There was a large showing on Thursday night on the issue of Mace Boulevard But city officials should be cautious about overreacting to that group’s message.
Why? The demographic in that room was heavily skewed toward people who wanted vehicular solutions. You had whole swaths of the South Davis community fundamentally either not represented at all or under-represented.
The population skewed very heavily toward the older demographic. There were very few people in the audience of the age with small kids who would attend Pioneer. There were very few people who biked to the event.
The result was that the crowd wanted to hear one solution and one solution only – the road would go back to the way it was. As I will explain shortly – even if they get that, it will not fix the problem.
There are likely dozens of reasons for the demographic shift – one is that most parents with small children have other commitments, but the other is that this group is intimidating. When staff mentioned that they counted 105 kids riding their bikes to school in one hour through the intersection of Mace and Cowell, the response was to shout down or boo.
Who is going to speak out under those conditions?
The lesser-told story of the Mace redesign is that parents with children are now much more likely to allow their kids to bike to Pioneer.
We have data to back that up. The city has data from Pioneer Elementary that shows bike ridership up from 17 percent last year to 34 percent this year. That’s significant – doubling the number in just a year.
Anecdotally, I have noticed the difference. As I drive from Angela to Mace on Cowell from my home in South Davis, I see far more children on bikes than in the previous seven years, perhaps 
combined.
As a parent of Pioneer kids pointed out, they now feel safe allowing their kids to bike to Mace.
“I live on the other side of Mace and for the first time since my kids have been at Pioneer I finally feel that they can safely ride their bikes to school,” she said, citing three reasons. A protected bike lane. There is no longer a free right turn. “Three, all those bright red lights at San Marino make me feel safe enough from them to cross Mace there.”
Leaving aside the success of the redesign in terms of that goal, there is no doubt that there are problems on Mace.
Last week I drove through Cowell at 4 pm and it took half an hour to get from Target to Montgomery Elementary to my house off of Cowell east of Mace. By contrast, yesterday at the same time, the roads were basically free flowing, other than Mace itself, and I did the same trip in less than ten minutes.
What triggered the problem last week was a collision on I-80, Darren Pytel explained. The traffic is such that any problem creates a cascading failure.
Before the meeting, I was chatting with one of the folks there. Half of an elderly couple, he asked my opinion but clearly didn’t buy what I had to say. His point to me: if it wasn’t the redesign, why did the problem start showing up when the road was redesigned?
The problem, as I will argue, is that it is not *only* the redesign. And simply putting the road back the way it was is really not going to fix most of the problems.
There are several clues to the fact that the problem is not simply the redesign. The first is that you have the same problem on the north end of Mace, which is completely unaffected by the redesign. The second problem that people forget is that there were similar problems on Mace in the winter of 2017 before any redesign occurred.
This starts out of a math problem. The data is that at peak there are about 500 to 600 vehicles going from Montgomery to I-80. About 200 of those are being re-routed from I-80 via Tremont by an app. It doesn’t take a traffic engineer to realize that when you increase the vehicle flow from 300 to 400 to 500 to 600, you are going to create problems.
No matter what we do locally, those numbers are not going to go away.
What the city wants to figure out is a way to, as Fehr & Peers consultant Adrian Engel explained, “allow some of the local traffic to bypass the queue to be able to get around some of the traffic.”
He warned that by creating additional capacity, “it could induce people to leave 80 at Dixon and drive into this community.”
He warned that could mean, instead of 200 cars, there could be 400 cars because I-80 hasn’t gotten better yet and there is additional capacity on this road.
There is the problem in a nutshell – it goes back to I-80. There appear to be two problems on I-80 at Davis. The first is that it is poorly designed, creating a huge bottleneck at UC Davis where it goes from six lanes down to three. The second is that lack of capacity at the causeway is creating back up.
The result is that the reroute of going Tremont to Mace saves the driver about ten minutes.
Until we can fix I-80, it is always going to be a problem.
The traffic engineers suggest three fixes for this. First, new traffic signals that can “help meter some of the traffic that’s coming from the south and create gaps in that traffic,” and “it can help control the flow so you can monitor the flow in a progression through some of the intersections.”
He believes that additional signals can help without having to create capacity.
The second issue is that they can add lanes back to the roadway that were taken away. That’s clearly the solution that this audience wanted to hear, but unless they can create a way to separate local traffic from I-80 bound traffic, more capacity simply means more by-pass traffic.
