(Update: March 26: The Sacramento City Council voted unanimously to move forward with the proposal. More at the Sacramento Bee.)
The Sacramento City Council is scheduled to vote tonight on whether or not to create a “Quick Build Capital Improvement Project” program that would allow the city to rapidly move transportation safety projects off the planning board and onto the street. (Agenda, Item 21).
A "quick build project" is a temporary, easily adjustable infrastructure improvement that can be installed rapidly using readily available materials to either solicit feedback from a community or put a smaller improvement in place while a larger one is planned. Quick build projects often rely on paint, signage, and plastic barriers, when concrete or other stronger materials will be needed for a permanent improvement.
The advocacy group Strong Sactown explains what tonight’s motion will do in an action alert encouraging members to support the motion:
- Create a new Transportation Safety Team within the Traffic Engineering Team which would focus on rapid-response traffic safety improvements at intersections, pedestrian crossings, and high-risk roadway locations.
- Implement quick, cost-effective solutions that can be deployed within months, rather than years (such as vertical delineators, barriers, and channelizing traffic posts)
- Use real-time crash data to identify high-risk areas in collaboration with the Police Department’s Traffic/Major Collision Investigation Unit
- Address community-reported safety concerns with targeted infrastructure changes
“Transportation advocates have been asking for a quick build program (also called tactical urbanism, though they are subtly different) for years,” writes Dan Allison at the Getting Around Sacramento advocacy blog.
Allison notes that Sacramento has several examples of quick build projects that it has done over the years including a block closure at 2nd Avenue at Broadway and 34th Street to address safety.
Next month, Sacramento is expected to approve a new Active Transportation Plan, that has received positive reviews from advocates for utilizing the “Safe Systems” approach to transportation planning. Safe Systems prioritizes safety over traffic speed when making decisions on what projects to advance and how to best spend funds. Both Strong Sactown and Allison believe that the Active Transportation Plan can be used to inform the quick build program.
In recent years, quick build projects have become popular in cities throughout California. Spurred by the success of quick build projects in Santa Monica, Assemblymember Rick Zbur (D-Santa Monica) introduced legislation earlier this year to require Caltrans to create its own quick build program for bicycle, pedestrian, and intersection improvements for state highways.
In the last two years, the city of Santa Monica, a city with 18% of the population of Sacramento, implemented several quick build projects including: plastic-bollard parking protected bike lane on Broadway in 2023, a series of Safe Routes to School’s Projects also in 2023, and the city is planning to use quick build for the East Pico Safety Project.
