Green Line to the Airport

Dan Allison2 Comments
Greenline-MAP
click for pdf map

I attended the open house meeting hosted by SacRT and it’s consultants this evening at the Sacramento Central Library, as did about 60 others. I’ve written before about the green line extension (the green line currently ends at Township 9 on Richardson), so I’ll just add a few comments now, on the bridge, multi-modal transit trips, the airport, and the EIR.

Bridge: The bridge over the American River, between Township 9 and Truxel Blvd, is a key issue. Will it be multi-modal, for light rail, pedestrians and bicyclists, or will it be all-modes, including private motor vehicles? There are good arguments for both. A multi-modal bridge would send a message that we value these transport modes more highly than motor vehicles, and it would be a great deal less expensive. On the other hand, Sacramento is somewhat isolated by the paucity of bridges over both rivers, and this might be a chance to disperse traffic to a new route. However, more lanes generally induce more traffic, and become congested, and lead to higher GHG emissions that both work against climate mitigation and undo the other good things we are doing. The planning does not seem to be far enough along to have any cost estimates for the bridge alternatives. The consultant at the bridge display was a fill-in, not the bridge engineer, so it wasn’t possible tonight to get any more detailed information. The recently completed rail-ped-bicycle bridge over the Willamette River in Oregon did not include motor vehicle traffic in part because it would have greatly increased the cost of the bridge. I suspect that both the city and SacRT will claim that the all-modes bridge is not significantly more expensive, but this claim needs to be watched closely and perhaps challenged.

Multi-modal transit trips and bicycles: SacRT just does not seem to get that almost all transit trips are multi-modal, as they include walking and bicycling at one or both ends of the trip. There was no mention at any of the displays of providing on-demand bicycle storage at stations, and discussions with several SacRT staff indicated that it wasn’t something they were even thinking of. The center platforms (boarding in the middle, tracks on the outside) to be used in several locations won’t even allow space for bike storage of any sort. I believe the only thing that will get North Natomas commuters out of their cars is if they can ride their bike to and from the station (there are some great paths, and some of the arterials are not horrible), leaving it there for the day because they don’t need it at the downtown or Folsom end where they work. The failure of SacRT to provide on-demand, secure bicycle storage has been raised by myself and many others for years, but still nothing has happened. The on-demand BikeLink lockers and station on the Folsom line were purchased and are managed by the City of Folsom, not by SacRT. I will suggest that a light rail line to North Natomas will fail if on-demand bicycle storage is not provided. SacRT only needs to visit the bay area systems to see that no one is any longer building or revising stations, or providing or updating rail cars, without serious provision for bicyclists.

Airport: Why does light rail need to go to the airport? I’m not sure that anyone has a financially sound reason for it. The line would go through miles of empty farm and ranch land. Will this land eventually be developed? Perhaps, but not likely. The GHG implications of this type of sprawl development will at some point stop it in its tracks, and at least some of the agricultural land will remain as such. Sure, cities like to be able to say they have transit to the airport, but in two places I visit where light rail does go to the airport, Portland and Seattle (both high-transit use locations), most people still drive to and from the airport. Both lines have large numbers of intermediate stations that serve many users beside airport customers, but the green line would not. In a less transit-oriented place like Sacramento, how many people will use the airport extension? And at what cost per passenger? If we had unlimited funds, I’d be all for an airport extension, but we don’t have unlimited funds, and an extension to the airport greatly delays, or perhaps kills, extensions to ARC, Roseville, Elk Grove and Davis.

EIR: The environmental impact report will have to cover the entire extension to the airport, because projects cannot be considered piecemeal, but there is a danger that ONLY the entire project will be analyzed, and that the segments will not also be analyzed separately. As I’ve said before, I think there is a clear justification for the extension to South Natomas (stopping south of I-80), there may be justification for segment to North Natomas, if the system can be designed in such a way that it will actually be used by the car-centric residents of North Natomas, and there is little justification for the segment to the airport. If the segments are analyzed separately in addition to as-a-whole, then people will be able to better judge the impacts and benefits of the extension.

Open houses on Green Line to the Airport

Dan Allison2 Comments

PrintSacRT is holding community open houses on the Green Line to the Airport in early December. December 1 in North Natomas, December 2 in Sacramento, and December 3 in South Natomas. Details are at http://www.sacrt.com/glopenhouse.stm.

As I’ve written before, I don’t think that an extension to the airport makes economic sense, with likely low ridership and high costs to get to the airport. But there are real opportunities for South Natomas, which is very much underserved by public transit.

I encourage you to attend one of the open houses, make your own decision, and then get involved to make sure that SacRT makes decisions that support transit access for lower income communities and economic development, connecting jobs to homes.

News summary 2015-11-22

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Sac Grid 2.0 additions

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.

SacRT issues and solutions

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Another list of ideas for improving SacRT. This was developed as part of my work with 350Sac Transportation Committee, but again, the ideas are mine and not the committee’s.

SacRT issues

  • funding
    • SacRT is the most poorly funded transit system of its size in California; the limited amount provided by Sacramento Measure A (through the Sacramento Transportation Authority) is insufficient to operate a transit system
    • dependence on federal funds from most system enhancements and extensions means that the system has not kept up with either population growth or increased demand
  • leadership
    • the board, composed of only elected officials, provides poor oversight and leadership
    • management is weak, unwilling to explore innovative solutions and accepting of current limitations as permanent
  • light rail
    • has a poor reputation among many commuters
    • no evening service to Folsom
    • no service to American River College
    • high-floor rail cars are inaccessible to many people
  • bus network
    • buses are too infrequent to provide effective service, with no routes meeting the definition of high frequency and only four routes meeting the definition of medium frequency
    • routes deviate into neighborhoods in an attempt to maximize coverage, but the result is a loss of functionality and timeliness
  • land use
    • SacRT is ineffective in large part becuase land use decisions have resulted in an urban/suburban/exurban pattern that cannot effectively be served by a transit system
    • SacRT has little to no input into land use decisions
  • fare card system (ConnectCard)
    • the fare card system has been delayed for more than a year
    • there is no evidence that the fare card system will address equity issues such as low-income users without bank accounts and credit cards being able to purchase cards and passes
  • bike parking
    • the lack of secure bike parking at light rail stations and major bus stops reduces transit use and usability
    • SacRT has refused to provide on-demand bike lockers at stations, though Folsom has provided them at stations within the city

SacRT solutions

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MTP-SCS comments

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mtpscsSACOG 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.

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News summary 2015-11-15

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Sac Grid 2.0

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.

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