Category: City of Sacramento

Sac City is transportation bankrupt

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

There is an insightful admission hiding in the City of Sacramento General Plan 2040 update. In the Mobility Element, A Multimodal System section, Maintenance and Funding subsection (page 8-8), “A key challenge for Sacramento is that existing revenue streams do not fully cover operations and maintenance costs, and this same funding is also used to support implementation of improvements for safety and mobility throughout the city.”

Revenue does not cover expenses. Liabilities exceed assets. The city is bankrupt, just as you would be in this situation. Some asset of yours, like your house if you own one, or your business if you own one, is deteriorating, and you do not have the income to fix it. In the case of the city, it has incurred debt in order to build a transportation network that it cannot possibly maintain under the current taxation regime. And it never will. Never. If the city raised taxes, of whatever type, to the point they would pay for debt service and maintenance of the existing system, people would revolt. And that does not even include the new transportation infrastructure that some people would want. The city’s transportation system is bankrupt. It always will be. The core of the reason is that the city asked developers to pay for transportation infrastructure within a development, but then the city takes on liability for maintenance of that infrastructure. It all looks good for about 30 years, until things start to fall apart. The streets need repaving. The sidewalks are cracked. Painted lines and crosswalks have long since faded to invisibility. Not to mention what lies beneath (water and sewer), which is even more expensive to fix. For an in-depth explanation of how cities and counties and states got into this situation, I can recommend Confessions of a Recovering Traffic Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, and Strong Towns: A Bottom-up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity, both by Charles Marohn of Strong Towns. In fact, just in time for my post, an article today on Strong Towns: Why Cities are Flying Blind When It Comes to Their Own Debt.

So, what to do?

  1. Don’t bond anything again. We don’t need more roadways, or wider roadways, or interchanges. We don’t need big projects. Pay for maintenance of what we have, out of current income. This also means that we would never again bond against future income for current funding, as the city has done with parking revenue.
  2. Figure out what we can’t afford to maintain, and have that discussion with the public. I’d suggest that we can’t afford to maintain parking areas, whether on street, surface lots, or structured parking. Parking has never paid for itself and never will, and if we have to triage our transportation spending, it should be the first to go. Next would be cut-de-sacs and intentionally dead-end streets.
  3. Change accounting and budgeting so that transportation infrastructure shows up as a liability in accounting and budget, because it must be maintained forever, rather than as an asset.
  4. Cease accepting responsibility for new roadways built by developers. If a developer wants infrastructure, they can pay for it, and maintain it, forever, by setting aside reserves to cover the necessary maintenance. This would result in gated communities, which I definitely do not like, but a gated community is better than fiscal bankruptcy. It would also result in far, far fewer greenfield developments, since the financial model for these is that society will take on maintenance responsibility, and will build the surrounding infrastructure of arterial roads and highways that the development must have to pencil out. That is all to the good.
  5. Wean the city off of federal, state, and regional grants. Not all at once, but decrease the percentage of transportation projects that depend on outside money. This would mean even less money for transportation in the city, but it would force the city and citizens to look at what is really important, to individuals and society, and spend on the things that are really important. I hope that safety comes out at the top, and that we spend on transforming out transportation system from the current one that kills and maims people to one that protects vulnerable users first and foremost.

Note that the city is bankrupt in many ways, not just transportation. But transportation is my thing, so that is what I focus on.

too wide, too fast

Dan Allison3 Comments

This phrase summarizes the street network we have in the City of Sacramento. With a very, very few exceptions, every single street is too wide and too fast, across the entire range from residential streets to traffic sewer arterials. These streets kill and injure incredible numbers of people every year. Walkers, bicyclists, drivers, passengers, no one is immune to the danger that these poorly designed streets present. Though rankings change year to year, and depend on details, Sacramento is at or near the top of crash rates for the state. We probably don’t have worse drivers than other cities, we have worse streets.

The city has promised that it will update the Street Design Standards that have created this hazard. Maybe soon, maybe not for years. In fact, the existing standards don’t even have all that much detail, so a lot of the streets were apparently designed on the whim of traffic engineers, not even on standards. MUTCD (Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices) and CA-MUTCD will not be considered acceptable roadway designs since they emphasize motor vehicles over all other roadway users. NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials) or European standards such as the Netherlands CROW will be referred to as needed.

The new standards must ensure that we never build an unsafe roadway again. The goal must be no fatalities or severe injuries, no matter how drivers behave. Sacramento must be a true Vision Zero, safe systems city, not the lip service, we will fix things someday, when we have the money, that it is now.

What should the new standards be like?

