I love Sacramento. I lived here for years and still spend much of my week downtown, commuting from Roseville to an office in the Esquire Building. City leaders say they want workers back in the core to revive restaurants, retailers and street-level services. I agree. But day after day, the way our streets are actually managed sends the opposite message: “Don’t come.”
Consider the approach from Highway 160 onto 12th Street. What should be a straightforward entry to the grid is a gauntlet of chokepoints and poorly-coordinated signals that can turn a 5‑minute hop into a 20‑minute crawl. The 12th Street corridor has been on the city’s radar for years — including in a city council staff report noting high crash‑rates and signal conflicts. Yet operational headaches persist.
These micro‑frictions add up. One recent article reported that Sacramento‑area drivers waste roughly $1,500 annually in time and fuel due to congestion. In earlier years, the average driver lost 44 hours annually stuck in congestion, with a cost of nearly $1,000 per driver. That’s lost time, lost productivity and, importantly, lost sales for the corner café waiting on a morning rush that may never fully arrive…