By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Davis, CA – In 2016 a narrow majority of voters made a mistake, fearing the traffic impacts from the Nishi project onto Richards, they voted down the Nishi Project. The result was about $10 million that would have gone to create a new route to campus from Richards through Nishi was taken off the table.
The city with the help of grant money from SACOG is redesigning the Richards / I-80 Interchange to help traffic flow, but that money that would have helped to siphon a good portion of traffic away from the downtown disappeared when the voters voted down Nishi in 2016 and then voted for Nishi without Richards Blvd access in 2018.
The situation on Richards will hopefully be improved with the changes, but in the end, you are still funneling the same amount of traffic through the narrow underpass and onto the narrow downtown streets.
We are facing similar decisions now with Mace and DiSC 2022. In 2020, the voters narrowly rejected DISC, a big part of that was likely fears about traffic impacts.
While Mace congestion has gotten less attention on the north side of I-80, in the pre-pandemic days, it was nearly as congested as the south side. Traffic during late afternoon hours would often back up in the south bound direction onto the 
Mace Curve, nearly to Harper Junior High.
There are similar problems with Mace as existed with Richards – too much traffic onto an overpass built at a different time and not meant to handle that volume of traffic which now backs up from the freeway which during peak hours is near a standstill.
We know from Nishi and Richards, that even a fairly clear cut solution may not win at the ballot box. It took Nishi removing Richards from the equation to win. DiSC has no such realistic luxury.
Having a reduced sized project – which was by necessity of one of the land owners pulling out, not a strategic decision – is actually a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it does reduce the impact of the project on traffic, but it also reduces greatly the amount of private money that can go into infrastructure upgrades.
Even with the full project, there was not enough money from the project alone to really fix the roadway. Now with a reduced sized project, that money will be even more limited.
I already see a full court press to create a bike/ ped under crossing at Mace. There is nothing wrong with that per se. But if we go that route, it probably leaves less money for the applicants to address the bigger problem which I think is Mace and not whether or not we have bike and pedestrian connectivity.
That is sacrilege in Davis, but it is the reality. If we can only deal with one problem – the road is the far bigger one.
Fortunately for Davis, we probably have a once in a lifetime opportunity to fix this thing. There is all sorts of federal money available for roadways and transportation. There is grant money from the American Recovery Plan and now there is additional billions that could come available through the Federal Infrastructure Bill.
In addition, CalTrans has already prioritized the I-80 corridor for upgrades and billions more will come available through the infrastructure bill.
Finally there is SACOG who ended up funding upgrades to Richards Blvd.
In addition to the public monies, the city will see at least three potential projects along Covell – one at Wildhorse Ranch, one at Shriner’s in addition to DiSC.
All of this comes together in a way that we really have the opportunity to fix this infrastructure and roadway in a way we will probably never have again.
So what does this look like? Can we actually fix the road way and I-80 exchange?
I have no idea.
One thing I will caution people on – it is extremely dangerous and problematic to try to play amateur traffic engineer here – and frankly way too many people are. It was like when a citizen last go around attempted to estimate traffic impacts from DISC and came up with five hour delays on Mace – a finding that belied common sense and was so far off from the professional traffic engineering estimates as to render it comical.
There is a reason why you hire traffic engineers to do this stuff, no sense in trying to do an amateur job. This is way above my pay grade.
Instead , what I would like to see is a conceptual plan that the city and developers lay out on the table prior to the project being put on the ballot. The voters need to have an idea of what they are voting on, and how we address issues of traffic prior to be asking to vote a project up or down.
With the amount of money and projects coming in, we can afford hopefully to go big and at least partly address issues of traffic and connectivity to the site.
The goal of the city and the developers should be to develop a plan that can actually improve things over the current conditions. Can they do that? I don’t know. If we were building Mace today, would it look like it does now? If not, how can we redesign it to make it more functional?
In a lot of ways, whether or not DiSC passes in June will depend on the developer and city’s ability to answer these questions. But as history warns, that may not be enough. The voters lost an opportunity to really fix Richards in 2016, hopefully they will get a chance to fix Mace in 2022 and not fumble that chance.
I agree with this. Just like I feel the voters also need to know exactly what they’re voting on when it comes to approving any Measure D vote. Not some conceptual outline of a projected project as some have been pushing.
This ought to do it:
https://stvinc.com/sites/default/files/2020-10/highbridge3.jpg
Keith: What a great photo!
I especially like the new canal between the UPRR and Ikeda on which high-speed catamarans can dart from DISC to downtown. (If they fund that canal, maybe we can let that pesky tunnel under Mace slide.)
Well, with a ‘rail diet’, there might be enough room to have a mass-transit sized scull route… or absent a rail diet, we could eliminate Second Street, and serve the adjacent properties via sculls or barges… but building of a complete enclosure of 113 and I-80, and using the top for infill would be a higher priority… we should just do it…
Not…
The “fourth” being the “other half” of DISC – probably a housing development.
But David has inadvertently brought-up an important point. The smaller DiSC proposal really is the proverbial “camel’s nose under the tent”. A vote for DiSC is ultimately a vote to encourage and enable ALL of the housing proposals that are arising. In fact, it’s already acknowledged that those additional developments would then be “needed” to even get a pedestrian/bicycle underpass built (to what is currently farmland).
The city has to ask itself if it wants to cross a logical boundary for the city – in the form of Covell and the Mace Curve, along with all of the impacts that would have. That’s really what this is about.
DiSC is the hole in the dam, which will inevitably lead to a flood.
“One thing I will caution people on – it is extremely dangerous and problematic to try to play amateur traffic engineer here – and frankly way too many people are.”
Are you talking about the same traffic engineers who designed the Mace mess? We should leave it to them? Or the one’s who decided to paint double yellow lines down F St where delivery trucks double park making every car that goes around a traffic violator and also makes a left turn into several different parking lots a moving violation?
