City seeks input on investments, safety

Starting next week, the City of Sacramento will host four community workshops to present its draft plan for implementing the recently updated Bicycle Master Plan. The workshops will also include the City’s draft Vision Zero action plan for preventing severe and fatal traffic collisions.

Please make plans to attend one or more of the workshops:

Weds., Jan. 17, 5:30-7:00pm
South Natomas Library
2901 Truxel Rd. at Pebblestone Way

Weds., Jan. 24, 5:30-7:00pm
Pannell Community Center
2450 Meadowview Road at 24th Street

Mon., Jan. 29, 5:30-7:00pm
Oak Park Community Center
3425 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. at 8th Ave.

Weds., Jan. 31, 5:00-7:00pm
City Hall
915 I Street at 10th Street

The City completed the update of its Bicycle Master Plan in 2016. The draft implementation plan, completed as a separate project, sets priorities for meeting the Bicycle Master Plan goals of increasing the number of people on bikes, making bicycling safer, creating continuous, connected networks of bike routes, and ensuring that future improvements are made equitably throughout the city, including in historically underserved neighborhoods.

SABA successfully pushed the City to add these goals to the Bicycle Master Plan during the update.

Weighing factors such as cost and difficulty, as well as the historical pattern of under-investment in neighborhoods outside the Central City, the implementation plan assigns priorities to all of the projects currently proposed in the Bicycle Master Plan.

In 2016 the City of Sacramento added bike lanes to Freeport Blvd. in Land Park in response to a campaign launched by C.K. McClatchy Hr. High School students. Photo by Andrew Seng/Sac Bee

Meanwhile, the draft Vision Zero action plan contains the proposed steps the City will follow to achieve the goal of safety, based on data about the location and type of past traffic collisions. The City has set the ambitious goal of eliminating severe-injury and fatal collisions of all types by 2027.

The draft Vision Zero plan also directs the City to develop strategies for educating road users about risk factors, enforcing speed limits and laws against driving distracted and under the influence, and creating a culture among City agencies that makes traffic safety a top priority. SABA is part of a task force of community groups and agencies asked to contribute to the content of the City’s plan.

Together, the two plans will determine what kinds of improvements will be made on which streets, and sets spending priorities based on safety. The two plans could result in residents of historically underserved neighborhoods, especially in South Sacramento and North Sacramento, seeing increased City investments to improve roadway safety.

Feedback received from residents at the upcoming workshops will help the City finalize the draft plans, which will be presented to the City Council for adoption later this spring.

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