Tag: one-way

one-way streets

1-way streets in downtown/midtown Sacramento

Dan Allison3 Comments
1-way streets in downtown/midtown
1-way streets in downtown/midtown

At right is the second map of downtown/midtown Sacramento, showing the 1-way streets. This map was created using Google maps and memory, and has not yet been field checked.

These streets total about 32.6 miles.

The map graphic links to the map data in Google Maps, from which you can zoom in on areas and turn on or off satellite view. The reason that this is not a map view graphic is that the online browser version of Google Maps starts paging after about 18 entries, so it is not possible to view all of the segments at the same time. This image is instead from Google Earth, via KML export and import.

The map provides background for an upcoming post about transforming transportation and livability in downtown/midtown.

3-lane streets in downtown/midtown Sacramento

Dan Allison2 Comments
3-lane streets
3-lane streets

At right is a map of the 3-lane (or more) streets in the downtown/midtown section of Sacramento. All of these streets are also one-way streets. Many people call this the grid, but others define the grid as a larger area including areas east of Alhambra Blvd and south of Broadway. This map was created using Google maps and memory, and has not yet been field checked.

These streets total about 25.4 miles.

The map graphic links to the map data in Google Maps, from which you can zoom in on areas and turn on or off satellite view.

The map provides background for an upcoming post about transforming transportation and livability in downtown/midtown.

Walkable City

Dan Allison2 Comments

Sacramento Press is sponsoring a live chat with Jeff Speck, the author of Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America One Step At A Time. The live chat is tomorrow, January 3, at 12:30PM. The offline chat is already going on, if you want to check it out. I am currently reading the book, in the Kindle version, but am only part way through.

Many of the online comments so far have focused on creating a livable city, and it is wonderful to see so many positive ideas and accurate identification of challenges. Intelligent conversation like this is rare in the Sacramento news blogs. I’ll make some comments specifically on the walkability safety aspects. I’ve written about this before, but it is worth writing about again and again, because the problems still exist.

Traffic sewers: Multiple lane and one way streets are traffic sewers. This epithet is used to describe streets designed to flush traffic in and out of employment centers (and to homes in the suburbs) twice a day. They serve no other reasonable purpose, and they make a place very much less walkable. Three (or more) lane roadways are incompatible with walkability. They encourage high speed traffic, and provide too long a crossing distance to pedestrians to be comfortable with. They don’t meet the “8-80” criteria, of being safe and comfortable for people of all ages.Solutions:

  1. Therefore, I think that all three-lane roadways in Sacramento must be narrowed to two lanes. If a true refuge median is provided between two directions of travel, at least three feet wide, so that a person can cross each direction of traffic separately, then roadways with a total of four lanes are acceptable. If not, then only a total of two lanes. Six lane or more roadways, common in the northern and southern suburbs of the City of Sacramento, are not acceptable.
  2. One way streets also encourage high speed travel. I think that all of our one way streets should be converted to two way streets. This can be done over time as streets are repaved, it is not as high a priority as the narrowing of streets, above.

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Two-waying streets in SF

Dan Allison1 Comment

StreetsBlog San Francisco had an interesting article yesterday about the conversion of one-way streets to two-way streets, SFMTA Brings Humane, Two-Way Traffic Back to Ellis and Eddy. This is an idea I’ve mentioned before for midtown, but haven’t posted any details yet, and still am not ready yet. But this article builds the justification. The […]