To quote from an old TV show I just saw… “it’s kinda’ complicated”…
Citizen interest groups ‘have a vision’/”have a problem”… certain ‘commission members’ have agendas (not the ones published for public view)… those forces come up with their visions, their ‘demands’… they convince their commissions/electeds that to stop their incessant complaints, ‘something needs to be done’, on their “terms”… the electeds direct the CM… who then directs the engineers, who are told to ‘pacify’ the demands… engineers advise ‘that isn’t the right answer to the problem’… the advice is rejected, and they are told to “do it anyway”… the highest up engineers are “at-will employees”… or consultants…
It’s complicated… particularly with the diversity of various interest groups/individuals, and their disparate “visions”…
Best analogy is along the lines of a camel (or, giraffe) being the result of a design of a horse by a committee…
It’s called ‘reality’… have lived it…
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I got caught in a “nearly to Harper Junior High” backup on Mace last week and I timed how long it took me to get to the Mace-Chiles intersection. It took 25 minutes. If I had been getting on the eastbound I-80 on-ramp it would have taken me at least 35-40 minutes if I had stayed in the right lane queue for the on-ramp. However, if I was rude, like so many drivers are, and jumped the queue by staying in the left lane until at the very last moment forcing my way back into the right lane, it probably would have only taken me 30 minutes to get on I-80.
David’s statement above is 100% wrong. The Mace overpass was not, and is not currently, “not meant to handle the volume of traffic.” The current six-lane width of the overpass is more than sufficient to handle the traffic volume. Widening it would not address the root cause of the traffic backup, which is the I-80 on-ramp meter light, which CalTrans has set at an interval it desires to constrain the number of vehicles getting onto I-80 eastbound. CalTrans believes that to great a flow of on-ramp vehicles merging into the through traffic in the three I-80 through lanes will/does reduce the through volume (and through speed) of I-80’s capacity.
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In his statement above David is only half right. Cutting the project in half does indeed reduce the amount of immediately available private money that can go into infrastructure upgrades. However, that is only a cash flow issue, not a revenues issue.
There will be lots and lots of private money that can go into infrastructure upgrades when the northern 100 acres of the DiSC property are developed, and
There will be lots and lots of private money that can go into infrastructure upgrades when the Shriners property is developed, and
There will be lots and lots of private money that can go into infrastructure upgrades when the Wildhorse Ranch property is developed.
To deal with that short term cash flow issue the City has the option of lending itself some of the cash from its current Impact Fees fund balances, and then pay that internal loan back when future Impact Fees dollars flow into the fund balance.
As Donovan Leitch once sang, “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.”
Matt,
I am certainly not as well versed as you in understanding the City’s finance and budget rules, so I would appreciate understanding your suggestion here that the City lend itself cash from the current Impact Fees fund balances. Seems interesting, but I want to lay out my confusion here in the hope that you can edify me.
The City currently has an Impact Fees fund that has come from past/recent developments which paid these impact fees as part of pulling their building permits as well as ongoing fees. This fund is of size X, for simplicity’s sake, let’s say $1 million. Presumably the reason why this fund would be available for current consumption is because the City has allowed Impact Fees to accumulate in order to use these funds for bigger ticket items (not a good idea to construct one third of a bridge and then stop).
I hope my understanding so far is correct. Here is my confusion. Is your suggestion here that the City somehow lever these funds to take out debt to fund immediate projects that would be paid back via future Impact Fees and revenues from future developments? For example, the City uses the current $1 million (X) in the current account to take out a loan for $3 million (3:1 leverage) in order to have a total of $4 million to spend today? If so, where does this loan come from? You mentioned it would be internal, but where would the $3 million come from on the City’s end? Would this be essentially a bond or other external debt instrument?
Shifting future revenues to the present via financing seems to make a lot of sense here, but I am a bit unclear as to what you are proposing precisely. Would appreciate any clarification.
Wesley, I’m far enough removed from the specifics of the City’s current financial situation that I’m going to channel a comment David Greenwald made in today’s article, there is a reason why you financial managers to keep track of this stuff (fund balances), no sense in trying to do an amateur job.
With that said, I pulled up the most recent City Budget, and asking about the balance in Fund 485 may be a good place to start.
Regarding the financing and leverage part of your comment above, you need to keep in mind that the City currently has annual General Fund revenues each and every year for the next 20 years that are between $8 million ans $14 million less than needed annual General Fund expenses. In the words of then-mayor Robb Davis in his January 3, 2017 State of the City address to the Chamber of Commerce,
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And since 2017 the situation has gotten progressively worse. What that means is that there isn’t any existing revenue stream that can pay the annual debt service that would be incurred by any borrowing like the one you talked about.
NOTE: This is my fifth comment today. I will restrict myself to making no more comments in this thread today.
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There is a simple solution to the problem David describes … get appropriate traffic engineers cracking on coming up with a plan and design that will address the problem. Once that plan is available for review, then “people” can make an informed judgement about the proposed plan/design.
Oh wait!!! CalTrans is already in the process of doing that for the root cause of close to 100% of the current problems on Mace. That root cause is I-80 … its current carrying capacity and the current CalTrans restricted volumes of Mace Blvd vehicles that are subject to the restrictive flows by the meter lights on the I-80 eastbound on-ramps.
Perhaps we should wait for CalTrans to share its plan/design when it is ready for prime time.
NOTE: This is my fourth comment today. I will restrict myself to only one more comment in this thread today.
The City should fix Mace before all these projects go to the voters. Otherwise I don’t see how anybody who lives over there is going to vote for all these projects.
Of course many of the people who live South of 80 don’t get to vote for annexation so maybe they don’t matter to our elected officials.