In addition to the SacRT Mobility Hubs grant to Civic Thread, the Sacramento region received another grant from the CARB FY 2022-2023 Planning and Capacity Building (Planning), Clean Mobility in Schools (CMIS), and the Sustainable Transportation Equity Project (STEP) program.
Lead Applicant: Sacramento City Unified School District Organization Type: Public School Funding Program: Planning Project Community Location: South Sacramento (Sacramento County) Project Name: Safe Routes to School for All Sub-applicants: Civic Thread, United Latinos Funding Request: $500,000 Summary from application: The overarching goal of Sacramento City Unified School District’s Safe Routes to School for All project is to increase transportation equity by way of enhanced mobility access and safe routes to schools in our highest need school neighborhoods in South Sacramento through a community-led planning and capacity building process. The community priorities and identified solutions will be documented in the Community Transportation Needs Assessment (“Needs Assessment”). The Safe Routes to School project will encompass a one to two-mile radius surrounding up to 15 Title Idesignated elementary, middle, K-8, and high schools serving nearly 7,500 students in South Sacramento. The project will prioritize engaging those living in Sacramento’s SB 535 Disadvantaged Communities who are BIPOC-identifying; LGBTIA+ identifying; those with limited or no English proficiency; refugees or recent immigrants; those with physical and/or learning disabilities; and households with no vehicle.
Note that Civic Thread is a partner in this application and program.
Yesterday I rode the bus to and from Sacramento International Airport, to see what the ride and buses and ridership were like. I noticed that there is significant construction occurring on I-5 between Arena Blvd and Airport Blvd, the entrance to the airport. The freeway width under overcrossings is being widened by one lane in each direction, and the roadway is being widened in between the overpasses and interchanges. I had not heard or realized that this work was already going on, but then, I rarely travel on I-5. This project is titled “SAC-5 Corridor Improvement Project – Phase 1”, and is being referred to as “Sacramento I-5 Auxiliary Lanes Project”. A fact sheet is available.
Caltrans claimed a categorical exclusion for this project, meaning that they claimed they did not need to do an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement for CEQA or NEPA because the project would not have a significant environmental impact. This is laughable. Capacity expansions ALWAYS have an environmental impact. It amazes me the number of agencies, including SACOG and California Transportation Commission, that sign off on this bullshit. The project number is 03-4H580, which means it is part of the Caltrans District 3 megaproject to increase the capacity of I-5 and I-80 in the Sacramento region. It may be that part of this widening is a separate project to add an auxiliary lane between Metro Airpark and State Route 99, using Trade Corridor Enhancement Program (TCEP). It appears that the main project is funded through Solutions for Congested Corridors Program (SCCP). The project also shows up on lists of State Highway Operation and Protection Program (SHOPP) projects, though it is not clear whether it actually received any SHOPP funding. This type of widening would be illegal as a SHOPP expenditure. There are literally 70 documents that relate to this project, and it is beyond me to figure out what they all mean, or how they relate to each other. Caltrans specifically does not gather these documents onto a project page. That would entail some transparency, which Caltrans District 3 is apparently opposed to.
The photo below shows the widening of I-5 at Airport Blvd, captured from Google StreetView. The freeway is being widened to the west to the Sacramento River crossing, and the widening appears to continue all the way to Arena Blvd. Caltrans calls these auxiliary lanes, meaning they extend only between interchanges but not through, but it appears to me that they will be continuous, and that is why the freeway is being widened beneath the overpasses. These modifications of the overpasses are called tie-backs by Caltrans, meaning the the original slope under the overcrossing bridge to the freeway is being truncated to add width to the freeway.
This is phase 1 of the project. Caltrans intends to add capacity to I-5 all the way from the Yolo County line to US 50, where the earlier project greatly expanded capacity from Elk Grove north.
If readers travel this section of I-5 and have comments about this project, or more knowledge of the project than I have been able to come up with, please comment or contact me.
California State Senator Scott Wiener has introduced two bills to improve road safety in California.
The more important is SB 961, which requires changes to vehicles directly, including a first-in-the-nation requirement that all new vehicles sold in California install speed governors, smart devices that automatically limit the vehicle’s speed to 10 miles above the legal limit. The old name for these is speed governors, which limited speed with a physical device that disengaged the driver train when a certain speed was reached. They were required on all early motor vehicles before vehicle manufacturers managed to eliminate laws requiring them. Today, speed can be digitally read and limited. Already, almost all new vehicles have built in the ability to limit speeds to the posted speed limit, but it is not implemented. The bill would require it be implemented by 2027.
