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The Sacramento Area Council of Governments is expected to approve a Highway 50 corridor plan Thursday that includes 299 transportation projects, 63 of which are actual freeway projects and 99 of which are geared toward cyclists and pedestrians.
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Yes, they intentionally made bikes and other human-powered methods of getting around a major part of a plan that’s supposed to help freeway drivers.
“It’s about a third of the total projects are bike and pedestrian projects,” said Dustin Foster, SACOG’s project manager for the U.S. 50 Comprehensive Multimodal Corridor Plan. He and other planners ask themselves, “How do we reduce congestion … by increasing the availability and quality of non-driving options?”
Although transportation planners have historically proposed highway-widening as the solution to traffic congestion — a trend that continues in California to this day, including on Highway 50 — that particular strategy has been repeatedly shown to backfire. The California State Transportation Agency has acknowledged that “research over the past several decades has demonstrated that and in some cases has worsened congestion, particularly in urbanized regions.”
And so, sometimes for the sake of freeway traffic, regional planners at SACOG work with local governments to help realize “active transportation” projects — those focused on people outside cars such as cyclists and pedestrians.
Summer Lopez, who heads up active transportation projects at SACOG, said that with shifting demand away from car-focused infrastructure such as freeways, there is an “encouragement piece to getting people out of their cars and riding their bikes.” People generally need safe and appealing routes, Lopez said, such as the American River Parkway.
For the corridor plan, SACOG also surveyed more than 1,500 residents, and “safety” emerged as a top priority. SACOG planners have attempted to prioritize getting pedestrians and cyclists onto dedicated infrastructure that’s separated from car traffic. Each year, hundreds of people die in traffic crashes in the region, and people outside cars face the highest risks.
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SACOG’s corridor plan includes 46 “near-term” transportation projects that are or will be done with all their planning, engineering and environmental work and may apply for construction grants within the next three grant cycles of the Solutions for Congested Corridors Program. That program, which is overseen by the California Transportation Commission, awards money to improve “heavily traveled corridors.” A handful of projects may be submitted to the grant this year.
As a regional transportation planning agency, SACOG works with local partner agencies to apply for those congested corridor grants.
“One key detail is, the state, through this program, they fund multiple projects through one package along the corridor,” Foster said. “It’s really about telling a good story.”
However, state grant programs are competitive — meaning that applicants aren’t guaranteed funding and may languish indefinitely.
Among others, three notable projects within Sacramento city limits may apply for grants in the 2026 cycle: the long-awaited I Street Bridge replacement project, the Two Rivers Trail project providing a connection to Sutter’s Landing and the “Envision Broadway in Oak Park” extension of street improvements and traffic-calming along Broadway.
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