Sacramento council OKs plan for better pedestrian safety — will it get funded?
Sacramento’s City Council voted to approve the Streets for People plan, a policy document that builds on existing goals to create safer roadways, particularly for those outside cars.
The plan proposed 567 miles of new or improved sidewalks throughout the city, as well as 417 miles of new or upgraded bike paths.
The document approved unanimously by the council notes that 11% of all trips in the Sacramento region currently rely on “active transportation” — human-powered modes of transportation such as biking or walking. People on bikes or on foot are more likely to die in vehicle collisions, and Streets for People aims to make cycling and walking safer.
“This is the product of a lot of years of work, a lot of participation, a lot of commentary and real devotion by the staff,” said Councilmember Roger Dickinson, who represents North Sacramento. “It is an enormous step in the right direction in supporting active transportation.”
The council has declined to fund the recommendations of the Active Transportation Commission multiple times, and whether the City Council makes funding decisions to support the new plan remains to be seen. In 2017, the council made a Vision Zero pledge to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2027. While pursuing that goal, the council did not make any significant changes to road safety funding until this year. In March, the council redirected $4.6 million of existing transportation funding toward a six-person “quick-build” team that will focus on rapid infrastructure improvements to dangerous roads.
Over nearly nine years since the City Council set its Vision Zero goal, data from the Sacramento Police Department show that traffic collisions have killed more than 350 people. Since January 2024, at least 62 people have died in crashes on Sacramento streets. Of the 62 dead, 42 were pedestrians or cyclists, and two were riding scooters.
This year, Jonathon T. Slaugh, 62; Adrienne Keyana Johnson, 33; Cornelius Jesse, 59; Vuong Van Nguyen, 47; Natalia Regina Sanchez, 50; William Andrew Akens, 26; Ernesto Torres, 58; Zhen Cheng Kuang, 76; Thongthai Xanaxay, 55; Kaleb Josiah Green, 22; Kimberly Lynn Pickett, 60; Parris Shauntel Windham, 41; Michael Driskell, 78; Ricky Ray Reyes, 19; Jeremy M. Robinson, 46; James Lee Little, 64; Alicia Andrea Barnes, 65; Nedra Lee Franklin, 67; Gerald Hall, 60; Bee Lao, 46; Kyle Scott Silvers, 33; and Randy Allen Perez, 41, were fatally struck while walking or biking.
Could plan save lives?
The Streets for People plan aims to create “low-stress” walking and biking networks, enabling people to travel to their destinations feeling safe and comfortable without having to take a car. The lowest-stress facility is often called a shared-use path, which is a bike and pedestrian path separated completely from car traffic, like the Sacramento River Trail and the county-run American River Parkway. The city of Sacramento has close to 80 miles of such paths but, the plan notes, “although (it is) expansive, the shared-use path network is disjointed, presenting difficulty for people connecting to various destinations.”
In other words, the plan says the network doesn’t provide a realistic option for getting to most destinations: Paths end before people can arrive where they need to go.
The plan also found that the city has many “bikeways that do not provide the level of comfort to be usable for the general population.” According to the document, only 47% of communities “have access to essential needs by bike”: People may be forced onto high-speed, high-vehicle-traffic routes such as Florin or Fruitridge roads to get anywhere.
The plan generally recommends creating more separation between drivers and people who are not in cars. It also recommends, among other things, increasing maintenance, widening certain sidewalks and planting more shade trees.
As part of the Streets for People project, staffers and consultants — with significant input from residents — identified 612 specific intersections where safety improvements are needed. Lao, a Sacramento father, was fatally struck last month while walking at one of the intersections on the list: Marysville Boulevard and Del Paso Road. His widow, Stella Xiong, has been left to face the holidays without him while raising their five children. The Sacramento Bee identified seven other intersections in the plan where fatal crashes occurred in 2025.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, Dickinson also raised his own priority intersection and amended the plan to include it: Rio Linda Boulevard and South Avenue.
Sitting on the dais, Dickinson did not say what happened at the Del Paso Heights crossroads that made him call it “acute in terms of needed attention.” The intersection was the site of fatal crashes in both February 2021 and in February 2023 which left three people dead. Amritpal Singh, 61, and Ryan Jacob Murphy, 38, were killed in 2021. No infrastructure improvements had been made by the time a crash killed Juan Ramon Flores, 78, two years later.
Flores was a grandfather and, his wife Iris previously told The Bee, “a jokester.” She remembered that before he was fatally struck while on his regular evening walk in 2023, he would always wait up for her to get home from the night shift. When she pulled up to the Del Paso Heights home after a long night of work, he would be sitting on the front porch with a hot cup of coffee for her.
This story was originally published December 3, 2025 at 8:05 AM.
