STAR urges everyone interested in the Dos Rios Light Rail Station to comment to the SacRT board for the Monday, November 13 board meeting. The meeting starts at 5:30PM. We guess that this agenda item will come up no later than 6:00PM, and will be the main topic of the evening. People may comment in person (fill out a comment card for agenda 7.1 when you come in), or through Zoom (raise your virtual hand as soon as the agenda item is announced), or by email to the board secretary (Boardcomments@sacrt.com) before 2:00PM.

The agenda item 7.1 on the Dos Rios Light Rail Station is now available, and is linked here. Staff is presenting three options, summarized as: 1) make a request for SB 125 funds to SACOG, and if successful (indications are positive but not confirmed), the project is fully funded with existing SacRT funds and the TCC grant. 2) fund most of the project but seek the remaining $9M from partners; 3) drop the light rail station and fund enhancements to SacRT bus route 33, and other actions.

STAR believes that the loss of the light rail station is unacceptable. It would blow a hole in the concept for Mirasol Village, which was a highly transit accessible housing development with mostly affordable housing. Without the light rail station, Mirasol will remain isolated from the community. This breaks the promise made to Mirasol residents. STAR does not have a position on options 1 or 2.

Alternatives

The SIMPL Leadership Council (SIMPL = Sacramento Integrated Multimodal Place-based Living), with help from a number of community organizations and agencies, started the work of developing alternatives to the light rail station, in case it was never built. This has included outreach to the community. It is hoped that the alternatives will not be needed, but since the alternatives have value in and of themselves, for eventual implementation after the station is complete, here is a brief summary of the ideas:

• Reroute SacRT Route 33 Dos Rios bus to better serve the neighborhood, including connecting to the Green Line light rail, and increase service to 15 minutes from the current 30 minutes, and add weekend service which is currently lacking. This would require some new buses and higher operations costs.
• Increase the frequency of SacRT Route 11 Truxel to better serve the area of Mirasol Village, though not directly. The span of service would be increased. Again, increase the span of service,
• Offer more car-sharing.
• Offer better bike-share and scooter share from existing providers.
• Offer a fleet of e-bikes dedicated to Mirasol Village and/or the neighborhood.
• New and improved sidewalks.
• Better bicycle facilities.

Though these are valuable additions, they do not take the place of a light rail station.

• Dos Rios Light Rail Station
• SacRT