These are my notes from the April 18 meeting of the Sacramento Active Transportation Commission (SacATC). The official minutes are not available until the agenda for the next meeting is released, about three days before the meeting.

City staff announced that due to hiring a consultant and the project timeline, the updated Vision Zero Action Plan would not be available until sometime in 2025, not this year.

Agenda 4: Kastanis Shared Use Path. This is a wonderful project, connecting two ends of a dead-end street for walkers and bicyclists. It received my support and the full commission. Commissioners asked about lighting and trees, but as a sidewalk infill project from a very limited program, those could not be included.

Agenda 5: Grand Avenue Sidewalk Infill. Another wonderful project, adding sidewalks on Grand Aveue adjacent to the Sacramento Northern Trail for better neighborhood access included ADA ramps on all corners. A SacRT bus stop location will also be improved. Again, my support and the full commission. Commissioner Harris, who represents District 2, spoke about the lack of sidewalks throughout much of the district, and the benefit of any infill projects.

I spoke on items ‘not on the agenda’, asking that the slide presentations be made available before the commission meeting whenever possible. There is often information in the presentations not available in the staff report, which can make a project look better, or worse. I also suggested that the commission ask for a presentation on how the city views its responsibility for bus stops, since this came up many times in discussion of the Grand Avenue project.

I hope that more people will attend the SacATC meetings and comment on projects (on online via eComment). This is the only real chance for public input on projects, other than going to your council member. Most Public Works projects are a black box without public input, so when there is the chance, it is time to speak up for safer and innovative solutions.

And now on to the more complex project, which took up the majority of the meeting time.

Agenda 3: Traffic Signal Safety Program. There was a staff presentation with a slide deck that was not available to the public (this is an ongoing problem, see below). Though the diagrams in the presentation were much more detailed than the ones in the staff report, they still left out a lot about the context of the intersection. What is it close to? Are there already a lot of walkers? How far is it to the next safe crossing? Is a traffic signal the best solution? It was clear from answers to commissioner questions that a lot of information was missing. Apparently this project is the result of a SACOG grant made to the city in 2017. Presumably there was a resulting document on the project, but that was not made available. The staff person said site selection was based on traffic warrants, but then exhibited a lack of knowledge about warrants. The question came up about whether the city could install a signal of any type that didn’t meet designs in the CA-MUTCD (California version of the federal Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices). The initial answer was no, but this was revised to yes, however a grant would be unlikely to be obtained that included non-MUTCD designs.

Overall, the entire traffic signal project is disappointing. The traffic engineering section of Public Works seems to have a very simple view of the world, to wit, a street with an unsafe design > a traffic signal. Changing the street design? Nah. Calming traffic to make the crossing safer? Nah. Shortening the crossing distance? Nah.

Traffic signals are expensive! Though no budget detail was provided, it is reasonable to assume from the overall $7.9M budget, which includes four full traffic signals, three pedestrian signals, and two RRFB (rectangular rapid flashing beacon) that full traffic signals cost about $1M each. That kind of money could fund a lot of traffic calming with lane reductions and curb extensions. Please take a look at my agenda post, and a comment from Sean Rogers that provides a much lower cost alternative for the Monroe Street and Latham Drive intersection.

Traffic signals do not necessarily create safer streets. Certainly, they don’t promote safety in between signals, as drivers accelerate to previous, often egregious, speeds as soon as the light turns green. With rampant red-light running, stop signs are probably much safer than signals. Though drivers also run stop signs, they do so at much slower speeds, whereas drivers running red lights often accelerate into the red light, ensuring the death of anyone in their path. If there are no gaps in traffic on a roadway, then it is necessary to create gaps with some sort of control, but a traffic signal is often the dumbest and most expensive way of doing that.

California has two years from the adoption of the federal MUTCD, which was December 2023, to either submit its own version, or the federal version will be the version for California.

The federal MUTCD (2023) has some interesting text (Section 4B.03 Alternatives to Traffic Control Signals): “Since road user delay and the frequency of some types of crashes are sometimes higher under traffic signal control than under STOP sign control, consideration should be given to providing alternatives to traffic control signals even if one or more of the signal warrants (see Chapter 4C) has been satisfied”, followed by 14 alternatives to traffic signals.

Section 4C.01 Studies and Factors for Justifying Traffic Control Signals provides a list of nine possible warrants to justify a traffic signal:

Warrant 1, Eight-Hour Vehicular Volume
Warrant 2, Four-Hour Vehicular Volume
Warrant 3, Peak Hour
Warrant 4, Pedestrian Volume
Warrant 5, School Crossing
Warrant 6, Coordinated Signal System
Warrant 7, Crash Experience
Warrant 8, Roadway Network
Warrant 9, Intersection Near a Grade Crossing

It is unknown which of, or any of, these were used to justify the signal locations. There are very detailed (and hard to understand) explanations of each of these warrant types.

My comments on the project, which I did not quite finish (two minutes is a short time), included:

• Signals are not necessarily a safety feature for people walking, unless there are no gaps in traffic, the more important issue is to calm traffic on the approaching streets
• We already have a lot of unneeded signals, where the traffic volume and context of the intersection does not justify a full traffic signal, perhaps 60 of them just in the central city
• 16th & D: traffic on 16th St needs to be calmed, signal will probably not shorten wait time for crossing
• Rio Linda at Roanoke: lacks a connection to Sacramento Northern Trail, which would make it a great deal more useful, posted speed 40 mph is too high for an RRFB
• Monroe and Latham: traffic calming through lane reduction and curb extensions would be as effective as a signal (Sean Rogers comment)
• At about $1M for a full traffic signal, there are much less expensive alternatives, and much better ways of spending limited funds