Planned Sacramento light rail station won’t be built anytime soon, board decides
A large new River District public housing complex will not get a light rail station anytime soon, a group of local elected officials decided Monday in a 6-5 vote.
Sacramento City Council members Katie Valenzuela, Caity Maple, Rick Jennings and Sean Loloee, as well as County Supervisor Phil Serna voted in support of building the station, at North 12th Street and Richard Boulevard, during Monday’s Regional Transit board meeting. County Supervisors Patrick Kennedy and Pat Hume, as well as Elk Grove Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen, Rancho Cordova Mayor Linda Budge, Citrus Heights councilman Bret Daniels, and Folsom councilman Mike Kozlowski voted against it.
Several of those who voted no said it was too expensive, and worried about what other services would be cut in other disadvantaged areas in order to fund it. It would cost RT about $9.2 million of its own dollars to build the $43 million station, according to a staff presentation Monday. The majority of the funds would be covered by state sources, including an effort by state Sen. Angelique Ashby, D-Sacramento.
Kennedy said he had lost sleep over the decision. He said RT is talking about instead adding a bus stop closer to the public housing complex, called Mirasol Village.
“We are after all a transit district not a light rail district,” Kennedy said. “This love affair with light rail just confounds me when we do have a great bus system.”
But Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency La Shelle Dozier said that delaying the building of the station is how the community got to how it is today, in an industrial area just north of downtown, cut off from the rest of the city. SHRA recently finished a $300 million renovation of the development. With 487 mixed-income units, it’s likely the largest affordable housing community in the region. And a light rail stop was supposed to come with it, Dozier said.
“A key part of this thing is transportation, and that light rail station was always a part of that vision,” Dozier told the board ahead of the vote, in an impassioned plea. “It was always a promise we made to the residents. It’s how we got the (Strategic Growth Council) to buy into our vision to put $17 million on the table And now for us to be talking about doing something different, it really is heartbreaking to me because it has been my life’s work.”
Several Mirasol Village residents said at the meeting that the existing bus stops are too far and the service do not come frequently enough to get them to work and school. One mom said she chose to move her family back in to the Mirasol Village unit after it was renovated purely because of the promised light rail.
The board voted instead to move forward with “implementing robust bus service,” including adding electric buses in the area of Mirasol Village, while pursuing grant funding for the station in the future.
In the meantime the closest light rail station is a 15 minute walk, at 12th and E streets. Dozier said many families with young children can be seen making that walk daily, including under the train tracks. She said the improved bus service will take 18 months, and will not be permanent, whereas a light rail station would have been.
During a council meeting Tuesday, Mayor Darrell Steinberg said efforts are still ongoing to find a way to build the station.
“There’s still a lot of advocacy to be had here,” Steinberg said. “The last word has not been spoken.”
