[doriankage]

By Tony Bizjak - Bee Staff Writer

The city of Sacramento and Caltrans, the state highway department, are like bickering bunkmates:

Squabble. Make up. Go at it again.

The friction is over an increasingly vexing issue: How are people supposed to get in and out of downtown?

Daily, tens of thousands pour in, many on clogged freeways. Caltrans' job is to keep freeways moving. More and more of those freeways, like overwhelmed students, are getting F's during rush hour. Caltrans is proposing adding carpool lanes on Highway 50 from Sunrise Boulevard to Watt Avenue.

The project, for now, stops just short of enemy territory: Sacramento city limits.

Nevertheless, city officials recently sent Caltrans a 13-page letter -- a potential set-up for a lawsuit -- arguing the new lanes amount to a car dump on city streets.

"That project is not consistent with the city's goals," says Assistant City Manager Marty Hanneman.

What are the city's goals? That's complicated. City officials obviously are not anti-car. Most drive their own cars to work downtown.

But, City Hall has been struggling for years to do something about growing street traffic and a parking crunch. They could build more garages, but they say that only encourages more cars downtown.

Yet, at the same time, city leaders are eager to expand downtown to maintain its status as the vibrant economic and entertainment hub of the region.

The city is pushing plans to build whole new city blocks in the 200-plus-acre downtown railyard. And last week, officials enthusiastically gave developers the thumbs up to build another office tower on Capitol Mall for about 1,000 workers.

Caltrans was not so enthusiastic.

It filed a formal protest of the Capitol Mall project -- and by extension, other upcoming downtown projects, especially the railyard -- arguing the freeways are going to get socked with more commuters. State law requires the city to "mitigate" the impacts, Caltrans contended.

That led to some intense negotiations. Even Caltrans head Will Kempton got involved.

The state ultimately agreed last week to drop its challenge of the Capitol Mall project, but only after City Manager Ray Kerridge crafted a carefully worded statement acknowledging the city's responsibility "to address potential significant impacts to traffic including on the state highway system."

City and Caltrans officials shook hands and vowed to engage in more friendly discussions about how exactly to "address" downtown growth and its effect on traffic.

One possibility: Charging developers fees for transportation improvements.

Yet, the philosophical chasm between the two sides remains big.

The city has not dropped its opposition to Caltrans' planned Highway 50 carpool project.

You don't solve the traffic problem just by making more room for more cars, city leaders say.

Their approach: Build more housing downtown. Get more people on light rail and buses. Encourage carpooling. Discourage downtown and midtown drivers by making streets slower for cars and safer for pedestrians. They are even talking about a Sacramento-West Sacramento trolley line.

"That," says the city's Hanneman, "is what we see as a comprehensive system."

Agreed, says Caltrans' Wayne Lewis. But freeways will continue to be the biggest part of that system, he argues.

"Not everybody is going to be able to live around the corner from their job," he said.

At least they are talking. It's an important conversation.