Tag: Strong SacTown

SacCity LPI background

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Previous posts on Leading Pedestrian Interval (LPI), in the City of Sacramento and more generally, at available at tag: LPI.

The Strong SacTown Street Design Standards Working Group has a team working on Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPI) at traffic signals. If LPI grabs your interest, I encourage you to join the working group. Meetings are posted on Luma, a calendaring application. Go to Luma (app or website: https://luma.com/strongsactown). The next working group group meeting is not listed there yet, but it is normally on the third Sunday of the month at 1:00 PM. Meetings are open to the public; one need not be a member of Strong SacTown or Strong Towns to join in (though you should be!).

The City of Sacramento has a Traffic Signal Operations and Standards page. The prose is garbled, to say the least. The linked documents have nothing to do with operations. It does not include a Traffic Signal Operations Manual (TSOM). Though the plan is supposed to be updated, it is not clear if it even exists.

Streets for People Active Transportation Plan (2025-08, page 105): “An evaluation of best practice to establish guidelines for leading pedestrian intervals (LPIs) at signalized intersections is currently (2025) underway and will be included in the updated City of Sacramento Traffic Signal Operations Manual (TSOM). The TSOM and the guidelines for LPIs will be presented to the Active Transportation and Disability Advisory Commissions to allow for public discussion of the proposed standard practices.”

Vision Zero Action Plan Update Safety Improvement Strategies presentation includes the following graphic:

graphic for Leading Pedestrian Interval (LPI)
SacCity Vision Zero Action Plan Update, Safety Improvement Strategies, presentation, page 48

The Vision Zero Action Plan Update Top Collision Profiles and Countermeasures memo includes the following graphic, which has more detail. It is identified as Tier 3, Engineering Countermeasures, Managing conflicts in time.

SacCity Vision Zero Action Plan Update, Top Collision Profiles and Countermeasures, memo, Leading Pedestrian Interval (LPI), page 44

The Vision Zero Action Plan Update draft recommendations includes #9: “Update City Traffic Signal Operations Manual (TSOM) to reflect complete streets and designs reflective of reducing exposure, likelihood, and severity. Include application of Leading Pedestrian Intervals, No Right Turn on Red, Protected Left-Turn Phasing, Rest on Red, and other similar strategies.” Items 19 and 26 might also include LPIs, though they are not called out there.

Park(ing) Day, 2025-09-20

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Strong SacTown will again be hosting a Park(ing) Day event on Saturday, September 20, 2025. The location will be 20th Street & L Street, adjacent to the Midtown Farmers Market, and the time 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM. The location should attract curious people from the farmers market, as well as passerbys. You can sign up with Strong SacTown at https://bit.ly/sstparkingday2025 (the link in the newsletter and meeting slide below is malformed, so use this one) to help with planning and hosting on the day, including setup and breakdown. Whether you stop by or get involved, don’t miss it!

The international Park(ing) Day website provides background and history about the events. Note that Sacramento’s day is Saturday, September 20, not Friday, September 19. It also provides a description of the event:

“On Saturday, September 20, Strong SacTown is hosting Park(ing) Day, a community celebration where we reimagine Sacramento’s streets. We’ll highlight the new daylighting law (AB 413), invite neighbors to brainstorm how we can use these reclaimed spaces, and enjoy fun activities like bike tune-ups, games, and a mini bike lot. This is a chance to spark creativity around how Sacramento can use daylighted corners for seating, greening, and gathering.”

Note that in addition to Park(ing) Day, the Midtown Farmers Market runs 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM, and the Sacramento Porch Fest in midtown runs 12:00 noon to 10:00 PM, all in this most livable neighborhood of Sacramento.

Strong SacTown: Things that work: traffic posts

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Things That Work: Traffic Posts is the eighth post by Strong SacTown to improve and promote the City of Sacramento update to its Street Design Standards. Other posts at tag: street design standards.

“You don’t often hear news about the crashes that didn’t happen. Today we’d like to highlight something already making real-world safety impacts in Sacramento: traffic posts (aka. delineators) on 15th & 16th Streets in Downtown. These traffic posts reduce the speed of cars (and severity of injuries) as well as channelize traffic – stopping cars from changing lanes at the crosswalk and potentially striking pedestrians who have started crossing.

Strong Towns approach to roadway safety

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Strong Towns, an organization which provides leadership and thinking through five priority campaigns: End Highway Expansion, Transparent Local Accounting, Incremental Housing, Safe and Productive Streets, and End Parking Mandates and Subsidies. Safe and Productive Streets are the focus this week, with a podcast Prioritizing Safety in Street Design: A Conversation with Melany Alliston, posted today, and tomorrow, Beyond Blame Press Conference: How Cities Can Learn From Crashes To Create Safer Streets Today, and release of a report Beyond Blame: How Cities Can Learn from Crashes to Create Safer Streets Today.

Strong SacTown, the ‘local conversation’ or affiliate of Strong Towns is an active participant in the City of Sacramento Street Design Standards Update. Please join Strong SacTown. Slow Down Sacramento (Isaac Gonzalez) is also playing a major role in bringing awareness of roadways safety to the public, and his emails inform this post. Please join Slow Down Sacramento. Civic Thread and SABA, along with many other organizations, are providing both leadership and technical expertise on roadway safety. Please support them!

Strong Towns has offered the Crash Analysis Studio for two years now, with 19 studios. I have participated in several of these, and I think they are great, though only a part of the necessary response.

Park(ing) Day in Sacramento on September 21

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Park(ing) Day, is an international and local event: “Park(ing) day is a global, public, participatory project where people across the world temporarily repurpose curbside parking spaces and convert them into public parks and social spaces to advocate for safer, greener, and more equitable streets for people.”

Strong SacTown, the affiliate or ‘local conversation’ of the Strong Towns organization, and SABA, are sponsoring a Park(ing) Day event on Saturday, September 21, from 11:00am to 2:00pm. The location will be repurposed parking spaces at 1607 10th Street, Sacramento, in front of Cafe Xocolatl, which is supporting the event.

The Park(ing) Day website (https://www.myparkingday.org) map shows a second location in Sacramento, on 20th Street between J and K streets, but doesn’t have information about the date and time or sponsor. This may be a carryover from 2023 when there was an event on 20th Street.

this week 2024-09-16

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Note: Don’t expect this to be a regular feature. I’ll do it when I can. Please see the calendar maintained by SacMoves Coalition, at https://sacmoves.org/events/.

Monday 16

Tuesday 17

  • Sacramento City Council meeting, 5:00 PM, likely will address emergency declaration for road safety introduced by Caity Maple, Mayor Darrell Steinberg, and Karina Talamantes; not noted on the agenda as of 2024-09-15

Wednesday 18

Thursday 19

Friday 20

Saturday 21

Sunday 22

Street Design Standards

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Strong SacTown Street Design Team will be posting a series to improve and promote the City of Sacramento update of their street design standards. This is the first. You can follow their website at https://www.strongsactown.org/, and the series at https://www.strongsactown.org/tag/street-design-standards/. Getting Around Sacramento / Dan Allison is participating in the team planning and writing, but these posts are the work of the team.

“We are Strong SacTown — Streets for People, a group of Sacramentans advocating for updated street designs that will rank safety, livability, and economic vitality above vehicle throughput or speed; where congestion relief will not be the goal in street design.

The City of Sacramento is updating the street design standards for the first time since 2009. The city is embarking on this effort as it is becoming increasingly apparent that the existing standards do not meet the needs of all users in the modern era.”

Streets for People – Street Design Standards – Strong SacTown
Streets for People – Street Design Standards