Craig Norman, Director of Engineering for SacRT, presented on capital projects at the ECOS Climate Change Committee last night. There were many topics that will be covered in future posts, but one interesting one was the current alignment of the streetcar. In case you haven’t been keeping up, the streetcar through downtown Sacramento with a loop to 19th Street, and further west and south into West Sacramento is long gone. The interest of SacRT and politicians is to keep the federal small starts grant that was made for the streetcar, but trimmed back to the funding actually available. Below is a slide from the presentation. The Short Range Transportation Plan indicates that the cost of the streetcar is $189M, with $75M being the federal contribution. There might be additional funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The streetcar alignment from Sacramento Valley Station to West Sacramento is no longer along 3rd Street, but on 7th and 8th Streets, using the existing light rail tracks. It seems reasonable to run the streetcar on 7th and 8th, and the additional railcar traffic on these two streets are a great argument for a dedicated transit lane rather than light rail in mixed traffic. Mixed traffic always slows light rail and creates a risk of crashes with private vehicles. The three general purpose lanes on both streets are not justified by traffic volume, so traffic would not be impacted by converting one lane to transit. 8th Street has already been identified by the city for reduction from three lanes to two lanes, but 7th Street has not.

The diagram does not answer the ongoing question of how the streetcar will integrate with light rail at Sacramento Valley Station. It seems to show that it will not use the to-be-constructed light rail station on a north trending section within the station, but this is just a sketch map, so may not accurately reflect the plan.

So far as STAR can determine, this alignment has not been brought before the SacRT Board.

We will post more as we find out more about the current proposal.

• SacRT
• SacRT light rail