Tag: Sacramento Active Transportation Commission

SacATC February 15, includes Truxel Bridge

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The monthly meeting of the Sacramento Active Transportation Commission (SacATC) will be this Thursday, February 15, 2024, starting at 5:30 PM in the city council chambers. The agenda includes five items. You can comment on these items, or on topics not on the agenda, ahead of time via eComment, or in person at the meeting. I encourage people to attend these commission meetings. There are usually very few members of the public in attendance, which means that your voice is important. Though eComments are valuable, in-person comments carry a lot more weight. The city’s planning staff is usually progressive and innovative, but Public Works in general is not, so it is important the citizens show up to push for progressive and innovative projects and policies. With some new appointments to the commission, and support of the public, the commission itself has been much more progressive than in past years.

Agenda item 3 is a presentation on the Truxel Bridge Concept and Feasibility Study. The Truxel crossing of the American River was originally proposed and approved by SacRT and the county as a transit-walking-bicycling bridge, carrying light rail from downtown to Natomas. The city is now proposing a motor vehicle-transit-walking-bicycling bridge. They are claiming that the bridge would reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) through the provision of alternative modes, and a shorter trip between downtown and Natomas, but has not presented data to justify this claim. New roadway capacity induces more motor vehicle trips, a well-established fact, so to claim otherwise requires proof. Walking and bicycling would be unlikely to be the major component of bridge users. Transit availability could reduce motor vehicle trips, but the Green Line to the Airport is probably decades away, and anything short of service to North Natomas would be unlikely to replace many car trips.

The city intends to go full speed ahead (pun intended) with the bridge, based on a 2013 city council approval, seeking public input only on the southern approach to the bridge and the bridge cross-section. Since 2013, the city has declared a climate emergency, the Mayors Commission on Climate Change goal is to achieve Carbon Zero by reducing VMT, the soon-to-be-adopted General Plan 2040 and Climate Action and Adaptation Plan aim for reducing VMT rather than increasing it, and SB 745 required VMT impacts as the primary criteria for judging projects. Most importantly, public awareness of the risk of motor vehicle induced climate change has emerged and strengthened.

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SacATC meeting Jan 19 with report, Northgate, Freeport

Dan Allison2 Comments

Update: The letter on the status of walking/biking was deferred to the next meeting, where a modified letter will be considered and hopefully passed. The Freeport and Northgate Transportation Plans were forwarded to council. I spoke in favor of Northgate and against Freeport, for reasons I will detail in the near future. The applications for planning grants were supported.

The Sacramento Active Transportation Commission (SacATC) is meeting online Thursday, January 18, 2023, 6:00PM to about 8:00PM, via Zoom. See http://sacramento.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=21 for agenda and eComment.

The three main topics are:

A read of the subcommittee report, formatted as a letter to the mayor since the commission is advisory to the council, is good and should be supported. I particularly like the emphasis on completing the construction detour policy, since city staff otherwise do not care about the safety of walkers and bicyclists in navigating construction projects that close or change sidewalks and bikeways. Two items missing are bike/scooter share, and Vision Zero. These two items may or may not fall under the purview of SacATC, however, the city is not making information available to the public on these efforts, so it seems to fall to SacATC to do so.

In general, the Northgate and Freeport plans are an immense improvement over existing conditions, so meet needs of the moment, but it is less clear they are going to meet the needs of the future, which will be much less private motor vehicle driving, and more walking, bicycling and transit. If time is available to look at the plans more closely, I’ll add posts.