Thank you.

This is a very rare occurrence.

Okay.

Good evening.

Welcome to the November 20th, 2025,

Active Transportation Commission.

The meeting is now called to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll to establish a quorum?

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioners, please unmute Commissioner Harris.

Here.

Commissioner Gibson?

Here.

Commissioner Wadwani?

Here.

Commissioner Ratio Patel?

Here.

Vice Chair Gonzalez?

Here.

Commissioner Hopp?

Here.

Commissioner Tao?

Here.

Commissioner Moore?

Present.

Commissioner Banks?

Here.

And Chair Hodel?

Here.

Thank you. We have a quorum.

Thank you.

I would like to remind members of the public in chambers that if you would like to speak

on an agenda item, please turn in a speaker slip when the item begins. You will have two minutes

to speak once you are called on. After the first speaker, we will no longer accept speaker slips.

We will now proceed with today's agenda. Please rise for the opening acknowledgments in honor of

Sacramento's indigenous people and tribal lands. To the original people of this land, the Nisanan

people, the Southern Maidu, Valley and Plains Miwok, Patwin Winton peoples, and the people

of the Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe. May we acknowledge

and honor the native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these

ancestral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement

and appreciation for Sacramento's indigenous people's history, contributions, and lives.

Thank you.

Please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I would like to welcome our new commissioner, Justine Reshio-Patel.

Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about yourself.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Justine Reshio-Patel.

I'm so honored to be here.

Just a few things about myself.

I'm a resident of District 5.

I live in Woodbine right by the airport.

I work as a transportation planner by day.

and I have a master's degree in city and regional planning from Merckers University.

But, you know, before I, instead of listing many things about myself,

I'd rather just that you know me as somebody who cares really deeply

about community-focused policy and planning.

And so I'm very excited to be working with you all to make streets safer

and make active transportation more accessible and viable

for everybody who lives in our communities.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Welcome.

Our first business today is the Commission's staff report.

Staff, you may proceed.

Thank you, Chair.

On October 30th, we had a ribbon-cutting and trail opening for the Ninos Parkway, in addition to the Ninos Parkway.

That was adding a half a mile to that existing parkway and connecting it to a new development area.

So it's well attended, and it's very exciting.

I'm also happy to announce that in mid-December, the Del Rio Trail Bridge will be reopened.

Yes.

So, and I was going to actually ask the group, there should be some kind of ribbon cutting.

If you would like me to email the group to see if you'd like to attend, I'm happy to invite you.

Yes, please.

Yes, yes, yes.

Lots of yeses.

Great.

And then just one final note, a little more housekeeping.

You all receive an email from the clerk's office for your attendance each month.

If you can respond to that quickly, it generally helps the clerk determine whether we're going to have a meeting or not.

So just a quick reminder for that.

And that concludes my report, Chair.

Thank you very much.

Next is the approval of the consent calendar.

Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on the consent calendar?

Thank you, Chair. I have no speaker slips for this item.

Are there any commissioners who wish to speak on this topic?

May I have a motion and a second for the consent?

Move to approve.

Second.

Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Haupt and a second by Vice Chair Gonzalez to approve the consent calendar.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioner Harris?

Aye.

Commissioner Gibson?

Aye.

Commissioner Wadwani?

Aye.

Commissioner Risho-Pateau?

Aye.

Vice Chair Gonzalez?

Aye.

Commissioner Hopp?

Aye.

Commissioner Tao?

Aye.

Commissioner Moore?

Aye.

Commissioner Banks?

Aye.

Chair Hodel?

Aye.

Thank you. The motion passes.

Thank you.

We will now proceed to the discussion calendar.

Item number three is Franklin Boulevard Complete Street.

Is there a staff presentation?

There is.

There is.

Perfect.

Is this Chris, did the slide deck that I dropped to you get put up?

It did.

They're pulling it from the back now.

Okay, I did not see it on the display there.

I have it on my laptop.

Should we make an amendment to the agenda and flip so we can get the slide deck up?

Sure.

So we'll go to the next item on the agenda and then come back.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

No problem.

Okay.

The next agenda item is number five, active.

No, no, no, no.

We need number four.

Four?

The next, so we'll proceed to item number four,

transportation planning, current and planned projects,

and there is a staff presentation.

Good evening, Chair.

Members of the Commission, Chris Doherty,

your Transmission Planning Manager.

Today I'm going to go over and kind of be giving a brief overview of all the projects that Transmission Planning is currently working on,

and then also give an update on some of the ones that we plan to be kicking off next year and restarting.

Perfect.

So we currently have two fairly large citywide projects that are underway.

and that is both our Vision Zero Action Plan update and our Streets for People Plan.

The Streets for People Plan I know was in front of you, I believe, a couple meetings ago for adoption

and it is slated after four years of the project to be adopted by City Council on December 2nd.

So we're all looking forward to completing that project and having a brand new bike and pedestrian master plan.

Our Vision Zero plan or action plan update really kicks off from our initial Vision Zero action plan and updates it to be current with the standards of the federal government.

And that is nearing completion as well.

We expect that to be adopted by the City Council in spring of 2026.

So look forward to that coming to this commission and then onward to the City Council.

We are currently working on four different corridor plans.

That is the connecting Howe Avenue safety mobility plan, the Norwood mobility project,

the Arden Auburn mobility project, and I believe I will say this is the first time you're seeing this logo as it's been rebranded and re-logoed this week.

And the Fruit Ridge Road safety and mobility plan.

I know recently the connecting Howe Avenue and Norwood mobility projects have been up in front of this commission as their final stage of their engagement as they move to be adopted and completed in spring of 2026.

So we're looking forward to bringing those to completion.

At the opposite, this summer we kicked off in July both the Arden Auburn mobility project and the Fruit Ridge mobility safety mobility plan.