Speed is a contributing factor in all motor vehicle crashes. Whether it is driving too fast for conditions, or simply driving way over the speed limit, speed is a contributing factor to carnage on our roads. Of course there are other factors such as roadway design which encourages speeding. And speed limiters won’t prevent drivers from running red lights, as has become so common, but at least the resulting crashes will be at a lower speed, less likely to result in fatalities.
Speed limiting of vehicles also would remove law enforcement from most speed enforcement, which increases safety for everyone on the road, including officers.
SB 960 requires Caltrans to implement and report on a complete streets policy. In vetoing a Wiener bill to require complete streets, the governor implemented a executive order that purported to accomplish this, but Caltrans has done almost nothing since then, and has weakened and then delayed release of its complete streets policy directive. The bill also requires Caltrans to develop a transit priority policy with performance targets.
Caltrans headquarters has, to some degree, gotten on board with the idea of designing and re-designing roads for better safety and productivity, but the Caltrans districts, including our District 3, are still full speed ahead (pun intended) on building unsafe highways that kill walkers and bicyclists. They must be reigned in by the legislature.
CalBike is a sponsor of both of these bills, along with other organizations. Yay, CalBike!
note: the YouTube live version of the press conference was almost unintelligible due to poor sound quality and traffic noise, but the TV media has good sound quality from after the conference interviews)
I woke up this morning with thoughts about how Governor Newsom could largely solve the budget deficit. And shortly thereafter ran across the CalBike-led letter, co-signed by 25 organizations, to the governor about shifting budget priorities: Stop Fueling Climate Change: Coalition Challenges Governor to Shift Transportation Spending. In the Governor’s initial budget proposal, there is no reduction in highway building whatsoever. It is as though this is the sacred mission of the state, to fund and build highways at the level desired by Caltrans, and the asphalt lobby, no matter what else is going on in the state, with budget or climate. This is called the ‘Infrastructure Cult’ by Strong Towns.
The letter’s four asks are:
Consider any proposed reductions in General Fund spending on transportation infrastructure in the context of our climate and equity goals
Backfill any General Fund cuts by leveraging the existing statutory flexibility of federal highway formula funds as well as funding from the State Highway Account.
Suspend California state investment in new highway capacity
Develop a multi-year funding commitment that ensures at least 50% of the State Highway Account (SHA) funds go to VMT-reducing projects while prioritizing investments in California’s most burdened communities.
I support all of these ideas, but of course would go further:
Suspend SHOPP funding, the funding which is supposed to maintain and improve (but not expand) our highway system until an audit of the SHOPP program is complete. This would take at least a year, maybe more. SHOPP is the biggest part of the Caltrans budget, so the savings for this year would be considerable.
Suspend all STIP funding, the funding which is used to build new infrastructure, indefinitely, except for the TIRCP (rail and transit) and ATP (walking and bicycling) programs. This is much the same as the letter’s third action.
Propose to the legislature a bill that would convert all HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes (which are worthless in practice because so routinely violated), to tolled lanes, statewide, within five years. This effort would include state funding to accelerate creation of tolling authorities where they don’t exist, and to study merging of tolling authorities into regional entities.
Propose to the legislature a bill that would not only allow but encourage and/or require the conversion of general purpose lanes to toll lanes. For the time being, this would preserve two general purpose lanes on highways with more than two lanes per direction, but ultimately, all lanes would be tolled. Highways are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, and general funds should never be spent on highways because they are not used by a significant portion of the population. And if all users are tolled in all lanes, the tolls would be reasonable and equitable.
Propose a bill to the legislature that assigns CalSTA (California State Transportation Agency) a study of the charter and organization of Caltrans. Caltrans is an outmoded legacy agency which should be reoriented towards meeting the needs of citizen access and climate action, and most specifically maintaining what we have and not continuing to build new.
Support governance options with one Caltrans voting member, but not two
Support inclusion of Sacramento Transportation Authority as the Sac county agency
Tolling advances user pays concept, which transportation advocates support
If the JPA had been in place, Fix50 project would have had toll lanes rather than HOV: HOV lanes don’t work for management because they are routinely violated
Support does not indicate that I support adding lanes in Yolo, but if lanes are added, they should be tolled
Questions about JPA membership, board members and voting are probably best answered by proportional representation based on tolled lane miles rather than county representation, which is more consistent with citizen representation; this would also entice counties to add or convert tolled lanes so they could be part of the process and benefits
Conversion of HOV lanes and general purpose lanes to tolled lanes will be required in the future to maintain our very expensive highway system, so this is a start
Brian Abbanat of YoloTD also spoke.
