On Friday, I was a little bit ahead of schedule and so I figured I would head to Montgomery and wait there for my daughter to get out just after 11:40 in the morning. Instead, I got a call that I could pick up a donation check back downtown. So I drove down Richards, hitting every red light on the way until I got to the top of the overpass and stopped.
It would take me another ten minutes to get from the Richards overpass through several cycles of lights to the downtown. The westbound I-80 offramp was backed up and jammed back to the freeway. Traffic would slowly merge one by one as it approached the Olive Drive intersection.
Midday on a Friday and Richards Boulevard is a veritable mess. A glorified parking lot.
Now some of you reading this are saying, and we want to bring more traffic to this congested corridor. We want to add housing and jobs, forcing more people into this area.
This is the point raised in a KCRA story: “Critics of Measure A said the development will add more traffic to the already congested area. Residents said as they make their way off the freeway and onto Richards Boulevard, they hit quite a backup while heading towards downtown.”
They quote Michael Harrington: “It would create traffic, unaffordable housing, gridlock at Richards and Olive Drive.”
He later said, “Four to five years of construction at a main entrance of the city? Why are we doing that? For what, 640 units?”
But there is another argument here. Michael Harrington on the Vanguard has stated that the only reason we need to do the Richards Corridor change is to accommodate the new traffic for the hotel conference center as well Nishi. The reality is that is not true – we have needed to change Richards Blvd. for a long time. What we lack is the money.
As Councilmember Rochelle Swanson put it this week, “If you drive around all of our roads, not just Richards, there has always been a will to improve things, there just hasn’t been money.”
The reality is that Richards needs to be fixed, with or without Nishi, however, with Nishi, we have a funding source we did not have without it.
The city of Davis has released plans to CalTrans for the Richards Corridor – something that must be completed prior to the construction of the Nishi Gateway project.
With the combination of the undercrossing at UC Davis from Old Davis Road, it is expected to be $23 million. That leaves another $10 million for the improvements, which is expected to come from state and federal funding.
It is safe to say that, without Nishi, the Richards Corridor plan is going to have a tough time getting financed. Thirty-three million dollars is more than 60 percent of our general plan. It is also right around the expected yearly unmet needs allotment the city is going to need going forward.
The Vanguard has chronicled a series of problems along Richard Blvd. These problems are are exacerbated by the illogical series of freeway off ramps that funnel traffic without lights or control directly onto Richards, with the most precarious being a forced merge for westbound I-80 traffic onto northbound Richards Blvd. This creates a back up, both on Richards and the off ramp, and puts motor vehicles, buses, bikes and pedestrians into a single-merge condition.
This is what I encountered midday at Richards and Olive. But the same conditions exist in the morning with the in-commute to downtown and the university. The same conditions exist in the opposite direction in the evening with traffic backing up along 1st Street and onto B Street.
Developers hope that the corridor plan will alleviate at least some of these problems.
First, it will widen the westbound off ramp to three lanes, which will “prevent cars from dangerously stacking up on I-80. This will provide a smoother transition and added capacity for people traveling to downtown, campus and south Davis.”
Second, it will move the off ramp closer to the bridge, with a tight diamond to create more distance from the Olive Drive intersection. “This will eliminate the dangerous weave conditions from the existing cloverleaf reads that conflict with cyclists.”
The new formation, coupled with the building of Nishi, will also potentially alleviate stress on the tunnel and the downtown traffic.
The plan calls for an extra lane to “turn left onto West Olive Drive from Richards Boulevard, which allows people traveling to campus to bypass the Richards tunnel entirely.”
There is skepticism of course. There are those who believe that Old Davis Road on the UC Davis campus cannot accommodate the heightened traffic. They may be right. This might force UC Davis to have to make their own improvements to road ways. Or it might create a huge traffic mess on campus.
On the other hand, creating a more direct route to campus, bypassing the Richards underpass and city streets, might alleviate pressure along Richards.
There are also those who believe that you cannot fix the traffic situation by adding more housing and more business along a congested route.