All four of these studies are funded through Caltrans planning grants who are on a very kind of standard template cycle.

So these will be, we're looking for completion in about 24 months for those two plans as they move forward.

We, of course, have our ongoing programs, like our bike parking program that is looking at meeting our bike parking needs

in largely our disadvantaged communities, but also all over the city.

Those include things like corrals, but also bike parking on private property and also public parking.

Public right away, excuse me.

We have our larger Vision Zero program.

This is the umbrella that all of our Vision Zero and safety programs, you know, focus on.

And we also do a lot of education programs.

For example, the active transportation education program.

So there's two projects that due to staffing and staff capacity and staff vacancy that we had to pause in the last year or so.

That is our update to our transmission demand management policy and our street design standards update.

We are currently underway with hiring some additional staff.

We should have people ideally hired up in the next few months.

So with that, we plan to re-kick off these two projects, to get these important projects, to get them completed in the next 12 to 18 months.

And then I'm also happy to announce a few new projects that we'll be kicking off in this next year.

One is an update to our creative crosswalk policy update, which we are excited to do,

to be able to either add some elements to that policy and or make it easier for our residents to do.

At the same time, we're actually working on this now, and it will be in full speed next year,

our automated red light enforcement, or the implementation of SB 720.

This will allow us to automatically enforce red lights throughout the city.

But at this point, we are currently working towards meeting the goals of the new law.

The new law has very strict guidelines about how we can implement this.

So we are analyzing those and working with our attorneys now to move that forward.

But we are very excited to move this as a primary component of our Vision Zero program throughout the city.

And also, once we have additional staff on board, we are really excited to launch our Reconnecting Old North Sacramento project.

This is a planning activity that was funded through a very large SACOG grant that multiple jurisdictions partnered on.

They were awarded about $22.5 million to do this work.

And the city got approximately $1 million to do this work for the area of Old North Sacramento.

to really address and identify how to mitigate the harms of historic freeways

and other elements that have gone into this corridor to improve.

So with that, that concludes my presentation.

I'm available for any questions that you might have.

Thank you very much.

Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this topic?

Thank you, Chair. I have no speaker slips for this item.

Okay. And we have so far one commissioner who will speak. Commissioner Rashiopatel.

I have one question. Of the current and upcoming plans, do we have anything, I guess, in the pipeline to think about traffic calming or speed reduction on 24th Street?

So we have a citywide quick build program that I think is going to be taking a look at areas like that and other areas for those immediately traffic calming quick components that we can do.

That was adopted last year at council and funded and they are currently staffing up for those positions now.

so that it's not the transportation planning division per se.

It's our transportation group, our traffic engineering, that is taking a look at that.

But we work very closely with them on how to do that.

So those are areas that we are actively looking at.

I have another question.

I see that you are restarting the reconnecting Old North Sacramento.

There's a few projects and studies in the area as well.

Have you connected with San Joaquin Regional Rail on their Del Paso Action Plan?

There are, I think at the last count, I've identified five different parallel efforts that are happening in Old North Sacramento,

including our Arden and Auburn Mobility Plan, the San Joaquin JPA's planning study for their siting of their new train stop.

There's several other initiatives that are going on.

And really to just to make sure that we don't really create some fatigue in the engagement for all these different efforts in this community.

We're really pairing and really trying to work efficiently so that we are out there unified as a city and other entities moving forward with those projects.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Yes.

Commissioner Moore.

That would be me, I think.

Oh, okay.

Frankly.

David's over here.

David's vacant.

until we get that sorted out.

My question to you, Chris, thanks for the presentation,

is about the Vision Zero.

There are a number of us that are here

that were on a Vision Zero task force,

and I think there's one more meeting.

Will we review all of the findings before it gets finished?

For the action plan update?

Yeah, for the Vision Zero action plan update

before it comes here.

I believe it's been sort of workshop-y,

meaning like we've learned about things

and then talked about things, learned about things.

We haven't really looked at policies and change of policies per se.

You're on the technical advisory committee.

I would assume that you're going to be seeing that before it goes out to the full engagement portion of that.

But I can definitely follow up with you to verify that.

Yeah, thanks.

Commissioner Moore.

Thank you.

For the Reconnecting North Sacramento, from a timeline perspective,

Can you speak to whether the delay is going to maybe necessitate any kind of extension, or do you not foresee that?

And do you see any maybe potential issues with needing to extend it?

Yeah.

So we're working really closely with our partners at SACOG that helped us fund this, but we have the funding until 2029.

We do anticipate releasing the RFP in January for that project.

So we do want to kick that off literally at the beginning of next year.

Got it.

That is an important project to us, and we really want to move that forward, especially with all the other efforts that are currently happening in that area, to make sure they're really happening concurrently, and we can have kind of one voice as a city moving through that area.

So that's really kind of front and center for us, so we want to move that forward.

Thank you.

I have a question.

Would you please describe the active transportation education program?

Sure.

We run a monthly active transportation class that people can sign up for.

It is free.

It is a portion of it is part of a diversion program for those who have been cited either on bike or on scooter that can take that class to educate.

But also we've just had drop-in students, effectively, who want to understand.

It's an hour-long class.

We actually, I taught my first one last Friday over lunch.

So there's a lot of good content and a lot of kind of how to have both how to follow the rules of the road,

but also how to enjoy riding a bike around Sacramento regardless of the weather and the environment.

Thank you.

Commissioner Moore, your name is still up.

I'm sorry.

Okay, so Commissioner Moore, I mean, that should say Banks.

Yes.

Okay. Commissioner Banks.

Thank you. One other question, Chris, about the Vision Zero piece.

Has there yet been or will there be soon an overlap with a new safety team, the technical safety team, the quick build folks that are also working on Vision Zero type effects?