Several board members spoke, and to summarize and paraphrase their comments:
Rich Desmond and Eric Guerra supported a lanes miles voting idea
Karina Talamantes expressed concern but seemed satisfied by the answers
Bret Daniels expressed the standard ‘I don’t want to pay anything’ and tolling is for rich Tesla people
Phil Serna asked about safety of adjacent lanes, SACOG responded that safety can be part of the infrastructure and/or tolling design; I don’t think the idea of separation on the causeway has come up before; also asked about detection and enforcement
Eric Guerra said benefit or presentation is raising awareness
Patrick Hume actually said that eventually we will need to toll not just lanes but entire facilities
Overall, the concerns of the board were mainly that Sacramento County be treated equitably in terms of tolled projects, design of tolls, and distribution of toll revenue; several people also commented that the focus on excess revenue may be premature since it isn’t clear that there will be excess revenue, and some of it is already dedicated to mitigation measures.
Kevin Bewsey presented on SacTA’s role in the JPA, including how votes would be handled.
Though no motion was made on the issue, nor any vote taken, the consensus of the board seems to be:
Support for creation of the JPA
Support for creating tolled lanes in Sacramento County
Yes to SacTA being the agency for Sacramento County
Yes to appointing members of the SacTA board to the JPA board, probably with one county representative and one city representative (under the staff recommended governance structure, SACOG would appoint another from its own board, and from Sacramento County or a city within)
Concern about the governance model treatment of Sacramento County, and concern about a voting methodology that is equitable for Sacramento County, but willingness to allow some uncertainty here for the time being (the voting document created by SACOG was not presented, but was discussed since several SacTA board members are also SACOG board members)
map of potential tolled lanes in the SACOG region
Note: I am unsure of the source of this map. It was referred to as being in the 2020 SCS, but I don’t find it there. Apologies for the low resolution, it was extracted from the SACOG presentation today, not from an original source.
For additional posts on managed lanes in general, this regional tolling authority, and the Yolo 80 project, see category ‘managed lanes‘.
Caltrans and Yolo County Transportation District (YoloTD) want to widen Interstate 80 in Yolo County and into Sacramento County. I previously wrote about this project in missing alternatives for Yolo 80 Managed Lanes Project. The list of alternatives seems to continually change. I saw a presentation at the SACOG Transportation Committee meeting this week that had a different list of alternatives. But the one on the Caltrans ‘Yolo 80 Corridor Improvements Project’ website is:
Build Alternative 2a: Add a high-occupancy vehicle lane in each direction for use by vehicles with two or more riders (HOV 2+).
Build Alternative 2b: Add a high-occupancy vehicle lane in each direction for use by vehicles with two or more riders (HOV 2+) and build an I-80 managed lane direct connector.
Build Alternative 3a: Add a high-occupancy toll lane in each direction for free use by vehicles with two or more riders (HOT 2+). Single-occupied vehicles would pay a fee for lane usage.
Build Alternative 3b: Add a high-occupancy toll lane in each direction for free use by vehicles with two or more riders (HOT 2+) and build an I-80 managed lane direct connector. Single-occupied vehicles would pay a fee for lane usage.
Build Alternative 4a: Add a high-occupancy toll lane in each direction for free use by vehicles with three or more riders (HOT 3+). Vehicles with less than three riders would pay a fee for lane usage.
Build Alternative 4b: Add a high-occupancy toll lane in each direction for free use by vehicles with three or more riders (HOT 3+) and build an I-80 managed lane direct connector. Vehicles with less than three riders would pay a fee for lane usage.
Build Alternative 5a: Add an express lane in each direction (i.e., everyone would pay a fee to use the lane, regardless of the number of riders).
Build Alternative 5b: Add an express lane in each direction (i.e., everyone would pay a fee to use the lane, regardless of number of riders), and build an I-80 managed lane direct connector.
Build Alternative 6a: Add a transit-only lane in each direction.
Build Alternative 6b: Add a transit-only lane in each direction and build an I-80 managed lane direct connector.
Build Alternative 7a: Repurpose the current number one general-purpose lane for use by vehicles with two or more riders (HOV 2+); no new lanes would be constructed.