This week, following the release of the plan, Vanguard readers varied in their assessment. As Alan Miller noted, for example, “having this through campus traffic go through Nishi has been the plan by the developers of Nishi all along. This will take much morning and evening traffic off of 1st street. Not ‘eliminate’ as this article says, but reduce.”
On the other hand, Michael Harrington is a skeptic. He wrote, “[A]ll this drama, all this huge expenditure of public money to totally re-do all public access roads all the way back to the freeway, to do what? Basically add 640 apts???”
He added, “The current Nishi project is total madness, and it will completely screw up the roads in that entire quadrant of the city for years to come.”
But critics like Mr. Harrington also seem to miss that the situation already is a total mess. Building Nishi would put $23 million of developer money and $10 million of public money – which the Mike Webb believes will be far more likely to flow to Davis with this new development – towards solving the problem.
Without Nishi, where will the money come from to fix Richards? UC Davis is going to continue to grow at the rate of 1000 students a year for the foreseeable future – that will eventually lead to the need for more faculty and staff to support them. That means that, with or without Nishi, pressure on Richards and other roads will continue grow.
Are there any certainties here? No. The critics could be exactly right, that the added vehicles will overwhelm an already congested system and that the bypass will do little to fix the problem.
What I would like see from those critics is the plan for how we fix Richards without the $33 million proposed by this plan. They will say that they don’t have to solve that puzzle, but to people like me who could go either way on this project – a valid alternative plan would go a long way towards resolving which way to go.
Richards Blvd. is a problem, either way we go. We are either going to gamble that the $33 million can fix it or gamble that we have another answer. The next month will determine which way the community wants to go.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
There has never been a focused community effort to “fix” the traffic issues. Public Works hadn’t even bothered to time the lights? So why not try before using a massive new intensive development to pay for a fix that is mostly needed because of Nishi itself ?
One of my pet peeves, the timing of Davis traffic lights. I sometimes think they were set to intentionally irritate drivers.
Agree there. In fact, I assumed that the bike activists controlled the programming for the light sequence so that drivers just give up.
I keep hearing that you ride a bike (though of course in no way are you one of those horrible “activists” who wish to reduce traffic congestion). If you do ride in town, you’d know that the traffic and the light sequencing is just as bad for the people who are reducing the traffic congestion by cycling as it is bad for those who are causing the congestion by driving.
Every bicycle advocate that I know supports all ways that increase transit convenience and safety in town. That you constantly denigrate this effort is frustrating.
You have got to be F-ing kidding Frank Lee. Have you ever rode a bike in Davis — I know you claim to. The lights in this town suck for bikes and are getting worse. You pull into a left turn lane — does it have a bike sensor, and if so, is it functional? It used to be there was a pretty good correlation between a painted bike location and a sensor, not no more! I routinely have to run red left turns because I’d never move from the lane if I didn’t. How does that fit in with you paranoid “the bicyclists are out to get us” theory?
Frankly likes to say obnoxious things in order to get a rise out of people. He reminds of Kindergartens I work with who make farting noises during circle time in order to get a reaction out of me or his classmates. They just want attention. I find it best to ignore them when they behave this way.
MM – Well aware. Using the opportunity to complain about the left turn lane sensors.
@Michelle –
Yeah, we all know. But… thanks for spelling it out in such a wonderfully accurate and compelling fashion. 🙂 As Alan mentioned, I use his comments as a springboard to flesh out some relevant issues.
The constant obfuscation is still frustrating and annoying.
And here I am, bringing more attention…. :sigh:
I am the maker of springboards. You are welcome!
Very talented for a Kindergartener.
Thank you all, you have inspired me to find a way to turn farting noises into a teachable moment.
They are supposedly re-sequencing the lights now. I don’t know exactly when that will happen.
They need to improve the flow on the main thoroughfares, like Richards, Covell, Cowell and others and give less attention to the side streets feeding into the main streets.
A previous article of David’s mentioned that the effort to sync lights was checked and the engineers found that the link between the lights on either side of the tunnel had failed years ago, if I remember correctly.. Most of town is probably substandard in this respect.
