Sacramento Area
Bicycle Advocates
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Highway 50 Bicycle Demonstration Project
Sacramento may be the first city in the nation to have a large-scale bicycle demonstration project. A demonstration project focused on the Highway 50 corridor has been put together by Sacramento Area Council of Government's (SACOG). Highway 50 is expected to be one of the most congested freeways in the region. ). The project is the result of urging by the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates (SABA).The project is a team effort. Several government organizations are involved, including the City of Sacramento, County of Sacramento, Sacramento Regional Transit, Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District, the City of Folsom and SACOG.
The demonstration project includes innovative programs, tried and proven elsewhere. Total construction costs are estimated at over 12 million dollars. Implementation of the demonstration project will add about 9 miles of bikeways in the City of Sacramento, 16 miles in Sacramento County and 2 miles in the City of Folsom. It will also widen and repave 27.5 miles of the heavily used Jedediah Smith Memorial bike trail in the American River Parkway. It will add a bike depot at the Amtrak station and create Sacramento's first bike boulevard. In addition, bike parking, signal sensors that detect bikes, promotion and education and safety efforts are all part of the demonstration.
The Federal Highway Administration set a goal of doubling the number of individuals walking and bicycling in its 1993 National Bicycling and Walking Study and outlined projects that could be implemented to reach that goal. The efforts sited in the study are targeted at a project corridor area that includes a two to four mile width within the vicinity of Highway 50 from the Sacramento/El Dorado county line to downtown. The intent of the new bicycle routes, upgrades to existing routes and other improvements is to double or triple the percentage of trips made by bicycle in the corridor. The 1990 Census reported that 1.81 percent of the Sacramento population currently bikes to work -- the highest in the country for a metropolitan area.
The environment in Sacramento makes good sense for expansion of bicycling because of good weather, flat topography, poor air quality and high growth. It has a significant population of government workers and students likely to try cycling with improved conditions.