  1. There should be separate documents, or at least clearly separate sections, for new construction and for healing existing designs.
  2. The state and federal roadway functional classification system (FCS) should not be used. Instead, a system that addresses the intended purpose of streets including ALL users should be used. The FCS is in large part responsible for the mess we have now. It represents that traditional traffic engineer focus on maximizing motor vehicle volume and speed. See SacCity street classification for more information.
  3. New construction standards:
    • will emphasize limited roadways, one lane in each direction, and would include designs for two lanes in each direction in exceptional circumstances
    • design speeds and posted speed limits must match
    • base design speed is 20 mph
    • roadways over 20 mph must have bike lanes; over 30 mph must have separated bikeways
    • no roadway will have a design speed over 40 mph. Anywhere. Ever.
    • intersections will be designed so that it is clear that crosswalks, at sidewalk level, continue through the intersection, and motor vehicles are the guests
    • all new developments will be designed with a street grid of 1/4 mile
    • rolled curbs will not meet standards, however, streets without curbs may be used if the design speed is 10 mph
  4. Healing existing roadways:
    • no street will be repaved without consideration being given to reallocating right-of-way width to walking, bicycling, transit, and sidewalks buffers for trees
    • the intent of reallocation will be to achieve the same design as new construction
    • on-street parking will be retained for its traffic calming effect, however, removal of parking will never prevent reallocation to higher uses
    • for overly wide streets, parallel parking will be converted to back-in diagonal parking in order to narrow roadways for safety
    • streets without a tree canopy will have trees added, in parking lanes if no other space is available
    • the city will adopt responsibility for maintenance of sidewalks, in the same way that they are responsible for pavement
    • designs will be available for closing sections of street temporarily or permanently for dining or community events
    • designs for diagonal ADA ramps will not be part of the updated standards; only perpendicular ramps will meet standards

My intent here is to provide something simple, summarizing beyond the details of previous posts on Street Design Standards.

What would you add?

Sac General Plan & street design update

Dan Allison1 Comment

City of Sacramento Public Works staff has told the Active Transportation Commission that an update to the Street Design Standards will start soon. But the General Plan says otherwise. From the plan, Implementation Actions, pages 8-28 to 8-29:

M-A.10: Street Design Standards Update. The City shall review and update City Street Design Standards as needed to ensure they adequately support objectives for prioritizing people throughput, safety, and efficient transportation management.
Responsible Entity: Department of Public Works
Timeframe: Mid-term (2030-2035)

This timeframe indicates that the update will not even start until 2030, six years after the adoption of the plan in 2024. Six years of Public Works enforcing outmoded and dangerous street designs on the public and on developers. Hopefully the plan is out of date, and staff is correct that it will start soon.

Yes, I had promised quite some while ago a summary of my many blog posts on the Street Design Standards update. Coming soon to a blog near you.

turn wedges of death

Dan Allison4 Comments

This is Central City Mobility Project update #15.

I have been following the progress of the Central City Mobility Project which has now mostly completed separated bikeways on 21st Street, half of 19th Street (H to Q), most of P Street, and now going to Q Street. One of the features of the design is ‘turn wedges’ which I have written about before: where the bike lane ends – update, where the bike lane ends, Central City Mobility update. I have spent a lot of time observing driver and bicyclist behavior at the intersections which have these turn wedges installed. The wedges are marked only by white paint, though city diagrams show them having some sort of physical barrier installed in them.

Drivers are using the turn wedges, and the buffer areas of the separated bikeway, to make very high speed, very wide turns at these corners, cutting the corner where a bicyclist might be riding. The prior configuration of a regular intersection did not allow such wide and high speed turns. I have seen a number of close calls between motor vehicles and bicyclists, and walkers, for that matter, since these high speed turns cross the crosswalk as well as the bikeway. These turn wedge corners are also encouraging drivers to run red lights, even more so than the usual red light running. I saw three drivers run the red on a single signal cycle, and a driver on the cross street had to slam on their brakes to avoid a collision. I’ve seen a large number of near-misses for motor vehicles.

It is not clear whether these turn wedges are complete or not. Will the city actually install something here that prevents or at least discourages these high speed dangerous turns? I don’t know. What I do know is that in the meanwhile, these turn wedges are a clear and present danger to bicyclists.

I spent time this afternoon watching left turns from P Street westbound to 15th Street southbound. Drivers were using the buffer area and the bikeway to form two lines of left turning traffic, where there should be only one. The block of P Street was completely devoid of parked cars, so drivers were queuing into two lines way back near 16th Street. Since the intersection is in no way marked for a double left turn lane, there were motor vehicle conflicts on every signal cycle.