I have yet another perspective. The root problem is not the road configuration, nor the timing of the traffic lights. The root problem is too many, usually single passenger cars attempting to use too little space. Provide better, more efficiently placed housing and public transportation options will be the best way to deal with the base cause of the problem. Nishi will help to address this problem by locating both housing and R&D space closer to both the university and the downtown.
Agree here. However, I wish that you had not joined the Trackside opposition. That move really hurt your credibility on the points you are making.
Frankly
“I wish that you had not joined the Trackside opposition”
This may also be your perception because of your “you are either with us or against us” point of view. I did not join the “Trackside opposition”. I want a new development at the Trackside site. I just did not favor the project as initially presented. I do not want a six story block building at the Trackside site for a number of reasons which I have spelled out on multiple occasions.
I am very much in favor of a collaborative process to design a project for the Trackside site that will meet the needs of the developers, the investors, the eventual inhabitants, and the existing neighbors ( of which I am not actually one as you correctly stated). Unlike you, I do not see the entire world as being divided into winners and losers, proponents and opponents. Well, darn, I guess this is where my view that the world is composed of more than black and white comes in, dismiss it if you will, I still believe that most of us live in a world of complexity, one with pros and cons to every situation in which choice exists. I am very hopeful that the current process in which we have engaged will result in a mutually agreeable collaborative solution.
You have got to be F-ing kidding Frank Lee. All development is not good development, and all developers don’t approach the stakeholders in the same way. You are so singularly-focused that your brains have fallen out.
FYI — neither Tia nor I nor anyone I have met in the neighborhood is against redeveloping the Trackside location. The neighborhood worked hard on consensus for a plan for growth in the downtown and historical neighborhoods, including a specific plan for the Trackside block. This was done for WHEN growth came, not so that people could claim, “well, growth is here, so the plan for when growth comes is irrelevant” just because the developers speculatively bought a piece of property and hoped they could turn a council majority to allow the zoning and Design Guidelines to be overturned — pretty slimy. All this has done is make those of us in Old East Davis not trust any City process.
Both Tia and I, for some different reasons I’m sure, support Nishi. I also supported Covell Village and the direction the NW Business Park was going. I calls ’em as I sees ’em, and I like Nishi on it’s merits, not because it is development and damn the details. Instead of criticizing allies of the Nishi project for holding other views you disagree with, why don’t you go . . . [I deleted this so Don wouldn’t have to].
AM, you are not TW. TW has rigorously advocated for things in direct conflict with her opposition to Trackside. Based on those things her opposition to the project should be that it isn’t 10-stories or more.
If there is only one reason I spend time blogging here is to bring forward that type of hypocrisy.
The same city staff who fought Steve Tracy and a CC majority for well over ten years opposing the reasonable restriping of Fifth are the same ones who tell us to believe them that the Nishi project is needed to fix Richards ?
We filed the Embassy Suites and Nishi cases partially because the traffic data provided by city Public Works staff make no sense and seem to have been pulled out of someone’s …. Back pocket ?
We have asked them repeatedly for their field data and they refuse, meaning we think they don’t have it. In other words, the City lacks the supporting field data to support the studies that underpin the entire Nishi house of cards
Why do you think the CC approved on consent one hour before approving Nishi an emergency $250,000 allocation of public tax money to study (again) the traffic mess at Richards and Olive? In the legal field , the Courts call this a “party admission.”
Folks, this is all too strange to make up.
Vote NO on June 7
Perhaps I am not reading what you have written here correctly, but I find it really hard to believe that you are claiming that the Richards interchange does not need substantial improvements as it currently stands. On April 22, you wrote “The freeway interchange design changes are not needed, except for the traffic created by Nishi.” It seems clear to me (and I imagine clear to anyone who is driving anywhere near the Richards interchange at peak traffic hours) that Richards needs solutions. The current situation is untenable. Again, maybe I missed something, but your claim that Richards is fine as it is, to me, showcases the two mentalities and worldviews at work with respect to the No and Yes on A campaigns.
Ps. Jim Frame: if you would like I would be happy to show you the traffic reports and discuss.
Michael
“Ps. Jim Frame: if you would like I would be happy to show you the traffic reports and discuss.”
An alternative suggestion as I believe that there are many of us who would be interested. Please consider posting this information and your take on it here as an article.
