Sacramento pedestrians ‘just want a sidewalk.’ Here’s what’s being done for city walkers
Kiara Reed and a group of volunteers look both ways before they cross the street. After reaching the other side, they turn to their clipboards and scratch down some observations. How safe did they feel crossing? Is there enough shade to make the walk comfortable? From their previous experience, does the intersection feel less safe at different times of day, such as during school pick-up, or after sunset? Reed has them write it all down.
Reed is the executive director of environmental design advocacy group Civic Thread and helps host these community walks often to determine safety issues facing pedestrians in Sacramento neighborhoods. Civic Thread uses their findings to help inform city construction efforts or to support advocacy efforts for walkable communities.
Reed said having the community there helps her team get more context for what the area feels like to walk around in on different days or at different times, and what safety issues might be the most pressing.
“We (use) their lived experience as guidance and our technical expertise to help develop what recommendations might be (for how to improve the safety),” Reed said. “It’s always helpful to have community members at the table.”
Fayzah Mughal, previously a member of Bicycle Advocates for Rancho Cordova, noted that people living in lower income communities aren’t necessarily just walking to school or work for fun or to benefit the environment — instead, she said, they’re walking because they don’t have access to a car or a nearby bus station.
“(We should be) looking at who actually is out there out of necessity, and then making that experience safer and more welcoming for them,” Mughal said.
Reed has seen a wide range of problems while walking: infrequent crosswalks, a lack of shade or dim streetlights. But she said often, the community members express simple needs.
“What we hear from community members is like, ‘Yeah, it would be great to have a bike lane, but can we even just get a sidewalk?’” Reed said. “We’re looking at all of these pedestrian-friendly options asking, ‘What would you like to see in your neighborhood?,’ and a lot of people have a hard time envisioning that far out because they simply just want a sidewalk.”
Reliable, wide sidewalks can transform pedestrian safety — an important goal in an area currently ranked poorly for pedestrian fatalities.
A 2022 report compiled by Smart Growth America, a nonprofit focused on climate change and racial equity, found that the Sacramento area ranked 27 out of 101 U.S. metro areas for pedestrian deaths, adjusted for population. Between 2016 and 2020, they recorded 296 deaths.
The report also found that pedestrians walking in low-income areas were killed at higher rates, possibly because of fewer sidewalks and marked crosswalks.
“Walkable communities are not equitably distributed,” Reed said. “We’ve designed our communities for speedy movement of cars, so you have people driving cars that aren’t looking for anyone else, aren’t looking for a pedestrian, aren’t looking for a bicyclist. Because why would you, when the whole system is designed for you?”
Reed said that she believes in order to make Sacramento feel safe for pedestrians, we have to flip that culture around, and train drivers to be actively aware of people outside of vehicles who may be crossing the street.
“I like to say my dying words will be, ‘Pedestrians have the right of way!’” Reed said.
Franklin Boulevard project centers community needs in design
The Franklin Boulevard Complete Street project, set to begin construction in 2024, plans to add protected bike lanes, wider sidewalks, better street lighting and more shade trees to the central corridor of the North City Farms neighborhood. And according to Megan Johnson, a senior engineer for the city of Sacramento, the project began with work that the street’s business association did to identify community needs.
The street planning team also partnered with community organizations and tabled at local events to hear about peoples’ experience as pedestrians in the South Oak Park and North City Farms neighborhoods, and how they might want that experience to change.
“People want to be able to walk to restaurants, to the supermarket with their family,” Johnson said. “This project is going to reclaim Franklin Boulevard to better serve the people who live around there and work around there.”
It will also, according to Johnson, better serve local business owners — the way she described it, when people feel safe and comfortable being out and about on sidewalks, they’re likely to spend more time in the area, stopping by restaurants, shops and services along the street.
Multiple studies have found that making cities more walkable can support local retail activity, and more pedestrian-friendly areas are even correlated with higher home values.
The Franklin Boulevard construction project is not the only effort to get people in North City Farms to go for a walk, and to have fun doing it. Another initiative, the 21st Avenue Beautification Project, is tackling the idea of creating a pedestrian-centric neighborhood from a different perspective.
In addition to using the Caltrans funds to plant trees and other vegetation along 21st Avenue, the project has supported the addition of murals, designed by local artists, to the walls lining the road. Some have even been painted in part by community members.
Johnson said that combined initiatives like this are like “pieces to the puzzle” in bringing more pedestrians to an area.
“Part of putting in bike facilities and sidewalks is (so) the complete street improvements can augment the investments that the business district has put in,” Johnson said. “Hopefully all these pieces work together to create a greater whole.”
This story was originally published September 13, 2023 at 5:00 AM.