I want to make sure I understand what you're asking correctly.

We have a new tactical safety team.

I think that might not have the right term for it.

The quick build team.

The quick build team.

Okay, that's the new term.

How are they being built in, or what's the overlap of what they're doing and the new Vision Zero plan?

And if there isn't any, should there be?

Yeah, I'm happy to follow up with you on that, just to better articulate it.

The Vision Zero Action Plan update is really coming up with a new policy framework and identifying countermeasures specifically, I think, to address those.

I'm assuming there will be several quick build options in that kit.

But at the same time as they step up and identify where the quick build team is going to be working, there will probably be some overlap, but I don't think it's directly related.

That surprises me that it wouldn't be directly related.

in that part of the reason why the Quick Build team was created was to help us with our Vision Zero work.

So I would think that the Quick Build team is one big strategy to help us get to our Vision Zero plan.

Yeah, and I apologize.

I am not actively managing the Vision Zero action plan update.

Jennifer and our staff is still carrying that one forward

as it's about to be completed.

And I'm definitely, let me follow up with you

and get back with you on that

because I think I might be misspeaking a little bit.

Yeah, I would think that those would be linked.

Okay, thank you.

I see no other speakers in the queue.

So this, thank you all very much.

This item is for review and comment,

so no vote is required. Thank you. We are now going to go back to item number three,

Franklin Boulevard Complete Street.

And there is a center.

All right. Good evening, commissioners. Thank you for bearing with us while we worked through

our technical difficulties. And thanks to those who helped get it loaded up.

My name is Megan Johnson, and I'm a senior engineer with our Public Works Department in the Engineering Services Division.

And I am the project manager for the Franklin Boulevard Complete Street Project.

This project is located, as you might suspect, on Franklin Boulevard between Sutterville Road and just south of Fruit Ridge at 32nd Avenue in our North City Farms and South City Farms neighborhoods.

This, so this is a major project that's been in the works since about 2016, which is actually

when I first started at the city.

And so we've been developing it over a number of years.

I led the planning, outreach, concept development, environmental clearance, and funding aspect

of this project.

And then at that point, I handed it off to another engineer who managed it through the

right-of-way and final design components. And that was so rigorous and so intensive that once he

finally got the project ready for construction, he decided to retire. And so then the project came

back to me and I'm leading it through the construction phase. So when I was leading this

effort back at the very beginning, I presented to the previous incarnation of this group. It was the

county city bicycle advisory committee so back in 2017 and it occurred to me

recently that this current active transportation commission has never been

presented to unless you hair snuck in here at some point and I wasn't aware of

it and so since this is just such a cool project I wanted to come and share it

with you so that you know what's happening

All right. So a little bit of background on the community to provide context for the project.

The neighborhoods around Franklin Boulevard were originally farm plots, and they were located just outside the limits of our neighborhoods,

which had racially restricted covenants or redlining.

And then following World War II, Mexican immigrants who came to the area through the Bracero programs settled into the community.

And so because of these two considerations, the Franklin neighborhoods have been home to generations of immigrants.

The community is majority residents of color, and the largest group are Hispanics, accounting for about 50% of the residents.

The community also faces significant poverty.

The Healthy Places Index, which measures a bunch of different factors contributing to community health,

including income level and access to trees and health care and transportation.

That index identifies this community in the 3.5th percentile

when compared to the rest of California's census districts.

So it has a lot of needs.

The construction of the freeways through Latino and black communities in the 1960s

displaced residents and when factoring in the freeways and the railroad, the Franklin District

is geographically isolated from the adjacent neighborhoods as well as from the central

city. The community felt the effects of isolation and underinvestment and Franklin Boulevard

would then go on to be called the ugliest street in Sacramento by the Sacramento beat.

And then today as the only continuous roadway running north-south between I-5 and Highway

99 that connects between Elk Grove, the South Sacramento neighborhoods and up towards the

central city, Franklin Boulevard often serves as a bypass route for freeway commuters cutting

through the community to cut down on travel time and it carries around 18,000 cars per

day.

So here's a snapshot of the community that lives in our part of Franklin.

As mentioned, the community is home to generations of immigrants.

And so it has a strong cultural identity and an abundance of really great restaurants,

shops and supermarkets and community centers.

And it also has a small but tenacious business district which acts as community advocates.

So Franklin Boulevard itself within the community acts as the backbone of the community, not

only for their day-to-day activities but also for cultural community events.

So over to technical details.

Currently Franklin Boulevard has four lanes,

a center turn lane, no bike lanes.

It has an attached narrow sidewalk

without any landscaping to buffer from traffic.

And it also has no pedestrian lighting

and so it's really dark to walk along here at night.

As you can see in the image to the right,

there are long distances

without any marked controlled pedestrian crossings.

And there's also long distances

without any meaningful shade,

which as we all know about Sacramento's hot summers

can be really uncomfortable.

And the lack of shade is a key concern for these residents.

And it's representative of a larger systemic issue.

The SACB wrote an article a few years back titled

How Sacramento's Urban Forest Divides the City

in Health and in Wealth.

And this map shows a layer

that's on our internal GIS mapping database.

And it shows all of the street trees

within public right of way that are maintained

by our urban forestry division.

And so when you toggle this layer on the map explodes

in green dots.

But here in the city of trees,

our disadvantaged neighborhoods

are noticeably more sparse.

In fact, along our mile and a half project limits,

there's only one tree shown in the database.

And I actually don't think that tree really exists.

So this project started through grassroots efforts.

The Franklin Boulevard Business District,

acting in advocacy for the community,

commissioned a study by UC Davis sociologist,

Dr. Jesus Hernandez, evaluating the neighborhoods

in the commercial corridor and identifying strategies

to revitalize the community, promote economic prosperity,

and help the residents and the businesses thrive.

