The region’s next big traffic jam is forming now in Natomas. Here’s why
Each morning, a caravan of gray vans rumbles down pockmarked Power Line Road near Sacramento International Airport, turns left onto the Garden Highway, then zigzags on other rural roads to Interstate 80.
It’s the Amazon Armada from the delivery company’s nearby fulfillment center, a huge million-square-foot structure.
Gibson Howell of the Garden Highway Community Association says he’s counted as many 32 Amazon trucks in a row.
“It’s quite the event,” he said.
If you’re in your driveway, you wait. In response to the vans and other cut-through traffic, residents of the winding levee road put up signs saying, “Garden Highway is not I-5.”
The traffic issue on the Garden Highway appears to be just a harbinger of a bigger problem: Residential and commercial growth in Natomas and in counties northwest of Sacramento are threatening to turn the Natomas intersection of Interstates 5 and 80 into the region’s next traffic choke point.
Local transportation planners are aware. They’ve been lining up freeway, bridge and light rail expansion projects. But there is no set date for getting those projects funded or built. And there is no certainty that what’s planned will be sufficient to handle the expected growth.
Natomas, a seasonally floodable agricultural area, has seen growth in fits and starts for decades. The airport was built in 1967, along with some housing, but the big boom occurred in the early 2000s after federal and local officials spent billions of dollars to strengthen the bathtub-like basin’s surrounding levees.
That came crashing to a halt in the recent Great Recession and after new flood fears forced a de facto housing moratorium pending more levee work.
A traffic jam in Natomas
Now, not only is Natomas growing again, but so are areas farther afield that send drivers through Natomas daily:
- In Yolo County, the city of Woodland is a fast-growing bedroom community, sending more commuters on I-5 past the airport to downtown Sacramento. Some of them already have been rerouted by their GPS systems to South River Road through West Sacramento when I-5 is congested.
- Sutter and Yuba counties to the north continue to grow, sending commuters down Highways 99 and 70 to I-5. And Placer County hopes to build the Placer Parkway expressway to funnel future south Placer residents to 99 and 70, allowing them that route south into Sacramento.
- Meanwhile, closer to downtown, a major subdivision of 3,000 homes called Northlake is underway immediately north of I-5 and west of 99-70. And a larger community of 10,000 potential homes called Upper Westside is under consideration west of I-5 along the Sacramento River.
- Decades in the planning, Metro Air Park, a commercial and industrial park, is underway just east of Sacramento International Airport.
The air park, expected to fill in over the next 20-plus years, will offer a local job center to reduce commute distances for Natomas residents, but also will be a launch point for commercial trucks in the e-commerce era. Amazon is the first tenant, opening its huge fulfillment center in late 2017.
A similar-sized warehouse distribution center is under construction nearby and is expected to open this fall. Amazon and future Metro Air Park tenants, meanwhile, are paying to build an $18 million interchange on I-5, about a mile east of the airport I-5 interchange.
That interchange is expecting to be finished in December, allowing Amazon trucks and others direct access to I-5.
Even without that interchange in place, Garden Highway residents complain that Amazon’s vans should not be driving through their neighborhood. They say the vans could take Bayou Way, a freeway frontage road, to the I-5 airport interchange one mile away instead of the convoluted 5.5-mile route along the Garden Highway.
In an email to The Bee, an Amazon spokesperson said the vans have been parked overnight at the fulfillment center, then head in the morning to a West Sacramento distribution center to pick up packages for delivery. That center center currently does not have adequate overnight parking for the vans, but Amazon says it will have new parking in place near the distribution center by this summer.
Warehouses and trucks at Metro Air Park
Despite truck traffic fears, county leaders say Metro Air Park will be an economic boon in the e-commerce age.
“We have a regional asset there, an economic engine,” air park representative Tom Ramos said. He pointed out that Stockton, Tracy, Fairfield and Reno already have e-commerce centers. “It’s a plus for the Sacramento region to participate.”
Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna, who represents the Natomas area, is a strong supporter of Metro Air Park. But he is wary of some other development. The proposed Upper West Side residential community doesn’t have his vote yet, and won’t unless it is designed to reduce commute distances rather than add to congestion, he said. “It has to be far superior to anything we’ve seen so far as far as greenhouse gas emissions go.”
That could include a shuttle bus program similar to one the Northlake community developer will finance. Northlake has contracted with a commuter shuttle bus service called North Natomas Jibe to provide downtown shuttles.
Caltrans and local officials acknowledge they have work to do to deal with growth and added commute traffic from neighboring counties. State highway officials said they hope to add what they call “managed” or multi-use lanes in each direction on I-5 through Natomas, but that is unlikely to happen until spring 2025. That could include using the lane as a toll lane where drivers can choose to pay a fee per mile to use that lane to get through the corridor more quickly.
Caltrans also is exploring ways to widen the I-5 bridge over the American River between downtown and Natomas.
The city of Sacramento and Sacramento Regional Transit are talking about building a local light rail and traffic bridge over the American River between Truxel Road in south Natomas and the River District adjacent to downtown. Their goal would be to extend light rail over that bridge, through South and North Natomas and eventually to the airport, with station stops in the new Northlake community development and in Metro Air Park.
That bridge could also handle commute cars from Natomas, taking some pressure off nearby I-5. Some Natomas residents complain the local commute already is over-burdened, and that includes slowdowns at times to and from the airport.
The next handful of years will tell whether the region’s leaders have learned the lessons from past traffic jams in other areas to avoid a similar logjam in Natomas.
This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 5:00 AM.