I support infrastructure investment, but urge city leaders and Public Works managers to FIRST update the city’s Improvement Toolboxes to include and emphasize the use of missing strategies / solutions which are affordable and proven to contribute substantially, quickly and simultaneously to the city’s goals for Active Transportation, Traffic Safety, sustainability, and air quality. It is inefficient, wasteful and actually dangerous to make investment decisions which do not fully evaluate or even consider the advantages / benefits of the single-most effective traffic calming, speed reduction, and safety solution alternative available today. The existing Toolbox for top priority traffic problems is Incomplete, but it would be easy to add newer but under and never utilized solutions which other cities, counties and states have employed successfully and systemically. Why else would state and federal transportation officials offer “free” resources to support the installation of small roundabouts (not mini-traffic calming circles). People will unnecessarily continue to die and suffer serious injuries across the city, even at dangerous intersections where less-effective solutions (including traffic signals) are implemented.

My name is Kiernan Elam (District 4 resident) and I strongly support all nine of the ATC's recommendations, especially increased funding, expanding bike parking, and re-establishing slow & active (or multi-use) streets.

I cannot emphasize enough how much these investments in transportation infrastructure do, in fact, work. I myself wasn't biking much at all two months ago, and find myself commuting to work and to groceries via bike on a weekly basis. Tons of riders in the city are brand new (partially due to the success of Bike Month, but in no small part due to newcomers to the city in general) and they deserve safety and proper infrastructure to navigate the city effectively. I fully support the funding of our city's bikeways and hope the continued success of Bike Month events prove how much demand and excitement there is for a more bikeable city.

Thank you Councilmember Vang and Valenzuela for elevating this topic and giving it the importance it deserves.

Those of us in the bicycling world plant seeds and watch them grow. In the past 24 hours, this has been my experience:
Sophie, age 34, learn to ride a bike in an Adult Learn to Ride class
Vivien, Riffat and Vicki practiced bike handling skills to prepare for their first on-street bike ride next week
Having previously taken bicycle education classes, Kathy and Lennore gave back to their community and volunteered to coach these new riders.
Outside a sandwich shop, I met Tim who wanted to know how to get to downtown on a bike. I gave him the new City and Jibe bicycling maps.
And .. Councilmember Eric Guerra’s office signed up for the May is Bike Month challenge.

Seeds have been planted. Let’s continue that growth by making active transportation an important part of the City’s budget. PLEASE
Choose option 2: Pass a motion to direct the appropriate person to begin working on the proposal with committee members and then forward the item to the city council for consideration without further review by the committee.

We must continue to fund active transport to decrease economic equality, carbon emissions, and create a city for everyone.

I support prioritizing funding for the implementation of the Active Transportation Commission's nine recommendations from their 2022 Annual Report.

You know the data. Citizen's lives are at stake. We must make our streets safer.

Sacramento streets are unsafe--for pedestrians, bicycle riders, and motorists alike. The recent trend spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a cacophony of colored cones, and brightly colored confusing directional indicators has only made the streets of Sacramento more unsafe. While money is spent on traffic "diets", motorized, and electric bikes and scooters traverse our streets and sidewalks, often going the wrong way. Look at 21st St.--passengers of parked vehicles open their doors into traffic. The vehicles parked there block sight lines, making the street more dangerous. None of the proponents of traffic safety ever mention the most effective way to make our streets more safe--a fully staffed Traffic Division to issue citations to speeders and scofflaws who put all of us at risk. With no effective enforcement, city streets remain unsafe for all.

I fully support Katie and Mai's proposal to fully fund the Active Transportation Commission's recommendations. I am a resident of District 4 and I moved to Sacramento specifically because I love how walkable and bikeable the midtown area is. However, this is not a privilege that many others in the city have, and it costs people their lives.

In the Central City alone, every 4 days, a pedestrian or cyclist is seriously injured or killed by traffic violence. We've had a string of violent traffic deaths in the city in just the few months of 2024 alone. And according to Sacramento's Vision Zero report, Sacramento leads the state in terms of highest number of traffic fatalities for youth under 18. This is shameful and without real support and funding to change the way our streets are designed and the support to safely commute by bike, these statistics will not change. So long as driving is the norm, we are going to keep seeing traffic deaths, air pollution, waterway pollution, noise pollution, and liabilities to our city infrastructure that we can't even keep up with now.

We also have a climate crisis that requires that we take every step we can as a city to reduce our carbon emissions. The most significant and meaningful way we could do that is to cut our transportation emissions and get people out of their cars and onto their bikes, walking, rolling, or taking transit.

Compared to the spending we'd have to do to combat our public health crisis, the impacts of climate change, and to make up for the loss of life on our streets, the funding for the ATC's recommendations are a smart and critical investment.

I love biking and walking to get around. Using my bike with transit means I can get even farther. The rewards of using active transportation can be felt in my life through the close connections I have with my neighbors in my community, the hundreds of dollars I save each month by not having to pay for a car, the increased health benefits I get from moving my body each day, and the joy I feel having the wind on my face and being outside in our wonderful city.

