Tag: climate change

SacATC meeting 2025-01-16 report

Dan Allison1 Comment

SacATC (City of Sacramento Active Transportation Commission) met Thursday, January 16, 2025.

The agenda included:

3. Selection of Chair and Vice Chair for Calendar Year 2025: Arlete Hodel was re-elected as Chair, and Isaac Gonzalez was re-elected as Vice Chair. Juanluis Licea-Cruz joined the commission as seat K youth representative, a high school student at West Campus joined the comission. David Moore was appointed to the Seat J. Ali Doerr-Westbrook has completed her term on the commission.

4. Caltrans American River Bridge Rehabilitation Project: The presentation by Caltrans staff was frustrating. A number of questions about details of the bike path being added as part of the freeway rehabilitation (widening) project went unanswered. Commission concerns were that there are a limited number of connections from the new path to existing bikeways, and that Caltrans has demonstrated an inability to maintain bike paths by the horrible condition of the Causeway path. The Caltrans staff claimed that some other agency would be responsible for maintaining the path, but seemed unclear about what agency. Federal law requires that the host agency is responsible for maintenance of multi-use paths in perpetuity, but Caltrans has rarely complied with that requirement. Completion of the entire project is December 2026, but it is unknown whether the path will be available before then. I hadn’t realized, but this path was part of a lawsuit settlement over widening of the freeway; it was not a project initiated by or desired by Caltrans.

5. Alternative Recommendation: Truxel Bridge Concept and Feasibility Study: See the STAR blog post for this topic, which includes all the agenda document parts. The commission voted for recommendation 3, “reject the Truxel Bridge Concept and Feasibility Study and instead recommend that the City Council direct staff to evaluate and study a Truxel Bridge alternative without personal motor vehicles.’ It was clear from the large number of in-person comments and eComments, as well as commissioner comments, that the city commitment to a multi-modal bridge with private motor vehicles is unacceptable.

My comments added two details: 1) SacRT board has never approved the city concept, though discussions at the staff level indicate that it might. The approved SacRT project is a transit/walking/bicycling only bridge. 2) The light rail to the airport Green Line might never be completed due to very high cost and uncertain ridership. If bus rapid transit (BRT) is implemented instead, the benefits of a direct bridge route are not clear. The current bus Route 11 jogs to the freeway, and is not signficiantly delayed by that. This BRT is not part of the current regional plans because it was assumed that light rail would be implemented, but it is quite possible that it might be added to the high capacity bus network plans.

It is assumed that the city study will proceed until the city council makes a decision on the SacATC recommentation.

6. Streets for People: Neighborhood Connections Draft Final Plan: staff report and Neighborhood Connections Plan: There was strong community and commission support for the plan, and it will be forwarded to council, probably next month. The toolbox part of the plan is outstanding. Nearly all of the 13 treatments in toolbox can be implemented as quick-build projects with low-cost materials, and eventually replaced by hardened infrastructure. Community and commission comments addressed the lack of likely funding for implementation, but it is hoped that the city will allocate some funds to the project, particularly now that the primary resister Howard Chan is no longer city managert.

For ‘not on the agenda’, I commented on the much delayed maintenance (sweeping) of the separated bikeways in the central city. The bikeways became nearly impassible during leaf season, except where they were cleared by landscaping services supplied by adjacent property owners, which is not their responsibility, but is appreciated.

Commissioners requested an update on the staff effort to inform council about what quick-build means. and this topic may also come back to the commission.

Traffic Diverter / Street Closure page from Streets for People Neighborhood Connections
Traffic Diverter / Street Closure page from Streets for People Neighborhood Connections

SacATC meeting 2025-01-16

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

SacATC (City of Sacramento Active Transportation Commission) will meet this Thursday, starting 5:30 PM, in city council chambers at 915 I Street, Sacramento. Comments may be made in person or via eComment ahead of time. Note that there are two commission meetings scheduled at the same time, so it is possible that this meeting will be in another location in city hall.

The agenda includes:

3. Selection of Chair and Vice Chair for Calendar Year 2025

4. Caltrans American River Bridge Rehabilitation Project: This project includes the addition of a shared use path (walking and bicycling) to the State Route 51 (Capitol City Freeway) bridge over the American River.

5. Alternative Recommendation: Truxel Bridge Concept and Feasibility Study: See the STAR blog post for this topic, which includes all the agenda document parts.

6. Streets for People: Neighborhood Connections Draft Final Plan: staff report and Neighborhood Connections Plan

The Neighborhood Connections Plan is largely unchanged from the 2024-10 draft. As such, I support it. It is important to remember that this plan only addresses residential and minor collector streets, which are important for encouraging walking and bicycling, but rarely are the location of fatalities and severe injuries. Those occur on major collector and arterial roadways, which are the subject of a separate Streets for People document, coming sometime later this year.

On page 19 the following info from the last round of public outreach is added:

PHASE THREE: PUBLIC DRAFT PLAN

  • Project Funding and Prioritization: How the plan will be moved forward into implementation, prioritization, and funding was a common theme. Community members requested clarification on the next steps for project implementation.
  • Speeding Implementation: Some workshop participants called for faster implementation of the recommended network via “quick build” projects.
  • Equity Considerations: Community members asked how equity would be considered for implementation, particularly where fewer active transportation facilities currently exists.
  • Youth Safety: School area improvements and other projects focused on addressing youth transportation needs was a theme in the virtual workshops.