Sorry to be the doom-sayer, but I have to recommend that bicyclists simply not ride on these streets until the projects are truly complete, with as full a protection for bicyclist as can be achieved with these less than international best practice designs.

The city’s attitude seems to be that since the bikeways will eventually be safer, we just have to put up with the unsafe situation in the meanwhile. I completely disagree. This may be criminal behavior on the part of the city, to remove moderately safe bike lanes and replace them with unsafe bikeways. If bicyclists (or walkers or drivers) die before the project is complete, is this just a ‘whoopsie’? Professional engineers designed this project, signed off on this project, and should be inspecting the project as it goes along. Why do we then have these unsafe situations? Is is intentional? Is it indifference to bicyclists and walkers? Is it professional incompetence?

It is imperative that all construction projects accommodate walkers and bicyclists, who are even more vulnerable at these projects than normally. The attitude of ‘it will be safer later’ is completely unacceptable.

The construction company for this project is McGuire and Hester. Though many people might blame these problems on the construction company, I don’t. It is the city’s responsibility to design safe projects, during and after construction, and it is the city’s responsibility to inspect projects to see if they are complying with the design, and to fix things if not. But I strongly suspect that the construction company is doing exactly what the city told it to do.

21st St and T St turn wedge
21st St and T St turn wedge

Sac General Plan at ECOS 2023-06-27

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

At the meeting of the ECOS Climate Committee on Tuesday, June 27, there was a presentation on the City of Sacramento General Plan 2040 Update by city staff Remi Mendoza. The presentation gave an overview of the plan, which is pretty much available on the city website, but the questions and comments were interesting.

Heather Fargo raised issue of language to address disability transportation concerns; does plan address sidewalk maintenance? Staff did not really answer about disabled mobility, rather, the answer was about walking and bicycling for other people. Heather said she is dissatisfied with bicyclist improvements which make things harder for disability. I will ask Heather for clarification on her concerns. Heather also expressed a number of concerns about the lack of a commitment to protecting agricultural and wildlife lands in the Natomas Basin and Natomas area, both in the main general plan and in the specific North Natomas Community Plan.

I asked two questions:

  • Why is the council commitment to removing parking mandates now a weak ‘could include’? Staff answered that a consultant is working on this, and if council wants stronger language, it can reinstitute it. This is a very dissatisfying answer. If the council wanted weaker language, they could asked for it, but they have not. I suspect that some politically powerful people (more powerful than you or I) asked for the language to be weakened, and staff complied. Was this City Manager Howard Chan, or was it one of the powerful who is not on the council?
  • Map M-3 emphasizes light rail and arterials for transit oriented development. These are both NOT the best locations due to surrounding land use (often industrial and toxic), poor accessibility to transit (long distances to safe crosswalks over high speed, high volume, very wide arterials), lack of existing neighborhoods to build on in several cases, and the pollution created along these freight routes and motor vehicle traffic sewers. This question was brushed off.

A number of others asked questions about the plan, which were only partially answered. It appears that the transportation and climate community are very concerned about the general plan. And they should be.

The members of city Community Development Department, which initially seemed to be on board with very innovative and future-looking goals and policies, seems to have backed way off, and are now proposing something not remarkable different from the current 2035 plan, which was outdated before it was even adopted.

I appreciate ECOS (Environmental Council of Sacramento) for their willingness to stand up to the powers that be. I’m a member of a number of other groups that are not willing to stand up. The city and the county, and the other cities in the county, get away with the status quo and gaslighting because no one is calling them out on their poor decisions and lack of attention to the needs of the people who live here.

bicycling at 21st St & I St

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

This is Central City Mobility Project update #14.

When bicyclists using the separated bikeway on 21st Street come to I Street, they are left without any bicyclist facilities at all, in a hazardous situation. The city intends to install a bikes-only signal here to allow bicyclists to proceed when motor vehicle traffic is not moving, but until at least late July, bicyclists are on their own. See the previous posts where the bike lane ends – update and where the bike lane ends for background.

The city has recommended, in the information sign on 21st St approaching I St, that bicyclists cross I Street using the pedestrian signal. I recommend otherwise. The double left turn general purpose (motor vehicle) lanes from 21st Street northbound to I Street westbound encourage drivers to make high speed turns, with no attention to other roadway users, while the pedestrian signal shows the white walker. This was a serious problem before the reconfiguration of 21st Street, but now is worse because not only are walkers are endangered, but now bicyclists as well.

I recommend looking for gaps in traffic from 21st Street southbound (21st is two-way north of I Street with much less traffic and much lower speeds) and I Street westbound (I Street to the east is a two-way street with much less traffic and much lower speeds), and cross against the red light. Illegal, yes. But safer to be making an illegal move than competing with drivers turning left on the green light.