The Franklin plan highlighted the profound effects

that transportation has on the health and well-being

of the neighborhoods, and it recommended strategies

for how to support the needs of the community.

One of the key recommendations that emerged from this plan

was to do a lane reduction to allow for trees

and to allow for better bike

and pedestrian facilities for families.

And so the business district then approached the city

to ask for us to take this project on.

Our concept development included extensive public engagement

to get feedback on the challenges

that the community faces with Franklin Boulevard

and what they wanted from the street

and what improvements would be most effective

at meeting their needs.

And so the project that emerged was shaped

to meet the community identified goals.

Some of the key goals that I'll identify

were the need to calm traffic and improve safety,

to provide bike and pedestrian facilities

that were comfortable for families to use,

to bring in pedestrian lighting

to make it feel safer at night,

and to expand the tree canopy

to bring shade to the corridor.

So here is the pre-project condition.

We had five lanes, a narrow attached sidewalk,

no bike facilities.

And here's what the proposed project will look like.

It includes a lane reduction to one lane in each direction,

new separated class four bikeways

that will have raised islands as the separating element

to make the separation feel more robust,

a realigned and widened sidewalk,

pedestrian scale lighting, and landscaping and trees.

So I'll just step really quickly through the plans.

Starting from the north at Curtis Park,

extending south from Sutterville Road,

we'll have one lane in each direction,

a center turn lane, and the new bikeways.

Continuing south, we'll be widening the sidewalks,

bringing in landscaping and trees.

And then at 18th Avenue, this was a location

of a pedestrian fatality a few years back.

And so we'll be adding in a new marked crosswalk

with pedestrian refuge island.

The lane reduction of course will reduce

the number of conflict points.

And we'll have a flashing beacon with overhead mast arms

to provide a safer crossing.

Continuing south, 21st Avenue is a really important

intersection for the project because it connects

to Ethel Phillips Elementary School to the west

and then connects under the freeway to Oak Park.

This was the intersection along the project

that had the highest number of pedestrian

and bicycle collisions.

And some of those included children.

And so our focus at this intersection

is to slow down all of our users, bicyclists and pedestrians.

We want everyone going slow.

And so the project is going to include

a raised protected intersection type design

that will hopefully slow everyone down and improve safety.

Continuing along, I'll note that because of the constrained

right of way, we have to make decisions

on how we're gonna prioritize this space.

And so we generally prioritized adding landscaping

and trees and the quality bike and pedestrian facilities

and did not include on street parking.

Most of the properties include parking lots.

There were a handful of locations

where it seemed appropriate to maintain the parking

and so we have parking separated bikeways

at those locations.

Another thing I'll highlight is that with this project,

we specifically made sure to line up enough funds

so that we could replace all of the non-ADA compliant

driveways even on segments where we're not replacing

the sidewalk itself.

So we'll have all new ADA compliant driveways.

And then we get down to Fruit Ridge Road.

We'll carry the bike lanes through the intersection

and then this brings us to the end of this project,

which is phase one and two.

We combined two phases together.

This is the start of a phase three project

that is in design now and it will continue the improvements

down to the city county line near 38th Avenue.

So another thing that I wanna highlight

is just how this project fits

into the bigger transportation network.

Like I mentioned, Franklin Boulevard is significant

because it's the only continuous north-south street

that connects between all of these

different neighborhoods and cities.

And so over the years, as we've been developing this project,

we've been working with our partner agencies

and our own selves on a series of projects

that will continue putting in quality bike facilities

all the way down to Elk Grove.

And so with these series of resurfacing projects

where we've worked with the county

and we've also worked with the city of Elk Grove,

we'll have about eight miles of bike facilities

that this project and the phase three project

will be the last projects to kind of piece it all together.

And then these projects will also improve access

to some of our other active transportation investments.

It gets us fairly close to Broadway

where there's a whole series of active transportation projects

as well as to the central city

where we've been expanding our protected bikeway network.

Now, as you might imagine, this was a very expensive project.

And so getting the funding to do this

required writing a lot of grant applications.

Luckily, between SACOG

and the California Transportation Commission,

we were able to secure over $21 million

in federal grant funds for the project.

And also strategically structure them

so that we were able to minimize the amount

of local matching funds that were needed for the project,

which I imagine this group is familiar

with our local funding restraints,

and so that was kind of key to success

for getting this project through.

So we started construction on this project in April,

and we're nearly complete with our utilities,

drainage, sidewalk, curb ramp,

and street lighting improvements.

Depending on whether our contractors are ambitious

and are wanting to move into the paving phase

in the next couple of weeks.

So if the weather is optimal, I see the surprise look,

yes, if the weather is optimal,

we'll keep charging through the winter

and hopefully have this project up and running by spring.

So with that, I think that's the end.

So welcome any comments, thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Clerk, are there any members of the public

wish to speak on this item?

Thank you, Chair. I have one speaker slip for this item. Our speaker is Michael Bevins.

Michael Bevins, member of District 2. I've been lucky, I guess, or fortunate to attend

most of these road redesigns from Howell Avenue, Norwood. I started off at Franklin, Folsom

Boulevard. They're all kind of the same. I stress that we need to consider both through traffic and destinations. If you reduce it down from two lanes in one direction down to one with a small bike lane, it is safer. Don't get me wrong. It's a good plan. It definitely improves the situation.

I think if you fine-tune it just a little bit more, make that bike lane wider so cars can use that slowly to turn into the right lane into a business.

And so slow that bikes ride in the cars at the same time.

Then you can improve throughput.

Cars that want to go, like we said, it's the north-south only way between the two freeways.

If you want to take, I'm a truck driver, so I know sometimes I get stuck in that and I want to go south.

