Category: SACOG

SACOG bike share policy

Dan Allison1 Comment

The SACOG Regional Bike Share Policy Steering Committee met this week on Monday (agenda). This was the first meeting of the committee in quite some while, long enough that the staff member did not remember when the last one was. The committee is almost entirely new people since the last meeting. Members are: Alberto Ayala (Sac Metro Air Quality District), James Corless (SACOG), Dawnté Early (City of West Sacramento), Caity Maple (City of Sacramento council member D5), Katie Valenzuela (City of Sacramento council member D4), and Chair Josh Chapman (City of Davis).

There was a presentation by SACOG staff Nicole Zhi Ling Porter on the status of bike share/scooter share (or micromobility) in the region, as well as questions that the policy committee will help answer. The main question is the ownership and operations model, with three options”

  • privately owned and operated (the current model)
  • publicly owned and operated
  • publicly owned and privately operated (under contract)

These are not exclusive categories. Several existing bike share programs have detail models for operations, using some sort of public/private partnership.

The City of Davis and UC Davis are undertaking a study to determine the model they want to use and the operators. They did not rejoin the regional program after the pandemic shutdown. It has apparently not been decided that they will not rejoin the program, but they wanted to consider other options. There may be an announcement about this in the near future.

The current bike share fleet is about one-third the number of bikes that were available before the pandemic, which was about 900. Sacramento was in fact the most successful bike share system in the country, as measured by number of rides per bike per day. The system is now an also-ran.

Several committee members mentioned that rental costs were now much higher, and that was probably depressing use. I have to admit that I am a Lime Access member, meaning that I don’t pay for individual rides of up to 30 minutes, so I have not noticed the per-minute fees.

I was the only public person in attendance in the room. One person spoke on Zoom, but I have not way of knowing if there were more people observing on Zoom. Note that I am a user of the bike share, not of the scooter share, and don’t have much perspective on scooters, I expressed these concerns, which I hope committee will address:

  • Instability: The unannounced shutdown of the system at the beginning of the pandemic was not the desire of the public, which wanted to continue using the bikes. This type of issue, determined solely on the whims of the operator/owner, is not acceptable to the users, and any new policy must address this issue.
  • Maintenance: The bikes are not being maintained to an acceptable level of good repair. About 1/4 of the bikes I try to rent are unrideable for various reasons, about 1/4 are rideable but have significant issues, and about 1/2 are more of less OK.
  • Distribution: The agreement between the operator/owner requires that some bikes be distributed/rebalanced into low income neighborhoods within the service area (many are not in the service area, but some are). My observation, both from being on the streets and checking the app, indicate that this is not being done.
  • Transit integration: The JUMP bike share system was for a time somewhat integrated with transit. Bike charging stations were located at a number of light rail stations. But when Uber took over the system, these charging stations were removed. So there is no integration at this time. Bike share and transit can complement each other in critical ways, but the current system is operating without that insight. There are a few systems in the country where the transportation/transit agency also operates the bike share system, Los Angeles Metro for example. Though this system is not perfect, the integration is noticeable, and the rental rates are significantly below that of private systems.

the future of downtown

Dan Allison1 Comment

The Belote Lecture: “The Future of Downtowns: Developing a New Vision for America’s Urban Core” occurred on Tuesday at the Citizen Hotel, sponsored by McGeorge School of Law. Chris Morfas alerted me to the lecture by re-tweeting Greg Shill, who I’ve always wanted to meet.

Brian Schoenfisch of the City of San Diego talked about how they had activated public space downtown by closing streets, liberal implementation of temporary and permanent use for dining and recreation, and new parks. Almost all development in downtown is by-right, which was accomplished by removing regulations and doing a categorical CEQA approval for downtown infill.

Noah Arroyo of the SF Chronicle said that a lot of the homeless issue in SF was more perception that reality. He also said that the many, many layers of development review in SF make it nearly impossible to build affordable housing, or any housing.

Greg Shill of University of Iowa Law School said we need to change cities so people can walk/bike to destinations, that cities actually have a lot of control over what happens there, and that transit is going to be in crisis for at least ten years.

