Tag: survey

SacCity vision zero action plan update survey

Dan Allison2 Comments

It is apparent that the City of Sacramento’s Vision Zero Action Plan has overall been a failure. Traffic fatalities in the city have increased, and Sacramento remains among the most unsafe cities in the state. I have written recently about the action plan update process (SacCity Vision Zero Update) and longer ago all the way back to the inception of the program (category: Vision Zero).

I believe that the failure is in large part due to the focus on improving corridors rather than specific points of concern which are mostly intersections, and a reliance on getting grants from federal, state or regional (SACOG) sources to accomplish these projects. The assumption was, and is for all transportation projects, that outside grants rather than the city’s general budget, will be the source for transportation infrastructure. The city spends very little of its own budget on transportation, beyond some basic maintenance and required grant matches. The recent quick-build program is the first time significant money has been dedicated to traffic calming and safety.

The city is offering a survey to gather community input on the action plan update, open through February 22. I just took the survey, and some screen captures are below, but I want to focus on the third page (the others are below). The top of this page offers a chance to rearrange actions in order of importance. Since these are screen captures, the six items in text are:

  • Planning and constructing large street projects that make big changes to intersections and streets to greatly improve safety, but take longer to build
  • Planning and constructing smaller projects that are quicker to build but may only modestly improve safety
  • Implementing traffic signal changes that enhance safety for everyone
  • Enforcement by police officers to address traffic violations most linked to serious or fatal crashes (for example, DUIs, red-light running, speeding)
  • Automated enforcement to address traffic violations most linked with serious or fatal crashes (for example, DUIs, red-light running, speeding)
  • Education campaigns reminding or teaching people proper rules of the road

My ranking of these is:

  1. Planning and constructing smaller projects that are quicker to build but may only modestly improve safety
  2. Automated enforcement to address traffic violations most linked with serious or fatal crashes (for example, DUIs, red-light running, speeding)
  3. Implementing traffic signal changes that enhance safety for everyone
  4. Education campaigns reminding or teaching people proper rules of the road
  5. Enforcement by police officers to address traffic violations most linked to serious or fatal crashes (for example, DUIs, red-light running, speeding)
  6. Planning and constructing large street projects that make big changes to intersections and streets to greatly improve safety, but take longer to build

Why?

  1. These small projects are in line with the city’s new Traffic Safety Initiative (quick-build) program. Though there does not seem to be a webpage for this program yet, an article in City Express summarizes the program. It is still not fully staffed and fully active. This kind of program has proven to be effective in many cities, including ones that have achieved vision zero no fatalities or greatly reduced fatalities.
  2. Automated enforcement is the best solution for speeding and red light running. Red light running is particularly epidemic in Sacramento, though a problem everywhere. There are no widely available methods for automated enforcement of failure to yield to pedestrians (people walking in the crosswalk), but this is something that could be piloted and implemented.
  3. On roadways with frequent traffic signals, traffic can be significantly slowed by setting signal timing to award safe speeds and make unsafe speeds awkward. It can even be set to a ‘green wave’ where the signals are timed to the speed of bicyclists, about 12 mph. This would be higher on my list except that the city has, to this point, demonstrated that they use signal improvements not to improve safety for walkers, but to ease traffic flow. They are claim that the entire intersection must be upgraded, at a cost approaching $1 million per intersection. That is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.
  4. Education does not work. Of the millions of dollars spent on ‘education’ programs, there are almost no studies indicating that these programs are effective. They are feel good, but worthless.
  5. Law enforcement bias, which in integral to officers and very very slow to change, makes this an unacceptable solution in nearly all cases. In-person enforcement is as likely to result in officer escalation and harm as to preventing unsafe driver behavior. Particularly in the past, but true today, many ‘safety’ enforcements have actually been stings targeting people walking and bicycling rather than driver behavior. There may be situations in which enforcement is the last but only solution, but it should definitely not be part of the program design.
  6. Large projects are what the city has been doing, and it hasn’t worked. The city has a backlog of poorly designed and unsafe arterial roadways that will take decades (or more) and hundreds of millions of dollars (or more) to fix. We can’t wait that long, or until we find the money, to save lives. That is why small projects are the answer. Of course the projects are nice when complete, and the city has done as well as most cities its size in getting grants for these big projects, but we need to save lives tomorrow, not ten years from now. Writing grants for large projects takes an inordinate amount of staff time.

