How a Sacramento County ballot measure could derail region’s long sought light rail dreams

Sacramento is saturated with the wrong type of housing, and the consequences of these shortsighted land use decisions go beyond cost-of-living or environmental issues. It could ultimately derail any hope of expanding light rail to the region’s suburbs.

Consider a planned community in Natomas. A Bay Area investment firm is proposing a mega-development at the corner of Del Paso and Sorento roads in the Panhandle area, with more than 800 single-family homes, an elementary school and significant recreation space.

Any housing California can develop is positive for a state mired in a severe shortage. The problem is that this 180-acre project is too much like everything else in the city’s suburban north: It’s exclusively detached, low-rise homes. The Panhandle development will occupy 21 times as much land as a proposed apartment complex on nearby Truxel Road but produce only four times as many homes.

This kind of recurring failure beyond the urban core threatens the region’s chances at long-sought light rail expansions, encouraging sprawl, low transit use and a deeper reliance on cars that poison our air and overheat our planet.

The Sacramento Regional Transit District has planned for light rail service to the airport for decades, and in recent years it has envisioned tracks to Elk Grove, Citrus Heights and faster service to Folsom — projects crucial for a healthier future in a region marred by some of the nation’s worst air quality.

A Sacramento County sales tax increase on the November ballot could undermine the prospects for light rail ever getting built. Wealthy developers and special interests bankrolling the campaign are counting on the ignorance of voters and their frustration over traffic conditions to enable an egregious sidestep of regional infrastructure planning to get what they want.

Sacramento County voters could sound the death knell of a more transit-oriented future if Measure A receives more than 50% of the vote in November. And RT General Manager Henry Li, who has been fixated on financial solvency since taking over in 2016, appears willing to take that risk if passing Measure A means his agency secures as much as $3.3 billion for the next 40 years.

“With that local funding to leverage both federal and state funding, it’s a historical amount,” Li told me in a May interview. “If we miss this opportunity, we are going to face some severe consequences in the next several decades.”

RT officials estimate that as much as 75% of the light rail expansion costs will come from the state and federal governments. But the chances of securing that level of support are getting slimmer as Caltrans and the U.S. Department of Transportation increasingly emphasize regions growing more sustainably than Sacramento.

Li said he’s “not trying to be just bullish, but conservatively optimistic” that RT can attract the money it needs to build the $2.1 billion airport extension, the $825 million for the Elk Grove line and the more than $600 million for modernizing the light rail system and laying new tracks to Folsom.

But money alone isn’t the answer.

Abysmal ridership outlook

An analysis by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the chief planning agency for 28 cities and counties, considered how Measure A would affect future light rail ridership and service times if the extension projects were built — in addition to the new freeways the measure would pay for. SACOG’s peer-reviewed findings suggest Sacramento light rail would be even more irrelevant than it is today.

When considering the number of passengers and how much travel times would change with the added distance, SACOG determined all three projects would result in negative figures that mean none of the new lines would be economically viable. RT would potentially lose money because it would not generate revenue from ridership, creating a situation that actually hurts the agency.

To analysts at a state or federal agency, those aren’t competitive projects. This undercuts one of Li’s central arguments for the measure: that having local money to attract a match will single-handedly solve RT’s light rail problems. It won’t, and to pretend the measure will magically lead to more light rail is dealing in deception.

Li seems to give less consideration to ridership projections and land use challenges and oversimplifies the hurdles the Sacramento region has placed in front of its light rail future, describing it as a “chicken-and-an-egg issue.” Transit ridership is down nationwide, he said, which is true.

But as an Urban Institute analysis found last year, the demographics of neighborhoods near transit also influenced whether ridership declined. Transit hubs near working-class neighborhoods didn’t see much of a drop over the past three years, whereas more affluent or suburban areas did.

When we talk about light rail to Natomas, Folsom and Elk Grove — suburban areas filled with outlet malls, low-rise mega-developments and young families who can afford them — we’re talking about communities with people who can work from home, buy expensive cars and wave at transit as they ignore it each day. To them it’s an ornament, not an essential.

The measure’s centerpiece is the Southeast Capital Connector, a 34-mile expressway that would link Folsom, Rancho Cordova and Elk Grove, unlocking a new suburban growth frontier on the region’s rural edges. For decades, planners and transportation officials have documented how the project would create sprawl and fundamentally alter the metropolitan area with far-flung new communities south of Rancho Cordova — miles from any mass transit.

Building the connector would shift development patterns in a way that could ensure a future Sacramento in which cars are the only viable mode of transportation.

The Committee for a Better Sacramento, the umbrella organization spearheading the campaign, has instead tried to greenwash the measure by pitching RT extensions as climate-conscious provisions that can appeal to an electorate that heavily favors action.

“This measure is only going to improve our air quality,” Michael Quigley, the executive director of the California Alliance for Jobs and the campaign head, claimed in an interview earlier this year.

Of course, building the connector and undermining light rail would do the opposite.

Cordova Hills Development Corp. and mega-developer Angelo K. Tsakopoulos, who spent a combined $346,000 on signature-gathering efforts, are likely counting on that because of properties they own that would directly benefit. So, too, are the California State Council of Laborers, California Alliance for Jobs, Sacramento Region Business Association and all the labor groups eagerly seeking four decades worth of taxpayer money.

Li believes that if you build it, people will come. “We do not have enough of a public transit network and service to really meet the demand,” he said.

Sacramento also does not have the demand to meet RT’s aspirations for its transit network. If Measure A passes, the biggest projects it pays for will make sure of it, giving RT billions of dollars to maintain services few people beyond the city can use.

This story was originally published September 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How a Sacramento County ballot measure could derail region’s long sought light rail dreams."