I have only one lane and it's crowded.

It's going to be backed up a lot.

So I think we need to consider throughput.

I would say to tweak it would be to make the bike lane wide enough for cars to use only to turn into a place or to turn right onto a street.

So that through traffic can just stay in that one lane and just keep going.

They're going to go slower, which is good.

but they're gonna consider,

they're not gonna be backed up as much

if cars are allowed to turn right or left

in the opposite lane.

So overall, I think it's a good plan.

I don't wanna complain too much.

Also on the bike, when I see the plans,

if you're on the bike lane and you wanna turn left,

there's no pathway for that in the design.

Just make sure that there's a crosswalk on the street.

Okay, what about a bike path?

You don't wanna just go down the pathway.

You wanna actually turn left on the side street.

What's the pathway or signage so you know as a bike list

how you're supposed to turn left.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Chair, I have no more speakers.

Thank you.

Are there any commissioners who wish to speak on this item?

Vice Chair Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for the great presentation.

Appreciate it very much.

It's so happy to see this project come into fruition.

We were there on the ribbon-cutting day,

groundbreaking and all that,

And now it's been many months.

And looking forward to this completion date.

I know you've done a great job with the outreach

with the businesses, the eminent domain,

the driveway access and stuff.

I think the city's been really thoughtful about that

and very mindful of it.

I, too, am looking forward to seeing those trees fill in.

You know, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago,

and the second best time is today.

So I'm glad that we're doing it,

and I'm looking forward to seeing as that all fills in.

I just want to share how much I appreciate

the intentionality of the pedestrian focused lighting.

I know we're getting street lighting

and pedestrian focused lighting

and it's being installed almost in places

right next to each other, but I think it's great.

It shows that we're investing in places

where we want to see safety

and not just in the places where cars are moving.

And I think that's really wonderful for this street.

It was really dark before we started

and has lots of safety challenges.

So just appreciate this project.

I've lived in Sacramento my entire life.

I've been going to La Esperanza Bakery since I used to look into the cabinets like this with the pandus and say, hey, now I'm looking down at it as an older man.

So it definitely has been the ugliest street in Sacramento for a long time, and it's long overdue and a place where I'm glad to see us investing.

So thank you for sharing this with us, and we look forward to it being done.

Thank you.

Commissioner Chow.

Thank you, Chair Liddell, and thank you, Ms. Johnson, for your wonderful presentation.

I kind of wanted to echo what board member,

Commissioner Gonzalez had said.

I'm really excited as well to kind of see the completion of the project.

I think that I've seen that road for a while and the evolution of it.

I'm really excited to kind of just see how it will look like once the project is complete.

The community member had mentioned some of the traffic.

I imagine we had done some studies around the traffic with the reduction.

So I just wanted to see if we can kind of just touch on that a little bit to see what the results were in that traffic study as we narrowed down the lanes.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we did do a detailed traffic analysis for the project as part of its development.

And so the traffic analysis shows that, you know, because a lot of the traffic that's on Franklin Boulevard aren't people who live there or are visiting those shops.

They're people who are traveling south to Elk Grove.

And so with the traffic analysis, it's showing a reduction of between 1,900 and 3,000 cars per day, which is exactly what we want.

So there will be reduced numbers of vehicles on Franklin Boulevard.

And the benefits also extend to some of the adjacent streets.

So there's a reduction on Franklin Boulevard even within Curtis Park.

As well as on Sutterville Road, it reduces the demand for the Sutterville Road interchange at 99.

And so the benefits of discouraging Franklin as being a commuter route extends out to some of the other streets.

And then with regards to bicyclists being able to cross the streets,

And one of the things that we did is we did focus at the intersections on making it more comfortable and intuitive for bicyclists to be able to cross the street at the intersections.

Commissioner Banks.

Thanks.

Thanks, Megan, for the overview.

It is such an exciting project.

And I just want to highlight not just the fantastic work that the city has done, but the partnership with Franklin Boulevard.

I think it's the business district.

Is that the right?

I always get the terminology wrong.

They are a tenacious, fantastic partner.

And it would be so fantastic if all of our projects had that level of input and engagement and commitment and devotion to that long haul, because these projects we know take a lot longer than we think they're going to take.

So hats off to the city and to them and everybody in between for working together to make it happen.

It's going to be really fantastic.

Thank you.

And I do want to emphasize, like, if I were given, you know, an extra 20 minutes, I could fill it up by talking about all the great work that the business district has done.

They are really the champions for the community and have initiated a lot of the change and benefits.

And so working with them has been integral in the success of the project.

Commissioner Rishio Patel.

Thank you, Chair.

That was a great presentation.

Thank you so much.

that was very informative. I have a question about I guess do we there's a bus route that

goes through Franklin is that correct? Yes. How have we thought about how that interacts

with the bike lane and potential conflicts? Yeah we did work with regional transit on

that and we would love there to be more bike lanes or not more bike lanes more transit

along Franklin Boulevard, but right now the overlap

between their transit is primarily from 21st Avenue

and North, and so there's just a few locations

where there is that interaction between transit

and the bike lanes.

And so we do accommodate those bus stops

and make sure to maintain access to them.

And then hopefully the improved bike

and pedestrian access to the bus stops

will be helpful for their users.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions.

On the slides that you presented

at the intersection with Fruit Ridge and with 21st,

there were no crosswalks at the intersections?

There...

So the, you have very sharp eyes.

There definitely are crosswalks.

The image that I clipped it from

just didn't have the layers turned on correctly.

And so in other iterations of this presentation,

I've tried to draw in crosswalks,

but I think I missed it here.

Just wanted to make sure they were gonna be there.

Absolutely, crosswalks, yes.

I have another question about right-of-way services.

Can you describe what that is

and how difficult it is to obtain right-of-ways?