Build Alternative 7b: Repurpose the current number one general-purpose lane for use by vehicles with two or more riders (HOV 2+); no new lanes would be constructed. Build an I-80 managed lane direct connector.
Note that of these 12 alternatives, 10 of them add a lane to the existing six lanes, which is capacity expansion, while 6 of them would be tolled in some manner. High occupancy toll (HOT) lanes charge vehicles that do not meet the minimum passenger count (often 2, but could be 3). Express lanes charge every vehicle using the lane, though there might be discounts for higher occupancy or certain types of vehicles, or certain times of day when there is no congestion.
Caltrans has sliced and diced cities with highways, dancing to the tune of segregationists who wanted to isolate and destroy communities of color so that they could ignore the existence of ‘those people’. Caltrans is not likely to be building any completely new highways in the future, though many in Caltrans would still like to. What they will be doing is continuing to widen existing highways, increasing motor vehicle capacity and inducing more driving. It seems that nothing will cure them of this, except disbanding of the agency and firing most of the highway engineers. So that is what I am proposing. In it’s place, there would be a Department of Highway Maintenance. The purpose would be to maintain our existing infrastructure, and I mean actually maintain, not just use safety and maintenance as a cover for widening. If bridges were replaced, they would be required to have the same or less motor vehicle capacity as before.
The department could do projects which remove motor vehicle capacity. This might include removing freeways completely, but with guidelines that prevent the design of ‘boulevards’ that are just as much traffic sewers as the freeways. It might include converting existing general purpose highway lanes to managed lanes, but would never include constructing new managed lanes. It might include projects which reduce on-ramps and off-ramps from two or more lanes to one lane, shortening the crosswalk distance over on-ramps and off-ramps, and creating right-angle on-ramps and off-ramps which slow motor vehicle drivers by design, and it might include narrowing freeway lanes and posting lower speed limits.
All designated state highways which are actually surface streets would be transferred to local transportation agencies, so the state highway system would shrink to actual freeways.
So what would happen to the funds that currently go to widening highways? I propose that one-third be given to local transportation agencies, on a competitive basis, for active transportation projects. All of this funding would go through the California State Transportation Agency; Caltrans would have nothing to do with it.
The other two-thirds would go for rail and transit. A Department of Rail and Transit would be created out of the existing Division of Rail and Mass Transportation. The purpose of this new department would be to purchase rail right-of-way, by condemnation if necessary, from the freight railroads, so that passenger rail may run in California without interference from the freights. It would also fund infrastructure and operations for rail and transit throughout the state. With the movement of funds from highway widening to rail, it should be possible to complete High Speed Rail on schedule, and to greatly enhance the operating frequency of the three regional rail services (Capitol Corridor, San Joaquins/Altamont Commuter Express (ACE), and Pacific Surfliner). Once higher frequency service and modern ticketing are in place, the regional rails would separate from Amtrak and be operated completely by the state. The state already owns the equipment. Though the agency could fund other transit, the emphasis would be on rail.
Jeanie Ward Waller, former Deputy Director for Planning and Modal Programs Caltrans, was fired in September, in retaliation for questioning illegal expenditures on highway widening, and threatening to file a whistleblower complaint. Though I’ve added several comments about this to other blog posts, these deserve their own prominence.
Caltrans District 3 (which covers Sacramento, Yolo, El Dorado, Placer, Nevada, Sierra, Butte, Glenn, and Colusa counties), is committed to widening freeways, now and forever. They do not intend to comply with direction from Caltrans headquarters, or with the upcoming complete streets policy, or with guidance such as Cal STA CAPTI (California Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure), which requires Caltrans to consider climate impacts of its projects. Caltrans D3 only knows how to build and widen highways, and they don’t believe that any other transportation modes are important.
Take a look at the list of current projects on the D3 web page. Most are highway widening projects. Of course Caltrans never uses the term widening, it uses terms such as enhancement, improvement, and multimodal to hide the true nature of these projects.
Caltrans has a long list of on-the-shelf projects which it will move to when these projects are done. Some of these projects were designed 20 or more years ago, when much of society had not yet woken up to the environmental and social damage that freeways cause, and before the surge of deaths and severe injuries to walkers on the state highway system. They will be pulled off the shelf and built, because that is what Caltrans does.
All of this is well to anyone who works with or follows Caltrans. Many engineers and planners won’t talk about this on the record, but privately confirm it.
Getting Around Sacramento 