Today is the first Re-Imagine Watt/I-80 meeting, at the Arcade Library, 2443 Marconi Ave. We hope that you can attend. SacRT is considering improvements to the station that would improve safety and make the station easier to use. Also being considered, though not obvious on the Re-Imagine page, is dropping the Watt/I-80 station completely, and having the bus connections occur at the Roseville Road station.

The Watt/I-80 light rail station and corresponding bus stops on Watt Ave suffer in part because the the station is located in the I-80 freeway footprint. There can never be any transit oriented development here. The station, no matter how much it might be improved, will always suffer from the noise and pollution of the freeway. Though Watt is a surface street, it is a six-lane major arterial, and will always suffer from the noise and pollution of the road. The station is not and will never be a pleasant place to wait for trains, or buses, though it could certainly be better than it is.

Thinking outside the box, what if the station, with both light rail and bus functions, were moved out of the freeway footprint? Watt is an important transit corridor, and will probably be even more so once a bus system re-design (the Route Optimization Study) creates higher frequency and more logical bus routes on Watt, so any station must serve the Watt corridor. Diverting buses to Roseville Road would make efficient bus service on Watt impossible. Just as important is that any change must make an eventual light rail connection to American River College easier or at least no more difficult. ARC is probably the most important unserved destination on the light rail system, and is a huge generator of motor vehicle trips (VMT) that could be significantly reduced with direct service.

Where would the station be? Where would light rail leave the freeway footprint and where would it travel? Since this is a think-outside-the-box exercise, we don’t have an answer, but have some ideas. Light rail could leave the freeway-running alignment after either the Marconi/Arcade station, or after the Roseville Road station. It probably ought to run on or parallel to Auburn Blvd since it is heading towards ARC and that is the most direct route there. The new station should be on or very close to Watt Ave. Where? Well, it should be somewhere that it can with be integrated with transit oriented development, so that transit is not the sole function of the place. The low density commercial development at the southeast, southwest, and northwest corners of Watt and Auburn are one possibility. Another is the location of the Children’s Discovery Museum/Powerhouse Science Center, when it eventually moves downtown.

What are your thoughts?

• SacRT