Share your thoughts! SacRT Forward Virtual Community Workshop

SacRT Forward will rethink the purpose and design of Sacramento Regional Transit’s entire transit network by exploring wholesale changes to the network, including a “blank slate” look at how to position transit competitively long-term in the Sacramento region.

We need to hear from you. Your input will help inform the project team about which key choices to make about the future of the SacRT transit network.

Join the conversation – Responses will be collected through May 15, 2018. There will be additional opportunities to provide input on the SacRT Forward Network Plan throughout this year. Get started below!

Click here to submit your input!

Highway 50 drivers, your daily commute is in for a big change. Light rail users, you too

By Tony Bizjak

April 30, 2018

The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento Regional Transit, for its part, will upgrade its light rail service along that corridor in several ways.

Beginning in June, SacRT will expand night-time service to Folsom until midnight. Currently, Folsom service stops at about 7 p.m. making the rail system unusable for late-hour workers and people going to the downtown arena or other evening events.The agency plans to follow that by adding 15-minute service to and from Folsom instead of the current 30-minute arrivals.

The most notable transit change, though, will be the introduction as early as 2020 of limited-stop express trains during morning and afternoon commute hours on the Gold Line, potentially cutting 10 or more minutes off the trip between Folsom and downtown.

That service is not likely to begin until 2020 or 2021, SacRT officials said.

The plan came together last week when local environmentalists and Caltrans resolved a years-long dispute over the state’s efforts to expand Highway 50, an environmental representative said on Friday.

Initially, the Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS) and the city of Sacramento opposed adding carpool lanes on Highway 50 in downtown, contending it was a narrow, car-focused and ultimately unsatisfactory solution to east county congestion.

The Sacramento City Council in 2002 voted nearly unanimously against funding to even study the idea. Several council members at the time said HOV lanes – which become regular all-user lanes during non-commute hours – would just encourage more suburban sprawl and more traffic.

More recently, city officials have looked more favorably on the plan, and have cooperated with Caltrans to use some related project money to make improvements to city streets near Highway 50 in the downtown area.

That includes money to turn 14 blocks of Broadway, near the Department of Motor Vehicles headquarters, into a more pedestrian and bicycle friendly street, and build a new block-long street just east of 28th Street between X Street and Broadway, allowing drivers to use X Street instead of Broadway to access the Highway 99 southbound on-ramp..

For its part, ECOS twice sued Caltrans to stop Highway 50 carpool lane plans. The most recent of those lawsuits became the fulcrum for last week’s negotiated deal.

Click here to read the full article.

A Tesla Semi was spotted on I-80 near Sacramento. Why that might not be an anomaly

By Michael McGough 

March 2, 2018

The Sacramento Bee

Driverless cars may be on California city streets for testing as early as April, but semi-autonomous cars are already driving on our highways.

And, apparently, so too are semi-autonomous trucks. A Tesla Semi, still technically a prototype vehicle, was recently seen driving on Interstate 80 in the Sacramento area, as documented by a YouTube video uploaded by another driver.

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Driverless cars are expected on California streets in April. What does it mean for you?

By Tony Bizjak

February 27, 2018

The Sacramento Bee

A moment that once belonged only in sci-fi novels is now a month away in California.

Starting in early April, auto manufacturers and technology companies will be free to put cars onto California city streets for testing with no one at the wheel – and in fact no one even in the car.

The Department of Motor Vehicles received legal approval Monday to publish the ground rules – and will begin issuing permits in a month.

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California Officials Set Up Invasive Swamp Rodent Hotline

By Vanessa Romo

February 12, 2018

National Public Radio 

California has a giant rodent problem.

To clarify, it’s not that California has a huge problem with run-of-the-mill rats, it’s that the state has an emerging problem with jumbo-sized critters.

Nutria, otherwise called Myocastor coypus, were thought to have been eradicated from the state’s wetlands and rivers as far back as 1965, but they have mysteriously reappeared in three counties over the past year, California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Peter Tira told NPR.

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