The Davis Citizens planning group would like to present our vision for a pragmatic, realistic, and sustainable way to develop our city going forward. This vision represents several months of work and builds upon a series of articles we have published over the past two years on the topics of how we might plan our city to have housing that is more affordable, sustainable, and a city that is more liveable and economically viable.
In the past we have framed our commentary in a reactive way with respect to the developments in the housing proposals being considered. Going forward, we have decided to be more proactive, starting with best practices, and advocating for a top-down city-wide vision for how we develop our city not just for the upcoming 25-year general plan cycle, but looking towards the end of the century.
Best Practices in Planning
Over the past few decades, more and more thinkers in the field of urban planning have come around to endorsing what is essentially the same set of strategies for urban planning:
- Start with transit, connecting:
- Centers of Employment
- Commercial districts for shopping
- Corridors of housing that are either already dense, or can be densified
- Intentionally create mixed-use walkable public spaces (that aren’t dominated by cars)
Note that you can’t have #2 without #1.
So many urban planners agree on this general framework that it has come to be called by a variety of different names: “15 Minute cities” / “Strong Towns” / “Walkable Cities” Even the LEED-ND “Rubric” that the council put forth a couple of years ago for analysis purposes is based on these same common principles, and they all implicitly arrive at one conclusion: Building our cities on the assumption that ‘everyone will drive a car everywhere’ was a HUGE mistake.
Today we are unveiling a model of what it might look like for Davis if we intentionally followed these principles and applied them to our town.
Planning Starts with Transit
Good cities are not planned parcel by parcel. They are designed as systems, and the most critical system in a city is its “circulation”: How people navigate between jobs, shopping and their homes.
The most important of these is the relationship between transit and land use:
- Density without transit increases congestion and reduces livability
- Transit without density lacks the ridership to be viable
Planned correctly, these two elements reinforce each other. Planned separately, they fail. So Density and transit MUST be planned together.
And just as important: that density should be focused within a short walking distance—roughly a quarter mile—of those transit lines.
There are many success stories of formerly auto-centric cities embracing transit as a alternative to building their cities around cars, and the results are clear: if you build “good” transit, people will take transit.
A “good” transit system is characterized by a few traits:
- Frequent: It runs frequently at least every 15 minutes.
- Convenient: It takes people close to where they want to go
- Connected: When transfers are needed, they are brief and convenient
Nobody makes a good transit system by running a bus through low density sprawl once an hour.
Unfortunately this is why very few Davisites make use of our existing transit. Unitrans takes people TO campus and stops there, And yolobus connects cities in a general / regional way, running only every half hour to 45 minutes. Neither of these services are designed to serve everyday intra-city uses for working Davisities. We are already talking about a very different kind of service than we currently see from either YoloBus or Unitrans.
Regarding “Density”
To be clear, when we say “density” we only mean “more than 15 housing units per acre” which is the lower threshold at which high frequency transit service becomes sustainable. We are NOT talking about high density housing anywhere in this proposal.
For context:
- townhomes tend to be ~17 units per acre,
- 4-plexes closer to 22.
- Small apartment buildings are 25-35 units per acre.
- We already have student housing along russell boulevard that is at 80
- Several of the downtown proposals are above 80.
As you will see in our projections below, our default assumptions we use never go beyond calling for more than 30 units per acre. The equivalent of 2-3 story apartments in our densest neighborhood hubs.
So when we say “densify” we are only talking about creating moderate density housing in an intentional way and in the areas where it can be served by transit: which is only ¼ Mile around the transit station. They key is to do it deliberately and thoughtfully.
The Layout.
Our proposal establishes 3 transit lines designed for high-frequency service:
- The Blue Line traverses campus, goes through downtown, touches the Amtrak station, continues up F street and all the way around the mace curve
- The Gold Line starts at Amtrak downtown, goes across campus then up Anderson boulevard before heading west to the Davis marketplace. The gold line we propose thinking about in two phases, with the second phase later extending further past the marketplace out to lake boulevard.
- The Green Line connects the Blue and the Gold via the high school for residents to want to get across town and don’t need to detour downtown or to campus.
These alignments connect the places where people work ( campus and downtown) to major shopping centers and to areas where there is either already denser housing, or where denser housing can reasonably be constructed.