So this project was interesting

Because along these aging corridors, the aging commercial corridors,

a lot of times, and it was the case for this street, there's the sidewalk.

And a lot of times the right-of-way is at the back of the sidewalk.

But on this street, the right-of-way was three feet behind the sidewalk.

And so that's wonderful because we didn't have to acquire right-of-way, you know, in fee to do the improvements.

and we certainly wanted to maximize the right-of-way so that we got every inch for pedestrian and bike improvements.

And so what that meant, though, is, you know, this street's 150 years old,

and so over the decades people have encroached into that three-foot space.

And so we had to work with the property owners and work through the right-of-way process to both remove encroachments

and then also make sure like over time sometimes people's parking lots and their site developed in

a way where reclaiming our three feet could have crippled their ability to continue to do business

and we're not looking to put people out of business so we had to do parcel by parcel

evaluations of you know how to maximize our right-of-way without damaging the business uses

and then we had to get our easements to do so.

And so I don't remember the exact number.

It's somewhere in the range of like 80 properties

that we had to go through and coordinate with

and get easements from.

And so luckily I did not have to do that.

That was my predecessor who went through that,

but it was a lot of effort.

Yeah, I can imagine.

And then you mentioned accessible sidewalk

and curb ramps for all users.

So does that mean like the slope of the driveway

or something would be adjusted?

Correct, a lot of those existing driveways

are the older style where the driveway ramps down like this

instead of maintaining the 2% cross slope.

And so all of the driveways,

if we're not replacing the sidewalk itself,

all of the driveways will be reconstructed

with ADA compliant grades.

And then of course if we are replacing the sidewalk,

the driveways will be ADA compliant.

Will there be any utility poles or signposts or anything in the sidewalks or are those relocated or?

There will be some since we are maximizing our right of way,

but we did not do any additional acquisition to like relocate you like poles out.

Actually, most of the poles, luckily on this segment, most of the poles had already been undergrounded,

but like where we have streetlights and things like that.

if we have a landscaping strip at that location,

then we tried to put our poles and signs and stuff in the landscaping strip.

But there are some locations where we don't have the landscaping strip with the sidewalk,

and so in those cases, the poles would be in the sidewalk.

Will any of those poles decrease the width of the sidewalk

so that certain mobility users will have difficulty?

No, they would be, it was designed so that those poles would be either at like the back of the walk or the front of it.

But it's a minimum of six foot sidewalk now.

And so that leaves plenty of space to get around it.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

This item, I lost my place, is for review and comment only.

So no vote is required.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Thank you for your time.

The next item is number five,

Active Transportation Commission 2025 Annual Report.

Is there a staff presentation?

Yes.

Getting my steps in tonight.

So, good evening, Chair and members of the Commission.

Again Chris Doherty, your Transmission Planning Manager, giving you your, this is an action

item for you to approve your 2025 annual report.

This really should be Jeff Jelzma up here as he really did the legwork on this working

with this Commission, but he is traveling abroad so he cannot be here.

So I will be presenting this to you tonight.

So just to kind of go through the process

of how we approve this,

our first step here is really,

it's a standing item as a commission

and we've gone through this process

since I believe August or I think August

we started the discussion about this process

to add content and all decide and agree

on the content in there. Then it goes to step two and this is where we are now to approve

this report and then forward it on to the personnel and public employees committee.

For there it will get approved and then move on to the city council. Our goal for this

report was to have it done by the last meeting of this calendar year so that it could be

ready for the City Council's budget process moving forward.

I'm going to go through some of the changes from last year's report quickly for the 2025

report. First and foremost, we included some language

and some policy to implement leading pedestrian interval

indicators citywide or LPIs as we generally refer to them.

These are to describe effectively a five to 10 second

advance of the pedestrian signal at an intersection

so that pedestrians can walk out of the crosswalk

before vehicles either get their green light

to move forward and or turn.

It's a commonly used safety device.

And at this point the recommendations being put in here are to allow them citywide and

to add them to the quick build tool box.

To adopt a policy to implement the LPIs whenever we are upgrading a signal.

And to recommend to do a citywide study to identify the impacts of doing this as a blanket

across the city.

I will note these are not as simple to install

as one would think.

It is not as simple as just turning a switch

or retiming a signal.

To do that in some intersections,

we would have to bring the entire intersection

up to full current ADA standards,

including the signal important components.

So therefore, it can be sometimes deceivingly

more expensive than you would think it would be.

So we did add some language in here

to kind of address that.

Additionally, the Commission acted to request a no turn on red policy citywide.

Again it's hard to put, Jeff and I came back and tried to put a cost to these recommendations.

They are difficult to put a cost to when you're talking about a citywide initiative where

where we have, I think, 830 signalized intersections citywide.

So there's a lot to implement here.

It has a lot of impact on the traffic operations.

So what we asked for, what you are asking for,

we recommended was to do a study here

to really spend about $500,000

to really address the impact on that

and identify some low-hanging fruit areas

that would really make some sense to limit right turn on red.

And to expand the creative crosswalk policy.

I think we're getting a little bit of a jump on you on this one from my last update.

But this is the request here is to streamline and to make it easier for residents of the

city and other agencies to do more creative uses of the street for crosswalks and for

crossing elements. And this had a request of approximately $100,000 which is just staff time.

So to kind of go through, we had the commission that kind of targeted a goal of around

$8 million of a total year one cost, which is on par with what you had requested last year for the

2024 report.

So we've identified all of that here.

We did pull out some elements,

especially from last year,

most notably was the quick build team

and the staff that goes with the quick build team

because that was funded and is moving forward.

So the staff reduction is less on the cost

the cost because that has been an ongoing initiative.