This intersection could be made safer in the meanwhile by two city actions: 1) Create a separate phase for walkers crossing I Street on the west leg, where the signal remains red; and 2) Prohibit left turns on red at the signal. Since this is a one-way street to one-way street turn, it is legal to turn on red, unless posted otherwise. The advantage to prohibiting left turn on red is that it will allow bicyclists to only pay attention to two opposing traffic movements rather than three. It will be necessary to prohibit left turns on red when the bike signals are installed, so why not do that now? There is a ‘left turn yield to pedestrians’ sign here, but it is small and mounted high up, so unlikely seen by drivers. Drivers may reasonably expect walkers crossing at slow speed, but are not expecting bicyclists crossing at much higher speed. It’s why bicyclists are discouraged from riding crosswalks, and why the city is wrong to be encouraging such behavior here.

21st St & I St bicyclist crossing sign
21st St & I St bicyclist crossing sign

Central City Mobility update #13

Dan Allison1 Comment

21st St: Nearly all striping is done and green paint complete, except for a few spots that were missed. No vertical delineators have been installed. No bicycle signal has been installed at 21st St and I St, and according to a SacBee article (Sacramento to install new bike signal at midtown cross street. How it will change traffic?), will not be installed before late July. The turn wedges are a continuing hazard to bicyclists as they imply that drivers will make safer turns, but they are not doing so.

19th St: Most striping and green paint has been installed from H St to Q St, with a few spots still being worked on. No striping has been installed south of Q St to X St, there are still temporary lane marking tabs without bike lanes. No vertical delineators have been installed.

P St: Repaving from 21st St to 15th St is complete, and white line striping is nearly complete. No green paint yet, no vertical delineators. P St has several of the unsafe turn wedges. In the blocks from 17th St to 15th St, drivers are parking in the bike lane, but to the east, drivers seem to be using the detached parking correctly.

Q St: It has been stripped down, and paving should occur soon.

10th St: ADA ramps nearly complete, but no sign of reconfiguration.

9th St: No work. It is unlikely that 9th St will be completed this year (or next?), as there are three blocks of major construction that block sidewalks and bike lanes, and would prevent completion of any roadway reconfiguration.

5th St: No further work beyond the signal bases that were installed some while ago.

I St: No parking signs have been up for quite some while, but there is no evidence of work beyond a few ADA ramps.

Sac Public Works enemy of safe streets

Dan Allison1 Comment

At the June 15, 2023 meeting of the City of Sacramento Active Transportation Commission meeting, agenda item 5 was ‘Stone Beetland Planned Unit Development – Amendments to the Bicycle Master Plan’. The topic was about modifying the bicycle master plan so that the new bicycle facilities in this development connected with other facilities already in the master plan. But since it is the purview of the commission is to address all active transportation topics, several members of the public and of the commission asked questions and commented on the transportation aspects of the overall development plan.

I asked why the streets were so wide, ranging from 42 feet to 74 feet, with the most common being 59 feet. Wide streets encourage drivers to speed, and so are significantly less safe than narrow streets. Another commenter and two commission members also asked about this. A 42 foot right of way should be the upper limit of street width, not the lower limit. When asked, the developer said that they had wanted narrower streets, but City of Sacramento Public Works forced the wider streets. The excuse from Public Works was apparently that as the area developed, there would be more traffic and wider streets were necessary. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy: building wider streets induces more traffic, and so the wider streets are needed to handle the motor vehicle traffic that the wider streets induced.

There were other questions about this development, including whether streets will have sidewalk buffers of sufficient width to host trees as they mature, and whether bicyclists will be able to leave the neighborhood since Cosumnes River Blvd is a high speed (55 mph!), high volume arterial that has paint-only bike lanes (which should not even be legal on a road with 55 mph posted speed limit), that very few bicyclists feel comfortable riding on. No matter what bicycle facilities the developer provides, people will be trapped in their neighborhood, unless they can drive and want to drive.

Public Works is the enemy of safe streets. Again and again the safer streets proposed by city planners and developers are nixed by someone in Public Works. There are car-brained engineers in Public Works that think the sole purpose of streets is to carry the maximum number of motor vehicles at the maximum possible speed. Despite the world changing around it, and the clearly documented hazard of wide fast streets, Public Works is living in the past, dedicated to a cars-first transportation system. I am not denying that there are progressive people in Public Works, and in Community Development as well, but somehow the outcome is always worse and less safe than the public wants.

