SacRT completed a planning document for Sacramento Valley Station in 2016, which can be accessed from the SacRT website: Sacramento Valley Station Area Improvements Project. Interestingly, this document is not included on the city’s Sacramento Valley Station Phase 3 webpage.

Elements of interest in the document include:

• New north-south oriented light rail station for both the Gold Line and Green Line within the Phase 3 planning area, located just east of the existing pedestrian tunnel to the train platforms. The existing light rail station just west of 5th would be removed.
• New double track for light rail from 7th and H through the light rail station and out to 7th Street to the north.
• The SacRT bus stop, currently for Route 30, would remain where it is, but have electric bus charging for future electric buses. This is in contrast with city diagrams which show a bus area squeezed in next to the light rail station.
• Separate station for the streetcar, located to the west of the light rail station, where the light rail storage tracks currently are. It would be a short walk, but not an across-platform transfer, between light rail and streetcar.
• New light rail station on 7th St at Railyards Blvd, serving the railyards area north of the tracks, including to some degree,  the proposed soccer stadium and Kaiser facility. This station is outside the city’s Phase 3 planning area.

Two diagrams below show the general track alignment, and the pedestrian circulation in the light rail station area. The pedestrian diagram doesn’t clarify exactly how the connection between the light rail station and train platforms will be made, but a ramp is shown, probably reaching the tunnel just where the platform 3 and 4 ramps and stair are. No elevator is shown.

Though not the focus of this document, the diagram does show the streetcar tracks crossing through the current bus turnaround, which would require some sort of change to the Amtrak Thruway bus use, and for the SacRT Route 30 which also uses this turnaround.

STAR is concerned that the City Phase 3 planning does to seem to be closely aligned with this document. In particular, neither this document nor Phase 3 seem to have a well thought out plan for locating and accommodating both existing buses, and additional buses that might come to SVS.

Though beyond the scope of the Phase 3 planning, STAR is also concerned that this document seems to accept that light rail will return to 7th Street as it heads north, that 7th Street will rail single tracked, perpetuating a bottleneck, and that a new station at 7th and Railyards will lock in the single track. It SacRT is serious about the Green Line being a major light rail line, it is hard to believe that it would be handicapped by single track.  The 7th Street underpass, which carries the single light rail track to the Township 9 station, was poorly planned with too little capacity for a second track or for safe bicycle facilities. It will likely have to be torn out and replaced by a bigger underpass. Given this limitation, SacRT and the city should consider whether to use the 7th Street alignment, or another one that reaches Richards and better serves the entire railyards area including the Kaiser facility that will be in the northwest corner of the railyards, far from 7th Street.

The routing of light rail tracks under the new 5th and 6th street bridges on the F Street alignment is of concern to bicycle advocates. It is not clear how the narrow space will be safely shared by bicycles and tracks, nor how bicycles will access the pedestrian areas, nor how bicycles can be parked or stored at this location since all the bicycle facilities are south of here in the area of the historical train station.

• Sacramento Valley Station