'Sanframento' transportation team seeks I-80 corridor funds

As the Bay Area and Sacramento regions creep relentlessly toward each other along Interstate 80 – getting uncomfortably crowded along the way – officials from both areas are promoting an idea they call mega-regional planning.

They're so excited, they've even come up with a phrase to capture the concept:

Sanframento.

Hundreds of thousands of trucks, trains and cars ferry goods and people each day between the bay shores, the Sacramento Valley and the mountains, they point out. And tens of thousands of former Bay Area residents now call the Valley and foothills home.

It makes sense, planners say, to take a broader, holistic approach to solving congestion problems and figuring out how the I-80 corridor ought to grow.

Despite the cutesy "Sanframento" coinage, Sacramento regional transportation planning head Mike McKeever said no one is talking about merging cities or eliminating local control.

"The last thing we want is to create the impression this is something where the Sacramento area gets subsumed by the beast to the west," said McKeever of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments. "It is about getting smart."

He and other leaders said it's become clear that bay and Valley communities can do better building transportation systems by joining forces, especially when competing with Southern California for scarce transportation funds.

Much of the talk among planners at a meeting in Davis on Thursday centered on the need to keep I-80 moving between the Bay Area and Sacramento, and on improving passenger and freight train service between the bay and Valley.

Solano County Supervisor Jim Spering said leaders should stick to concrete matters, such as fixing bottlenecks like the antiquated and overmatched I-80/I-680 interchange.

So many drivers from the Bay Area and Sacramento pass through there and get stuck in the jams, "it's really not (just) a Solano County project or problem anymore."

Some officials say mega-region planning could touch on growth topics, such as whether there should be a no-build buffer zone between Yolo and Solano counties.

But West Sacramento Mayor Chris Cabaldon, a supporter of the mega-region planning idea, pointedly argued that people from San Francisco and Sacramento should steer clear of telling cities along I-80 how to grow.

Cabaldon told the planners group Thursday that Solano and Yolo cities are handling growth issues just fine, thank you, even if they don't look like San Francisco's densely packed Mission District.

The mega-region planning concept is in some respects already under way.

Cities from Colfax to San Jose participate in the Capitol Corridor regional train service that runs in the I-80 corridor and regularly hits new ridership highs.

And an ad hoc group of Bay Area and Sacramento planners teamed to score a coup Thursday at the state Capitol, jointly persuading the California Transportation Commission to award Northern California $843 million in freight movement and trade improvement funds from the voter-approved 2006 Proposition 1B transportation infrastructure bonds.

Officials say they joined lobbying forces, figuring they'd stand a better chance competing against Los Angeles and San Diego.

"We saw a common enemy; we went to war and we won," Cabaldon said.

Southern California didn't do badly either, however. The commission allocated $1.6 billion to the much bigger port and rail system in Long Beach and Los Angeles.

The locally directed funds include $20 million for the city of Sacramento to move the downtown railyard tracks a few hundred feet north from their current alignment near I Street.

The move, officials say, will ease freight and passenger rail congestion, make space for a new downtown train and transit center, and give private developers room to build on the lower part of the railyard.

The state Transportation Commission also approved $10 million as part of a planned $83 million project to deepen 43 miles of shipping channel into the West Sacramento port to allow more goods movement.

The commission also approved $43 million to help Union Pacific expand tunnels and tracks in the Donner Summit area.

State officials have said they expect Union Pacific to respond to the funds offers for rail improvements by accommodating more passenger trains on its tracks.

In the Bay Area, much of the funds went to speed rail freight movement out of the Port of Oakland and on toward the Central Valley. Stockton won funds to deepen its ship channel.

Sacramento city officials were exultant over the $20 million track-moving funds.

"This is, from anyone's memory, the largest amount we've ever received for a single project from the state," city transportation planner Fran Halbakken said.

Halbakken said city officials hope to begin moving the tracks by the end of next year or early 2010.

The state money, however, does not seal the deal.

The track move will cost an estimated $51 million, city officials said. Some of the extra money is expected to come from private railyard developers. City officials were in Washington, D.C., earlier this week asking for $15 million in federal funds to help make the move.

"We're hoping to leverage this $20 million to give us a step up in getting the federal money," Halbakken said.

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