Stone Beetland development 74 foot wide street
Stone Beetland development 74 foot wide street

Central City Mobility update #12

Dan Allison2 Comments

I really am not sure if this is #12 on Central City Mobility Project, but close, so I’ll go with it.

Nothing has changed on 21st Street since the last post.

On 19th Street, some of the striping has been completed as far south at P Street. This is only white, long-line striping, none of the details have been painted. While riding 19th Street today, I was very nearly hit by a driver at O Street. The long-lines lead drivers to think that they have full width right of way, and to not expect bike riders to be coming out to pass the curb extensions at O Street. As I have said all along, I question putting extensions in locations with separated bikeways. It may be less dangerous once the detailed striping and green paint are installed, but it won’t be as safe as it could be if the city had simply not installed extensions on the east side of the 19th Street and O Street intersection.

A friend pointed out that the separated bikeway on 19th Street southbound is more than half in the gutter pan, and that the gutter pan is deteriorated in many locations. Therefore the effective width of the separated bikeway is not six feet, but about two feet. Smooth sailing for drivers, not for bicyclists!

19th St separated bikeway in the gutter pan
19th St separated bikeway in the gutter pan

As is true of every street that has been repaved, or patched, so far, the lane tabs have indicated that the general purpose lanes are very wide, and there are no bike lanes. Bike riders are now exposed to higher speed traffic (because of the very wide lanes), with not even the slight protection of paint.
Though this might be the fault of the project contractor, I doubt it. If the city had told the contractor to keep temporary bike lanes, they would have. I’m almost certain that the city did not say anything about accommodations for bicyclists to the contractor. The city is endangering bicyclists during this construction project, on purpose and with full knowledge. If someone is hurt or killed here, it will be on the city, and I hope they get sued for millions. The city philosophy, overall, for this project and every other construction project on streets and sidewalks, is that bicyclists and walkers don’t matter.

The city has claimed that they are now, finally, working on a construction accommodation policy. I suspect that it will come out very weak, because Public Works still believes strongly in cars-first. Traffic flow and ease for drivers controls all their decisions.

P Street has been repaved, but does not have any marking yet. Q Street has been patched, though I can’t tell if there is more to be done. A reader pointed out that there is some active work on 10th Street, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

A friend mentioned that traffic was a disaster when the city closed Q Street and 15th Street, with traffic backed up for many blocks. Though I did not observe this, I’ve had reports now from many people that the detour signage for this project does not provide drivers (or bicyclists) with any information about which way to go (the detour signs, I have observed, frequently point two directions, and the signage along the detours is incomplete. This could, possibly, be the fault of the contractor, but if the city was not out inspecting the detours and getting them corrected, the city was also failing. I have talked to a number of people on the street for whom this project has left a bad taste in their mouth. They have seen that the city has done a poor job of communicating with drivers, bicyclists and walkers, and there is a lot of doubt being expressed about whether the separated bikeways will actually be safer.

Lastly, I will note that there was no public outreach on this project. There are no plans available to the public. I am sure if there had been outreach, some of the design details would be different, some of the flaws would have been caught, communication would have been continuous and effective, and construction signing would have been done correctly. This was an internal Public Works project, and it was not done well.

Sac CAAP disappointment

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

The City of Sacramento Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP) draft has been released. Note that this is the second draft, though essentially unchanged from the first draft. I reviewed my previous posts on the CAAP (category: CAAP) and looked a a few key places in the plan to see what had changed. Nothing.

City staff gave a presentation on the CAAP to the ECOS Climate Committee last night. As with all previous presentations, and the plan itself, the focus was on SMUD zero-carbon (which the city shouldn’t really be taking credit for), electrification of built housing, and EVs. And EVs, and EVs.

57% of Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHGs) are from transportation, so it certainly makes sense that electrification of vehicles is important. However, the the city’s focus on EVs ignores: 1) all the city can do is provide charging, all other aspects of the transition are largely beyond their control; 2) the transition will be slow, and there will be fossil fuel vehicles on the road long after net-zero is intended; 3) it turns out EVs are not the environmental panacea claimed, with battery manufacture, rare earth mining, and battery recycling (or lack thereof, turns out almost no batteries are being recycled); 4) EVs are not and will probably never be affordable to low income people, and nearly all the subsidies so far have gone exclusively to high income individuals; 5) EVs have the same or worse pollution potential as fossil fuel because the main health impacts of motor vehicles are not tailpipe emissions, but road dust, tire dust, and brake dust, which are all exacerbated by the higher weights of EVs; 6) EVs kill pedestrians and bicyclists just as effectively, if not more (higher weight) than fossil fueled cars.