Thanks, gang.

I wonder if we can point to any significant action that has been taken due to the "Climate Emergency." We were supposed to be moving as fast as possible toward curbing emissions. Meantime, we still fully subsidize private vehicle parking all over town. We had to fight to make a percentage of one small block of G Street permanently car-free. We have to fight for proper bike lanes. We aren't offering exceptional, car-free ways to get into downtown. We should be doing everything we can to get people out of their cars, but instead we'll add more freeway lanes through town.

I'm not sure that everybody knows what "emergency" means.

In full agreement, of course. How absurd at this point to think that any progress toward lessening carbon output can simply be bought to increase it somewhere else. That is called no progress at all. I sure hope the city council "gets it".

Predictably, I am waving my hands wildly in the air in appreciation!

There’s some backstory, sidestory and related which is probably not mentioned due to space limitations (wordplay intentional):

* For years the project promised a dedicated and new bicycle-pedestrian bridge across the ‘Bypass. In 2020 – when I was still on the BTSSC – the notification that it was dropped some months earlier was only indirectly mentioned in a summary for a BTSSC meeting by the primary liaison for the City of Davis at the time, Brian Abbanat (former Senior Planner; now he’s in a similar role for Yolo County and co-presenting Tuesday evening.) A couple of years later when this was mentioned to the other co-presenter, YCTD head Autumn Bernstein, she said it was not funded: I believe that the aggregate truth – to be precise as possible – is that Caltrans dropped it, never told any of the local interested groups about it (e.g. Bike Davis, Davis Bike Club) through their liaison Abbanat and that it wasn’t part of the initial, funded proposal to the Federal Government.

* I arrived in town after Nishi 1.0 (retroactively supported a concept that would involve a complete redesign of the 80-Richards interchange inclusive of a parking structure and Park & Ride for regional buses which would have minimal impacts on Richards) and was against Nishi 2.0 because I don’t think there should be housing (buildings with windows people open!) so close to the noisy and arguably otherwise-polluting interstate, but it’s not why I am suggesting that the proposed “multi-modal” mitigation is a fallacy… anyway here goes: Use Google Maps (etc) to look at Pole Line over 80. It’s incredibly long because it has to go very high over the railway tracks, more so than to get over 80 itself (to better understand this, picture the crossings over 113 which are much lower as they only need to accomodate trucks.) First of all, this – and all the over-crossings of 80 in town – are simply not comfortable and suitable for people on normal bicycles, especially carrying children. 80 is a wall for people on bikes. The over-crossings have around a 6 to 7% grade, nearly twice as high as the Dutch standard: So to make it comfortable for hundreds of people to go from Nishi to campus and back once or more every day it would have to be nearly twice as long. Look again at the view of 80 at Pole Line: There’s no space for this in the Nishi-campus space unless it’s very circuitous and indirect and lands behind Shrem or just by the entrance to Solano Park from Old Davis Rd. And that’s just for cycling. Imagine walking this at least twice a day. Motor vehicles including buses can obviously do this... but it's not truly "multi-modal"! in sum I feel confident in saying that since motor vehicle, bus, bicycle, walking, differently-abled/equitable mobility access is part of the agreement for Nishi, and Union Pacific forbids an under-crossing, there’s no way to build Nishi unless it’s returned to the voters. As far as this mitigation goes: There’s nothing to mitigate here as nothing can be built for mitigation.

* It’s no secret that Mayor Will Arnold is a/the Media Relations Manager for Caltrans. Should he recuse himself from the discussion for ethical reasons? Should he be signing a letter to support a project he would then have to (continue to) work on at Caltrans? I don’t think he can recuse himself from the communications hierarchy at Caltrans. Note how the project communicates things, its lies (or obfuscations), its spin, lack of backstory. At a public presentation hosted by Cool Davis a couple of months ago, Bernstein said that Yolo County had convinced Caltrans to do the managed lanes variant. I think that Caltrans had decided this already, and I would not be surprised if they try to offer the bike-ped crossing of the Yolo Bypass as a carrot. Arnold’s job description at LinkedIn is: “Caltrans Headquarters Public Affairs, Office of the Director – Duties include managing media inquiries and press relations, designing and executing effective communications strategy, and writing/editing communication plans, press releases, talking points and social media content.” - https://www.linkedin.com/in/willarnold00/

Clarification please: Do the above authors mean a toll road or a toll lane? These are by no means the same thing (Go to Continental Europe for real toll freeways all over the place), though, for the reasons stated above (and others), I oppose both.

Just a practical question - I live in Davis with two young kids and work in West Sac. School for my youngest begins at 8:15 and my childcare after school ends at 5:00. If I tried to take an e-bike to West Sac to work - I would not arrive the 13 miles until about 9:15 and have to leave by 4 to pick them up by 5. That’s not 8 hours of work. If I tried to take the Amtrak to old Sac and walk - it would take longer because the train only comes every 1.5 hrs.

So without driving - how does one with kids work 8 hours and make it in time for pick up and drop off. Very few childcare centers operate hours outside of 8-5.

And this is why many working parents support widening the 80.

Christine,

I don't know your exact needs or locations, but you can take your e-bike on Amtrak to Sac and then into West Sac. The Capitol Corridor service is currently limited and doesn't meet my needs well - whereas before the pandemic I used it both to commute and to travel to the Bay Area. You'll have to check the schedules to see if it works for you.

Freeway widening will take many years and your kids will be grown. Almost certainly with the massive construction in many areas (south Folsom, Vacaville to name a few) along with induced travel, the congestion will continue, but with narrower lanes and no left shoulder on the Causeway, reducing safety.

Todd's rail-expansion list has some good ideas, but is all over the map as far as prioritization, and given that most are not even on the drawing board, almost none could possibly be built in our lifetimes. Great expansion of the Capitol Corridor is not only possible, it is on the drawing boards. What we need is the political will to move forward on hourly service 5am-10pm(-ish), and half-hourly peak service.

. . . or, decades more of a new freeway lane here, and then there, and there . . .

Also, YoloBus has expanded service and straightened routes, and plans to go half-hourly all-day in the next year or so on it's core 42 route.

Christine: "None of your solutions fix the immediate problem." Did you not hear about 'induced demand'. This is a very real phenomenon. The freeway widening, if it happens, will take many years to build -- so much for many of your 13 years. Then within a short time - sometimes immediately, the increased 'flow' quickly balances out the increased induced demand, and traffic is back to as bad as it was before the widening -- maybe worse with all the developments bringing more people. Did you check out the schedule and bringing your e-bike on the Capitol Corridor? What if Capitol Corridor trains ran every hour? That wouldn't take a whole lot more funding.