What is the 2025 Blueprint?   

The 2025 Blueprint will outline recommendations for public land use policy and transportation investment strategies for the Sacramento region for the next 20-30 years. This plan will lay out a set of strategies for an integrated, multimodal transportation system and regional development pattern that can create a more thriving region that works for all residents. The plan aims to connect housing to jobs, education, goods and services, and recreational opportunities while protecting and enhancing our region’s natural and working landscapes. Additionally, Blueprint is a federal and state required policy document for long-range transportation and land use planning.  

Why are we creating the 2025 Blueprint?  

Aside from this plan being a federal and state requirement, SACOG uses the 2025 Blueprint update to help the 22 cities and 6 counties coordinate planning efforts to better plan for the Sacramento region’s transportation system. This coordination helps improve the region’s quality of life by making it easier and safer to get where residents need to go. 

This is important because the growth and mobility challenges facing the region are complex and are made more so due to the global pandemic, recent record setting drought and fire seasons, and the effects of a staggering statewide housing crisis. These challenges are daunting and are too often most acutely felt in historically disenfranchised communities. Finding pathways to create a thriving economy and healthy environment for all residents of the Sacramento region, as they relate to a regional planning effort, requires a holistic approach that examines the relationships between public sector land use decisions, transportation infrastructure and programs, prevailing market conditions, and public policy.

What are the guidelines for Blueprint?   

The Policy Framework for the 2025 Blueprint will guide the plan and dictate how it supports local jurisdictions and partner agencies as the region competes for transportation funding by aligning it with federal and state policy imperatives. The frameworks will do this by using three key factors to analyze the plan including the Sacramento Region Growth Forecast, The Triple Bottom Line Framework, and the input received during outreach efforts. 

Sacramento Region Growth Forecast 

The Sacramento Region Growth Forecast sets projections to estimate where the region will be in the next 20 to 30 years in terms of population, employment, and households.  To estimate growth projections that far into the future, staff looked at historical, economic, and demographic data as well as international, national, state, and regional trends.  Today, the region has approximately 2.5 million people, slightly more than 1 million jobs, and slightly less than 1 million homes. However even with the projections pointing to a slower growth rate relative to the projections for the current long-range plan, the Sacramento region can reasonably estimate a 566,000 increase in population, 263,000 more jobs, and about 264,000 more homes.  

Learn more about the Sacramento Region Growth Forecast here.  

How do the triple bottom line goals affect the development of the 2025 Blueprint?   

The 2025 Blueprint update centers on the triple bottom line framework which will use equity, economy, and environment, to shape the discussions and strategies for the 2025 Blueprint.  

The 2025 Blueprint will outline a path to lead the region to a thriving and prosperous future by developing land use and transportation policies and investment strategies that work with economic, societal, and environmental forces. This plan aims to come together around a collective vision to advance economic prosperity, support environmental health and resiliency, and promote equity through reducing transportation and housing disparities by race, ethnicity, income, and ability. For SACOG, this concept provides a continued emphasis on the agency’s goal of tying infrastructure investments to economic prosperity, gives appropriate emphasis to the environmental and climate resilience goals that the plan tries to achieve, and notably elevates equity to a level of significance that is equal to the challenge that the region and the nation are facing.  

How will SACOG engage members, the public, and stakeholders in the 2025 Blueprint?  

SACOG intends to use several awareness building tactics throughout the 2025 Blueprint development process to increase engagement among low-income communities, communities of color, partner agencies, stakeholders that represent a broad variety of interests throughout the region, and all other interested community members. Staff will use best practices to gain input from partners and will leverage relationships with community-based organizations to build upon these engagement activities to ensure that all interested parties can be meaningfully involved in shaping this regional plan. 

Watch the adoption of the Policy Framework by the Transportation Committee.