Category: transportation

One-way streets, again

Dan Allison1 Comment

I’m glad to see the idea of converting one-way streets to two-way streets to improve livability and safety is back in the news: More than one way (Sacramento News & Review 2014-11-27).

The reasons given, by Chris Morfas, William Burg, Jim Brown, Dave Saalsaa, and Emily Baime Michaels are all good, strong reasons for conversion.

The comments by Sparky Harris are a little disingenuous. The city already has a plan to convert one-way to two-way, documented in the 2006 Central City Two-Way Conversion Study Final Environmental Impact Statement (no long available on the city’s website, but I have a copy of this large document if you want it). It is interesting that it is not longer on the website. Eight years ago the changes in driving and living habit were starting to become obvious, and even at that time, it was clear that there were considerable benefits from conversion. Except for a very few streets that were converted when they were resurfaced, nothing has been done. Now another study? I’d rather see more action and less study. Yes, some conversions will not have benefits that are as strong, and some will be controversial, but converting many of the streets is “low-hanging” fruit, something that should already be underway and not awaiting more study.

I’ve written about this idea in several posts:

comments on Transportation Impacts Analysis

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

I’ve commented on the California Office of Planning and Research’s (OPR) Updating Transportation Impacts Analysis in the CEQA Guidelines: Preliminary Discussion Draft of Updates to the CEQA Guidelines Implementing Senate Bill 743 (Steinberg, 2013), below. OPR’s page is Developing Alternatives to Level of Service, which includes the downloadable discussion draft. Climate Plan has a good if too brief analysis at Support a stronger law to reduce greenhouse gases and fight climate change! If there are other good resources, please let me know.

The deadline for comments is this Friday, November 21!

  1. I completely agree with removal of level of service analysis and the statement “A project’s effect on automobile delay does not constitute a significant environmental impact.”
  2. I fully support subdivision (b)(1) use of VMT analysis.
  3. I fully support subdivision (b)(2) which states that “For example, projects that are primarily designed to improve safety or operations would not typically be expected to create significant impacts. The same is true of pedestrian, bicycle and transit projects, including those that require reallocation or removal of motor vehicle lanes.”
  4. I fully support Subdivision (b)(4) which states that “a lead agency would be expected to consider vehicle miles traveled that extend beyond the lead agency’s political boundaries.”
  5. Appendix E: Estimating VMT From Roadway Capacity Increasing Projects (of the discussion draft) is useful and has an appropriate level of detail for initial use, but detail and specificity may need to be increased in the future.
  6. The draft uses the terms “major transit stops” and “high quality transit corridors” without defining the terms. What frequency of service, hours of service, or ridership at that particular stop would define a “major transit stop?” What defines a “high quality transit corridor?” Rail? BRT? Regular bus service? Ridership?For example, bus service on 30 or 60 minutes headways, or running only during commute hours or only during the day time, certainly does not qualify as a “high quality transit service.” A bus service sign by the side of the road, without any associated facilities such as seating, shelter, transit signing, trash can, and perhaps bicycle racks, does not qualify as a “major transit stop.”

    Using the terms without more specific definition might encourage some agencies to claim exemption when it really doesn’t apply. As an example, some agencies have claimed that a development is “transit oriented development” when it is not oriented to transit at all but simply located in proximity to transit. I can imagine that some agencies would make similar claims about “major transit stops” and “high quality transit service.”

Free holiday parking? Why not free transit?

Dan Allison1 Comment

The City of Sacramento has announced free holiday parking (on the Downtown Sacramento Partnership website), stretching from Old Sacramento through midtown, to attract shoppers. This is done in order to attract people who might otherwise shop at suburban big box stores and malls that offer acres of free parking, as this free parking in the suburbs puts downtown businesses at a disadvantage. (There is, of course, no such thing as free parking, someone has to pay, but that is another argument for another day.)

However, why no benefits for people who use transit to reach downtown, either by choice or necessity? I think there should be free transit tickets for people who shop downtown during the same times and places as the free parking is in effect. Businesses would give out a SacRT single ticket (normally $2.50) to each shopper for the trip back home. There might be a minimum purchase requirement, just to prevent someone from accumulating a large number of tickets by making small purchases at several businesses. However, since one free ticket doesn’t cover the trip to the business, nor trips requiring a transfer, nor family members, I think overall it would be more than fair to the city.

