. These comments come from a misunderstanding of context. I’ve written some while ago about diagonal parking, and it is mentioned in many of my posts about parking and street design, particularly sidewalk-level bikeways and bike lane widths.

What I intend is a transportation system where:

Streets designed for 20 mph and under don’t need any bike facilities, as they are naturally traffic calmed. Bike lanes would be a waste of space. Where these streets are too wide, diagonal parking is a great solution for narrowing the street.
Streets from 21 to 30 mph need standard Class 2 bike lanes. Visual separation from motor vehicles is needed.
Streets from 31 to 40 mp need separated bikeways. In most cases these should be at sidewalk level, not at street level, but street level bikeways can be a temporary measure until the street is redesigned. These bikeways need to be sufficiently wide to accommodate passing and all types (widths) of bicycles and mobility devices.
Streets 41 mph and above are NOT streets, they are roads, and should be designed as such. No driveways, no street facing retail or commercial, few intersections. These are for getting someplace fast. These roads do not need bicycle facilities at the edge of the road. What is needed is a completely separate transportation system that keeps bicyclist safe and completely separated from motor vehicle traffic.

Is any of this real right now? No. Nothing like this exists in the Sacramento region. But I strongly believe it is the goal we should be moving towards, with haste. And diagonal parking on slow but overly wide streets provides traffic calming and more efficient use of space.

Getting Around Sacramento

by foot, bicycle, and public transit (car-free!)

Category: Active Transportation