The Densification Strategies
Along these lines we have several opportunities for establishing more housing
Densification of existing arterial neighborhoods. When existing neighborhoods turn 80 years old, structures start getting replaced by their owners. At that age, we can re-zone to allow property owners to replace single family homes with multifamily if they choose.
This image shows the corridor properties in brown along with the decade in which those neighborhoods turn 80 years old.
Re-Zoning urban strip malls to mixed use. This is what many people were calling for at the university mall site – a conversion of an auto-centric strip mall into a mixed use site with residential over commercial, like we already see downtown.
This rebirth of auto-centric strip malls into pedestrian friendly “neighborhood centers” is the specialty of the neourbanist movement, and there are hundreds of examples where lovely public spaces have been constructed in places which previously were dominated by parking lots.
We see this eventually happening at all of the major shopping centers around town along these lines including Oak Tree Plaza, and perhaps at the entire strip of Covell From Anderson Plaza to the Davis Marketplace.
Development of NEW medium density housing and urban centers. For properties along the lines that are not yet developed, we have an opportunity to do some intentional place-making: Create walkable neighborhood centers described above, dotted around the city serving their local residents. The largest opportunity to do this is on the blue line around the mace curve and indeed, the mace curve is at risk of being a “food desert” if we do NOT specify that there be a neighborhood center there.
Development of more single-family homes on greenfield sites outside the range of the transit lines.
(Note that we are including this last strategy for fair comparison purposes only. We do not generally support the creation of single family housing unless it is for use as a lever to compel developers to build out means-tested affordable housing. For an explanation why, look up “strong towns” or watch this playlist– it’s very much worth your time.)
Development over time
Having laid out these transit lines and identified the properties that could be up-zoned or developed along their service routes, we created a spreadsheet that allows us to see just what the impact on our city might be if we embraced these options, and critically, how our city might change over the course of time.
This allows us to see how much population we are adding to our city over the coming decades.
Here is an example output of this model assuming that we are trying to hit a 1% growth target and we apply our densification + transit oriented strategies only… and only moderate density assumptions. As you can see, this is enough housing to last us to 2070 under these assumptions.
Some details about the model
For our our arterial neighborhoods such as Anderson, we only expect that densification will start when the neighborhoods hit 80 years old, and even then, maybe only half of the properties will densify, and the conversion will likely take 20 years. So we would not suggest a scenario that calls for bulldozing those areas and forcing a conversion artificially.
Similarly, we are not going to redevelop every shopping center and every property around the mace curve at once.
We are looking for a long-term supply of housing, and one of the principal aims of this analysis is to investigate just how much of a housing supply we might produce via these strategies.
To that extent, the final part of our model is a city growth target, which can be set at the rate you desire, along with an amount of short-term growth to help our schools and working class… and then you can see just how much time we buy, how much growth can be accomplished through these strategies along these lines.
Our spreadsheet can be found HERE, and we encourage readers to play with it. Simply save your own copy of it, and feel free to edit.
There are check-boxes that allow you to turn on and off the individual transit lines ( and the properties along them) and to turn on and off different development strategies. You will see that we have recorded the acreages of the parcels along these routes and estimated the existing densities we find there. If you want to go deeper, you can play with the densification specification and the build-out date for any of the properties to see how much housing we can produce and WHEN, and then compare that to the growth rate for the city that you think is appropriate.
Analysis of our options.
Of course, we hope you will play with the spreadsheet and come to your own conclusions, but we have spent a few weeks with this model, have tested a variety of assumptions and have some high-level observations we think are generally fair:
- Densification of existing neighborhoods alone doesn’t move the needle. For years, opponents of development proposals have suggested that we should “densify instead” of building anything new – but this analysis shows that if you include both of the densification strategies and compare them to a modest 1% annual growth rate, they don’t get us where we need to be..
Yes, we technically could densify other parts of our city not considered here, but density and transit need to go together. Density without transit means a lot more cars. So for the purpose of sticking to best practices and aspiring to be a sustainable city, strategies 1&2 simply aren’t enough. - Embracing “Transit Oriented Development” gets us enough housing through to 2070. That not just through the end of the upcoming general plan, but the one AFTER that as well.