Finally, he suggested adding ramp meters to the HOV (high occupancy vehicle) bypass lane at the freeway on-ramp. Right now he said half of the cars jump over to the HOV lane to bypass the traffic signal because they’ve been sitting on Mace for 35 minutes and calculate it is unlikely they will be caught and ticketed.
“As they do that they are entering the freeway faster than what the meter would normally allow which then creates congestion and back up on the freeway.” He said that creates additional congestion and increases people bypassing I-80.
The problem here really is not Mace. The problem here is the added 200 cars an hour (which is probably a low figure) during peak hours, trying to bypass the freeway. Thus we can try to improve the engineering and design on Mace, but in the end, it will only do so much.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Wow. I had to check my notes to make sure that I didn’t write those first eight paragraphs. Sounds almost like all of my comments on yesterday’s article combined. 🙂
Clearly, I agree with your angle on this. There is much that Caltrans can do. But it sure sounds like they don’t care. They created that huge bubble south of the campus where the freeway width instantly doubles, then shrinks back down to its previous size. Adding merges in already congested areas *always* stuffs up traffic. This particular stuff is of legendary proportions. So folks are directed off before the bubble, then THEY merge back on in east Davis, creating ever more congestion that then directs more traffic to Mace, and around and around it goes.
No amount of more car storage on Mace is gonna fix this.
How about the 4,340-parking space “car storage” proposed on Mace, adjacent to the freeway?
Looking forward to an updated traffic study, regarding that.
I suggest that this large, mobilized community in South Davis and El Macero channel some of that energy into direct pressure on their legislators and the governor to move faster on the proposed widening of the Causeway.
Sen. Bill Dodd: https://sd03.senate.ca.gov/contact
Assembly Member Cecilia Aguilar-Curry: https://lcmspubcontact.lc.ca.gov/PublicLCMS/ContactPopup.php?district=AD04
Governor Gavin Newsom: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/
Assembly Committee on Transportation: https://atrn.assembly.ca.gov/
Senate Committee on Transportation: https://stran.senate.ca.gov/
Gone are the days when we could pave our way out of congestion by adding more lanes. Adding more “capacity” to the freeway across the causeway will work as well as adding more lanes/capacity to Mace. Yup, it’ll hold more cars. But that means you’ll just enjoy sitting in traffic with more drivers beside you in more adjacent lanes.
And who pays for all this? Especially at a time when we can’t even afford to maintain the pavement that we already have in place. Our road system is a giant Ponzi scheme, and at some point we have to admit that… or just keep digging our hole ever deeper.
Each time we add lanes and then take them away, we get more congestion (see Bill’s comments regarding the big ol’ bubble just west of Davis where 113 and Old Davis come in). Bubble expansions are the enemy. Somebody wishing to drive home from Old Davis road and *not* wishing to drive through campus and then through town would get on the EB freeway, only to be forced to merge with the rest of the mess for a short distance before exiting at Richards exit. Meanwhile, some folks already on the freeway, will merge into those onramp lanes to get ahead, and merge back in later. That tiny bit of freeway bubble between 113 and Richards is a huge reason for the congestion that creates the 200 cut-through cars per hour on Mace.
When we add more lanes, we don’t reduce congestion. We generally just make the line of cars shorter and wider… without shortening the travel time. Adding more lanes to “free up” the traffic then induces more people to adjust their elastic driving desires, and fill those lanes. We see almost unlimited examples of this. Perhaps the 405 widening was the most famous and expensive. (https://ktla.com/2019/05/07/traffic-on-405-freeway-has-gotten-worse-despite-billion-dollar-widening-project/)
Plans to widen the Yolo Causeway have been under consideration for years, and it would obviously relieve the traffic congestion that currently develops every day in the eastbound direction. Current iterations include either a high-occupancy lane or, if funding is not sufficient from federal grants, there is consideration of a high-occupancy toll lane. Improvements for bike travelers, such as a separated bike/pedestrian path, would be part of the proposal.
Increased gas taxes would be a primary funding source.
Ultimately CalTrans goal, for many years, has been to have four lanes in both directions for the entire I-80 corridor from the Bay Area to West Sac. There are lower priority sections, such as the part near Dixon where it narrows to three lanes. Increased population has led to the Causeway becoming a daily bottleneck, and has probably moved it to a higher priority.
Do you mean peak hour? If so, that is not a lane capacity problem… 600 vph is 10 vehicles/minute… one every 6 seconds. Imagine standing on the sidewalk… a vehicle goes by… count “one alligator, two alligator,…” etc. When you get to six alligators, the next car goes by… that’s a problem? I think not. Level of Service pretty much “A”… so it is not lane capacity… next you look at intersections… particularly signalized intersections… aye, there’s the rub. Particularly bicycle/pedestrian phases… rule to thumb is to allow peds ~ 2-3 feet per second for transiting between curbs/islands… bike traffic, you assume go more towards 4-6 feet/sec.