The ‘Funding and Ways to Get the Network Built’ (page 123) is unfortunately unchanged. The city still does not identify even the possibility of using general funds for implementing this plan.

the false promise of EVs

Dan Allison3 Comments

Electric vehicles (EVs) are touted as being the solution to many of our climate change problems. Most of the money being spent on climate change current is going to EV subsidies and to creating widespread charging networks. They also dominate the conversations about climate change, pushing other issues and solutions to the margin. I’m sick of this (I’m tired of the electric vehicle conversation), and become more sick by the day. They are only a small part of the actions we need, and they should not be receiving the bulk of the funding.

The hype and commitment to electric motor vehicles also pushes out the real climate solution (and livability solution), electric bikes, whether privately owned or bike share systems. Entities from the city to the county to the state to the federal government claim that there isn’t enough money to really support the transition to elective bikes. Why? Because almost all of it going to EVs.

If we depend on EVs to solve our environmental or social problems, we’ll will end up with exactly what we have today, which is world dominated by motor vehicles and traffic violence. Except it will be worse, because we’ve put all our eggs in one basket.

Paris Marx in Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation, addresses the boosterism in Chapter 3: Greenwashing the Electric Vehicle (ISBN 978-1-83976-588-9). Conservative magazine Forbes offers The Expensive And Harmful Truth About Electric Vehicles. Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green (ISBN 978-0861543755) covers the mining and battery manufacturing side of electric vehicle production. If you search the Internet, you will find articles and sources ranging from ‘EVs are the single solution to everything’ to ‘EVs will be the end of us all’. The truth, is of course, somewhere in between. It is early enough in EV adoption that we really don’t know that much about overall and long-term effects. Nor is there an effective battery recycling industry yet (though it is not hard to find dead Teslas, with their batteries waiting to be recycled).

Much of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as well as other federal investments, is going to subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles, and creating charging networks. As is well known, almost all the existing EV subsidies at the federal and state levels have gone to high income individuals. Little in the current and planned programs will change that. Though there is work to make subsidies more equitable, every proposal has met with significant blowback. The rich want to preserve their perquisites.

I suppose the thing that most irritates me personally is the ‘more environmental than you’ attitude of Tesla owners. They live, though not speak, as though their purchase of a Tesla has absolved them of all other environmental harms. Tesla owners are part of the ‘I’m richer than you, so I can do anything I want, and I can drive in any way I want’ crowd. For more on Tesla the real instead of Tesla the hype, see Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, Edward Niedermeyer, ISBN 978-1948836128.

My greatest concerns about EVs are:

  • all cities and counties can do is provide charging, all other aspects of the transition are largely beyond their control; this sends the locus of control to a higher level of government, further from people
  • the transition will be slow, and there will be fossil fuel vehicles on the road long after net-zero is intended
  • it turns out EVs are not the environmental panacea claimed, with battery manufacture, rare earth mining, and battery recycling (or lack thereof, turns out almost no batteries are being recycled)
  • EVs are not and will probably never be affordable to low income people, and nearly all the subsidies so far have gone exclusively to high income individuals
  • EVs have the same or worse pollution potential as fossil fuel because the main health impacts of motor vehicles are not tailpipe emissions, but road dust, tire dust, and brake dust, which are all exacerbated by the higher weights of EVs
  • EVs kill pedestrians and bicyclists just as effectively, if not more (higher weight), than fossil fueled cars

Why this topic today? Because I’m about to get to some posts on the City of Sacramento Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. The plan prioritizes EVs in its solutions to GHG reduction. Ack!

CARB 2022 Scoping Plan

Dan Allison4 Comments

CARB has released for public review the Draft 2022 Scoping Plan Update. The June 23/25 CARB Board Meeting will have public comment (and board decision?) on this document. The document is 255 pages, not even including many appendices. I have only just begun to review the document, but what I see so far is pretty disappointing. For a brief introduction, see the four page Executive Summary. Also see Air Board Seeks Comments on Climate Scoping Plan; Shoup Urges a Look at Parking.

From the Executive Summary: “… rapidly moving to zero-emission transportation, electrifying the cars, buses, trains, and trucks that now constitute California’s single largest source of planet-warming pollution”. Notice that bicycles are not mentioned. Even more worrisome is that one third of the carbon reduction is from actions that capture carbon, including natural environments and as-yet unavailable carbon capture technology.

From the Ensure Equity and Affordability section: “… effective actions to move with all possible speed to clean energy, zero-emission cars and trucks, energy efficient homes, sustainable agriculture, and resilient forests…”. No mention of electric bikes or transit. Unless CARB intends to buy every low income person in the state an electric car, its plan will not meet with needs of low income and disinvested communities. What would meet those needs is a transit-first policy and funding, with significant state investment in making walking and bicycling more welcoming and safer.

In the entire document, there are two instances of ‘bike’ and three of ‘bicycling’ (and none of bicycle or e-bike or electric bicycle). There is one instance of ‘transit’. Six instances of ‘walking’. Ten instances of ‘active transportation’, but 163 instances of ‘transportation’, many of them referring to other documents and programs. In contrast, 157 instances of ‘vehicle’. Not hard to see where the focus is.

Here is a wordcloud of just the Executive Summary section. See if it speaks to your concerns. A wordcloud of the entire document would show vehicle prominently.

CARB seems incapable of imagining a future that is not dominated by cars. They simply intend to replace existing cars with electric cars. Put simply, this is climate arson, by the very agency that is supposed to be working on climate change in a serious way.

Sadly, many of the climate change and environmental organizations seem aligned with this focus on vehicle electrification.

I’ve said it before and will repeat (again and again): electric cars, or any electric vehicles other than bikes, are only a partial solution to the climate crisis. Serious solutions will include and prioritize walking, bicycling and transit. If you are an electric car booster and not working to reduce the dominance of motor vehicles in our cities and lives, you are not serious about climate change. And you are certainly not serious about livable cities.