So at this point this is a request for the Commission to pass a motion to forward the

2025 annual report on to the personnel and public employees committee with a recommendation

to approve. And I am here and available for any questions you might have.

Thank you. Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item?

Thank you, Chair. I have no speaker slips for this item.

Thank you. Are there any commissioners who wish to speak on this item?

Commissioner Tao.

Thank you, Chris, for the presentation. Thank you, Chair O'Dell.

I just wanted to say that I like the new updated language, and it's very clear to me.

I just want to thank the other commissioners who have put a lot of work into this report as well.

So thank you all so much.

Thank you.

I do.

Commissioner Gibson.

Just second Commissioner Tao's point.

Commissioner Harris did a really good explanation of the needs for that.

Very well written.

I know more people contributed, definitely members of the public.

We had a lot of attention.

We don't normally have a lot of attention at this commission and I'll be looking for, oh, and my one question.

I did have a question.

If it is adopted tonight, when will we anticipate it going to the PNP, the next step, the next thing?

That's a great question.

One I regrettably was not prepared to answer.

The earliest we're probably able to go would be in January.

Okay.

The earliest that we'll probably be able to go will be January.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Vice Chair Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chair.

And just to reiterate Commissioner Gibson's point further,

the reason that we start so early in the year, obviously,

is so that we can get that for the appropriate committees to get involved in the budget discussion.

What we learned four years ago was that our report came in so late,

not really late, it's just that we were intentional about when it was going to drop,

that by the time it was ratified as city council late March, early April,

the budget's getting pretty baked by then.

So anything on your end to understand that we'd like to expect this to the full extent we can

within the process that we have to make sure that the final adoptions can become part of the budget discussion,

even in our difficult and challenging times right now,

so the public can weigh in and say, hey, we have this ATC report that's been approved,

and as they are telling the city what their budget priorities are

hopefully that can become part of the discussion.

So that's the context in which Commissioner Gibson was trying to share

and I just want to reiterate it further

because it really is why we do it so early

and I just want to commend my fellow commissioners tonight.

In years past we've fine-tuned this thing to death in October and November

and I'm so glad to hear us all in unison ready to move this thing forward

hopefully for adoption and discussion.

Thank you.

Commissioner Banks.

Yeah, thank you.

Yes, plus one to everything.

Both of you have already said I was the person that wrote the creative crosswalks and the, that's really loud, and the right turn on red.

I sent it directly to Jeff Jelsma because of Brown laws.

So I know tonight's the first time you're seeing it, so hopefully it captures what we were going after.

Actually, if I can respond to that, I did have a recommendation for next year.

I know early on in this discussion we had talked about forming an ad hoc committee.

And I think by the time we had had that discussion, it was just too late to do that and plus meet the timeline goals that we had wanted to meet.

So I was going to question to the group, and I would recommend this, especially in conference with attorney staff, is forming that maybe in May of next year to start that process,

which you can then notice your meetings and that you're clearly within the Brown Act to collaborate on this document as you see fit.

So form the ad hoc committee in May.

Okay.

Can you like put that in your notes and then bring it?

Okay, good.

Thank you.

I see no additional commissioners wishing to speak.

So I will entertain a motion from someone.

I will make a motion.

Please.

I second it.

That we adopt the annual report.

I will make a motion that we adopt the annual report.

I'll second the motion.

Thank you.

I have a motion by Commissioner Tao and a second from Vice Chair Gonzalez to approve the annual report.

If the clerk would please call the roll.

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioner Harris?

Aye.

Commissioner Gibson?

Aye.

Commissioner Wadwani?

Aye.

Commissioner Rizzo-Pato?

Aye.

Vice Chair Gonzalez?

Yes.

Commissioner Haub?

Aye.

Commissioner Tao?

Aye.

Commissioner Moore? Aye. Commissioner Banks? Aye. Chair Hodel? Aye. Thank you. The motion passes.

Good job, everybody.

The next item is public comments. Matters not on the agenda. Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on public comments, matters not on the agenda?

Thank you, Chair. I have no speaker slips for this item.

the last item is commissioner comments ideas and questions are there any commissioners who wish to

speak commissioner gibson uh first of all thank you everybody for um the uh active transportation

commission report i recommend everybody reach out to their city council members any community groups

as soon as possible let them know this report is well maybe after thanksgiving i'm pretty sure

everyone was a little distracted but right after Thanksgiving to let your

elected officials know that this is important and let the powers that be

encourage this to go through the process as fast as possible. I know there's a lot

of media covering these things nowadays especially one I don't want to act like

I've been on this for that long but before three years ago I don't think

there was as much attention on active transportation safety issues but I think

there's a lot more now in our communities. And part of that is because of sadly our

our traffic violence in our community.

Between the September and October meeting,

there was at least two pedestrian fatalities.

And then since our October meeting,

there was at least seven, unfortunately.

Yesterday, there were two.

One on Fruit Ridge and Power In Roads.

There was a fatal hit and run at around 9.15 p.m.

of 41-year-old man.

This was the third fatality on Fruit Ridge Road this year.

There were three also on Fruit Ridge Road last year.

There was another fatality on Highway 160 near Royal Oaks Drive, a 36-year-old man.

This took place around 12.30 p.m.

Then the 64-year-old man was involved in a hit and run on Del Paso Boulevard and Marysville Boulevard on November 3rd.

This person has been publicly identified.

It's B. Lau.

He was a father of five.

On October 26th, a 60-year-old man was struck on Florin Road east of 24th Avenue, 24th Street.

On the 21st of October, Nedra Lee Franklin, a woman who was 60, was struck around 5.35 a.m. on North 16th Street on the 200 block.

Then a 47-year-old man was struck on Franklin Boulevard near 47th Avenue outside of the project scope that we saw today.