Cornelius Burke of California Building Industry Association said that we need housing of all types and for all income levels.

Questions from the audience largely focused on how we make up for past mistakes like urban renewal and redlining, and how citizens can ensure movement towards building cities people want. Everyone agreed that creating a more successful Downtown Sacramento requires housing, housing, housing, to replace and grow beyond that which the city and state removed during urban renewal.

I had interesting discussions with Greg Shill before and after, and with Brian Schoenfisch after. I think the real benefit of these presentations is the opportunity to bounce ideas and perspectives off of people who have spent a lot of time thinking about these issues.

As I was listening to the lecture and questions, I was also looking out over downtown from the 7th floor Metropolitan Terrace, I came back even more strongly to a key difference between successful midtown and struggling downtown. Almost all of the existing developments and opportunities downtown are quarter block, half blocks, and full blocks. The fine-grained parcels of midtown, which allow and encourage infill development, were erased by the city when they acquired the small parcels and aggregated them into large parcels. So now there are only opportunities for big developments, and big developments are even harder now than they were before. If the city really wanted to promote infill, they would break up the large parcels that are empty or hold surface parking lots into smaller parcels. Infill developers would be asking for these opportunities. Almost no one is asking for the large parcels.

Unlike many events I go to sponsored by the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, at this one I did not know anyone else. That is actually fun, meeting new people.

SACOG pathways

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SACOG is in the process of developing the 2024 MTP/SCS, now referred to as the Blueprint in acknowledgement of the innovative and leading 2004 Blueprint. As part of the process, they have defined three pathways or scenarios, shown below. Pathway one is the vision of more greenfield development, more roadways and expanded roadways, ineffective transit, and neglect of already developed areas. Pathway three is close to the vision of advocates for an effective and equitable transportation system. Pathway two is basically continuing what we are doing, some good things along with many bad things.

Where does the 2022 Measure A transportation sales tax measure, which will lock in a vision of transportation for 40 years while costing taxpayers $8.5 billion, is as close to pathway one as possible. It is a mistake for land use planning, for transportation, for equity, and for climate. Please vote against Measure A in November.

PATHWAY 1: OUTWARD EXPANSION
This pathway builds on the land use trends over the last two decades and expands the footprint of the region outwards through significant lower density growth in developing communities and rural residential areas. It will provide the most large lot single-family and rural residential housing and the least amount of infill growth. The Outward Expansion pathway will provide more emphasis on adding roadway capacity to meet mobility needs. Due to this pathway’s more dispersed land use pattern, transit services will focus on geographic coverage rather than frequency of service, and bicycle and pedestrian facilities will focus more on connecting developing communities to existing networks.

PATHWAY 2: COMPACT GROWTH AND PHASED EXPANSION
This pathway will use the key land use metrics from the 2020 MTP/SCS to create a land use forecast and will be updated with current conditions. In the 2020 MTP/SCS, roughly 65 percent of new housing and 85 percent of new jobs were in infill areas and roughly 73 percent of new homes were either small lot single-family or attached products. This pathway will maintain the transportation project list from the 2020 MTP/SCS but will include updates based on completed or modified projects in capital improvement programs or planning efforts. New roadways or transportation investments will be included where the growth pattern has shifted. Transit service in this pathway will focus on increasing vehicle service hours for bus and rail projects.

PATHWAY 3: INWARD EXPANSION
This pathway will explore a future in which most of the future growth occurs in infill areas such as centers and corridors and established communities. This pathway is intended to explore the performance implications of a future that significantly departs from today’s land use trends. This pathway provides the most new small lot and attached housing and growth in infill areas would consist of already approved projects, vacant lots, and significant redevelopment of underutilized commercial corridors oriented around the transportation investments. In this pathway investments in capacity projects will only be used to address extreme bottle necks and congestion. To meet the region’s mobility needs, this pathway will focus on transit service in corridors with sufficient density and mix of uses needed to generate sufficient ridership to justify higher frequency transit, and fully connect existing communities through an integrated bike and trail network to reach essential destinations within communities.