The free tickets would cost the city money, since they’d have to be purchased from SacRT. I’m sure a volume discount could be worked out, but there would still be real costs. The free parking offer means that the city is foregoing a considerable amount of parking revenue in order to support local business. Whether the increase in sales tax revenue from holiday shopping balances the lost parking revenue, I don’t know, but the city obviously considers it an overall benefit whether the balance sheet works or not. The same benefit could be obtained through free transit tickets.

Fare is fair! Let’s see free transit tickets!

North 12th Street Complete Street Project

Dan Allison4 Comments

North12thSt-logoThe City of Sacramento is soliciting input on the North 12th Street Complete Street Project, the most significant portion of which would install a two-way cycletrack on the west side of 12th Street between the Hwy 160 bridge over the American River near Richards Blvd, and as far south as F Street.

The project should be compatible with and benefit from the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative Twin Rivers project which would revitalize the Twin Rivers Community Housing and the surrounding area. The January 2014 Final Transformation Plan is available from SHRA.  Though the plan does not go into great detail on streets and transportation, page 78 does provide a good overview of the changes and the relationship to 12th Street and other efforts in the River District and Railyards. In particular:

  • Richards Blvd would be realigned and extended east of 12th St
  • several streets intersecting 12th St would be reconfigured, particularly Bannon St
  • a potential SacRT light rail station near the redevelopment and Richards Blvd

There is also a City of Sacramento project to add sidewalks to the east side of 12th St between B St and Richards Blvd.

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We need more of this… dedicated bus lanes

Dan Allison1 Comment
dedicated bus lane, Capitol Mall, Sacramento
dedicated bus lane, Capitol Mall, Sacramento

The recent relocation of bus service from L Street to the Capitol Mall for demolition of the mall and later construction of the arena has resulting in an interesting change: the first dedicated bus lane (that I’m aware of) in the Sacramento region. There are some dedicated light rail lanes.

True, the bus lane is only one block long, between 8th Street and 7th Street (this photo is taken from 8th Street looking westbound).

Prior to the bus stops being moved, asphalt was replaced with concrete, which is the only material that can stand up well to frequent bus traffic.

So why am I excited about a one-block long dedicated bus lane? Because it is a local example of something that is happening in many cities, but you don’t have to travel to see it. It also represents a reallocation of street space that increases the utility of bus systems and better balances different modes of transportation. Buses spend much of their time at critical times of the day waiting on motor vehicle traffic congestion. Dedicated bus lanes remove some of this conflict and create, for the first time, the possibility of buses being a faster mode of transport than private cars.

This one-block location show a good balance of modes. There is a wide sidewalk for pedestrians, a dedicated bus lane, a dedicated bicycle lane, and a travel lane for motor vehicles. Many more of our streets should look like this. Any street that carries bus traffic at a frequency of once every ten minutes or better (whether from a high-frequency single route or from multiple routes), at any time of day, should have dedicated bus lanes.

There are six SacRT routes that ran on L Street and are temporarily running on Capitol Mall. In addition, four Yolobus routes and several from other transit providers run along these streets.

So what are we going to do when the arena is finished and some or all of the bus traffic moves back to L Street? I think that L Street should have a dedicated bus lane from 15th Street, where it becomes three lanes westbound (and four lanes at 6th Street), all the way to 3rd St. SABA has suggested a protected bike lane on the south side for the portion between 7th Street and 3rd Street, and I think that is a good idea as well. I am not sure if SacRT has proposed anything. Wide sidewalks, dedicated bus lanes, protected bike lanes, and a somewhat reduced capacity for private motor vehicles would make for a more welcoming and efficient street. The arena developers and city have resisted making any transformative changes to circulation downtown, but significant public pressure could bring the improvements.

The NACTO Urban Street Design Guide has diagrams and details about dedicated bus lanes.

drunk driving in midtown

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

Thanks, Chris Daugherty, for linking to this CityLab article (What If the Best Way to End Drunk Driving Is to End Driving?) from Facebook. This is not a new article, but one worth thinking about.

In midtown, there are always drunk drivers on Friday and Saturday nights, sometimes other times. While vehicles don’t carry a label indicating what part of town they are from, I strongly suspect from the streets they are using and the directions they are heading that the drivers are from the suburbs. And if I’m in a bar, I notice that the most drunk people are the people talking about suburban places. None of this is to say that midtown people don’t drink, or that some of them don’t drive drunk, but the big problem, in my perception, is suburban drunk drivers.