I’d have to see detailed counts, and look at how the controller is configured… I assume the City has already done so, but if not, there could be a problem because the transit distance has been decreased, therefore reducing the amount of time needing to be allocated.
But it is not a problem of lane capacity.
The main problem with 80 is the funky expansion/contraction west of Richards. A lot of weaving, trying to get one car length ahead, etc. Which causes braking, and the dominoes start falling quickly… think funnel. Widening 80 thru Davis and the causeway will not be the panacea folk seem to imagine. Take a good look some time and see what it would take… removal of shoulders, sometimes used to get disabled vehicles out of the travel lanes; loss of shoulders available to get EVA to the scene of a crash… loss of trees, landscaping. Etc.
It will not be simple, and will be expensive, and during widening, there will be reductions (for construction activities)… to make it “better”, it will become “worse”.
That’s correct Bill, the issue is getting cars onto the freeway, not capacity on Mace. Even yesterday I noticed, the left lane on Mace is clear, the back up is all from the freeway queue. As long as car don’t attempt to jump the queue and cut in, there is not a huge problem with local traffic once you hit Cowell. What they do need to do is create a lane between Montgomery and Cowell that can handle local traffic and somehow prevent cut overs.
Extra lanes encourage cut-overs (aggressive/impatient drivers)… proven fact… that’s exactly what creates problems… law of unintended consequences… am all out of magic wands… but I check from time to time on E-Bay in case they come up… easier to find unicorns…
Purely local traffic can usually adjust ‘time of trip’ decisions…
Both Darren Pytel and Fehr and Peers are looking at ways to expand capacity without encouraging more cut throughs or cut overs. Like you said, magic wands are in short supply which is why ultimately, the current configuration with tweaks might be the way they go.
“Looking at ways”… ‘finding‘ is a different matter, entirely… the key will be the intersections, not the segments… hope I’m proved wrong, but the original set of improvements that started all this, was a “found” way… saying that, in the main, a lot of good concepts were implemented… reduction of transit distance for bikes/peds; reduction of “conflict points”…
Too many “bells and whistles”, meant to be ‘all things to all people’… a strategy often tripping on itself, rather than focusing on basics…
We’ll see…
The biggest issue isn’t getting cars onto the freeway. The biggest issues is having more cars than we can possibly accommodate with finite resources (including perhaps the least important resource, money).
We can put bandaids on this as we have for years. Or we can put money and effort into moving people efficiently with fewer cars, not more.
Hence the high-occupancy lane proposals.
Yes, I realize that is the plan. Just like all other lane-adding plans that came before.
At what cost? Who pays for it and who maintains it? The new HOV lane is free if it is added in place of a regular traffic lane. But congestion doesn’t get fixed just with a special lane for buses. It gets fixed with effective transit. And instead of spending billions on a new lane, I’d like to see the money spent on making transit so effective and attractive that we actually free up one of the existing lanes for this purpose. But we never have support for that. Tell folks that their driving experience will be better if we add a lane (for buses, cars, whatever), and the vote will pass. Adding lanes is always the response to congestion. I’ve seen no plans for vastly improving transit… after using up money we don’t have in order to build those extra lanes.
We can’t pave our way out of freeway congestion.
Despicable! Seriously . . . despicable
DDD – That’s Who!!!
Seriously affirm…
>> DDD – That’s Who!!! <<
🙂 . Well, I tried. I didn’t get boo’d only because almost nobody in the audience had any knowledge of road design, nor that Davis has Street Standards and a Transportation Element in our General Plan. (Elements from both were violated in all three proposed designs that were shown in the hand-outs… each benefitting drivers at the expense of people outside of cars. Shocking, I know).
Folks seemed to just ignore me and waited until they could get back to the virtual chant of “Make Mace Great Again!”
And specifically to who speaks out… It is *really* uncomfortable to do so in such a vocal, large group of mono-thinkers. There were several in the back who were stunned into silence… these being their first torch and pitchfork meeting re. Mace.
I’m going to have to go to one of these and speak. I love having large groups of people hate me. My favorite part is when one of them tries to talk to me later with some per-packaged line.
CORRECTED (no shot clock):
I’m going to have to go to one of these and speak. I love having large groups of people hating on me. My favorite part is when one of them tries to talk to me later with some pre-packaged line.