Again this is assuming a 1% growth rate, and the eventual development of the multifamily properties + new neighborhood centers around the mace curve and out towards Lake boulevard… But that gets us all of the housing we need until 2075. Most people reading these words today will no longer be alive then. - “Sprawl” is entirely optional! With a focus on two transit corridors and simply building moderate density housing along them, we can provide affordable, energy efficient housing that doesn’t snarl our city with automotive traffic, consumes the minimum amount of farmland AND supports our local economy.
Lots of Davis residents we have talked to say that they are not against “growth”, they are against uncontrolled “sprawl”. For the first time, we now have an option on the table that gets us a lifetime worth of growth – and without the sprawl. It is our hope that this concept laid out with this much specific detail will get people thinking about growth differently and provide us an option for growth that is more generally acceptable to all.
Whats’ next?
We want to hear from you. Do you like this vision? What concerns you?
We think that a lot of the housing debate in our city is driven by fear of the unknown. Measure J gives us a veto against bad projects, and we like being able to have that control, but Measure J/R/D does not give us a pathway to assert OUR will as to what we want our city to look like.
We can defeat this fear of the unknown through PLANNING, by declaring positively what we want to see.
If we as a community can move away from simply debating the most recent developer proposal, and instead have a detailed proactive discussion about what kind of growth WE want, and what WE might be willing to accept, that common ground might be found.
Yes, there are those who will not accept growth under any circumstance, but most Davisites are united by a desire to have a nice, liveable, environmentally sustainable, low-traffic city that is financially healthy. If THAT is what we want, then there is really only one way to get it. That might be something we find we can agree on.
The Davis Citizens Planning Group
- Alex Achimore – Architect & Urban Planner
- David Thompson – Affordable Housing Developer & Urban Planner
- Anthony Palmere – Transit Planner, Former head of Unitrans
- Richard McCann –Environmental Policy Consultant
- Tim Keller – Economic Development
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“Here is an example output of this model assuming that we are trying to hit a 1% growth target and we apply our densification + transit oriented strategies only… and only moderate density assumptions. As you can see, this is enough housing to last us to 2070 under these assumptions.”
Why do you have a “growth target” when California itself is not growing? Why do you want to encourage people to move TO the area, FROM areas that are already dense (e.g., the Bay Area)?
1.6 kids NATIONWIDE.
Though I do like the focus on infill/density, and you’re right – a lot of buildings can be remodeled or replaced over time.
I watched a small single family house on K Street receive a major remodel, recently (with a garage that had already been turned into an ADU). Beautiful result, and one that wouldn’t happen without a certain amount of “value” already there BECAUSE it’s in Davis, and BECAUSE it’s close to downtown (and UCD).
Of course, they didn’t actually expand the living space, but again – it already had a garage converted into an ADU. And the building matches all of the other buildings on that street – most of which were built around the same time.
Put that same house in the older part of Woodland, and it might STILL be a wreck. Woodland, West Sacramento, etc., generally aren’t valuable enough yet to justify that type of investment.
But it actually seems like Davis STILL isn’t valuable enough to justify that kind of investment in areas further from downtown (yet). In neighborhoods such as the one between Pole Line and Mace Ranch (Stanley Davis houses). (Most of them could use some significant updating – and possibly ADUs if the owners are so inclined.)
Truth be told, if you really want to make Davis “better” (not necessarily “bigger”), it has to be more valuable than it is.
I’m also not sure why the argument in Davis is that it should take steps to house more “poor” people. Seems to me that communities become better when they take steps to ensure investment from “rich” people. I have yet to see ANY wealthy community actually suffer because they’re wealthy. (And Davis is FAR from being wealthy in the first place.)
Davis (also) already has a significant amount of Affordable (subsidized) housing.
It is interesting that (despite the major battle regarding Trackside), it’s apparently still not penciling out so far. Again, maybe not “valuable enough” yet (not enough demand at the price that would be needed to make it pencil out).
Put that same (approved) Trackside proposal in San Francisco, and it would have been built years ago. (Of course, these days – they wouldn’t be satisfied with that relatively small building – and would seek out another 20 floors on top of it).
In other words, if you want density and rehabilitation of buildings – “Make Davis Valuable Again”. (Or more accurately, make it valuable for the FIRST time in its history.)
