Sac Grid 2.0 additions

2015/11/11 Dan Allison1 Comment

The Sac Grid 2.0 plan is a good one which I mostly support, but I have had, and do, and will have, some suggestions that I think would improved it.

Access to and from the Sacramento Valley Station (Amtrak) is of critical importance for walkers, bicyclists, and transit users. Bicycling and walking are handicapped by the one-way streets, high-volume and high-speed streets, and prohibited pedestrian crossings. It is not clear from the maps presented, and the projects may not have been clearly enough defined, to know whether these issues will be completely or only partially solved by the Sac Grid 2.0 plan and resulting projects. Two key issues are: 1) exactly how I Street will be modified to improve access, and 2) whether access will be provided to the train platforms from the Class IV separated bikeway through the railyards that connects F Street in the east to Jibboom St and the Sacramento River Bike Trail on the west.

There are locations where pedestrian space is already so constrained and pedestrian use is so high that some roadway must be reallocated to sidewalks. Two examples are 16th Street between P and O Streets on the east side, where the restaurant seating leaves far to little pedestrian space, and J Street between 21st and 22nd Streets on the north side, with the same issue. As more and more properties are redeveloped and the pedestrian realm activated along 16th Street and J Street, these issues will become more profound. The city is already proposing some reallocation in both these locations, but I am concerned that the reallocation will be to bicyclists and not to pedestrians. Despite myself being primarily a bicyclist, I believe that pedestrians are more important than bicyclists to making a place livable, walkable, and economically successful. So I hope that in cases where a limited amount of road space must be reallocated to one or the other, pedestrians will receive preference.

The Chicago complete streets mode priority diagram, which I’ve shared before, visually summarizes my feelings about transportation in the grid, and beyond. I’d like to see the city adopt this diagram to express priorities. I know some in the bicyclist advocacy community would like to see bicycle in position one or two, but I think the indicated priorities will lead to the most livable place, and therefore the happiest environment for everyone.

ChicagoCompleteStreets

The city has said that the element maps will be posted to the Sac Grid website soon, and when that happens, I can point out some additional areas of concern.

MTP-SCS comments

2015/11/09 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

mtpscs SACOG is working on the 2016 update of the MTP-SCS (Metropolitan Transportation Plan / Sustainable Communities Strategy) or Greenprint, with the draft having been out for a month and the deadline for comments on November 16. The last of the public meetings will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, November 10, 6:30-7:30PM, at SACOG Offices, 1415 L Street, 3rd Floor, Sacramento. I hope you can attend.

I have been part of a 350Sac Transportation Committee effort to review the document. I’ve reviewed parts of it, Chapters 1, 4, and 5C, and Appendix A, but have not had the time to review the whole thing – it is massive. The comments below are my own, not the committees. Your comments on the plan are welcome and important. If you can’t tackle the whole plan, pick a small part of interest to you, and comment on that part.

Sac Grid 2.0

2015/11/082016/12/13 Dan Allison1 Comment

Tomorrow (Monday) an open house / community meeting will be held on the Sacramento Grid 2.0 project which aims to improve transportation in the downtown/midtown area of Sacramento.

I attended the stakeholder meeting October 20, and had input leading up and as a result of that meeting, but then forgot to post. Thank you, Ken Petruzzelli for reminding me to post.

The stakeholder meeting was all about the maps of each component (pedestrian, bicycling, transit, and others), gathering feedback about what works and what doesn’t. Of course with physical maps you can’t overlay different layers to see what the correlation is, but the facilitator at my table did a good job of relating the layers. The maps have not been made available to the public yet, and what you see on Monday could differ from those shown at the stakeholder meeting.

Significant issues in my group (there were six groups) were: whether bike lanes on both sides of one-way streets made sense, with the consensus being that they were not needed except in special circumstances of heavy bicyclist traffic turning left; whether the two-way cycle-track (separated bikeway) on N Street between 3rd and 15th would work well at intersections in the western part; and that nothing in the plan seemed to address a reduction of signals and stop signs throughout the grid that would improve transportation flow and actually reduce speeding.

The map approach at the stakeholder meeting left out that which isn’t spatial – policy. I think policy to support the transformation is at least as important as which streets are changed. What follows is a list of policy issues that I think must be addressed in the plan.

parking rights?

2015/08/18 Dan Allison3 Comments

Tony Bizjak wrote in his Back-Seat Driver weekly column yesterday about parking issues in the central city, Backseat Driver: Sacramento’s central city residents want parking rights protected (SacBee 2015-08-17), as a follow-on to the community meeting held by Steve Hansen last week.

I don’t know whether Tony was responsible for the headline, but the headline does at least accurately reflect the view of some central city residents that they have a right to free parking, right in front of their house, and of some suburban commuters that they have a right to low cost parking right at their place of employment. There is no right to parking. You won’t find it in the constitution, federal, state or local law, nor in the bible, protestations to the contrary. There are always trade-offs in providing parking, including reduced livability, air pollution and carbon release, potentially lower walkability and bikeability, a less effective transit system, proliferation of that most ugly of urban forms – the parking garage and the surface parking lot, and most of all, encouragement to drive everywhere – a relict of the 1950s and 1970s that most “world class” cities are rapidly moving away from.