I need to point out one bit of clarity on this particular boo’ing incident.
Members of the mob weren’t upset that kids were actually riding. They were boo’ing the fact that a count was made, and that this fact was publicly stated. The mob’s contention all along is that *nobody* rides now after the reconfiguration, where they used to see kids riding all the time! (most of them referring to when they had school kids 30+ years ago, btw). If a driver finds the bike facility empty at some point in the day, they take a picture and spread it around as an example of what a waste of money it is to build bicycle infrastructure. So hearing that there are kids actually using it flies in the face of their narrative that this money was spent to take away *their* lanes and free-right turns to create an un-used bicycle facility.
In contrast, you have testimony from the parents of school kids who say that only now are they comfortable with letting their kids ride to school along or across the Mace Moat™.
Perhaps they believed it was inaccurate, or incomplete. As noted by your subsequent statement:
Certainly, the trend in Davis is for a reduction in the number of children, decline in Davis enrollments, etc. I believe that some have claimed that bicycle usage is down from what it once was, as well.
Not very many young parents with children moving into Davis, as evidenced by the Cannery. (I wonder if there’s generally larger numbers of children in Affordable housing complexes.)
As a side note, perhaps the Vanguard isn’t providing a complete picture, either. Especially since apparently none of the 200 “pitchfork-wielding” attendees (as described) comment on here. 😉
I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of them didn’t even know about the Vanguard, let alone care about what’s written about them (or the issue itself), on this blog.
That would be everyone – including bicycle advocates who often use cars, have visitors, and generally rely upon roads and vehicles to deliver goods and services. (Not to mention bike lanes, which for the most part wouldn’t exist without roads.)
Given the average age of those attending this event, I doubt that most will suddenly take up bicycling in mass, though some could probably avoid driving at peak hours (without resorting to my sarcastic suggestion regarding non-impacted hours, in the other article).
And almost certainly, those traveling on I-80 are not going to be using bicycles, in place of cars.
Would strongly agree that no one should shout-down other viewpoints (or apparent facts, in this case).
As California is allowed to become more crowded and dense, quality-of-life issues will inevitably decline. Whether it’s traffic (more vehicles), water availability, the environment in general, aging/over-used infrastructure that becomes more expensive and disruptive to maintain and repair, discouragement of single-family dwellings in cities – while simultaneously encouraging them in more distant areas, etc. Regulations to offset such impacts will also increase, leading to more costs.
Reduced quality-of-life, coupled with increased expense is inevitably leading to a situation in which only the wealthy and poor will remain in some areas.
Again, given the apparent age of the attendees, I suspect that some feel that quality-of-life is being “taken” from them. And, it’s based upon reality, given their collective memories.
>> That would be everyone
Even if you did confuse me by quoting a comment on a different article here…. Ding ding! I think we have a winner.
So, here’s my no-doubt infeasible solution: Create a bypass by extending Montgomery to the east and then connecting it to Road 105D, which intersects E. Chiles Rd.
Developers will love that!
Not to mention flood-plain deniers…
Eric, there is one reality associated with your bypass suggestion. All the yellow land in the graphic below is owned by one man, Angelo Tsakopoulos. So the feasibility with one landowner along the entire route of the proposed bypass is simpler than in cases where there are multiple landowners.
However, there is also a fatal flaw in such a bypass concept … the bottleneck of the Causeway. It is easy to currently see how bad a merge lane of traffic at Chiles and the Causeway is, because all the people who go down eastbound Chiles from Mace back up at the current on-ramp, which is where you would want your bypass to join I-80.
x
And, reiterating a portion of my earlier comment, what is AT known for?
And, Matt is correct as to connection to 80…
The answer lies not in infrastructure… it lies within behavioral change… simple, yet exceedingly complex… just like energy use in general; interpersonal relationships; crime (and punishment); drug issues; MH issues… etc., etc., etc.
Rocket science is a no-brainer compared to behavioral change… above my pay grade…
Walt Kelly, using Pogo as his foil, nailed it… as have other ‘prophets’ in history… “We have met the enemy…”
Matt – Perhaps mitigating the issue with the on-ramp from Chiles at the causeway: One can also backtrack a short distance on Chiles and use the on-ramp at Mace. So, a bypass would result in three routes to I-80, including the current one, instead of only the one route today.
Great concept, Eric… a ‘short distance’…. around 2.5 miles… we ought to pursue that!
And open up properties for development… in the flood plain…
Bill – Actually, it’s only about 1.75 miles to backtrack on Chiles from Rd. 105D to the Mace on-ramp.