I know you dont share this opinion Ron, but growth is Good. At least, if its the right growth.
population growth because we built a lot of money-losing single family housing for people who dont work here… that is bad growth, we have no interest in that kind of growth.
but multi-family housing is a net revenue producer and housing our workforce instead of having them drive in will make our city better. That is good growth. Hell, even growing our workforce creating new jobs and housing THOSE people in new multifamily neighborhoods… those are good kinds of growth, the kind of growth that pays for fixing our streets.
Relying on a never-ending supply of “new” people to pay the bills is a textbook example of a Ponzi scheme (and also doesn’t seem particularly “fair”).
Part of the problem in Davis is that there’s too many property owners who are exempt (one way or another) from DJUSD parcel taxes. And then there’s some neighborhoods that have significant Mello Roos.
As a result of Proposition 13 (and senior exemption from DJUSD parcel taxes), there are probably quite a few homeowners with very low property taxes, little or no Mello Roos, etc. However, this will change as they die off, partly as a result of Proposition 19.
A single-family property owner does have to live in the home in order to be exempt from DJUSD parcel taxes. In other words, the more single-family rentals there are – the better for the school district at least. Unfortunately, this does not apply for apartment complexes in the same way – they’re only subject to one parcel tax regardless of how many units (which I believe is the same amount as a single-family dwelling).
Apartment complexes are not good for the city or school district, and neither are Affordable housing complexes for much the same reason.
https://www.djusd.net/departments/business_services/tax_exemptions
Ron, the ponzi scheme metpahor is quite apt. Its exactly the phrasing that Strong Towns uses to describe the pattern of low-density single family development: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-8-28-the-growth-ponzi-scheme-a-crash-course
That is what I mean by “bad development”
We should feel no need to pursue growht that will hurt us in the long-term.
We need growth that helps us over the entire lifecycle of our city. That means economic growth and multifamily, mixed use residential growth. and industrial growth.
Interestingly-enough, I’ve found that the parcel tax exemptions also apply to those living in Affordable housing. (And of course, school district employees, as well.)
That doesn’t sound like something that supports the “lifecycle” of the school district.
The entire structure of this exemption (including that for seniors – regardless of income) sounds more like disingenuousness, since it “sticks” a relatively small population with the entire bill.
https://www.djusd.net/departments/business_services/parcel_tax_history
Ron O
Again, you miss the point that growth is not evenly distributed and Davis exhibits the attributes of a community that has unmet growth demand–house price premiums and substantial interdistrict transfers. In addition the people per housing unit in California grew 10% from 2010 to 2020 revealing a housing shortage.
And then you exhibit your bigotry by arguing that Davis should intentionally shut out those not wealthy enough to buy a house here. Why anyone bothers to listen to you.
The only mention of regional or intercity rail here is the Amtrak station connectivity. Is it simply an unspoken complement that the inter-city and regional rail plan will be funded and implemented before our children who stay local… die?
And that’s just the east west corridor: the trip between Davis Downtown and Woodland Main Street takes well over an hour by bus. There are train stations at both ends. It’s 20 minutes by car.
How can Davis get really good when planning in Woodland continues to be really poor?
Bicycles? Is it implicit that there will be bicycle arterials with optimize the capabilities of E bikes? In cities in the Netherlands, half of people arrive at train station by bicycle… but if there’s no train…
This concept is a good one, but I fear that it’s not comprehensive in relation to the things I mentioned, and if it’s story doesn’t change, it starts to border on dishonesty – to be clear, however, that’s a tiny fraction of the dishonesty perpetuated by the actors and participants in the current extremely flawed system!
Todd, Yes, bikes as a modal share deserve their own article.
Thats a bigger subject however because there is no reason why we cant do a better job of protecting bike corridors outside of these transit lines we call for here… its a city-wide issue, and more to the point, I dont see us pushing housing densification as a policy based on providing bike infrastructure.. would you?
There’s only so much space in a future climate-friendly ROW – one where our grandchildren can experience a complete tree canopy over a street: high-quality cycling infrastructure which optimizes E bikes but also keeps everyone safe takes at least 30 ft of that arterial ROW.