A bikeable and walkable city is a happier, healthier, and wealthier city. Fund the Active Transportation Commission's recommendations now and you will see those benefits within 5 years of a city that doesn't have to pay as much in traffic violence, in road maintenance, in parking lot upkeep, in air pollution, in waterway pollution, in stormwater runoff. This is a smart move, and I thank councilmembers Valenzuela and Vang for championing it!

I'm making comment about the Proposed City Budget of Sacramento for FY 24-25 only, as there hasn't been time to review the CIP in the short turn around the City has provided for public review. I'm a resident of District 6, and will not be able to comment at City Council because I'm out of town this month.

As a general rule, the City has said that they would involve citizens more in the budget process. The workshops that were provided to discuss the budget crisis were very nice to be part of, and it would be great to see more opportunities for the public to be involved with the budgeting process. This document is very confusing for someone who does not have a budget background, even with the explanation of how the City Budget process works nearly 90 pages into the document. Overall, more clarity of the percentages of changes for FTE and funding based on percent of changes for the department would be helpful in understanding the impact. Removing 50 positions in the police budget has a different impact on the total people accomplishing that departments vision compared to removing 50 positions from Youth budget, which has significantly fewer positions to begin with.

Some things to consider, and my general comments:
1. Funding for transparency (city clerk, 76) and record requests (police) is being removed. This will slow down PRA requests, which are already slow to be fulfilled, and reduce transparency. This is a problem.
2. To meet our Climate Action and Adaptation Plan goals, we need additional funding for climate action in the budget.
3. Line by line, major funds like Parking and Community Center do not appear solvent. Parking also does not include costs that are associated with the roads that get people to those parking spots, even considering CIP. This obscures the true cost of parking, and should be considered (146).
4. It was encouraging to see parking revenue increased by removing free parking on Sundays and holidays. Thank you for proposing this method of increasing city income.
5. More funding needs to be allocated to Active Transportation, as it will ultimately lead to a reduced need for funding associated with fixing and maintaining roadways, parking, and other auto infrastructure (major drivers of city costs).

How did the city consider parking revenues after multiple years of falling short? (110, 126) Is a new methodology being used at this point?

Overall, I'd like the city to focus on transparent local accounting and getting residents more involved. Barring this, residents need easy and timely ways to review and confirm city documents. Delays on PRA requests are already in excess of months, well beyond the allowable 10 days (with a 14 day extension when needed).

Thank you to the budget staff and all other city staff who worked on this incredible document. It's no small feat.

As a long time resident of District 7, I strongly support the Active Transportation Committee and item 5 on the agenda. There has been a rapid decline public safety since the pandemic. The recent statistics backup my concerns about my safety. I don't' feel safe driving my car in the city of Sacramento anymore.
As a result, now I walk or ride my bike to run my errands in the downtown area. Unfortunately, the existing infrastructure is very poor for Active Transportation in downtown . Any increased funding in active transportation is badly needed to improve the safety and quality of life for those of us living in the downtown.

I know we're facing a major budget shortfall and we have to make really tough decisions about what to fund. Everyone says public safety is a top priority. Implementing the Active Transportation Commission's nine recommendations IS public safety. People are being killed, maimed, and injured on Sacramento streets in traffic accidents. And these are 100% preventable - but only if we prioritize funding safer streets.

If implemented, not only would these recommendations make our streets safer, they would make active transportation easier for people to adopt, thereby increasing public health, and reducing pollution and climate-changing emissions. And most of all, it would make our city a more livable city, that increases economic vitality. It is a win-win.

I am a cyclist, a pedestrian, and a driver. If I could totally ditch my car, I would. But I don't feel our streets are safe enough. Still, I brave our streets as much as I dare.

On the other hand, one of my neighbors recently moved here from Germany. She didn't have a car. Her primary form of transportation was a bicycle. But since coming to Sacramento, although she easily lives close enough to ride a bike to work, to shop, and to play, she is too afraid. There have been recent cyclist deaths at intersections near our homes and she has experienced too many near misses herself. So she quit cycling. How sad. How many others are unwilling to get out of their vehicles because it is simply too unsafe to do so within our city?

Please, please save lives: prioritize funding safe, active transportation in Sacramento.

Strong support for all of the Active Transportation Committee’s recommendations. Over 5,000 Sacramentans are being hurt or killed every year on our roads and cars are now killing more people in our community than guns. I urge you to treat this with critical attention it deserves and help provide residents with safe and alternative modes of transit.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Matt Anderson, D4

As a resident of District 7 in Sacramento, I fully support item 5 and the proposal to prioritize funding for the ATC recommendations. The ATC was created to focus on the needs to the city and they came back with a detailed report that truly recognize areas for improvement, many of which are straightforward, simple, and will have a large impact.

Vision Zero, while great in theory, continues to be an unsuccessful program for Sacramento. We need to take a closer look at how we achieve reduction in crashes, starting with data. The "High Injury Network" that we use to fund improvements is based on data that is almost a decade old. We should look for improvements by prioritizing the ATC recommendations and making data driven decisions instead of arbitrary cherrypicking projects which are executed on today.

