The Riverfront Streetcar has proposed that light rail be moved from K St to H St, between 12th St and 7th St, so that K St can be used by the streetcar, without the additional traffic and speed differential that sharing the tracks engender. STAR has not taken a position on this issue, so the points below are just an exploration of ideas.

From an employment perspective, there does not seem to be a compelling argument for K or H, as there are significant employment center along both routes. This was documented in Employment Patterns Downtown. However, light rail is not just used for jobs, but for shopping, medical, social services, entertainment, and socialization. We don’t have good data on those destinations, though SacRT or SACOG may.

It has been suggested that there shouldn’t be rail on K St at all. Sacramento does not have any streets that can easily be closed to traffic (both public and private) for celebrations and events, sort of a pop-up community square. Streets are closed, at times and sections, but none of them seem that well fitted to the purpose. Without rail, there could be large farmers markets and open streets events on K St.

Two additional ideas we’d like to share are a realignment to J St and/or L St instead of H St. These two streets are identified as transit corridors, with preferred bus lanes, in the Downtown Transit Circulation Plan. They were not, however, identified as light rail streets. It is not clear whether there is strong benefit to these streets rather than H St, but they should be considered. Since both J St and L St are major arterials through downtown, it would probably not be appropriate to place two light rail tracks in addition to dedicated bus lanes. Instead, J St could carry a single side-running track eastbound, and L St a single side-running track westbound. Or vice-a-versa, as rail can be contra-flow if in dedicated space.  Separation of two blocks between westbound and eastbound is not the ideal – one block separation is better – but it is workable.

The map below shows the three potential realignments, magenta on H St, red on J St, and cyan on L St. The existing light rail lines are Blue Line (blue) and Gold Line (gold). Note that Gold and Blue overlap between K St and 16th St station, but the map only shows the gold color. Green Line is not shown. Also available as a pdf.

That’s it for this series of posts on light rail in downtown. We encourage your questions and comments, and we also welcome guest posts.

A future topic is the SVS (Sacramento Valley Station) Loop connecting the Gold Line and Green Line to the Amtrak station. An old design for that has been superseded by changes at the station and platforms, as well as opportunities in the area that did not exist before, including Kaiser Hospital and Republic FC stadium. However, it will take some reaseach and analysis, so it will be a while.

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