Tia: good point. I’ll try to get to it, in between working in the precincts against this insane project. I could live with MRIC befire this Nishi madness at our city’s front door
There are many small minded Davis residents who continue to think a 5 pound sack of potatoes will still handle an extra 10 lbs of potatoes a day.
This is not a tourist town. It is not a resort town. Get over yourselves and move if you want to retire. The students in this town want to live, even Sacramento is too tame for them. A City that puts all of its commerce at one or two exits off a freeway is only looking for the freeway traffic, no matter what the Press Release says.
If the “smartest” people in the City can’t figure it out, putting a “convention center” AND and “innovation park” (described as Live/Work) right by the freeway, at the busiest “entry to the City”, then you went to the wrong school.
Otherwise, put “Davis City Limits and Museum” on the signs and let it go like it is. My opinion is not important, but you don’t need to change the under pass to a World Class traffic jam, the city needs more ingress and egress. Making a bad idea wider does not make it better. Find another “Entrance to the City”, or move the railroad. Otherwise you are Davisville forever.
I’d say both of those options are physically impossible, or at best very unrealistic.
Miwok, Nishi will create another access point to and from campus. Furthermore, it will contribute to improvements along Old Davis Road to encourage and facilitate greater use of this exit as well. That sounds like exactly what you are looking for.
DavisforNishiGateway:
Will this be before they break ground or after the buildings are done? They already will not”donate” to the Affordable Foundation until after the money starts flowing.
Old Davis Road? Under the Freeway? Through Solano? Where have they decided to finally place the “access to campus”?
Don Shor: They need to think like this, because you are talking about being Rancho Cordova. They are split by Rail for the whole length of their City. You will need walls like the Border Fence to keep people from crossing except where they are safe.
This will be before they break ground. It is written in the project baseline features. Well, the access to campus will connect Olive Drive through Nishi to Old Davis Road. The article today about UC Davis has a good illustration of their plans as to where it will hook in. There will be upgrades along Old Davis Road as well to handle the increased traffic flow.
Miwok, the graphic below, which came from UCD’s “Campus Tomorrow” website (see LINK) gives you a pretty good idea of how UCD sees the railroad underpass fitting into the south portion of the UCD campus.
There are many deficiencies in the Conference Center and Nishi traffic studies about which I have written extensively in the Vanguard (Serious Questions About Hotel Conference Center’s Impact on Traffic, Its Sustainability, and Transparency of the Process – https://davisvanguard.org/2015/08/serious-questions-about-hotel-conference-centers-impact-traffic-its-sustainability-and-transparency-of-the-process/).
As a result of these deficiencies, the Bicycle, Transportation, and Traffic-Safety Commission asked for a completely independent review of the traffic study used for Nishi before the project was approved. Amazingly, though, there was no independent traffic study review done by any outside firm or agency or by the City’s own traffic department. They simply took the flawed study they were given and rubber-stamped it. At best, the outcome of this “traffic experiment” is highly uncertain. At worst it is an unmitigated disaster that will tie up Richards traffic in hopeless grid-lock for years to come. Not a very enlightened approach to traffic planning.
Unless you can document that statement, I contend it’s a damn LIE.
So…who would pay for, authorize, and direct a “fully independent review”? Who would specify the scope of the review? Who would evaluate the quality and or conclusions of such a review? Meant, pretty much honestly… the traffic engineer Mr H engaged was VERY arguably not an independent review.
Mr. Pryor, the traffic firm who undertook the traffic study is nationally recognized and meticulously explained their methodology, findings, and conclusions as well as gave thorough rebuttals to the questions you and Mr. Smith posed. The projections of the traffic study are in fact, supported by reams of data. Richards is one of the more studied intersections in Davis. The conclusions reached in the traffic study are supported by data and are the professional opinions of experts doing professional due diligence. This is a great example of evidence-based decision making instead of taking subjective impressions given by laypeople. That seems like a good approach to traffic planning to me.
>> Now some of you reading this are saying, and we want to bring more traffic to this congested corridor. <<
I suppose some are thinking and saying that. What I’m thinking is, “why are you increasing the congestion by driving a motor vehicle for such short intracity distances?” (and yes, I know there’s always reason at the time.)
