New week, new blog entry…I’m getting the hang of this! This week, the blog is a bit more about me and why I’m so excited to be leading the Connector project.
I’ve been thinking about it, and one thing my years of experience have taught me is that you don’t achieve as much dreaming by yourself as you do when you dream with a group. Whether it’s building the Connector or sending a man to the moon—someone had to start the project, with the energy and enthusiasm to get it going, and then translate that energy and ambition to other people to carry it through. That’s my job as the executive director of the Capital SouthEast Connector: I’m the coach, cheerleader and booster club.
My years of working on public projects, including determining financing and guiding the environmental, design and outreach processes, have taught me when and how to put all the pieces together so those pieces will result in a coherent, well-developed project. And if a project leader can do that, they can translate their energy and excitement to other people and build a critical mass of smarts, momentum and energy around a project. That’s one of my goals with the Connector.
I’ve devoted my professional life to transportation in this region—I think I know the people, the communities and the issues with different projects. Some people would say I’m not a typical engineer, because I’m not the one who does the calculations. Of course I’m interested in the calculations, because a project cannot happen without them, but I primarily focus on the design and communication processes to make a project successful.
I believe that if you can motivate and inspire people, those people will become your most powerful allies—whether they support the issue or oppose it. If a leader can use himself as a catalyst for ideas and then let the process sort out the ideas, the end result will be more collaboration and inspiration than anyone thought possible. And that’s my ultimate goal for the Connector: to plan and build a roadway that was developed with the communities it will serve to best meet the needs of the region.
Keep checking back for new entries…there’s much more to talk about!
I agree that the Connector offers opportunities to our region. In connection with El Dorado Hills it offers both opportunities and risk. A challenge for the JPA is to focus on how to integrate the Connector with the road network in the El Dorado Hills and Folsom area to benefit from the opportunities and avoid some evident problems.
A road network is not unlike a computer network. Emphasizing the network perspective, this month saw the 35th anniversary of the first transmission of real time speech on a computer network (ARPANET). This was in a connection between my group at the USC Information Sciences Institute and MIT Lincoln Labs.
We succeeded in handling real time speech by developing protocols for multipath routing, distributing speech packets. EDH has a similar need, to distribute traffic on surface roads rather than to collect it into our miniscule set of arterials.
The Connector as currently indicated on JPA maps collects traffic from Sacramento County on one side and from El Dorado County on the other side, routing all of it through our traffic-critical Town Center Area. This is definitely a problem, since the Connector can be expected to form a backbone for future development of the road network in Sacramento County. The intersection of White Rock and Latrobe is already under stress, operating frequently at LOS F. There is a realistic risk that the mapped Connector route will intensify traffic at this stress point and will trigger chronic LOS F radiating in all directions from EDH Town Center.
The opportunity is to identify a different Connector route that will provide a bypass for through traffic around El Dorado Hills. On behalf of the El Dorado Hills Citizens Alliance I strongly urge the JPA to pursue that opportunity.
This project is interesting.
Yes, clearly the Sacramento region needs to develop a bypass for its downtown area. And, yes, the project needs to be mindful of the environment. So it strikes me as odd that for the sake of expediency the Capital SouthEast Connector working group would select the most environmentally sensitive location to construct its roadway.
The Sheldon region of the project is quite problematic. It is an environmentally fragile area. There are wetlands which foster animal and plant habitat. It is also a floodplain. Furthermore, Sheldon has a quiet, rural neighborhood ambiance that would be completely destroyed if such a connector were constructed. The community is already agitated about the Elk Grove City Council’s attempts to annex the area and the debacle that is the unfinished mall. If residents knew (or realized) that the connector would literally tear the community in half, they would probably fight it with gusto.
The comments by the previous poster are also interesting with regard to the way in which the connector is envisioned. Please consider the impact of drawing thousands of motor vehicles through this area. Yes, many will use the connector for its stated purpose: for long trips to connect 5 and 99 to 50. But many others will use it for much shorter trips. Are the adjacent roadways prepared to carry the vehicle capacity such traffic would require? Sheldon Road is a two lane country road, as is Excelsior, Bradshaw and much of Calvine. Would the connector project include widening those roads and placing traffic lights (or better yet, round abouts to keep traffic flowing) on those streets?
I ask these questions not as a resident of Sheldon. I am not. My address is in Laguna. Rather I ask these questions as a concerned citizen of the Elk Grove community who has been in the past and continues to be in the present dismayed at the short sighted decisions made by this community’s leaders.
As we move closer toward the second decade of the 21st century, we need to be mindful that 20th century plans may not work so well anymore. In simple terms, the world is changing. What used to be the norm in American society will soon be extinct. Perhaps the connector planning group could consult transportation planners who emphasize bicycles and trains more than cars. It’s usually a good idea to get voices that challenge rather than assuage one’s comfort level. A transportation link such as this one can be a marvel for the region, or it can be a debacle like the mall it will pass by. The variety of voices this body hears will determine, in large part, the connector’s success.
Yes, this is an interesting and challenging project. I look forward to watching its progress. I also look forward to seeing how the planning group, yourself included, allow and embrace different voices as it moves forward.
I’ve seen three alternatives for the Capital Southeast Connector in Sheldon. One involves ripping the connector through Sheldon (destructive). Another involves tunneling the connector under Sheldon (expensive). The final pragmatic, non-fatally flawed proposal involves routing the connector to the south of Sheldon’s core. I think the planners will choose the final alternative.
While it would be nice to see a world where people lived close enough to their worksites where a significant portion of the populatation could walk or bike to their worksites, most households require two incomes to support a family. Living near where one works is not a reality in a two-income world. The so-called “walkable, live-work” environments of San Francisco, Portland and Vancouver BC have driven up the cost of real estate (current recession situation nothwithstanding) to the point where the middle class must move 50-75 miles from the urban centers to afford decent, middle class housing.
A future based on bicycles and walkability sounds nice. Unfortunately, it is a 19th century solution to the 21st century problem of two-income families(in my opinion anyway). I think the Capital Southeast Connector can resolve a lot of those problems, if it is planned and bulit correctly. Areas will be developed for walkability, while the corridor will (or should) be developed for inter-regional mobility.