The article opens with “A downtown can’t prosper if its people can’t park their cars,” which has become a tag line for comments at the SacBee, Facebook and Twitter. Says who? The implication is that all other considerations are subservient to the demand for parking. A city’s businesses can’t prosper if customers can’t find parking reasonable close to the business they wish to frequent, for those customers that must or choose to drive. All day commuter parking and all day and night residential parking are in fact what threaten the prosperity of downtown, and it is our existing parking policies that make this so. A downtown can’t prosper if it is not walkable, bikeable and transit friendly, and in my opinion those are at least as important as drivability. It is not that parking need necessarily conflict with these other goals, but it does currently, and the restrictions, requirements and limitations being asked by some residents and some commuters will make it worse, much worse.

Hansen’s community meeting on parking

2015/08/172025/06/04 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

On August 12, Steve Hansen sponsored a community meeting on parking issues. This is a report and reaction. The meeting was actually quite civil, not often the case when neighborhood people get involved in issues. There was clapping for things they liked but no booing and no angry outbursts.

Matt Eierman, parking manager for the City of Sacramento, presented on the current proposals and a bit about future ideas, what the city is calling “parking modernization.” He addressed concern that there would not be enough parking for the arena by showing a map of downtown parking spaces overlaid with walking distance at the Sleep Train Arena (ARCO), with sufficient parking available.

Eierman claimed that credit card fees at parking meters cannot legally be charged back to the credit card holder, however, San Francisco and many cities outside California are doing just that.

Eierman said dismissively that he hates the idea of “dynamic” parking fees, the idea that parking rates would change with location, time of day or day of week. He said “no wants to drive up to a meter and not know how much it is going to cost.” This is an absurd statement, and I’ll provide an analogy. Would a person say they are never going to buy apples at the store again because they don’t know ahead of time whether they are $0.89 or $1.19 this week? Of course not, people make decisions based on changing information, and parking is no different. With a smart phone, the person would know the fee even before pulling into the space.

The two things being proposed to go the the city council in the near future are:

An increase in the parking rate from $1.25 per hour to $1.75 per hour, at all on-street metered parking in the central city. The city pointed out that fees have not increased in some time, though costs have gone up, and that an increase for on-street parking would shift longer term parking off the streets and to city parking garages and lots, some of which are very underutilized.
A SPOTZone (Special Parking Over Time) pilot in Old Sacramento and one location in midtown that would allow people to pay for time beyond the set time limit, at a higher price. The pricing would discourage long term parking, causing more spaces to be open, but through payment mechanisms (smart meters and smart phone payment) would reduce the number of parking citations.

flipping choice riders and captive riders

2015/08/162015/08/16 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

I am reading Jarrett Walker’s Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities. It is a revelation, and I’ll have more to say about it when I finish. He cautions about using the traditional categories of “choice” riders, those who are not riders but might be if they were better served, and “captive” riders, those who have no choice but to ride public transit. The equivalent is “rich” and “poor,” in that order. I agree with his caution.

But I realized that the categories should be flipped. Choice riders are those who have chosen to live in an area where transit is available, and have chosen not to indebt themselves and their family by owning, maintaining, and operating a motor vehicle. Captive riders are those who have chosen to live in the suburbs and exurbs where they have no choice but to own a motor vehicle, because there is no other way to get around, and no place worth going to, in any case. They are a captive of the choice they’ve made, far less free than someone who lives in a place with transit.

So, what is SacBAC?

2015/08/082015/08/09 Dan Allison1 Comment

When talking to people about local transportation issues, the subject of SacBAC comes up, and at least half the people say “SacBAC? What is that?” SacBAC is the Sacramento Bicycle Advisory Committee. It is a joint committee formed by the City of Sacramento and the County of Sacramento to advise the respective governments on bicycle issues. It was officially chartered in 1995, and has twelve members, six appointed by the city council and six appointed by the county board of supervisors. It is supported by two staff, the City of Sacramento Bike and Pedestrian Coordinator, Ed Cox, and the County of Sacramento Alternative Modes Coordinator, Dan Klinker. The committee meets once a month, on the second Tuesday, 6:00-8:00PM, in room 1217 of Sacramento City Hall at 915 I Street. The meetings are open to the public.