And then there was another collision involving a fatality of a 48-year-old, sorry I don't have the sex, on Highway 99 near Mack Road in the overcrossing.

sadly this is probably the most I've counted

since I've been on the commission

Vice Chair Gonzalez

Thank you Chair and thank you Commissioner Gibson

for your steadfast and sobering

reminders of why we are here to do the work that we do

and I am also

sad to say

with everybody you mentioned who has passed away

there's so many who have been hit by cars and have

survived but still are going to live with

lifelong effects including many children in the

past month that we heard of including a four-year-old girl a four-year-old child near Power

Inn in Elder Creek in recent days and we can't protect the the most smallest and most vulnerable

among us what what are we doing but in any case I'll digress for now I just want to share with

you a couple updates the city of Sacramento is just recently rolled out its EV blueprint plan

and car share you may have seen some of that in the press last couple weeks but I was lucky enough

to work in a small part on that as a consultant.

And in speaking with Rachel Patton, the program manager from that today,

I learned that the bike lockers that were being utilized for the e-trikes need to be repurposed

because that program, it will be sunseting at the end of the year.

And she is looking for creative solutions for how to repurpose those bike locks.

So we have bike lockers across many city library sites.

They're large because they're for tricycles, electric tricycles.

So if any of you can think of an adaptive reuse using a community partner or some other fun way, I see Commissioner Banks sticking their head with ideas.

I would email rpatten, that's P-A-T-T-E-N, at cityofsacramental.org, and she invites your suggestions and ideas.

I saved a date since we will not meet again before then.

I would welcome the commissioners to keep your eyes open for January 7th, Wednesday, where we will be,

Slowdown Sacramento will be holding its second annual Day of Remembrance event to commemorate or to honor those that we've lost to traffic violence in all modes through the city of Sacramento.

The numbers, as Commissioner Gibson mentioned, continue to be tallied, but we are unfortunately on track to either meet or exceed last year's numbers.

So while the conversation does seem to be much more robust than it was in previous years, the work remains as important as ever and the urgency as well.

And lastly, I just want to commend Chair Hodel for two years of wonderful service.

Thank you for what you've done.

Tonight is your final meeting as Chair.

And just thank you for running this for two years and leading great discussions and a great group.

And thank you again just for your service.

Thank you.

Commissioner Banks?

Yeah, thank you.

I'm not sure that this is the right forum, but Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates is looking for a new leader.

So if you know of anybody who might be able to fill the shoes, size nines, of mine,

I'm stepping aside as the executive director and hopefully will stay involved in policy and advocacy.

I'm not going anywhere.

I'm just ready to step aside and hand that organization over to someone that can take it to the next level.

So if you don't have anybody, have them get in touch.

Thanks.

Vice Chair Gonzalez.

I apologize for the repeated, but I want to just commend Commissioner Banks as well for her service as the exec director of SABBA.

I actually had the pleasure of hiring her when I was president of SABBA.

It seems like so many years ago, and I know that feeling of being ready to let the next person step in and take it to the next level myself.

I feel like I'm doing the same thing as an organization I went in.

So congratulations, Chair Banks.

We're so excited.

We know you're not going anywhere and are looking to see how you can help Saba and so many other efforts in the community.

But thank you for your many years of service.

Really, you did take Saba to the next level.

You did help us get through many things that we needed to evolve and elevate to, and you're to be commended for that service.

I would like to remind the commissioners not to rush out of here when the meeting is over.

We're going to take a picture for the annual report.

I'm so glad everyone's here.

I have two additional things.

One is I'm going to put on the commission log a request for an update

or what the policy is regarding red paint for the day lighting.

I think we need to know if enforcement is happening.

What is the plan going forward?

I think it's a very important element, like green paint teaches bicyclists

and drivers and pedestrians where bikes should be,

red paint also educates.

And so I would like to hear from the city

about what their plans are.

The final thing is something I learned,

and Commissioner Harris, you're in my heart right now.

On October 27th, a few of us, including Commissioner Banks,

we went to a walk audit workshop

at Robertson Community Center on Marysville Boulevard.

It was sponsored by AARP.

It was an excellent workshop.

As we went through the process, learned about walk audits, what they're like, what happens with the information,

we actually went out onto Marysville Boulevard and looked at the project.

Marysville Boulevard has come to us before, and we've seen it.

And what we learned, I think, really shocked us, and I just want you to know about it.

I had pictures. They didn't come through to show you today, so I'm going to have to rely on my description.

The roadway design is beautiful. There are bike lanes.

The crosswalks, they're adding intersections with lights.

What's the other flashing signal?

Yeah, for crossing.

Pedestrians crossing at the intersections are wonderful and improved.

However, all the sidewalks connecting the intersections have not been improved.

They have, so when we asked the project manager who happened to be at the meeting,

and he said that the, where's my other piece,

the right-of-way services that was mentioned for the Franklin Boulevard project,

it was too complicated, I believe.

It was too difficult to address those issues.

So now you've got narrow sidewalks, terrible slopes, and lack of flatness, and poles, and debris, and lots of obstructions.

So pedestrians are fine at the intersections, and everything in between is not there.

So for the most vulnerable users that we've got in one of our most areas that needs the most improvement, the people who should be number one prioritized have been completely left out of this plan.

And I don't know if we can ask the project managers to come back and give an opinion or show us the plan again so that we can have additional input.

But it just kind of breaks my heart that they do not have an accessible sidewalk and curb ramps for all users.

And anyway, and they did not, and because it was so expensive, they could not, they didn't put into the plan how to do the right-of-way services.

and the sidewalk improvements.

So I would like to put that on the commissioner's log also.

Thank you.

So I think that's it.

This concludes today's agenda.

Remember the picture.

Thank you, everyone, for your participation.

The meeting is adjourned.

Picture.

Thank you.