There is a certain happiness sighted when your bus comes along. It is of course a small specialized form of happiness and will never be a great thing.

-Richard Brautigan, The Old Bus

Friday, May 8, 2009

New starts and Sacramento's south line extension

The Annual Report on Funding Recommendations by the secretary of transportation was released today and it includes good news for Sacramento Regional Transit.

The Federal Transit Administration has identified Sacramento's south line extension from Meadowview to Cosumnes River College as one of five projects recommended for Full Funding Grant Agreements and Early System Work Agreements in the 2010 fiscal year.


California: Sacramento South Corridor Phase 2
The Sacramento Regional Transit District (RT) is proposing to implement an extension of its existing South Corridor light rail transit (LRT) line from its current terminus at Meadowview Road south and east to Cosumnes River College (CRC), near the intersection of State Highway 99 and Calvine Road. The four-station, 4.3-mile project would operate in an exclusive, primarily at-grade right-of-way requiring six street crossings along the alignment. The proposed extension will use existing RT vehicles and operate on 10-minute peak-period frequencies. Approximately 2,700 park-and-ride spaces would be constructed at three of the four proposed stations as part of the project.

The capital cost for the project is $270.00 million, with a proposed New Starts share of $135.00 million, or 50 percent. Congress has appropriated $11.34 million for the project through FY 2009. FTA recommends $40.00 million of New Starts funding for the project in FY 2010.
Here's the description of the South Corridor Phase 2 from the Annual Report on Funding Recommendations

4 comments:

wburg said...

Interesting. This line runs along the back of the planned "Delta Shores" neighborhood, but there is no station, and the portion planned for that end of Delta Shores is the low-density single-family homes portion.

Sounds like another "transit-oriented development" neighborhood that will be dismayingly free of transit.

Unknown said...

I have heard that the Sacramento region has a reputation for leading in transit-oriented development. And, sure enough, there are sites like 65th and Folsom. But those are so rare as to be the exception that proves the rule -- low-density, single-family, auto-centric is still the dominant goal.

We're still building for the 1950s.

wburg said...

I think that reputation is undeserved. Most of the "transit-oriented development" projects around here tend to get built before the transit reaches them, and they become car-centric development by default. Laguna West and North Natomas are classic examples. Lots of wonderful plans, renderings and drawings of pedestrian-lined streets, and what gets built? Snout houses with the snout in the back, cul-de-sacs, and shopping centers so big you need a car to drive from one end of the parking lot to the other. From the looks of Delta Shores, we still haven't learned our lesson.

The higher-density examples are mostly still under construction or incomplete, like 65th/Folsom or the Alexan apartments (formerly the Trammell Crow condos) at Alhambra and S, but the jury is still out. So we may have a reputation for TOD, but it is definitely more in theory than in practice.

Naomi P. said...

Can you say rail line to nowhere?