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Friday, February 10, 2012
Downtown Sac / West Sac streetcar plan slowly chugs along
by Kathleen Haley, published on May 5, 2009 at 10:52 PM
Storyline: Sacramento City Hall / Politics
The Sacramento City Council will keep working on its plan to set up a streetcar that will, when completed, travel between downtown West Sacramento and downtown Sacramento.
However, most details about how the three-year-old plan would work are not settled.
Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to keep working on the plan, which is known as the Downtown/Riverfront Streetcar Project.
“By doing this, we’re recommitting not just to a streetcar, but to do a starter line between Central City and West Sacramento,” said Councilman Steve Cohn. “I think it’s been something that’s a regional priority, and one that the city certainly wants to be a part of.”
The exact route and alignment for the streetcar needs to be analyzed, he added.
West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon said his city wanted to keep working with Sacramento on the project, which he called “a signature project for our two cities and the region.”
A city staff report notes that “several policy issues arose regarding the route alignment and project financing” during the past 18 months.
The cities have been examining a draft financial plan that states the project will have $69 million in capital costs.
In addition, business and development representatives have weighed in on the issue of the streetcar’s route. The staff report states that business groups “are concerned that the proposed route does not provide a connection to key development sites in Sacramento.”
Al Bulf of Sacramento urged the City Council to press ahead on the project. “I hope we’ll move past the inertia of doing more studies,” he said.
Specifically, the City Council pledged Tuesday to keep developing the streetcar plan by approving a new agreement with West Sacramento, the Yolo County Transportation District (YCTD) and Regional Transit (RT).
The agreement sets up a policy committee that will decide how the project will work.
Members of the committee will include council members from both Sacramento and West Sacramento, members of the “local community or business and development interests,” and representatives from YCTD and RT, according to the city staff report.
The committee will plan the project’s goals, scope, milestones, schedule and financing, the report also states.
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William, how much of a sales tax increase was agreed upon?
The problem is that most of the federal "stimulus" funding is going towards highways and streets, rather than public transit projects like streetcar lines.