If Sacramento is going to be a city that people want to live in, the city government needs to invest in the infrastructure and small businesses that make a city desirable to live in.

As a long time resident and user of cycling 'infrastructure', and as a confident cyclist capable of maintaining pace with traffic, I'm terrified to use much of the existing active transport infrastructure. Sacramento has egregiously failed in developing the active transport that is needed to support roadside businesses where abundant car parking isn't available. The solution isn't more parking - it's better bike lanes and sidewalks.

Not everything can, or should, be accessible by car. Active transport funding is an incredibly cheap means of developing small-scale commerce and provides dramatically more significant benefits per dollar than car-based infrastructure.

Sacramento is flat as a pancake, which likely contributes to the high rate of bicycle accidents in the city - it's easier to hop on a bike here than most places, and the white stripes and green paint provide an illusion of protection. The minimal cost solution invites the unwary to death while simple solutions are widely known to planners. It's a failure of the city government to its citizens and to its businesses that cycling in this flat city is the province of the experienced.

We could be a city renowned for active transport, to rival anywhere in the Netherlands, if the city would invest even a fraction of what's spent on vehicular infrastructure. And city leaders wouldn't even have to kowtow to business interests, with so many new opportunities for commerce with basic, safe, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. Opening space for people to exist and interact invites commercial exchange.

Failure to fund active transport is a basic failure of government in a city that has such opportunity for easy improvement. Its unconscionable that this requires input from citizens to encourage. Hold yourselves accountable to the basic needs of the people of this city, to the needs of those who walk and know and live on the streets and not those who fly past them at highway speeds.

I am a resident of District 7 and strongly support the ATC's work. Sacramento's traffic safety issue is severe and we are losing ground on the ten-year Vision Zero initiative. Thr Department of Public Works is under-resourced to build the necessary infrastructure and has not been appropriately directed by Council to focus on proven modern safety concepts. Using outdated methods puts Sacramento in a disadvantageous position for competitive grant applications while moving us away from a safer city. The ATC propodals will not only improve safety and liability; they will be more affordable than less-effective alternatives.

The ATC also is the only commission where the public can interface with the Department of Public Works regarding traffic safety issues. While this issue doesn't get much press, it dominates neighborhood meetings and local social media. Supporting the ATC's report will allow Council to deliver popular initiatives at a reasonable cost.

Please, support and advance the ATC's work, including these recommendations.

A note to show my support for prioritizing the Active Transportation Commission's subcommittee's 9 recommendations.

This is a vote of support for the Active Transportation recommendations from a long time District 5 resident. Every day I see a need in my neighborhood to create safer spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. My next door neighbor died in a hit and run event (not an accident!) while walking on a nearby thoroughfare. Sacramento needs to prioritize active transportation. Please consider this a priority in the budget.

As a 25-year resident of the City of Sacramento, and current resident of District 7, I strongly support prioritizing active transportation, which will benefit public health and safety, reduce emissions, and save public funds. The future vitality and climate resilience of our great city depends on it!

Prioritizing active transportation will save the city money in the long run while making the environment cleaner, citizens healthier and help forestall climate warming. Cities around the world, including Berlin, Seville, Paris and Copenhagen have shown that changing the transportation paradigm is possible and practical. Sacramento has topographic and weather advantages that most of those cities don't have. We can do it here if there is the will to do so.

My name is Joey Wraithwall, and I am a resident and homeowner in District 7. I strongly support all nine recommendations from the Active Transportation Commission subcommittee. Specifically, I urge a focus on recommendations 1 (as funding is always critical), 2, 3 (especially in underserved communities where youth are placed at risk at unsafe intersections), 4 (ideally with improvements and more teeth for offenders), 6 (I would urge considering how to empower citizens to build simple city-approved interventions to save lives), and 9 (Sacramento has fallen tragically behind the curve on policy with sad implications for our civic culture regarding slow streets).

As District 7 Councilmember Jennings has vowed to focus on core city services amidst the challenging fiscal outlook, I urge him to consider the dozens of people killed by motorists every year in Sacramento and the core service of providing infrastructure that does not facilitate those deaths.

However, even positive action from councilmembers on these recommendations and continued work from City staff along those lines will not be enough to address Sacramento’s deficits regarding a safe and sustainable transportation system. Having recently attended the Broadway redesign workshop, I was saddened that even among millions of dollars of planned improvements there were basic safety elements like physically separate bike lanes that were disregarded without any compelling reason. It will take redoubled efforts from all of us to demand better outcomes, and I am very hopeful y that supporting these 9 ATC recommendations can be another step towards Sacramento reversing the trend of increasing numbers of residents killed and maimed on our streets.

My name is Ben Raderstorf and I am a D4 resident. I strongly support funding the implementation of the ATC's recommendations. Dangerous roads kill far more Sacramentans every year than homicides. It's quite literally the thing that is most likely to harm me and my family in this city — I strongly urge the city to reverse decades of neglect and match our budget priorities to the scale of the problem.