The city seems to be OK with a focus on small short-term projects, and these have been promoted by the city’s consultant (Fehr & Peers). But the public will need to support this approach, particularly against pushback from the cars-first lobby and individuals.

If you have the time and inclination, reviewing the seven documents on the city’s Vision Zero Action Plan Update page will deepen your understanding of the issue and possible solutions. If you have time for only one, the Safety Strategies (2025.06.18) is probably the most valuable.

The other pages. Note that I sometimes had started to fill out a page before capturing it.

SacramentoGO survey

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

If you are a resident of Sacramento county, you have probably received two glossy mailers from SacramentoGO, otherwise known as the Sacramento Transportation Authority. The agency is building up towards putting a measure on the November ballot that will add another half cent of sale tax to fund transportation in the county. This half cent would be added to the existing half cent of Measure A. I will have plenty to say about the tax measure in the future, but tonight I’ll focus on the authority’s “Tell Us What You Think” survey.

I took the online survey, and was pretty dissatisfied with the wording of the questions. By putting unrelated items into one choice, the survey tries to gain support for pro-motor-vehicle projects by conflating them with pro-active-transportation and pro-transit options. My notes from the survey are below.

If Sacramento County had additional funding for transportation, which would be a higher priority for you:
[note: I was not able to capture the two options here because trying to copy the text selects that item, but you’ll get the idea with the next few questions about the tricks they are trying to play; if someone manages to capture these for me, I’ll add them here]

Smoothing traffic flow on local streets
(Street maintenance, pothole fixes, synchronized traffic signals, street widening)
Low Priority, Medium Priority, High Priority
Conflates street maintenance with street widening, which should be unrelated to each other, and should have been asked separately.

Reducing congestion on Sacramento highways
(Fixing or upgrading major roadways and interchanges, adding carpool lanes)
Low Priority, Medium Priority, High Priority
Again, conflates fixing with upgrading, which should be unrelated to each other.

Investing in bridges and overcrossings
(Building or upgrading bridges over the rivers, improving or adding light rail)
Low Priority, Medium Priority, High Priority
Though there is one river crossing which might carry both motor vehicle and light rail (though it shouldn’t), the Green Line extension, this is not true of any other bridge, and this is an attempt to conflate car bridges with light rail bridges.

Adding bike paths
(American River Parkway improvements and adding bike paths to local streets)
Low Priority, Medium Priority, High Priority
A reasonable option. The parkway receives $1M per year from Measure A, but all entities in the county have a backlog of desirable bike lanes of at least $1B.

Extending light rail service to additional locations
(Adding new rail lines and stations to expand the light rail network)
Low Priority, Medium Priority, High Priority
Seems reasonable at first glance, but what is not asked is which extensions. The Green Line to the Airport is a trophy project that will not serve local or regional needs, and current planning is largely ignoring the valuable extension to the northeast at least to American River College, and perhaps beyond.

Improving service on existing light rail routes
(Upgrading trains, improving cleanliness and security, increasing frequency of service)
Low Priority, Medium Priority, High Priority
Yes!

Improving sidewalks, trails, paths
(Pedestrian improvements to sidewalks and lighting, neighborhood traffic calming and safety upgrades near schools)
Low Priority, Medium Priority, High Priority
Yes! There is probably a backlog of $20B in the county for sidewalks.

Reducing pollution from traffic
(Key infrastructure investments to improve air quality
Low Priority, Medium Priority, High Priority
Another wolf in sheep’s clothing. I am almost certain that SacTA will claim that roadway and highway widening will reduce air pollution, when in fact it will induce demand that will increase air pollution, including but not limited to greenhouse gas emissions.

Providing more transit programs/options for seniors and people with disabilities
(Expanded and affordable paratransit services)
Low Priority, Medium Priority, High Priority
Yes, but we need to be careful not to continue or establish low-productivity routes in an effort to serve seniors and disabled. There are other, more efficient ways of meeting this need.

Investing in reliable and convenient bus routes
(Bus service improvements, new routes or increased frequency)
Low Priority, Medium Priority, High Priority
Yes. But reliable and convenient means high frequency, which SacRT has not really provided or investigated.