The agenda for the August 11 meeting is available.

deaths per 100K

2015/07/29 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

I just ran across an interesting piece of data that I was not aware of before, in Motor Vehicle Crash Deaths in Metropolitan Areas — United States, 2009. Sacramento area ranks 8.3/100,100 for motor vehicle related crash deaths, but 14.4 for the city, which is in the middle of pack for the US, but worse than most of California. Riverside area is 10.6 and city 11.9, San Diego area 7.8 and city 5.6, San Francisco area 5.6 and SF 4.0 and Oakland 5.0, Los Angeles area 6.6 and Los Angeles city 7.7 and Long Beach 6.1 and Anaheim 7.8. This 2009 data, and I could not find anything from CDC more recent. For contrast, London is 1.6 and New York is 3.2, both considered dangerous places in the mis-informed public mind.
The Keys to Designing Cities With Fewer Traffic Fatalities (CityLab 2015-07-23)

parking fees

2015/07/242025/06/04 Dan Allison1 Comment

The Sacramento News & Review published this week Parking Nightmare: Major changes in Sacramento could mean higher prices, stiffer restrictions, following up on a earlier blog post (https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/pageburner/blogs, scroll down to July 15). SacBee also had an article on Friday, Downtown Sacramento parking rates likely to rise. Apart from the SN&R click-bait headline, the article provides more depth than anything else available at the moment, and provides me a chance to review parking fees and consequences. First, I would not for a moment counter the claim that an increase in parking charges is due at least in part to the city’s need to increase revenue to pay off arena bonds. But beyond that, it is possible to evaluate how parking should be priced.

My views on parking are all based on two concepts:

There is no such thing as free parking. If parking is free, it is being subsidized by someone. The seminal thinking on this issue is The High Cost of Free Parking, by Donald Shoup, as well as writings by others. The objective of managed parking pricing should be to ensure some free parking on every block so that people do not circle looking for parking, and that some of the parking fee income be returned to the neighborhood for improving the right-of-way, including sidewalks and pedestrian amenities.
On-street parking is not, as some people think, a bad thing. It slows traffic by generating “friction.” On street parking might be removed when there is clearly a higher use for road right-of-way, such as bike lanes or sidewalks, however, in almost all cases, removal of a travel lane is better for everyone than removal of on-street parking. I don’t support on-street parking because I want to see more space devoted to motor vehicles, but because of the traffic calming effect and because I think on-street parking creates a more livable environment than do parking garages, which I consider to be the lowest use (or mis-use) of urban land, only exceeded by off-street surface parking lots. Our streets would in fact be safer if there were more on-street parking on weekends and evenings, when most of the extremely dangerous and egregious speeding occurs.

transportation funding must be weight-based

2015/07/23 Dan AllisonLeave a comment

The California legislature is meeting in special session to discuss sources of funding for transportation (they are on summer break, but will get back to it). The state uses the number $5.7B as the annual shortfall in funds available for maintenance, and these discussion are largely an effort to close that gap. Some of the solutions are: 1) indexing the gas tax so that it doesn’t fall behind (it was last raised in 1990); 2) increasing transportation related fees such as vehicle registration; 3) increasing the tax on specific fuels such as diesel; and 4) basing taxes on VMT (vehicle miles traveled) rather than fuel purchase. Of course there have been other ideas such as redirecting high-speed rail funds (which would be illegal unless legislation and the voter-passed bond are completely undone), and using cap-and-trade funds for highways (also illegal because maintenance and certainly construction would not reduce greenhouse gases), but those right-wing ideas won’t receive consideration by me.

I think it extremely important that all taxes and fees be at least partially based on the weight of the vehicle. The amount of damage caused to roadways and bridges is almost exactly proportional to the weight of the vehicle, and those that weigh more should pay more, at least for the maintenance portion of the transportation budget. If, for example, VMT were used instead of or in addition to fuel tax, one mile by a lightweight passenger vehicle is in no way proportional to one mile by a heavy truck. The tax should instead be a multiplier of VMT and weight, with a strong component of weight. And yes, all vehicles should be charged, including government-owned vehicles, which cause just as much damage to roadways as commercial vehicles. There has been a ballooning of vehicle sizes and weights with the government to match the commercial sector, and this is one way of bringing that under some control. Yes, I realize this means public buses would be paying weight fees, and I think this is appropriate since they do cause significant damage to the roadways. However, public transportation could be more than compensated as we save money on wasteful parts of our transportation system.

Vehicle registration fees are based on the type and price of a vehicle, which means that commercial vehicles are already paying relatively more than less expensive private vehicles, but they are not paying their fair share in relationship to damage caused to roads. It is not just an issue of commercial vehicles, however. Heavy passenger vehicles (you know what I’m talking about) also pay much less than their share of maintenance because the price differential is not as great as the weight differential.

Commercial vehicles do pay a weight fee, which is the sort of thing I’m requesting, but it is not assessed at a high enough level to pay for the damage caused, and at least for now these fees are being diverted to the general treasury rather than being used for maintenance.

Note that I am intentionally ignoring the finer points of sales tax, excise tax, and the arcane fuel tax swap. They are important, but not important to this issue of all users paying their way. It is important to remember that only a portion of transportation funds in the state flows through the federal and state government. Local governments are actually the larger and more significant players. As well, the idea that gas tax pays for roadways is myth, it pays less than half, and has never paid all.

A lot of information about funding, including the chart above, is in the Transportation Funding in California – 2014 document from Caltrans. If this document doesn’t make your head spin, I don’t know what will.

Getting Around Sacramento

by foot, bicycle, and public transit (car-free!)

Category: transportation