But also to come back to at least one point of the “most people will not drive” thing. Cycling modal share, for example, shows different results based on distance in the Campus Travel Survey. 15 min by bike to Downtown is one thing but people live who live near the east end of Cowell have friends who live past Lake: This is a 30 min ride working hard on a higher speed e-bike. The east west public transit corridor in your concept is great with the expected signal preemption, and so on, but that cycling corridor needs roundabouts or a yield priority the whole way to be truly attractive if there’s free parking on both ends for people who own cars: Yes, the transit systems don’t work very well for people who don’t have campus or Downtown destinations, but neither does the cycling network. Evidence of this is the very obvious single digit cycling model share amongst adults not going to campus for work or also to a considerable extent, to the store. That no one admits this is a kind of cancer of denial.
Finally: parking maximums?
I love the idea of parking maximums, and some of our original writings on these topics mention them. But I think that they will be most effective when the car alternatives are fully mature. That might take some time.
According to the survey data shown in General Plan workshops, 50% of those who work in Davis–anywhere in Davis–do NOT use a car to get to work. That’s consistent with the UCD ITS survey that puts 70% of its workforce in that category.
You’re nitpicking at this plan, asking for details that need more resolution. Nothing that you’re suggesting conflicts with what we are proposing. (However, a rail line to Woodland is unlikely unless the County is willing to condemn the existing rail line–a legally difficult task. We need to consider a different transit option.)
“…. if you build “good” transit, people will take transit.
Unfortunately this is why very few Davisites make use of our existing transit.
Our proposal establishes 3 transit lines designed for high-frequency service:
These alignments connect the places where people work ( campus and downtown)
Re-Zoning urban strip malls to mixed use. This is what many people were calling for at the university mall site – a conversion of an auto-centric strip mall into a mixed use site with residential over commercial, like we already see downtown.
We see this eventually happening at all of the major shopping centers around town
Here is an example output of this model assuming that we are trying to hit a 1% growth target
We want to hear from you. Do you like this vision? What concerns you?”
What concerns me is that your assumptions are not evidence based with respect to this particular site or housing market.
No, people who drive cars will not take transit in general.
Very few Davisites make use of our existing transit because automobiles are far more convenient in every respect.
Nobody will pay for your transit proposals. If transit demand is there, Unitrans will meet it. Other than that, you have no funding and no agency that will meet your proposals.
You don’t have property owners on board for converting urban strip malls to mixed use.
The University Mall site was never, ever going to have housing. That whole proposal was a waste of time and resources.
I don’t think even most Davisites support “a 1% growth target.” That was a ceiling, not a goal.
You don’t know who is going to buy or rent these houses. Whether most will work on campus is a question. Most will certainly not be working downtown. Most won’t even be going there to shop, and with student-focused eateries most will not be going there to dine. Transit to convey residents from Covell to downtown would almost certainly fail for lack of ridership.
New Urbanist enclaves are fine. They meet a particular niche market and would be a fine addition, along with housing co-ops and mobile home parks and other lower-cost housing options, as part of the gradual development of housing along Covell over the next few decades. But since your team doesn’t seem to have a single landowner or development team interested in your proposals, they have simply become another tool for blocking housing development.
Don, I understand your skepticism, because there is no way to snap ones fingers and make this vision appear overnight, and doing something like this means aligning a number of stakeholders as you describe. It will take effort, and negotiation, and time. That is all true.
But let me put the question to you like this: Would you discourage anyone from planting a tree just because it might take a couple of decades before it provides appreciable amount of shade?
We have been building our city around the car for two generations, something we know now to be a mistake. The right time to get on a better trajectory is now. We built a car-centric Davis over two generations, and it probably take three generations to completely fix it, but creating that vision, creating the partnerships, and laying out the plans is a long process that has to start somewhere.
All development we do needs to be part of a well-coordinated, well planned, long-term vision. And the problem we have is that everything coming form General Plan consultants is still entirely car-centric. A huge mistake. If we are going to have a more sustainable, more bikeable, more equitable and affordable, and economically viable city going forward, we need to get on the right path right now. Even if it you and I will never fully sit under the shade that this tree will provide.
The thing is, this kind of project usually requires a redevelopment agency, significant federal funding, and a project developer who works at a very large scale and who usually has some kind of special (read: backroom) deal with the city.
