Capital Southeast Connector: A project in need of a plan

A traffic project in need of a plan...
Connector logo, modified

* Note: This is not the web site of the Capital Southeast Connector Joint Powers Authority ("Connector JPA"), that site is at http://connectorjpa.net/. This web site, www.sierrafoot.org, belongs to an individual who has been involved in civic advocacy in El Dorado Hills, California since 1992, including service as president of the El Dorado Hills Citizens Alliance. My background with the Connector project began in July, 2005, when it was a project of SACOG - the Sacramento Area Council Of Governments - before the project was transferred to a new Joint Powers Authority (JPA).

SACOG acknowledged the key issue for El Dorado Hills, route alignment using White Rock Road with no proposed alternatives, in July, 2005. The JPA is still failing to address it five years later despite repeated advocacy by groups of EDH citizens.

Recommended to El Dorado County and JPA:

Southern Bypass Alternative, a concept design proposal

The Southern Bypass Alternative Proposal is being submitted to the County of El Dorado and the Capital Southeast Connector JPA to recommend a Concept Alternative to benefit El Dorado Hills as well as the other localities served by the Connector.

Summary:

The origin of the problem matches the origin of the Connector project in late 2002, with the initial Concept Plan developed in 2003 and 2004. The SACOG Policy Advisory Committee overseeing the Connector finalized the Concept Plan in 2005. Oversight of the Connector was transferred to a new Joint Powers Authority (JPA) at the end of 2006. Since then the JPA has pressed forward into California environmental review for the project at the level of a program Environmental Impact Statement. The Connector itself was renamed to the Capital Southeast Connector.

In doing so the JPA has devoted substantial attention to four alternative alignments for parts of the Connector in Sacramento County, as well as three sub-alignments for local alternatives in the Sheldon area, a small community near Elk Grove. It has done nothing to commission corresponding studies of alternatives needed by El Dorado Hills. El Dorado Hills is the largest city in El Dorado County, with a current population of about 43,000, more than 4 times that of the County's only incorporated city west of Lake Tahoe.

The designated Connector alignment in El Dorado Hills is used as one of the two most traffic-critical local streets in EDH. EDH could reach the buildout population limit of about 80,000 population before 2025 if local housing growth returns to its pre-recession rate. El Dorado Hills needs the Connector to fulfill two of its stated goals:

Remove regional traffic from local streets
Reduce traffic on local freeways by providing a separate regional expressway.

Connector history can be tracked through original source documents in the Documents Archive.

Detail pages for the Connector JPA discussion are:

The two most significant documents defining the Connector:

The Connector JPA (Joint Powers Authority) has been exceptional among local agencies in intransigence, incompetence in oversight of an engineering project, and in other dimensions of failure. Some specific points:

Goals and objectives of the Connector project are in part to reduce traffic congestion on local street in cities served by the Connector. The basic route alignment alternatives do this for Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova, and Folsom by drawing traffic out of the cities and onto the Connector. In El Dorado Hills, the Connector is planned to use an existing local street, one of the two carrying the heaviest traffic loads in the city, in the area of Town Center, the El Dorado Hills Business Park, and several residential areas.

The Connector will increase traffic where its goals and objectives require decreasing traffic.
Web-accessible JPA documents show precisely one relevant document: A consultant's study of traffic demand in El Dorado Hills on the designated Connector alignment. See White Rock Road Daily Traffic Counts for a graph showing these details:

-- Existing traffic levels in the JPA document understate traffic measured in 2009 by the El Dorado County Department (DOT) of Transportation by as much as a factor of 5.

-- JPA estimates for White Rock Road traffic in 2035 are barely above 2009 actual (measured) traffic levels.

-- JPA estimates for White Rock traffic on the east side of Latrobe Road in 2035 are 1/3 of County DOT's estimated traffic for 2025.

See White Rock Road Daily Traffic Counts for additional notes.
To date, the JPA has failed to do even a requirements analysis for El Dorado Hills.

Speaking personally: As a recently retired software engineer it is incomprehensible how this situation could persist for years. As a homeowner in El Dorado Hills it is very troubling that our city's needs are not only being ignored, but the plan now being set in motion is harmful in the area of our most critical issue: Traffic.

See Connector JPA business for additional notes.
Five years after EDH requests for alternative route alignments began the JPA still is taking no action, and instead is pressing forward with a CEQA (environmental) process to use the alignment which is harmful rather than beneficial to El Dorado Hills.

JPA documents through mid-2010 show that the only work in progress on alterative alignments is for (a) the four alternatives within Sacramento County that were originally identified by SACOG, and (b) three sub-alternatives in answer to complaints from the Sheldon area.

The problems with this route (White Rock Road through El Dorado Hills) have been immediately evident to EDH residents and El Dorado County Supervisors. Expressions ranging from concern through vocal opposition have come from sources including the Four Seasons Civic League, the El Dorado Hills Citizens Alliance, and the Bass Lake Action Committee. All have called for identification of alternative route alignments to bypass the critical area of El Dorado Hills as the Connector does for the other cities on its route.

See Connector JPA business for additional notes.

What would be a better alternative for El Dorado Hills as well as for other communities served by the Connector? Many among us in El Dorado Hills have proposed alternatives and even more have requested that the JPA consider alternatives.

See Southern Bypass Alternative for a new suggestion, covering the entire area served by the Connector, instead of focusing only on El Dorado Hills.

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