Capitol Corridor has received more funds from the TIRCP (Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program) for some projects in the Sacramento region. It includes full funding of the Sacramento Valley Station transit hub, additional funds for the Sacramento-Roseville third track project, and contactless readers for Thruway buses (presumable the same readers that have been installed on the trains, which will allow direct payment for trips once the Tap2Ride pilot is complete).
leaving Twitter?
I have been using a Twitter connection to announce my blog posts on my Twitter feed (@GetAroundSac). I’ve removed that connection. I’ve added a subscribe button prominently on each page, just below the categories drop-down.
I’ve been a pretty active Twitter user. Though I don’t think of myself as addicted, I certain spend a lot of time there. But a lot of the people I follow have either left Twitter or are using it much less. I notice less and less local (Sacramento region) tweets. Some of the users I follow have taken to retweeting everything they see, which is clogging my Twitter feed with items that I already see, or am not interested in. This may be a desperation move as their own followers drop away. So I’m getting bored with Twitter.
Of course as nearly everyone does, I question whether I should even be on Twitter, that social media platform owned by one of my least favorite people in the world. Some days it seems like Twitter is working OK, but then he makes a nonsensical change that makes everything less useful. His management is pretty clearly oriented towards amplifying right wing voices. I’m guessing he wants to be the first person to accomplish throwing $44 billion in the toilet (that’s what he paid for it, but his own valuation is now $20 billion, and falling).
So, I haven’t left Twitter. Yet. But am thinking about leaving more and more.
update on SacCity ADA ramps
Note: I discovered that I have often used ‘detectible’, but should have been using ‘dectectable’ for detectable warning strips.
This is Central City Mobility Project update #2.
This is an update to the update on work being done on corner ADA ramps in the Sacramento central city, apparently as part of the Central City Mobility Project.
So far as I have seen, curb extensions are not part of this project.
There are now a number of locations where the concrete ramp is being cut so that the detectable warning strip can be installed, but the curbs are not being touched. See below for an example.
One of the corners I have been monitoring, 21st St and O St northeast corner, is complete, but with temporary patches that make the ramps useable, though ironically still blocked by folding barricades and caution tape, which absolutely does not meet ADA guidelines for contruction signing and safety. This seems to be the pattern with the city, trying to make things better, but not paying attenteion to the details. I don’t know when the asphalt will be restored and the corner opened. Maybe the contractor is waiting until all the corners are ready before patching, though that would be stupid.
I am still not able to make sense of the asphalt cuts that are being done on the corners where the curb will be or has been modified. I’m guess that there was a standard cut design, implemented everywhere, no matter what the actual project.
Walking around the central city, it appear that most of the corners which did not have ADA-compliant ramps will have them when the project is done, but some may not. I don’t know what the criteria is for which corners are being done, and which are being done at a higher level of replacing the curbs and widening the ramps. Many of the existing ramps are narrow, with edging curbs, which was apparently the design at the time they were placed, but the new corners are a different design, with a sloping area between the two ramps, similar to the diagram below, from the 2020 Department of Utilities Standard Specifications: Transportation drawings, not from the 2009 Department of Public Works Street Design Standards, which contain no ADA diagrams. I think the detectable warning strip width is at least 60 inches on the new installations, which is an improvement. The 48 inch width does not allow two people to stand on the strip. Corners with new curb extensions seem to have 72 inch strips.
SacCity intersection design
Part of an ongoing series of posts to support better streets in the City of Sacramento during their 2023 update of Street Design Standards. New standards must be innovative, safe, and equitable, and it will take strong citizen involvement and advocacy to make them so.
This intersection design post follows on to the SacCity intersections of local streets post, addressing intersections of larger streets. See SacCity street classification for detail on types of streets (local, neighborhood, corridor).
The most important point of intersection design is that multi-lane roundabouts have absolutely no benefit for people walking or bicycling, particularly those with vision or mobility limitations. They are no more safe than regular intersections, and some research indicates they are less safe. They are just more motor vehicle infrastructure masquerading as something innovative and safe. If the city were to include a design for multi-lane roundabout, it would be a travesty.
