Tag: Green Line to the Airport

Californians for Electric Rail ideas for Sacramento region

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

Added note about train speeds below.

The plans of Californians for Electric Rail for the Greater Sacramento Region were promoted today in a meeting I participated in. I think this is a great organization. They have correctly identified the roadblocks thrown up by special interests, the freight railroads and business as usual government agencies, and solutions to those roadblocks. It is well worth looking at their website and materials. I have long supported serious consideration of electrifying (overhead catenary) Capitol Corridor, at least the Sacramento to Oakland Jack London section.

I am glad to see that light rail extension beyond Cosumnes River College into Elk Grove is not on the map. That would be a total waste of funds for a low ridership route, better served by bus.

However, I have concerns with some of the specifics for the Sacramento region.

  • I support more frequent service between Sacramento and Davis. There are a lot of Capitol Corridor Riders on this section. However, I question ridership for Sacramento to Roseville. The once-a-day Capitol Corridor to Auburn has few riders on or off at Roseville. The Amtrak buses to Reno have few riders on or off at Roseville. The once-a-day Amtrak California Zephyr has few riders on or off in Roseville. The Placer County Transit Route 10 has few riders on or off at Roseville, though admittedly the Galleria transit stop is not what most transit riders want. There are ways of increasing rider demand on this corridor, but without a plan to do so, I don’t think this should be a ‘Primary Buildout’ project, regardless of whether it is in the State Rail Plan. The Sacramento to Roseville 3rd track project has been delayed by years, due to funding issues and Union Pacific intransigence and delay. I think a focus on Sacramento to Davis would be much more useful.
  • Light rail to the airport (Green Line to the Airport) has an unproven demand. The hourly SacRT Route 142 bus is frequently empty. The hourly Yolobus 42A/B bus has more passengers, but that is because it serves Davis and Woodland as well as downtown Sacramento. If a regular bus isn’t being used, the idea that light rail will be used is speculative, and not the basis for spending $2 billion plus on rail. The SacRT study of BRT along a similar route is useful, but again, is a step well beyond basic bus service.
  • The idea of using the Woodland Division of the Sierra Northern railroad on the west side of the Sacramento River, and new tracks from there to the airport is intriguing. I’d never seen that proposal before. Using mostly existing track, and some new, might provide a much lower cost alternative to new light rail construction to the airport. Apparently there is a recreational train on a portion of this route, leading me to wonder what the condition of the tracks is.
  • Valley Rail is shown with a suggested connection into Sacramento Valley Station (SVS). I have not heard of any such proposal from San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission. So far as I can tell, their intent is to remain separate from SVS, with connections via light rail, but not passenger rail. There is also no bus service shown from this line to the airport. Without such a connection, the Valley Rail project probably will remain low ridership. Again, these issues can be addressed, but I’m concerned that they are not in this proposal.
map of Greater Sacramento Regional Rail Concept, from Californians for Electric Rail
map of Greater Sacramento Regional Rail Concept, from Californians for Electric Rail

Train speed

The Sacramento region page says “Existing railroad infrastructure could support up to 125 mph top speeds” under ‘Advantages of regional rail’. The current maximum speed, set by the state based on both train equipment and track condition, is 79 mph (127 kph). But actual speeds on Capitol Corridor are often about 55 mph, reaching 79 mph only on some sections. It would require significant improvement of track quality and better trainset maintenance to accomplish faster speeds. I have heard that Capitol Corridor’s target speed is 110 mph (177 kph). The new Siemens Charger locomotives can go 125 mph (201 kph), but the still in use P42 locomotives can only go 110 mph. This isn’t to say better speeds won’t be achieved, but it is not a simple process.

incremental transit

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

I wrote a blog post for Sacramento Transit Advocates and Riders (STAR), How to build successful transit, in August 2025, a year ago. It is probably one of the most valuable and insightful posts STAR made, as important today as it was then.

