Sacramento City: Cars Over People

Thank you to Bella Ahwal for writing this piece!

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On February 18th, the Sacramento City Council called a special meeting to discuss a potential Truxel Road Bridge development plan in Natomas. More specifically, Fedolia “Sparky” Harris, a Principal Planner for the Public Works Department, came to the council and asked them to accept the Truxel Bridge concept report, and to adopt the 3rd alternative presented.

For context, this project runs back to 2013, when the City created an American River Bridge Crossings Alternatives Study in order to think about ways to increase people’s ability to cross the American River. The city claims that the alternative presented on 2/18 would create a bridge crossing the American River in Natomas that is minimally invasive to the surrounding street infrastructure, and is able to support 4 modes of transport- cars, the light rail, pedestrians, and cyclists. The specific option that Sparky and his team urged the council to accept presents a light rail in the middle of the bridge as a buffer, with pedestrians and cyclists on one side and car traffic on the other. 

Fedolia “Sparky” Harris addresses the Sac City Council on 2/18/25

Sparky and staff did a lot of work discussing the bridge with the public, and while there was engagement and discourse at every step of the way, one could question the sample size of those who were actually able to show up and advocate one way or the other. It is likely that those who are more dependent on public transportation were underrepresented in these discussions due to other compounding factors and were therefore unable to advocate against car use on this bridge in the early stages. 

Image pulled from Sac Bee article: What will Sacramento’s new American River bridge look like? See the city’s renderings

During public comment at the 2/18 meeting, community members voiced concerns of feasibility and cost. There are huge discrepancies in cost between the presented option and a NO CAR option. While the 3rd alternative for Truxel Road Bridge would cost $250 million, many folks in attendance at the Council meeting started to question if this is really the best use of money, especially when it had been estimated that this same bridge without the car lanes would cost about $135 million.

As Kay Crumb of Strong SacTown says:

The cost of a transit and active transportation option is $135 mil but including cars on that bridge would raise that to $250 million…The proposed bridge estimates that there is going to be less than a 1% change in VMT and it’s going to save less than or about 5 minutes of travel for people…If our roads are falling apart, why would we spend the money on a bridge that includes more road maintenance?

*VMT = vehicle miles traveled

A public comment from Isaac Gonzalez stressed that a car-free conversation was never even on the table: 

Since then [back in 2013, when the project was initiated] we have seen hundreds of lives lost to vehicular violence on our streets. A painful reminder of what happens when we design infrastructure with inherent conflicts between vulnerable road users and fast-moving vehicles…We never had the chance to seriously compare a car-free option, it was never on the table

Representation of proposed bridge location; image source: Sacramento nears selecting final strategy for Truxel Bridge project

Michael Hutnik pointed out that Sparky wasn’t even allowed to study the impacts of a car-free bridge, and Sparky added detail to that later, saying that in order to seem viable and desirable for receiving grants, they had to make sure to extend cars into the project. He said that in 2013 when this project began to take shape, the council had only accepted an option that included cars in the modalities. This of course created the big problem with the current meeting - the lack of a car-free alternative being mentioned at all.

Keyan Bliss noted that many of the proponents of the bridge design including cars, were moneyed interests, and those representing business voices, “which have given the council a total of $222,225 dollars.” 

On the environmental front, this bridge doesn’t fare too well either. Deb Banks, Executive Director at SABA (Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates) says:

The [American River] parkway will undergo some severe damage with the creation of this bridge and not just during the building of this bridge, but long term habit damage to all the species, animals, wildlife, and to all the people that love the parkway

Many others chimed in on the environmental impact of the proposed bridge, with several folks choosing to oppose the creation of the bridge entirely. Sparky pointed out that constructing a bridge that supports cars as well - as opposed to a bridge only supporting a light rail and pedestrians/cyclists - would evoke a similar upfront effect in terms of environmental impact. But, he also agreed that in the long term, the effect of cars going 24 hours a day over the bridge would have a more catastrophic effect on the surrounding natural areas. 

Almost everyone on the council voted to pass the motion to move forward with the Truxel Road Bridge - specifically recommendation 3B as presented by Sparky. Many councilmembers did claim to understand the importance of moving toward a car-free future, but somehow did not see the issue as pressing enough to make any real steps toward that future. In fact, they committed to paying millions of dollars (and to continue paying millions in maintenance costs) to construct a bridge that will decrease safety and negatively impact our environment - two things that are in direct contradiction to the supposed goals of our city. While Councilmember Vang pointed out that sometimes inequities can be complex, and to some marginalized communities, cars are still the most accessible option, no one on the dais managed to take significant steps towards moving our council away from investing in car-dependent infrastructure.

Surprisingly, Councilmember Kaplan was the only no vote on this motion, and she really pressed Sparky regarding the funding and the priority of this bridge. She talked about the nuances of what Vang said, and argued that cars are inaccessible to some marginalized folks.

Councilmember Kaplan addresses Sparky Harris at the 2/18/25 Sac City Council meeting

She states:

Somebody talked about biking as a luxury, and I take offense to that…I consistently rode by, 6 o’clock in the morning, 5 o’clock at night. I did that because I didn’t have a luxury. I had no ability to pay for car parking

Kaplan talked about the importance of ease of access in transportation and how crucial safe and connecting bike lanes are for those who have no choice. She also stated:

The only way to meet our climate goals is to remove cars from the road

Although most members posit valuing a car-free future, they made it clear that they believe it is a problem for the future. In the face of environmental crisis, countless pedestrian deaths by cars, and the desire to move away from car-dependent infrastructure, they gave the go-ahead to the choice that would lead to a significant drain on our budget, and an increased risk for pedestrian and cyclist deaths.