Exercise during the pandemic could get easier. Sacramento to close some streets to cars
Months after city officials nixed the idea, it appears Sacramento will be launching a Slow Streets program after all.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg announced the program Tuesday along with other climate change initiatives.
Several cities have been adopting Slow Streets programs during the pandemic, which has many people stuck indoors. The program blocks off sections of residential roadways to vehicles so people can more easily spread out to walk, run or ride bicycles in the street. It especially helps areas that have no sidewalks, are not near parks, and are near essential services like grocery stores and coronavirus testing sites.
Oakland adopted the program in April, followed by San Francisco, which had 30 roadways closed as of mid-July.
Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates and WALKSacramento reached out to city officials in April interested in bringing the program to Sacramento, said Debra Banks, SABA’s executive director.
An initiative got underway, and the two organizations sent out a citywide survey asking for street suggestions, Banks said. There were responses from across the city, but the most were from midtown and downtown, Banks said. There were not as many responses from under resourced neighborhoods such as Oak Park, Meadowview and Del Paso Heights.
After seeing the survey results, city officials decided to shelve the project.
“The city determined that it did not have enough information to begin implementing this program in the neighborhoods it had hoped to serve,” city spokeswoman Grace Nunez said in an email to The Sacramento Bee on June 9. “Instead, the City plans to use the staff time that would have been allocated for the Slow Streets program to focus on continuing to strengthen relationships and communication with all neighborhoods within our city.”
Then on Tuesday, during a news conference to discuss climate change initiatives, Steinberg unexpectedly revived the idea. He said he wanted to quickly launch the program with 10 to 20 miles of closures to start.
The caveat: It will have to be neighborhood-led and partly funded by entities other than the city, he said. The city previously determined the cost to close down streets was high, he said.
The city is currently struggling with a loss of tax revenue caused by the pandemic.
“We want this to be neighborhood based,” Steinberg said. “We want the neighborhood to be able to choose the streets that are appropriate for this quality of life improvement where people can walk and bike and not have to worry about automobile traffic.”
Banks said she was thrilled the city has revived the program, and said the city can learn from other cities.
“There are a number of cities now that have gone this route which is great,” Banks said. “There are some emerging best practices.”
For community engagement, she suggested Sacramento use a process similar to LA, which allows the public to submit ideas online.
Banks suggested the city allocate some of its federal coronavirus stimulus funds to the project. The city has essentially allocated all of its $89 million in funding, however. The City Council is expected to approve the last roughly $12.5 million for projects to boost tourism and the creative economy Tuesday.
Lavinia Phillips, president of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association, agreed that CARES funds should have been used.
Phillips said she could not immediately think of any streets in Oak Park that would be good candidates for the program, but said she would ask residents. The area of 36th Street and 12th Avenue came to mind, but since it’s a main thoroughfare it likely wouldn’t work, she said.
The city currently has closed portions of some streets to allow restaurants to expand outdoor dining.
Steinberg also asked city staff to start working toward several other recommendations included in the Mayors’ Commission on Climate Change, a joint effort with West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon. They include:
▪ Drafting an ordinance requiring all new low-rise construction be electric, without use of fossil fuels, by a certain deadline. He said he wants that process to take months, not years, with public outreach starting soon.
▪ Retrofitting existing buildings that use fossil fuels over the next decade, particularly in marginalized neighborhoods.
▪ Adopting building code upgrades for electric vehicle infrastructure.
▪ Finding a way to extend a program that allows students to ride Regional Transit buses and light rail for free, but is currently set to end Sept. 30.
“The call for urgency here is obvious,” Steinberg said at the council meeting. “Just as the city has elevated the call for inclusive economic development as a main staple and priority of what we do as a city, climate change must be elevated to the same status.”
This story was originally published August 27, 2020 at 8:20 AM.