Though I certainly don’t mean to discount the risk, the slower speed streets in midtown are probably not the big problem, where most crashes occur at lower speeds and result in injuries rather than fatalities. But for these people to get home, they are driving on the freeways and arterials, and that is where the fatalities occur. In my weekly news summary, I only keep track of pedestrian and bicyclist-involved crashes, but if I kept track of alcohol-caused or exacerbated crashes, the posts would be at least three times as long.

So why are these people coming to midtown to get drunk? Well, the places to get drunk in the suburbs are few and not very interesting. The cool places are in midtown. I don’t just say that because I live here, but because these people are voting their preferences by coming to midtown, and driving, at considerable risk to themselves and others.

So, the article. It suggests that we could largely eliminate drunk driving by providing public transportation alternatives. To some degree, we have alternatives. There are two issues, though: public transportation is not considered cool by the suburban population, or even in Sacramento in general. This is not true in some other places, where it is cool. The second problem is the “last mile,” getting from the light rail station or bus stop to home. The transit network is not dense enough in the suburbs to get people most of the way home. In fact, in the suburbs of the Sacramento region, it is not usually the “last mile” but “the last five miles.”

When drunk drivers (and here I’m not just thinking of the legal definition, but of a person who has had enough to drink that they shouldn’t be operating a motor vehicle) are stopped in midtown, some get warnings, some get citations. But none of them gets told to use public transportation instead of driving.

So here is an idea. If a person gets stopped but is not enough over the limit to get a ticket, they would receive a one-month suspension of drivers license and a free one-month pass on SacRT. Yes, this would cost some money, but if it converts drunk drivers to public transportation riders, the investment is worthwhile. This relatively mild consequence, one month of a changed life, would I think also encourage law enforcement to confront more drivers. Only a tiny fraction of the Friday and Saturday night drunks get stopped. When if we stopped them all, and got them onto public transit, or at least into Lyft, Uber, and taxis?

In the long run, some of these people who are stopped, suspended, and moved to public transit would start to realize that living in the suburbs when most of the interesting night life is in midtown, is a pretty crazy idea that can be solved not only by using public transit, but by moving to midtown and walking home from the bar. Nah, these are not my favorite people, but they’d be much closer to acceptable if they were simply drunk instead of drunk drivers.

crossing guard for DMV on 24th

Dan Allison1 Comment
crossing guard for DMV on 24th Street
crossing guard for DMV on 24th Street

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has facilities on both side of 24th Street to the south of Broadway. Employees must go back and forth between the two facilities, but DMV does not think that it is safe for their employees to use the mid-block crosswalk without the extra protection of a crossing guard.

What are they being protected against? Well, drivers that have been licensed by DMV. Drivers who either do not know the law on yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks, or who choose not to follow it. Drivers who are distracted by cell phones. Drivers who drive over the speed limit. Drivers who are inattentive to their surroundings. You would think that maybe this hazard would cause DMV to reconsider their lackadaisical method of licensing motor vehicle drivers. Maybe drivers should be relicensed on a regular basis instead of receiving what is essentially a life-time license. Maybe drivers should have to demonstrate safe driving skills, knowledge of the law, and pro-social attitudes. Maybe. But DMV doesn’t seem interested in improving the safety of all roadways, but would rather solve a specific problem by using a crossing guard.

Another issue is that the street has been striped with a wide median in the center (not a physical median) to provide a place for the R1-6 Yield to Pedestrian signs and a refuge for pedestrians and the crossing guard. Normally this would be a good thing, but the wide painted median pushed the travel lanes to the side and pinches out the shoulder that is used by bicyclists. So in making things safer for pedestrians, the city has made things less safe for bicyclists. An appropriate trade-off if it were the only choice, but it is not the only choice. There is no logical reason for this section of 24th Street to be four lanes. To the north, it is two lanes, to the south it is two lanes. So the obvious solution is to road-diet the street so that it is two lanes or two lanes plus a center turn lane, if necessary and appropriate. The rest of the road width can be used for wide bicycle lanes.