You have to measure from Montgomery @ Mace (aka CR 104) to align with CR 105 D, up to Chiles then backtrack to Mace (see above)… County Roads are numbered a mile apart, and letter designations are east or south of the county roads… would be interested in seeing your math…
At least from your starting point of Mace/Montgomery…
I may have under-estimated… Chiles is sw’ly… adds distance…
Matt… more than one reality… but you are correct on the one you cited… I see at least 3 ‘realities’… does the ‘three strikes rule’ apply? [Not a question for Matt, per se… “general”]
I try not to stray too much from my areas of expertise but sometimes do [opinions on social issues]… doesn’t seem to be a mantra for others…
I do find it both interesting and amusing… some who advocated for a “road diet” for Fifth Street, going from 4 lanes to 2+, now espouse going from 6 lanes thru Davis, and the Causeway, to 8… (or more?)
Perhaps a ‘road diet’ for I-80 (reducing to a total of 4 lanes) would make their views consistent, and improve traffic flow… easier and cheaper to try… actually might change behaviors… just a pilot project… 6-12 months, tops… unless it works… might direct traffic to SR 113/I-5, just like the Fifth Street road diet diverted folk to Eighth and Covell… worth a try…
Might make Eric’s idea more feasible…
The only practical way to solve this is to meter traffic crossing the County Line on Mace just south of Davis. That delay will then show up on Waze, and it won’t look attractive, decreasing the number of cars detouring, and creating balance. Most of these other ideas are just increasing auto as a mode share. Isn’t that what we are against?
No, they are attempts at managing the increased population on the roads.
Might be a subtle point, but to me it sounds more like wishing to accommodate more people on the road, not “manage” more people… where managing would include reducing, and accommodating would include increasing.
I’d call it encouraging/enabling more people on the road, via developments that will take advantage of it. So, in that sense, it is “managing” – in one direction at least (“more”).
The correlation between autos, roads and sprawl is obvious. It’s unfortunate that our society doesn’t seem willing or able to separate this. It’s ultimately a reason that some in the Bay Area rejected freeway expansions out to areas such as Pt. Reyes.
Yep.
People should choose time, place, and manner [legal, and practical concept](in this thread, transportation options)… and accept the consequences of their choices… without whining about the consequences of their choices… nor expecting the rest of us to bail them out…
@Ron and @ Bill.
Yup and yup. Thanks for the input.
How so? Most ideas presented in comments open up limited increased road capacity in constricted corridors, perpetuating the fallacy of freeway expansion as a traffic solution.
This was effectively what Fehr and Peers suggested – more signals along Mace to distribute the flow better. But that’s one of three recommendations
At a mere $1 million per signaled intersection.
Actually, that’s a tad high, Darell, for most intersections, but your main point, it is costly… summing construction, maintenance, replacement does get to over $1 million over the life-cycle of a signalized intersection… and, if current trends continue, signalized intersections are four-way stop signs when power goes out… [if ‘users’ know that… many don’t “get” that]
Cost/benefit… quite a concept…
Then you have to start looking at whether shareholders of the consultant have stock in traffic signal companies. And on it goes . . .
Bill, in the presentation Fehr & Peers consultant Adrian Engel explicitly assigned the $1 million per signaled intersection price tag in his comments about (1) the alternative where the Mace-Montgomery intersection was/is signalized, and then doubled down on that $1 million estimate about (2) the alternative where the Mace-South El Macero Drive intersection was/is signalized. Darell is simply referring to the information provided by the experts.
Meanwhile, doubling lanes on I-80 across the causeway, creating bypasses around south Davis are expensive solutions and are also automobile-centric. It’s as if the Koch Brothers were totally in charge of the transportation policy planning at CalTrans. Our own Hassan Minhaj did a very nice segment on the Koch’s war on mass transportation on his Netflix show of which a few short segments are excerpted: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/hasan-minhaj-claims-koch-brothers-are-blocking-public-transportation-plans-073354893.html The entire show is really quite good including the incredible Danish bus line advertisement that makes taking the local bus a rock star fantasy.
That’s hilarious. The next time I see a road in Davis with no cars on it, I’ll take a picture to show what waste of money and space roads are. And post it to . . . how you say? . . . social meedya?
Yeah, unless the kids are supposedly/supposed to be at school – with their bikes parked outside.
Which cannot be determined either way, from the article/comments.
Of course, not all bike trips are to/from schools, nor are they limited to kids. But, legitimate arguments can theoretically be made, if expensive infrastructure is both “underused” and its existence impacts other users.