When I took courses in urban planning, the case studies for new urbanism were mostly blighted downtown core areas. Places where eminent domain might be used to deal with recalcitrant mall owners, where homes were routinely bulldozed and gentrification followed, all to the purported betterment of the city and its residents.
While I have little doubt that a small community of high-density, inward-facing homes with spots left for hypothetical retailers, skinny streets, transit hubs, and lovely parks and greenbelts would meet some market demand, I don’t think it should be mandated.
Make the larger streets wide enough to accommodate future transit, whatever that may entail (we really have no idea what transportation is going to look like 30 years from now). Mandate the percentage of pavement shading by trees, have lots of parks and landscaped areas, bargain for as much high-density housing as the site and the industry’s ROI will allow.
But so long as the funding for these developments is coming from private sources, those with the land and dollars will call the shots and that will largely be dictated by the lenders. The major things that you want would largely have to be funded with public dollars. We don’t have the tax base to pay for that. I don’t see money forthcoming from the state or the federal government. Mandating them without revenues simply becomes another obstacle to new housing, and I’d expect the state to see it that way.
Don,
I agree, but lets keep in mind that our article describes 4 types of develppment each of which has different (and important) dynamics
Yes the downtown revivals in other cities that have abandoned their downtowns have required redevelopment funding in the past,, but if there IS one thing that our city has done right over the past 30 years, it was to jealously guard and protect our downtown. As a result, nothing in this plan here requires much of a heavy lift in our core. We only are asking that unitrans go through downtown and touch amtrak on its way across campus. A small, but significatn change to Unitrans service that makes it much more useful to non-student passengers.
The densification of our existing corridors is merely a proactive zoning change. There is no need for us to force the conversion of those properties, and the zoning change will increase the value of the affected lots. What is needed is TIME and confidence / predictability on behalf of the property owners that they know what the city is willing to support, and give them a pathway to get there.
As for greenfield developments around the curve, that is simply transit-oriented development, its a zoning exercise, establishing right of ways, planning for the future etc. and there are lots of examples of people creating those kinds of walkable neighborhoods from scratch. Its very doable.
The success of these types of projects elsewhere, even in neighboring cities such as West Sac, shows that when a community asks more of developers they will deliver. This is particularly true in Davis where many landowners have held their properties for decades so there’s no real land costs–only the opportunity cost of what they may be able to sell it for. They will eventually develop the land–they can’t hold their breath that long. We should stop kowtowing to developers as though they run the community.
Don
According to the ACS data presented in the General Plan workshops, 50% of Davis workers who live in town and commute do so without a car, using bikes, buses and walking instead. The issue isn’t getting people out of their cars; its getting them into houses in Davis. It won’t matter if they work on campus or not.
Developers in other cities are building these types of projects and must be making enough profits to do so. Our problem is that we have relied on a small number of local developers who have been at this since the 1980s or earlier. They are stuck in their old ways. There are younger ones, maybe even the next generation of those families, who will be willing to develop the projects we’re describing. Younger families are now buying houses that would have been considered non traditional a couple decades ago. The market is evolving.
Our problem isn’t that we don’t have a developer yet buying into these plans–our problem is that the community hasn’t asked developers to submit proposals that meet a set of requirements. We’ve just let the developers come in with whatever they wish. We’re not going to get what we want if we continue down that road. The General Plan needs to spell what we want, rather than guessing at what developers might be willing to build.
I applaud the group for their hard work. I am generally supportive of increased effective transit, growth, and densification. However, I’d opine with different options. If you look at Unitrans ridership numbers, they show each line’s (except the P/Q circumferential lines) ridership to count both “inbound” and “outbound” traffic. The P and Q are circumferential lines and thus someone taking this line likely rides the P/Q toward a destination and the opposite line “back” to their origin. Thus the impact of this route is hidden by splitting up these rides between the P and Q by not listing their ridership together. If you look at it combined, the circumferential line is by far the biggest ride demand except for the Express V from west village. This means there is already huge demand to “get around” Davis. As such, I would suggest improvements in three phases
1) Increasing the P/Q line frequency as it already covers a large part of this catchment area.