 

Sacramento transit use ranks 81st

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The blog FiveThirtyEight posted last Thursday an analysis of transit trips per capita for major and medium cities, How Your City’s Public Transit Stacks Up. They combined National Transit Database trip counts with American Community Survey population. For the Sacramento region:

  • Davis, ranked 16 out of 290, 52.2 trips per capita
  • Sacramento, ranked 82, 17.8 trips
  • Yuba City, ranked 141, 10.7 trips

The blog mentioned that some small cities did not report, so there might be other places in the Sacramento region that are not on the list. I am surprised at the ranking of Davis. I think of it as a bicycling city, and not a transit city, but perhaps the UC Davis operated Unitrans bus system is what makes the difference. The blog mentions that Athens GA at number 4 is influenced by the University of Georgia, so Davis may be as well. Sacramento at 82 is not bad, and not good, which matches my subjective judgement. The post points out the strong relationship between ranking and total population and population density. Sacramento at 1,767,000 population is similar to many medium sized cities that end up in the top half of the rankings. San Francisco, at 3,369,000 population, is only twice Sacramento, yet ranks 2 and has 131.5 trips per capita. What is the difference? Density! Sacramento is probably too spread out to ever rank very high in transit use, but as it does inevitably densify, it will probably do better. The density affect certainly determines the number one ranking of New York, and New York is about eleven times the size of Sacramento. As I look down the list with my personal bias, I see a very general relationship between livability and transit use, but there are a number of places that don’t rank where I’d expect them to.

autonomous cars won’t go

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Google autonomous or driverless cars, and offerings expected from auto manufacturers using the technology, have been all the rage in news for the last year, with Google making real progress towards a workable vehicle and having 700,000 plus miles of testing under their belt. However, I don’t think Google cars, or any others, will go. Here is why. The manufacturers have two choices:

  1. Ensure that the logic of the car follows the law, the vehicle codes.
  2. Allow the logic to violate the law.

If Google and car manufacturers follow the second, they will be sued, and will lose, the first time and every time that a crash occurs.

The first is more far more likely, and the outcome more subtle. Following the law means such things as a full and complete stop at stop signs, never exceeding the speed limit, yielding to every pedestrian every time, never making unsafe passes. What’s the problem with this? Nothing except that most drivers will not be the least interested in having a car that never violates the law. That’s no fun!

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No to the southeast connector

Dan Allison2 Comments

In response to the Viewpoint: Sacramento County Needs SouthEast Connector by Roberta MacGlashan and Steve Miklos in the Sacramento Bee on Tuesday:

ConnectorClientMap2bThe southeast connector is a 1970s solution to modern transportation questions. It is based on the model of people living a long way from where they work, and commuting long distances, for example, from El Dorado Hills to Elk Grove. Many people are looking now for a different way to live, with home, work, shopping and cultural amenities all close to each other. They are looking for transportation alternatives, which are scarce in the Sacramento region.

The southeast connector will also produce sprawl all along the corridor. Even before the project is scheduled for construction, developers are wanting to turn agricultural land into yet another subdivision. Cordova Hills is just one example. The Sacramento region already has an oversupply of suburban housing and suburban office parks; we don’t need any more. Some people will continue to choose suburban living and long commutes, but the question is why the rest of us would want to subsidize that choice to the tune of $456M dollars.

The Sacramento region certainly needs transportation infrastructure, and some small part of that infrastructure might be new roads, but what we really need to meet the demands of people for livable places and a vibrant economy is alternatives to single occupant cars. We need a more extensive light rail system, a bus network that serves more people, frequent Amtrak service, and streets that are safe and welcoming for bicyclists and pedestrians. We won’t get that if we spend huge sums on the connector.

We know that freeways such as the connector do not reduce fuel consumption or air pollution. Instead, they induce more driving and increase both. If you don’t believe that freeways induce traffic, just look at Interstate 80. It has been under an almost continuous process of expansion, yet it is always congested, and the new construction underway will be full as soon as it is finished. The economic and freight needs of Interstate 80 could be met by a four-lane freeway. The other lanes are there for commuters. I don’t accept long-distance commuting as an economic benefit, in fact it is quite otherwise.

Though the viewpoint talks about $456M as being the “total cost,” it is only just the beginning. There will be interchanges and widening and enhancements, costing in total many times as much. It would be better to cancel the project right now and re-think the transportation network we need in the Sacramento region.

Capital SouthEast Connector JPA website