Walkable, Livable, Healthier Cities
Walkable, Livable, Healthier Cities
Our cities and towns have been designed around the automobile for so long that most Americans have forgotten what the alternative looks like. The result is communities where it is dangerous to walk, dangerous to bike, expensive to live, and impossible to get anywhere without a car. That is not just an inconvenience–it’s a public health crisis, an environmental crisis, and a quality of life crisis that falls hardest on the people with the fewest resources to escape it.
I will fight to rebuild our cities and towns around the people who live in them, with safe streets, reliable transit, walkable neighborhoods, and housing people can actually afford. The federal government has a major role to play in funding this transformation, and the people of this district deserve a representative in Congress who will fight for those federal dollars rather than asking local governments to bankrupt themselves trying to fix the problem alone.
The 3rd District includes a lot of different communities. Sacramento and the urban core are where dense, walkable design is the most feasible. Smaller cities like Folsom, Auburn, and Grass Valley have a mix of density and design. Suburban sprawl had spread across Arden-Arcade and the surrounding county where decades of car-centric planning have produced some of the highest rates of automobile fatalities in the region. Rural and forested areas seem different, but the underlying federal investment in transportation, housing, and community infrastructure matters just as much. Any serious approach to this issue has to recognize that one size does not fit all of these communities, and that meaningful federal support has to adjust to the realities of urban, suburban, and rural life.
Pedestrian deaths have climbed dramatically over the past decade. Our streets are dangerous in ways most other wealthy countries simply do not tolerate. Driving through Sacramento on Highway 50, Highway 80, or Del Paso Boulevard should not feel like a game of chance. Crossing the street to get to school, the bus stop, or the grocery store should not put anyone's life at risk.
I support federal adoption of Vision Zero, the principle that no traffic deaths or serious injuries are acceptable, paired with aggressive funding for the Safe Streets and Roads for All program that puts that principle into practice. Other countries have shown that Vision Zero is achievable when governments take it seriously. The United States has the resources and the knowledge to do the same.
The good news is that we already know exactly what works. Decades of evidence from cities around the world point in the same direction: streets designed to slow drivers down save lives. I will fight to direct federal transportation funding toward:
Narrower lanes, traffic-calming infrastructure, and road designs that reduce the speeds at which people are actually driving rather than the speeds posted on signs.
Roundabouts and other modern intersection designs that have been shown to dramatically reduce collisions compared to traffic lights and stop signs.
Protected bike lanes built to a standard that ordinary people, including children and seniors, will actually use, with side-street parking and physical barriers separating cyclists from traffic.
Direct-line bike infrastructure connecting residential neighborhoods to schools, jobs, and commercial corridors, rather than the patchwork of disconnected bike lanes that tend to get built today.
Federal subsidies for working-class families to afford e-bikes, which are one of the fastest-growing forms of clean transportation in the country and can replace car trips for many people who could not easily get around on a conventional bicycle, especially across the longer distances and hillier terrain that define so much of our district.
A federal push to end "induced demand" road expansion. Adding lanes does not relieve traffic. It actually attracts more cars, congesting the new lanes within a few years and locking communities into more car dependence in the process.
I will also fight for federal investment that directs safer-streets funding equitably across neighborhoods. Lower-income communities tend to receive the least attention from planners and the worst infrastructure as a result. The places that have been written off should be the first we invest in.
I will fight to make public transit safer, more reliable, and more connected. Sacramento RT has struggled with funding for years, and the cycle is predictable. Service gets cut, ridership drops in response, fare revenue falls, and the system gets cut further. The way out is to invest, not to retreat. Congress can support local public transit through funding for:
Infrastructure to expand bus service, light rail, and connections between transit modes, with priority placed on connecting dense, walkable areas where transit actually works.
Designated bus lanes so that buses are not stuck in the same traffic as the cars they are supposed to be an alternative to.
Light rail expansion in dense urban corridors, with development planned around transit rather than the parking lots that currently surround too many stations.
Building and maintaining high-speed rail. California's high-speed rail project has been hamstrung for years by inadequate federal support and political sabotage, even as similar systems abroad have transformed the way people move between cities. A serious national high-speed rail network would replace short-haul flights and intercity car travel, cut emissions dramatically, and bring the United States in line with what other developed countries built decades ago.
Low or no fares, funded through taxes on the corporations and landlords benefiting most from the system. Free transit reduces the conflicts that tend to flare up around fare enforcement, increases ridership, and treats public transit the way we already treat public roads, as basic infrastructure rather than a service that has to pay for itself.
These investments matter for everyone, but they matter most for the people who do not own cars: low-income workers, seniors, young people, people with disabilities, and the disproportionately working-class riders who already depend on transit and deserve a system that actually works for them.
We cannot build walkable communities through zoning laws designed to prevent them. Most American cities still have zoning codes that mandate single-family housing across vast areas, ban mixed uses, and require excessive amounts of parking with every new building. The result is exactly what those rules were designed to produce: sprawl, isolation, and dependency on the car.
I support federal incentives and funding tied to local zoning reform that:
Expands mixed-use zoning, so that grocery stores, restaurants, services, and small businesses can locate within walking distance of where people live.
Eliminates or sharply reduces parking minimums, which deter new businesses, especially small ones, drive up the cost of housing, and make neighborhoods less walkable. Hidden and rear parking, where it is needed at all, is more compatible with walkable streets than the giant front-facing lots that currently dominate too many of our commercial districts.
Allows varied density housing, including duplexes, triplexes, courtyard apartments, and small multi-family buildings, in neighborhoods currently restricted to single-family homes.
Plans density around transit corridors so that the people who most benefit from walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods can actually live in them.
The cruel irony of walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods is that they tend to become unaffordable as soon as they start working. Without strong protections, the residents who already live in places like Oak Park and the surrounding areas of the district may end up displaced as those neighborhoods become more livable, and the benefits flow to wealthier newcomers instead of the working-class families who lived there all along.
I will fight to ensure that walkability and affordability go together, not in opposition. That means:
Major federal investment in publicly funded affordable housing, so that rising livability does not have to mean rising rents.
Real protections for tenants, including limits on rent increases, just-cause eviction protections, and meaningful enforcement when landlords violate tenant rights.
Accountability for landlords who fail to maintain habitable conditions, with escalating consequences for repeat violations.
Limits on the corporate consolidation of housing, including the institutional investors and large landlords who have been buying up housing stock at scale and pricing working families out of their own neighborhoods.
These priorities tie directly into the broader housing platform of my campaign. Walkable cities and a housing-as-a-human-right framework are part of the same project.
Car dependence is the result of a century of policy decisions that subsidized highway construction, mandated parking, zoned out alternatives, and entrenched an automobile industry whose interests do not match those of most Americans. The costs of that choice show up everywhere: in the people we lose to traffic deaths, in the asthma rates among kids growing up near highways, in the carbon emissions warming the planet, in the household budgets stretched thin by car payments and insurance, and in the isolation of communities where you have to drive to do anything at all.
Reversing that requires sustained federal investment, careful local planning, and the political will to take on the industries that profit from the status quo. The transformation will not happen overnight. The work is worth doing, because the result is communities where people are safer, healthier, more connected, and able to live full lives without the car being a precondition for any of it.
My Checklist for Congress
Secure funding for urban, suburban, and rural infrastructure improvements
Federal adoption of Vision Zero
Increase federal funding for local transit projects
Create federal requirements for local rezoning
Focus federal policies on non-car-centric development