It is not possible to fix traffic/congestion with more pavement and more lanes. If that were possible, then we could fix obesity with bigger pants.
The answer to traffic congestion, the vexing parking problems and carbon emissions (and hey! even obesity) is the same: Stop driving when driving is not needed.
Agree with all your points… as someone who has knowledge of, and experience in the field of transportation…
Amen to that. Of course, today kids don’t ride bicycles as a given. Instead, the parents drive over to pick them up and move them short intra-city distances. It’s rather sick, societally speaking.
You are both right… it’s largely due to the ‘helicopter parents’ who drive their kids to school because the are too many cars around the schools… Walt Kelly time… “we have met the enemy…”
First grade to eighth… rode a bike as primary transportation… then, to SR in HS, walk or public/school transit… college, back on a bike… didn’t own or have regular access to a car until I graduated college, had a job…
darelldd
“The answer to traffic congestion, the vexing parking problems and carbon emissions (and hey! even obesity) is the same: Stop driving when driving is not needed.”
I could not agree more. And I would go even further. Make a portion of downtown a walking mall with some form of public transportation for those who are mobility impaired or too old or too young or too burdened to go the full distance. I was helped on Picnic Day by a very nice young man who peddled us the rest of the way home after I overestimated my ability to walk to the far side of campus and all the way back home while recovering from my compressed spinal nerve. We flagged him down on the street, but with a little ingenuity, I am sure that either regular routes or an Uber like system for people powered transportation could be established.
This could be yet another example of fully utilizing our unique resources. We have a plethora of young, healthy student residents who I am sure would be capable of putting in a few hours of peddling as opposed to a few hours of sitting in stalled traffic at the Richards intersection. We would benefit from more creative “outside the box” thinking about our current problems.
Seemed Davis was headed that way with pedal taxis, but for some reason (anyone know?) they disappeared as a regular feature of downtown.
I love the rendering drawing at the top of this article showing all open lanes and not a car in sight – even on I-80! An obvious little subliminal push by the project developers to make it appear as if all our traffic problems on Richards will magically disappear if only we would agree to the project and let our rulers get on with their plans. Sigh…if only it were so.
I question the 3 lane off ramp. It’s not like we often have backup involving traffic coming off of I-80, except after busy weekends. The majority of people come from the other side of the overpass. Also, I don’t see much as far as bike lanes for people traveling on Olive. With the new Lincoln 40 and students already living in the apartment complexes on Olive, there is, and increasingly so, a lot of people who walk or bicycle to town from East Olive.
I doubt that any of the funding agencies would design lanes for which there’s not a well-demonstrated need during the project lifetime. Lanes don’t come cheap, and projects that can’t attract sufficient funding don’t get built, so I expect that the bean counters have to be convinced before the plan reaches final design.
Odin
“It’s not like we often have backup involving traffic coming off of I-80, except after busy weekends.”
My perception of this is quite different from yours. Until about one year ago, I frequently traveled the route from South Davis to the downtown area at 8 am, 12:30 pm and 5:30 pm. It was not unusual at all to see traffic backing up onto the off ramp. It was because of this congestion that I changed my route using the PoleLine over pass instead. I will grant that this situation may have changed since I no longer work in South Davis, but I doubt that it has improved.
Our difference of perspective does point out the importance of having both thorough and accurate traffic studies.
An obvious preventive measure to avoid exacerbating the already enormous traffic and congestion problems at Richards Blvd. is to NOT build 650 housing units that site, and let UCD build the needed student housing on-campus, where it would not add to the traffic and congestion at Richards Blvd.
This amount of housing proposed by Nishi Gateway is a “drop in the bucket” compared to what UCD wants to continue pushing onto our City (13,000 more students) for their own housing needs and it will not solve anything. In fact, it will only create much more damage to the City, particularly at Richards Blvd., and the downtown, and the businesses along Olive Drive, as well as to South Davis residents and businesses.