2) Implementing a “downtown to UC Davis” circulator. This could be a smaller bus (or even Zoox style autonomous carriage), to take riders from the UC Davis Silo hub, past the Memorial Union Hub, down third street to the train station, then back along 1st street back again to the Silo hub.
3) Implementing a loop from UC Davis, up Anderson, across 14th, and back down F St. through downtown.
Steven,
Yes, we are aware that there isnt much difference between our green line and the P/Q. Whether it makes sense to increase the frequency of the entire loop that P/Q does versus establish a single high frequency green line is an interesting question.
All of these we do intend will be services that evolve over time and for sure we can debate exactly how / where and when we build, but lets keep our eyes on the current reality: The transportation commission wasn’t even included in the city’s series of workshops on possibly ammending measure J… and when the council asked a consultant (for 40k+!) to study the potential for “transit” in the NE corner of the city, they came back with a ridiculous sprawling land use map and then complained that the density (they way THEY designed it!) was too low for transit! Then spend the rest of the report designing how wide the streets needed to be…
Job one here is getting people to see development and transit as the same lens. Its the only way we can have development that is sustainable, and both culturally and physically we are at the moment entirely car-centric, which is really sad given that we pretend to be a “bike” town.
But that is why I think that if this is possible ANYWHERE it is possible here. There are so many good examples of cities embracing transit-oriented development, I have to think that if davis citizens are exposed to these ideas, they will respond.
Hi Tim,
I really appreciate your response and I’m sure we are not only aligned with our desired end goal but likely not far off in methodology. I would request your group take a look at ridership numbers using the P/Q combination just so you can view the true magnitude of this already existing demand. I think it greatly bolsters my suggestion for increasing P/Q frequency. As a general statement, the underlying philosophy would be to collaborate and leverage partnership with Unitrans. At the margin, they can provide these routes much more easily than an alternative. They already provide a bus to get students to the Davis High School and the Junior high and both see very high usage. In my view the P/Q lines are the only ones that every resident is bound to have access to and thus can politically get on board with. Doubling its frequency would begin to bring it into realm of usability for many citizens.
The downtown circulator has the benefit of picking up at Silo and Memorial Union which are already collection points from all over the city, then passing directly through the high demand/pedestrian downtown, to Amtrak to provide ingress/egress from the city. It also effectively only requires making right turns and would likely not be subject to quite so many delays. The city itself is particularly concerned about the 18,000 people (not trips) who have to commute both in and then back out each day to their place of employment. Also, this would provide the way for students to more easily get to major job centers for internships or follow on work to bolster their educational work. They already spend a lot of money on the causeway connector. I think this would be far more utilized. This one option could allow people coming in from outside of Davis to reach anywhere else in Davis with at most one transfer.
Third, I think the central portion of your service area would be a good area in which to focus. Much of the service area is along covell which is the only true Stroad of our town and, in my view, the least likely to take to transit given how prioritized the car is in the northern area of our town. i would gladly support road diets and similar but we already get a ton of pushback from citizens in this area opposing densification because they don’t want to share their roads with more car drivers.
Finally, I’d suggest partnering with the micro mobility Spin partnership the town already has. We have a brief opening where the town is obliged to cut parking spaces for the daylighting law. If we could blanket every single one of those spots with both personal and shared bikes/mobility devices we have a chance of making that option far more visible to the plurality of our neighbors.
Steven
One of our coauthors Anthony Palmere worked at Unitrans and is well acquainted with ridership the different routes. We used his expertise in developing this design.
Your suggestions are good additions for implementing this plan. We recognize the importance of opposition which is why we proposed staged rezoning by vintage so that residents will be able to anticipate changes in the future.
I don’t know why anyone thinks there isn’t good commuter bus service.
There is – it’s the 43 Express to/from Sacramento. Standing-room only on many of the days that I took it.
LOL! The it caters entirely to state employee work hours and has little and slow service outside of the very few buses that run. I was often in late afternoon meetings when a state worker would get up midway and say they had to head for their bus well before 5 pm.
Our plan is consistent with this report by the UCD Institute of Transportation Studies laying out what’s needed to achieve the emission reductions that blunt climate change.
The Compact City Scenario – Electrified
https://itdp.org/publication/the-compact-city-scenario-electrified/