public engagement – 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.

There is a continuous and never settled argument among agencies and the public they serve about when to have meetings. Some people are all in favor of day-time meetings because it fits their schedule, and others in favor of evening meetings because they work during the day. Most people do work during the day, but significant numbers work other hours. If an agency always has meetings at the same time, then the other group of people will be left out, always. Many of the issues considered by agencies have a direct and significant impact on low-income people, and excluding them by scheduling a meeting when they would have to take off work is not good governance.

A few agencies handle this by varying their schedule, sometimes day time and sometime evening.

But there is an even better idea. CADA, Capital Area Development Authority, is a city-state chartered entity that owns or manages residential and commercial properties in the downtown/midtown area. On October 3, they had an outreach/engagement meeting to gather input on the Envision O Street project. Instead of one meeting, they had two, one in the early afternoon (12:00-1:30) and the other in the evening (6:00-7:30). I think this is a model that should be used for all public engagement.

Whether two meetings could also work for board meetings, where legal decisions are made, is less clear, but it could certainly be explored.

Getting Around Sacramento

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

Tag: public engagement

engagement???

a public engagement solution: two meetings