At 3 am this morning, I returned from a week-long vacation in northern California (Sacramento). I miss the sun already. As a League employee, even when I am on vacation I look at things through the eyes of improving our communities. I saw many things in California that were impressive, and wanted to share them…today, I will list the cool transportation things I saw there:
1. Carpooling advantages - The highways have HOV lanes. That in itself isn’t too impressive. Many states do. The one unique thing in Cali, though, was that if you have more than three people in a car during rush hour, you beat the tolls! And, if you are entering an on-ramp to a highway during rush hour (when they only let one or two cars on per 30 seconds or so), you can jump to the head of the line if have more than three people in the car. I thought that was very cool.
2. They have light rail. At least in the Sacramento area, they do. The RT goes from a variety of suburban areas into Sacramento. We were able to take the RT from Folsom directly to the Capitol without having to drive or park. It did have its drawbacks, though, as it took twice as long to get to downtown, and some of the people using it were interesting. But the availability was nice, and the stop in Folsom has free parking garage and the city is building a huge multi-use development outside the RT stop which will mean big economic development benefits for this city. The RT is also 80% publicly funded.
3. California is still a state of highways, but they have a plan in place to create a statewide rail system. In fact, they have asked for $3 billion of the available $6 billion in available federal stimulus dollars.
More tomorrow...
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