Sacramento may declare a state of emergency over dangerous roads. Could it save lives?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As the Sacramento City Council prepared to consider a state of emergency over road safety, advocates pleaded for the city to prioritize infrastructure improvements over a police response.

Whether the declaration would lead to more money to address the crisis is uncertain. Vice Mayor Caity Maple planned to submit the proposal and comment on it at Tuesday’s council meeting.

The draft emergency declaration resolution, put forth by Maple alongside Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Councilwoman Karina Talamantes, would direct the Sacramento Police Department to ramp up enforcement of driver violations that endanger pedestrians, including but not limited to speeding and failing to yield. Advocates said they were leery of that part of the strategy.

City staff provided data to reporters Monday showing that about two-thirds of more than 200 fatal pedestrian collisions in the city between 2012 and March of this year were the pedestrian’s fault in the eyes of police.

The draft resolution says it would kick off a “public education” campaign for all road users.

It would also direct City Manager Howard Chan to work with public works staff to implement “quick-build” safety projects. The process of implementing infrastructure changes on dangerous roads typically takes years.

The immediate goal of the emergency declaration, Maple said Monday, was “to let the citizens of Sacramento know that this is a very pressing issue, this is front-of-mind for us.”

At least 21 people have died in traffic collisions on city streets this year, including a 48-year-old woman who died of her injuries at the hospital Sunday night. She was fatally struck Thursday night while crossing Sutterville Road just outside Sacramento City College.

In a phone call, Talamantes said, “Our Sacramento community has been clear that active transportation is a public safety issue.”

Maple said Monday that according to UC Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System, 264 crashes killed or seriously injured cyclists or pedestrians in Sacramento between 2012 and March 1 of this year.

This year, in addition to the 48-year-old woman whose identity has not been released, Mattie Nicholson, 56; Kate Johnston, 55; Jeffrey Blain, 59; Aaron Ward, 40; Sam Dent, 41; Terry Lane, 55; David Rink, 51; Tyler Vandehei, 32; James Lind, 54; Jose Valladolid Ramirez, 36; Larry Winters, 76; Sau Voong, 84; José Luis Silva, 55; and Muhammad Saddique, 64, were killed by drivers while walking or biking in the city. Geohaira “Geo” Sosa, 32, and Kaylee Xiong, 18, were fatally struck while riding electric scooters.

Voong and Saddique died at the same Natomas intersection. Councilwoman Lisa Kaplan, who represents the area, hosted a pedestrian safety meeting to discuss residents’ concerns Monday night.

Advocates beg for funding to slow traffic

Advocates expressed concern that the draft emergency declaration emphasized a police response.

Isaac Gonzalez, vice chair of the city’s Active Transportation Commission and founder of Slow Down Sacramento, said that police enforcement might be useful “after we properly invest in changes to the built environment that make it prohibitively difficult to drive at unsafe speeds.”

“But until then,” he added, “enforcement would be a cathartic exercise for some but little more than a performative action in reality.”

Talamantes defended the enforcement piece of the proposal. “When people see a police officer, they slow down,” she said.

Research has shown that vehicle speeds over 20 mph imperil pedestrians — meaning that drivers are legally permitted to travel at dangerous speeds on many streets.

“Increased police enforcement only addresses the symptom; it doesn’t address the root of the problem,” said Kiara Reed, executive director of Civic Thread, which presses local leaders for transportation improvements. “We need the city to dedicate general funds in the city budget to address street design flaws, implement complete streets, enact speed management programs and quick builds along high-injury networks and at locations where pedestrian and cyclist fatalities occur.”

The vast majority of funding for safety-oriented infrastructure projects in the city comes from grants. While those grants generally require the city to kick in money as well, very little of the city’s budget is set aside for improving road safety.

In June, the City Council declined to earmark $10 million in the 2024-25 fiscal year to fulfill the 10 recommendations made by the Active Transportation Commission. The first recommendation on the list in 2023 and 2024 was to allocate $3 million annually toward active transportation infrastructure projects. In 2024, the commission suggested a 10% increase in subsequent years. The money would be used to match grant awards, making Sacramento a more competitive grant applicant.

In its report, the commission noted that the city’s Transportation Priorities Plan has $5 billion worth of projects and the city “only has about $42 million each year to do the work, which would take 100 years to build what is planned.”

As potential low-cost quick-build solutions, the draft emergency declaration mentioned intersection restriping, road diets that narrow the space for cars in an attempt to slow drivers down and mini-roundabouts, which slow down traffic at intersections and eliminate dangerous left turns.

Earlier this year, the Department of Public Works rejected an engineer’s proposal for installing mini-roundabouts at 20 intersections across the city.

Deb Banks, the executive director of Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates, said Monday that if the emergency declaration does allow city leaders to draw in more state and federal funding, the money “should be directed to Public Works for immediate quick-build projects to change behavior on our high injury networks, which are typically located on our underserved communities.”

Staggering delays are the norm. In January 2018, Jian Hao Kuang, then 6, was crossing Freeport Boulevard with his grandmother QuiChang Zhu when both were struck by a driver. Kuang’s grandmother died, and the little boy suffered severe, permanent brain damage.

Sacramento paid the family an $11 million settlement, but it has not installed new safety infrastructure in the more than six years since the crash. It has approved a plan to make safety improvements to Freeport, however, Maple said, “for the Freeport project alone, we’re looking at 10 years out before we have the funding to actually do that.”

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