This is also the last of the design detail posts. I realize that the posts have veered off into related issues, and the piecemeal nature of the posts makes it hard to see the overall pattern, so I will try for a summary post in the near future.
Policy
- New or reconstructed intersections of neighborhood streets will generally use protected intersection design
- New or reconstructed intersections of corridor streets will use prote
- New and reconstructed intersections will include curb extensions, raised crosswalks or raised intersections, and/or protected intersection design
- ADA ramps at intersections will always be perpendicular to the roadway, never diagonal
- Daylighting for visibility will be provided at all intersections, through red curbs, curb extensions, or protected intersections; if red curbs alone are used, the offset from intersection should be at least 15 feet
- Roundabouts: single-lane roundabouts will be considered for any reconstructed intersection except local streets; multi-lane roundabouts have no safety benefits and will be prohibited
- Intersection corner radii will be set to ensure slow and safe turning speeds for all motor vehicles; truck and bus routes will never be more than 15 feet
- Safe crosswalks will be provided at no less than every 1/8 mile in all urbanized areas; 30 mph, crosswalks must have at least pedestrian activated or automated flashing beacons; at 40 mph, crosswalks must have full signalization
- Slip lanes will be removed from existing streets and not installed on new or reconstructed streets
- Pedestrian crossing prohibitions will be removed from all intersections except those with freeway onramps and off ramps
Design diagrams will include:
- ADA ramps, including design which prevents accumulation of water at the base of ramps
- intersections of local streets
- intersections of neighborhood streets with neighborhood streets or local streets
- intersections of corridor streets with corridor streets, neighborhood streets, or local streets
- protected intersections
- modal filters/traffic diverters
- single lane roundabouts
- curb extensions (bulb-outs), with concrete curbs
- interim curb extensions with paint/post installations
Two design diagrams for protected intersections, the first from NACTO Don’t Give Up on the Intersection: Protected Intersections, the second from Alta Design+Planning Evolution of the Protected Intersection, for protected intersections, followed by NCHRP Roundabouts: An Informational Guide, for a single-lane roundabout.
this to that
I have been irritated by the Caltrans ‘Let’s Change This to That’ advertising campaign for litter pickup and highway cleanup. Certainly litter is a water quality issue, particularly when that litter is washed into the ocean. The really big problem is not the litter, however, but the roads and highways that Caltrans has designed. The highways and wide roadways seem especially adept at accumulating litter, and illegal dumping. Could it be that the highways are such horrible places that people feel compelled to litter them? The highways are overbuilt, incredibly expensive, destroyed and divided neighborhoods, inject air pollution straight into low income communities, and prevent real solutions to climate change and livability. Maybe litter is a comment on all this.
Inspired by the campaign graphics (second below is an example), I’ve created one of my own. I took a shortcut, using something that has already happened (without Caltrans cooperation), the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco which was damaged beyond repair in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. When I have the time, I’ll look for other photos to pair, of actual changes or of potential changes. I’ve seen AI transformations that I think could play well for that, but a big part of my purpose here is to call out Caltrans greenwashing.
If this idea inspires you, I’d like to see your campaign graphics for highway removal. My ‘Let’s Change This to That’ graphic is available as a webp. Don’t know how to upload other formats.
update on half-measure corners
This is Central City Mobility Project update #1.
There has been construction on several of the corners I had previously mentioned (half-measure corners?), with 21st Street and O Street being the most advanced. It seems that I was wrong about curb islands being put in – there is no evidence of such construction. I don’t know why the asphalt cutting implied that. When more of these are complete, I’ll post again.
What seems to be going on is simple updates to place ADA-compliant curb ramp with detectable warning strips. Of course any improvement to curb ramps helps everyone, disabled and otherwise, and I’m not criticizing that. Rather, wondering why when the city is changing these corners, they did not take the opportunity to do true curb extensions. The ADA ramp and detectable warning in place for O Street is wider, than previous ramps and strips, looks to be more than four feet rather than the prior narrow ones. If all the ramps end up wider, that will be a plus.
