Challenge

The City of Sacramento needs to redesign its streets to make them safer and more comfortable for a variety of road users, as well as better connect people to everyday destinations like schools, grocery stores, and parks. The City decided to develop “15-minute neighborhoods”—where most daily necessities are accessible in just 15 minutes via pedestrian, bicycle, or public transit infrastructure.

Solution

Kittelson is leading the development of Sacramento’s network of low-speed neighborhood connections for nonmotorized travel. We used a community-driven and data-informed process to identify the places where the people of Sacramento want to go. Then, we used GIS to identify access gaps and opportunities to help people connect to their desired destinations.

Synthesizing this data into action, Kittelson developed the Sacramento Neighborhood Connections Plan, which includes:

• A citywide geospatial, inventory of multimodal conditions and community-identified destinations.
• A low-stress Neighborhood Connections network tying local streets into a broader active transportation network.
• A toolbox of community and city staff-approved traffic calming treatments and design specifications, including application guidance and sample drawings for typical Sacramento intersections and streets.
• A series of walk audits developed with Sacramentans who identified the challenges they face and solutions to address them.
• Policies that could be implemented to help support the implementation of the plan.