I attended the last SacRT Board meeting on July 27. On the agenda was authorization for SacRT staff to negotiate a grant from the state for a study of bus rapid transit (BRT) to the Sacramento airport (agenda item 2.11 on consent calendar “Authorizing the General Manager/CEO to Execute Agreements with the California Department of Transportation for the Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant Award for the Green Line Bus Rapid Transit to Sacramento International Airport”. The item was not pulled from consent, but three board members commented and said that they were supportive of the study, but still absolutely committed to light rail to the airport. I suspect the other board members felt the same way, but did not comment. The board and many SacRT staff continue to promote light rail to the airport, though they have finally admitted that there is no likelihood of it happening in the near future due to two major issues: lack of agreement with the city and county for crossing the American River, and funding for a bridge at Truxel Road, and the overall cost of the project. The last time it was estimated, it was $2 billion dollars, a cost that will continue to rise and accelerate over the years. The entire capital budget for SacRT, which includes light rail modernization and bus replacement, and fare technology, as well as a large number of other activities, is only $2 billion per year. That portion of the budget includes mostly funding from federal and state sources and grants; it is mostly not Sacramento County Measure A or other local sources. That means, as a practical matter, that the Green Line would zero out an entire year’s budget for everything else, or if spread out over 10 years, 10% of the budget, every year. And the estimate of cost is very conservative.

The public has said, throughout the Transit Idea Exchange process (A Community Collaboration to Shape the Future of Transit), that they did not want huge investments in infrastructure, but instead wanted better and more frequent bus service. How to build better and more frequent bus service? Well, by incrementally improving transit. Back to the STAR model:

I’ve decided to call this incremental transit. As the STAR post noted, the concept did not originate with STAR, but comes from Strong Towns, The Strong Towns Approach to Public Investment, and the ideas presented by Jarrett Walker in Human Transit (the book and the website).

The SacRT Board and many of the SacRT staff want to jump from step 1, or actually, step 0.5, since the frequency of bus service to the airport is hourly, not 30 minutes, to step 5, bypassing all steps in between. That is a mistake. Not only does the approach put any solution off for years, it risks turning the public off to any service to the airport since nothing so far has been successful (the bus is mostly empty). Light rail might be mostly empty as well.

Green Line to the airport?

Dan Allison3 Comments

SacRT, and many local politicians, want the Green Line to the Airport to be the next big transit project in the region. I have doubts, and have written about them before (Green Line to the Airport, Open houses on Green Line to the Airport, linking the colleges?, SacRT light rail extensions). Jarrett Walker, my favorite writer on transit, has posted Keys to Great Airport Transit, a great analysis of rail and bus transit to airports.

  1. Total travel time matters, not just in-vehicle time: Not sure how the Green Line measures up, but it is indicative that the Green Line to Township 9 (the current destination) runs on an infrequent schedule (60 minutes) during a small part of the day, because it is beyond the area where most people travel. The airport would also be beyond where most people travel, so is likely to have infrequent and short hours service.
  2. Combine air travelers and airport employees on the same train/bus: The Green Line might do OK on this, though light rail already suffers from the perception of higher income people (which is mostly who flies rather than takes the bus or train) that light rail is only for poor people.
  3. Connect the airport to lots of places, not just downtown, by providing a total network: Since the SacRT network fails pretty badly on connectivity already, it is likely that the Green Line will suffer from the same issue.
  4. Don’t interfere with the growth of other services: The Green Line is definitely a negative on this issue. The Green Line to the Airport would gobble up all the construction funds for years, as well as a large slice of operating funds. Fare recovery on the network is 23%, somewhat below average, but the extension would likely reduce this significantly. If distance-based fares (which SacRT has talked about but done no real planning towards) are implemented on the light rail system, the operating subsidy might be less, but it will still compare poorly with the rest of the system.
  5. If you can afford it, go via the airport instead of terminating there: Not applicable to the Green Line because there is nothing beyond the airport except agricultural fields, and a bit further out, sprawling suburbs that would never generate ridership.

I think the right solution for airport access is frequent bus service (15 minute frequency) from downtown to the airport, from 5:00AM to 12:00 midnight, for travelers and airport employees, and less frequent service from midnight to 5:00AM, for employees. The current Yolobus 42A/42B provides infrequent (60 minute) service from 5:30AM (6:30AM on weekends) to 10:00PM. In addition, there would need to be service from eastern Sacramento/Roseville, but I’ve thought less about how that would work.

Save our infrastructure funds for more productive routes!

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.