This work is probably part of the city’s Central City Mobility Project. The project detail mentions ‘turn wedges’. Maybe the wedges will be added later, or maybe these will be at different locations than the ones I’ve looked at. The page does not specifically mention ADA ramp improvements.
I had mentioned in the previous post curb extensions being extended to serve as bus boarding areas. I am not aware of any of these in Sacramento, but San Francisco has many. Many earlier posts have mentioned bus boarding islands, but this is for a street without bike lanes (yet), which allows the bus to stop in-lane and people to board directly. Notice that the extension allows for a bus shelter without constraining the sidewalk width for walkers. This should be the standard for Sacramento for all streets with bus routes but not bike lanes.
the future of downtown
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.
red light running consequences
I’ve written recently about red-light-running bullies. On Wednesday morning I got to observe the logical consequences of this behavior.
The driver of the SUV heading south on P Street intentionally ran the red light, colliding with the passenger car that was heading west through the intersection. The red light running was well after the light had turned red. Fortunately the red light running driver slammed on his brakes and the resulting collision was low speed, or the other driver might well be dead. I might well have been dead if the other car had not been in the way, since I was using the crosswalk over 15th St, west to east, and would quite possible have been run over by the SUV driver. The driver would have been much less likely to see me than to see the other car.
Really all the red light running driver had to say is that we was in a hurry.
Perhaps most interesting is that law enforcement refused to come to the crash. The passenger car driver had called 911 shortly after the crash, as did at least one bystander. I waited 45 minutes so that I could give a statement. The passenger car driver said that he had finally gotten a text message back that no one would respond. So the crash will not get recorded anywhere. The SUV driver will not get a ticket. Apparently the 911 operator had transferred the caller to CHP, and it is CHP that refused to respond. Perhaps they were busy attending a white supremacy meeting somewhere and couldn’t be bothered. No one died – what’s the big deal?
Just more traffic violence. Nothing to see here. Let’s move along.
coffee shops (tea) on the grid
2024-01-07 update since the original post: Anchor and Tree Coffee (16th St) has soft opened, Flow State Coffee has closed, Milka Coffee has a second location on R St, Pressed is probably closing and has shorter hours, Tupi Coffee has moved to 8th St, and I missed Tiferet on the Park Coffee on H St in my original post. The spreadsheet and slide show have been updated and will be further. Note that the spreadsheet image seems to offer clickable links, but does not; you must use one of the other formats.
Disclaimer up front: I don’t drink and don’t even like coffee, but I do drink and love tea, and the majority of coffee shops offer tea as well, but most other businesses do not. So I can tell you absolutely nothing about the variety or quality of coffee at any of these shops.
I have long believed that the frequency of locally-owned coffee shops is a key indicator of livability and walkability. Though I’ve not done the calculations, I think this measure would be just as effective a ‘walk score’ as the WalkScore offered by Redfin, which uses a complicated and proprietary algorithm to determine walkability, measured as distance to amenities. Note that WalkScore does not assess the walking environment such as presence or condition of sidewalks, and safety of crossing streets.
I live in the Sacramento central city, the area bounded by the Sacramento River to the west, Broadway to the south, Alhambra Avenue to the east, and the railroad tracks to the north. I have focused my coffee shop visits on this area. Though there are certainly coffee shops throughout the urbanized county, the number of locally-owned coffee shops drops off rapidly outside the central city. In much of the suburbs, there are only chain coffee shops such as Starbucks and Peets.
My preferred locally-owned coffee shop is Naked Lounge, on the southeast corner of Q Street and 15th Street, across from Fremont Park. I go there for tea, and for socialization. For those who remember ‘the old days’ when people socialized more and spent less time on their computers, yes, I miss those days. Some days I write in my journal, some days I read, some days I talk to people, and yes, some days I too work on my computer.
