News

January 27, 2021: The SACOG travel-modeling team has a powerful new source of data that enables even more fine-tuned analysis of travel trends in the Sacramento region.

In a Big Data pilot project partnership with Caltrans and the California Air Resources Board, the team has access to the software-as-a-service platform Replica for 2021. Replica uses machine learning to turn many streams of inputs — raw data from GPS to cell phone apps to credit card purchases, and many more — into valuable insights useful for transportation modelers, planners, and policy-makers.

These insights are displayed in two different forms on the Replica platform: Nationwide Trends and Local Places. The Nationwide Trends is a weekly snapshot of activities across the United States such as numbers of daily trips, vehicle miles traveled, trip start times, trips to work and school, as well as spending across sectors such as gas stations, grocery stores, and restaurants and bars. Users can view the trends at the state, county, and census tract levels.

January 27, 2021: Fresh pavement and new sidewalks are the new normal for Ella Elementary School in Olivehurst. The streets approaching the school have had major improvements recently, drastically changing the landscape for the better and making it safer for students to get to and from school.  

November 29, 2020: When the California Air Resources Board certified SACOG’s Sustainable Communities Strategy recently, it was more than a formality. The painstaking review of the data modeling that underpins the 2020 MTP/SCS makes sure that its findings are valid and therefore can be used to support grant applications as well as for the environmental review streamlining provisions of SB 375.  

November 29, 2020: Next year Woodland will celebrate 150 years since being incorporated and it all started on Main Street. Since then the thoroughfare has stretched both west and east, adding West and East Main Streets. Now West Main Street gets a lot of traffic “dumped” on it because of a lack of connectors between Highway 113 and Main Street from the south, said Tom Stallard, Woodland’s mayor pro tempore. The combination of heavy traffic and some missing sidewalks and no bike lanes had made the busy street unwelcoming for people not in cars. 

October 28, 2020: California local governments are caught in a vise, squeezed between the need to house future residents as required by state law and having to answer to residents who don’t want more housing on a site in their neighborhood. As Elk Grove’s Director of Strategic Planning and Innovation Christopher Jordan put it in a recent SACOG housing series webinar, “We’re not seeing the forest for the trees because people tend to focus on sites they know.” 

The solution hit upon by the City of Elk Grove is to transform residents into housing planners. “We wanted our residents involved in the sites we will use to count towards RHNA in a more dynamic way than we usually do,” said Jordan. The tool that helped them achieve that is an online budgeting simulation called Balancing Act, which has mostly been used by cities in public engagement around city budgets. Elk Grove was the first city to adapt the tool for housing elements, said Brenda Morrison, a partner at Engaged Public, the firm behind Balancing Act, who joined Jordan’s webinar demonstration of the tool. The city “pushed us to use the platform in different ways,” she said, and that required some custom coding. She said the innovation was driven by ”Covid and the strain on city governments having staff thinking of new ways to communicate changes to the public.” 

October 7, 2020: Today is California Clean Air Day and it is especially timely this year. With a record 4 million acres of California burned already this year and wildfires still out of control, air quality has become a topic of daily conversation.

“Every day that we see smoke in our air and witness the terrible pollution impacts from wildfires we are starkly reminded of the importance of clean air for public health. Clean Air Day is recognizing that we all must continue the fight against air and climate pollution from all sources, including fires,” said Dr. Alberto Ayala, executive director of the Sacramento Metroplitan Air Quality Management District at a press event to mark the day.

September 29, 2020: This year has brought powerful reminders that many key issues that affect the greater Sacramento region are not confined to our borders. Viruses, wildfires and their smoke, and global recessions have no regard for lines on a map and require well-coordinated responses.  

Some of these same forces are also accelerating long-standing connections and growth trends that tie Northern California metropolitan areas together. So this was the right year to relaunch the Megaregion Working Group, which brings together board members and staff from three adjacent Metropolitan Planning Organizations: SACOG, San Joaquin Council of Governments, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Together, these MPOs serve more than 11 million residents of 16 contiguous counties, stretching from Santa Clara in the southwest to Placer in the northeast.