Uneasy Rhetoric

Attended one of SACOG’s Regional Transportation Plan workshops this morning and, like Maya, I found it “stilted.” I would also say uninspiring. I don’t exactly feel like I wasted my time, but I did feel like I was playing with maps more than I was giving input into a future transportation plan.

Part of this may have been our moderator’s fault. Our moderator talked at length about what all of the pretty colors on the maps meant, but he never really went over what we were about to do. I didn’t really figure out what was going on until we were well into the process.

My one piece of advice, serious advice, to SACOG on running these forums would be to have a brief run through of exactly what we’re going to do in specific terms before we dive in. A general overview isn’t enough. Have someone conduct the overview for the entire room. Don’t depend on the moderators to do it. I think if we had had a better idea of where we were supposed to be going, some of us might have been able to keep the moderator from running on too long.

This is one case where I think we actually switched into workshop mode much too quickly.

Observations.

1) We were given three different transportation plans and told to pick from a “short distance” commute plan, a “medium distance,” and a “long distance.” Obviously, each of the three contained some, but not all, of the elements of the others. What wasn’t clear to me until after we’d made the choice (and despite Maya’s explanation to a latecomer), was that these were mutually exclusive plans. The “short distance” plan spent all of the transportation money on infrastructure designed for short commutes. In an ideal world, I’d have bought into this completely. After all, my ideal city is composed of walkable transportation nodes connected by transit and bicycle facilities (okay, I’ll allow some freeways for the tomato trucks). But this isn’t an ideal world. I should have fought for the “medium distance” plan because I think it reflected reality better.

2) We were then to make modifications to the plan we chose and try to keep within a budget. Want to add more light rail? Something has to disappear. We ended up paying for a lot of local transit options (shuttles), pedestrian bridges, and a streetcar by *taking out* some proposed light rail. Several tables went this route, which surprised me, and which should make all those anti-light rail libertarians happy. Citizens, even in the “inner city” (such as it is), are not necessarily enamored of light rail for its own sake. You wouldn’t know this talking to some planners, but even hard core rail people like me think that a line has to make sense before you spend that kind of dough. And very little about light rail in Sacramento makes much sense.

3) As Maya pointed out, central city residents hate them some HOV lanes. I’m not hot on them either, although Maya’s right that they do have some benefits vis-a-vis congestion and air quality and, in a world where no amount of social engineering will get people out of their cars, HOV lanes probably have to be part of the equation. The problem is, those who do not wish to get out of their cars want HOV lanes instead of other transportation options, just as those of us who want to get people out of their cars are willing to make driving as difficult as possible (see 5 below).

4) In the end, I felt like our choices had already been made for us, and we were just being given the opportunity to kvetch. Maybe some of the proposals will make it in to the plan, but much of the future transportation infrastructure will depend on whether local governments can stick to higher-density proposals or whether they’ll cave for the first developer that wants to build a bunch of McMansions where once there was farm land. Much will also depend on whether the central city continues to be the employment center (to some degree it always will be, thanks to state government) or whether, as I suspect, commuting will become more about going from suburb to suburb.

5) Finally, as I was advocating for some kind of non-automobile based options connecting everything south of Hwy 50 to that main corridor, someone suggested maybe we don’t want to make it easy for anyone to live in those areas. While this kind of “screw you” is attractive, it isn’t reality. Especially when you consider that living “close in” is very expensive. Some of those neighborhoods are still affordable, relative to the rest of the city.

Finally, the workshop gave short (read: no) shrift to current bus service, and there was really no way to incorporate significant bicycle facility improvements except by putting bike/ped bridges over the river. I’ll acquiesce on walkability issues since I think those are best address through the land use process. I seriously doubt we’re going to get a major pedestrian highway built, although it would be nice to see a bigger, better network of bike/ped trails.