hearing – Getting Around Sacramento

Strong Towns: The Highest Form of Public Engagement Isn’t a Meeting (2026-04-03, Edward Erfurt)

I have become increasingly dissatisfied with attending and speaking at public meetings on transportation projects. Most of the time, what the public says make only minor difference in the project. No matter what the design stage, planners and engineers already have a pretty clear picture of what they want to build. Strong opposition may stop a project, but it rarely improves a project. This blog has had a larger impact than my meeting participation, and though my voice is important, it is only one voice and I can’t claim that it represents what the public wants. I have the expertise to speak to transportation planners and engineers in their own terminology, but very few people have that. Nor should need to have it.

A recent article on the Strong Towns website expresses what I have struggled to express. Please read it, and ponder it!

The upshot is that creating a temporary change to the transportation network, the agency can then get public feedback on their experience of using the project, not on some theoretical change that is hard to grasp. Temporary changes might include:

curb extensions with paint and vertical delineators
speed display signs (preliminary to reducing speed limits, narrowing lanes, creating ‘friction’)
creating temporary medians with paint and vertical delineators
closing driveways
closing travel lanes when there are excessive travel lanes, with cones or vertical delineators
temporary separated bikeways with paint and vertical delineators

See Strong SacTown Quick Build Street Safety, category: Street Design Standards, and Streets for People Action Transportation Plan for additional ideas.

Sacramento Regional Transit (SacRT) is working on a project that they call TransitRenewal. It is an effort to rebuild the transit system that existed prior to 2010 when it was decimated by cuts. People who live in the downtown/mid-town/EastSac area mostly notice that the system stops running very early in the evening, but people who live in the more outlying area of the regional suffer from the full extent of the decimation. Signs that say “temporarily no bus service” are found along arterial streets everywhere, as many the routes simply don’t exist anymore. SacRT wants to bring back the most useful of these routes, as well as to extend the schedule by about two hours, ending soon after 11 instead of soon after 8.

The next event in the TransitRenewal process is a hearing on Monday, March 26, starting at 6:00PM, at the RT Auditorium at 1400 29th St, Sacramento. I encourage you to take a look at the website, pick one or a few routes of importance to you, and then go to the hearing and speak about these routes. SacRT hearings are often lightly attended, so your voice has a impact than you’d think. If you can’t attend the hearing, you can comment online, by phone, or at some less formal outreach opportunities.

SacRT was also involved in an effort by Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) to document Unmet Transit Needs. As part of both these processes, I investigated the current situation and possible improvement of several routes that I am concerned about. I recently posted about how to improve bicycle access on light rail, and below are my thoughts about Route 1, which runs from McClelland to Sunrise Mall in the northeast suburbs of Sacramento county.Read More »

Getting Around Sacramento

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

Tag: hearing

engagement???

TransitRenewal and Route 1