Update - Please understand, dear readers, that this post, like others we have published on occasion, is about the impacts of decades of neglect towards our unincorporated area. It is not meant to bring any ill-will towards our current Supervisor, whose own track record is one of acknowlegment of our situation and an openness to the correction of past problems. Keep in mind that our Supervisor can only cast 1 vote as a member of the County Board, which needs a minimum of 3 votes to do anything.

There have been a number of reports in local media lately about the lack of safety for pedestrians and cyclists, to the point where it is almost routine to hear about a pedestrian or a cyclist being struck by a car. And, let's face it, neither car vs. pedestrian  nor car vs. cyclist ends up with the pedestrian or cyclist being the winner. Most recently, the City Council of the City of Sacramento has been considering pedestrian safety as a kind of public emergency. The alarm bells are ringing because of the clear need for safe mobility choices as our region slowly pivots into an era of significantly reduced dependence on fossil fuels and "active transportation" (walking and biking) starts to fill in the blanks.

None of this makes sense to those of us who live in the vast unincorporated UnCity of Sacramento. When someone mentions sidewalks or bike lanes, we all tend to just scratch our heads - what are those things, anyway? We quite properly scoff when someone says "take RT", because we do not have viable bus or light rail service. No, our unincorporated nowhere land has to rely on cars, cars, and cars. That's why we complain so much about potholes. At the same time, though, we enjoy not having a functional traffic law enforcement system. The CHP, which is responsible for our local traffic law enforcement, has so many other priorities that their Chippies cannot drill down into our relatively insignificant local roads. And that means drivers hereabouts can exceed the speed limit, run stop signs, race through yellows, or otherwise violate the Motor Vehicle Code without worrying about enforcement.

So it was interesting to hear Supervisor Desmond say, at his recent community meetings on land use and economic development, that 1) the road maintenance budget has risen from $990M to $1.4B and 2) sidewalk maintenance is the responsibility of the property owner. Translation: The County is way behind the eight ball fixing the roads and thus cannot possibly pay for sidewalks or protected bike lanes. Yup, when you are $1.4 BILLION in the hole, you don't have bandwidth to spare for "sustainable transportation", i.e. active modes like walking, biking or the alternative mode of transit use. The County says it would go broke if it had to provide appropriate infrastructure for anything other than the roadways.

But when Supervisor Desmond told people at his recent meetings that sidewalk maintenance is up to the property owner, the audience reacted in disbelief. To be fair to Supervisor Desmond, his approach to sidewalk maintenance is nuanced. Consider, for example, what might happen to a tree that falls over in a storm and tears up a sidewalk. If the tree was planted by the property owner, it makes sense that the burden of maintenance goes back to the property owner. To his credit, our Supervisor tries to work with property owners to resolve those kinds of issues; he said so at the recent meetings. That willigness is something that distinguishes him from his predecessors .

The certainty the County cannot maintain its roads would logically translate to the County not maintaining its sidewalks. Still,  a sidewalk is infrastructure for the safe and efficient mobility of pedestrians, just like a road is infrastructure for the safe and efficient mobility of motor vehicle operators. Leaving sidewalk maintenance up to property owners is like saying a sidewalk is a private road that only its property owners may drive on. Can you have an "active transportation" policy if only motor vehicle use matters? Does "Git offa my lawn!" mean the same thing as "Git offa my sidewalk!"?

While the roadway-maintenance-only approach is understandable for the County, it is a bitter pill for the families that have lost loved ones who got hit by a car while walking or biking. As long as pavement conditions on major streets like Watt (or Walerga or #insertstreetnamehere) dominate county transportation spending, filling in sidewalk gaps - even short ones like on Whitney or El Camino - will take forever to fix, much to the chagrin of pedestrians whose only alternative is to walk in the street every day. What does it take to change these situations: to provide our community with traffic law enforcement, legitimate bus service, safe sidewalks and protected bike lanes? Incorporation is an answer, but only if vehicle-associated revenues accompany it (as is the case in 482 of California's 483 cities). Until that happens, though, we recommend you get a car and keep money on hand to replace the struts and shocks frequently.