Furthermore, Nishi Gateway just causes the City to become an “enabler” in a long term opportunistic situation that UCD has created with our community for decades. UCD’s negligence in not building their own needed housing on campus is the root of all of these problems and they need to deal with building their own housing for their own housing needs on-campus now.
It is pretty clear given what has been covered in the media how dysfunctional and how UCD is so terribly mismanaged. UCD needs to clean up their act and get moving on building the promised on-campus apartments now. They certainly have the resources with a $4.3 Billion dollar operating budget, a $1 Billion dollar endowment fund, and plenty to spend on internet “communications” to deal with a pepper spray incident which never should have happened.
UCD needs to start acting responsibly not only for the sake of their own reputation, but for the sake of their students, and for the sake of our community.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I think our CC has done nothing to pressure UCD to build more on campus housing ? Do we need some CC members to have a sit in at Mrak Hall ? How about at least a public meeting where the chancellor comes and talks about it ? Oh, haven’t done that yet ?
I get it: Five CC members have spent the last five years pushing exterior development. That’s their solution ? Sad.
Eileen
“and let UCD build the needed student housing on-campus, where it would not add to the traffic and congestion at Richards Blvd.”
Interesting choice of words. “Let UCD build”. What do you suppose that the city has been doing to prevent UCD from building the entire stock of housing that they had agreed to ? What I am missing from this conversation on your part, and fell free to add your thoughts Michael is “What specific steps that you believe that the City Council or staff could take to “let” or “make” the university house the number of students that they had committed to ?
Tia wrote:
> Interesting choice of words. “Let UCD build”.
Traffic would be a lot better on Richards if we “let kids in South Davis ride to DHS and Chavez” (vs. having so many parents drive them)…
Maybe Eileen would also “let UCD faculty and staff carpool”….
Frankly
“TW has rigorously advocated for things in direct conflict with her opposition to Trackside.”
Please be specific when throwing around the word hypocrisy. I eagerly await your clarification.
Tia wrote:
> Please be specific when throwing around the word hypocrisy.
I’ve called Tia out for hypocrisy a fair amount of times but an opposition to Trackside (as currently proposed at 6 stories) is not one of them. I’m not a “slow growth” guy and I agree with Tia (and others in Old East Davis) that the proposed Trackside project is just too big for the site.
I was at a party in the Arden Oaks area of Sacramento this weekend and I was thinking of the Trackside development when I noticed how silly it looked when people built 12,000 sf three story “mansions” (that looked like small hotels) next to the older 60 year old 3,000 sf single story “ranch homes” (like the one my friend lives in)…
Ah …. Nothing like a beautiful Sunday afternoon out in the precincts Confirming that nearly all the Yes signs are in rentals and the students don’t know about the elections and many not registered to vote here
Putting up NO signs is fun and meaningful The facts and public policies are on our side and the residents tell us they are leaning NO even if not ready for lawn sign yet
People know that Olive Richards intersection is a mess and they just blurt out “probably voting NO”
Mike wrote:
> Confirming that nearly all the Yes signs are in rentals and the students
> don’t know about the elections and many not registered to vote here
Are you accusing the Yes on A people of putting “nearly all” (is this 90%?) of their signs on the lawns of rental homes with student renters who care so little about politics that they can’t even be bothered to toss the signs in the trash?
“I’ve called Tia out for hypocrisy a fair amount of times”
It seems that too often “hypocrisy” seems to be defined as “Tia doesn’t see the issue the same way as I do, and is affluent , so she must be guilty of something”.
I suspect that I am no more nor no less “hypocritical” than most who post here, but I at least would like the possibility of accepting or defending myself against the charge based on the facts, something that seems to be in short supply, especially from anonymous posters.
It’s pathetic the city would approve Nishi just to have the developer solve, perhaps, the city’s traffic problem on Richards. The city should take care of its own problems on its own terms.
Nishi will not solve any problems that currently exist on the corridor… unless they have a deity on the development team, and/or possess a magic wand.
I don’t believe either option exists.
The ‘answers’ rely more on the use of other access corridors to UCD (particularly Hutchison and/or Old Davis Road)… and ensure that the Nishi project has no motor vehicular access (except EVA) to W Olive…