If you also like to drink tea at home, as I do, I recommend Tea Cozy, 1021 R Street, next to Fox and Goose, with a very large and diverse offering of bulk and packaged teas. And in Davis, Mishka’s Cafe, 610 2nd Street, offers a selection of tea unparalleled in the region, so far as I know.
Below is the table I compiled, along with pdf, Numbers, and xlsx versions. The columns are what interested me, and the ratings are entirely my own, not based on any scale. Reuse means they offer reusable cups for tea and coffee service, outdoor means they offer outdoor seating, and tea indicates my take on the number and variety of teas offered.
I visited each coffee shop location on the grid. I attempted to take a photo of each, outside and inside. I also started taking photos of the tea service, but didn’t start at the beginning so only a few are in the slideshow.
complete streets failure
Summary: Complete streets concept is a failure because it doesn’t address frequent safe crossings. It leaves streets dominated by motor vehicle traffic while not necessarily increasing safety or welcoming design for walkers and bicyclists.
A recent post on Strong Towns (Ager Road: Where Complete Streets Fell Short) shows a street that was converted to a ‘complete street’, and won awards, but is actually less safe and less pleasant than what was there before. A fatality occurred shortly after the conversion, perhaps as a result of the conversion increasing vehicle speeds, perhaps not, but the conversion did nothing to reduce the likelihood.
From the post: “This is a stroad in disguise,” remarked Strong Towns Director of Community Action Edward Erfurt when examining Ager Road in Hyattsville, Maryland. And a Twitter post below.
My response:
The complete streets concept is largely a failure, everywhere it is implemented. I’m sure the original intentions were good, but every complete street project I’ve seen affirms the primacy of motor vehicles over other modes. The greatest failure of all is not what happens along the street, but that the concept does not even address the need for frequent safe crossings of the roadway. No wonder traffic engineers have embraced the concept – it allows them to continue motor vehicle dominance and accept traffic violence.
Dan Allison
So you can see the present ‘complete street’ more clearly:
The complete Streets concept is all about travel ALONG streets. Though it recognizes that crossings of streets are important, and encourages designs that make crossing safer and more welcoming, it does NOT address the frequency of safe crossings. The Complete Streets Coalition, part of Smart Growth America, does not require that complete streets policies include anything about the frequency of safe crossings. And so nearly all polices do not address that. The Caltrans policy, which applies only to state highways but is often applied to other streets, does not mention the frequency of safe crossings.
Traffic planners and engineers have embraced the Complete Streets concept, and tout policies and implementation. But what do we really end up with in most cases? Just more motor vehicle dominated streets, which is what most traffic planners and engineers want anyway, and claiming a complete street isolates them from criticism of the roads being designed and built, while making it more likely that they will be a federal, state, or regional grant for their project. Very few projects are awarded grants these days unless they claim to be a complete streets project. That is good, but the bar is set so low for what can be called a complete street, that the result is just more car infrastructure.
The project shown in the Strong Towns post checks off the following elements:
- sidewalk, check
- bike lane, check
- green paint, check
- general purpose lane(s), check
- fence to prevent walkers from crossing any place other than the signalized intersection, check (I put this here with tongue in cheek)
What it does not check:
- narrow the travel lanes to calm traffic
- reduce the speed limit or actual speed through design
- remove slip lanes (ask any bicyclist how they feel about bike lanes that cross high speed slip lanes)
- reduce the corner radius at driveways
- install or maintain street trees to calm traffic and provide shade for walkers
- widen sidewalk buffers to ensure healthy trees and vegetation
- create a pleasant walking environment
- provide wayfinding to the nearby Metro station
The next time you hear a planner or engineer mention ‘complete streets’, hold on to your wallet (because, after all, it is your tax dollars that fund ineffective projects), and look around you to identify the traffic violence that will remain or even be increased.
The first step in designing a safe and welcoming streets is top ensure that there are safe and welcoming sidewalks and crossings of the street. Everything else comes after that, if at all. Adding bicyclist facilities that are neither safe nor welcoming, and reducing the the environment for walkers in trade, is going the wrong direction, and will lead to less walking and more traffic violence.
Getting Around Sacramento 
