![\"Vehicles](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/img-25-09-17-021FA.jpg\" "\\"Vehicles")
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Vehicles travel along Marysville Boulevard near Nogales Street in North Sacramento on Sept. 17, 2025. A quick-build safety project has been approved for the roadway as city officials await funding for an $18 million permanent redesign.<\/p>\n
Daniel Hunt<\/p>\n
dhunt@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
Sacramento faces at least a $5 billion backlog of transportation improvements, with roughly $3 billion needed on roadways where people have been killed or severely injured, according to city officials.<\/p>\n
Voters in the city, ranked by the California Office of Traffic Safety as the second-worst large city in the state for crash injuries and deaths, might soon consider a half-cent sales tax to help close the funding gap.<\/p>\n
READ THE FULL STORY: At least $5 billion needed for Sacramento\u2019s backlog to fix roads, improve safety<\/a><\/p>\n Here are key takeaways:<\/p>\n \u2022 Since 2000, Sacramento\u2019s City Council has adopted 700 transportation plans the city was \u201cunable to build,\u201d according to Transportation Planning Manager Jennifer Donlon Wyant. Construction costs are \u201cskyrocketing,\u201d she said, meaning the $5 billion estimate from 2022 is likely higher now.<\/p>\n \u2022 The city\u2019s 2017 \u201cVision Zero\u201d pledge to eliminate all traffic fatalities by 2027 is off track. More than 270 people have died on city streets since the pledge, according to city data, and Sacramento ranked second-worst among California\u2019s 15 largest cities<\/a> for injury and fatal crashes, with 4,214 people killed or injured in 2023.<\/p>\n \u2022 A proposed ballot measure filed Feb. 20 would impose a half-cent sales tax, raising an estimated $70 million a year. Organizers of the \u201cSafe Streets and Affordable Transit Measure\u201d<\/a> need about 30,000 signatures by mid-June to qualify for the November ballot.<\/p>\n \u2022 Crashes hit low-income communities hardest: 48% occurred in disadvantaged neighborhoods, which contain about 31% of Sacramento\u2019s roads.<\/p>\n \u2022 The Sacramento Police Department issued 13,083 traffic citations in 2025<\/a>, a 56% increase over 2023. Stop-sign violations and unsafe-speed tickets both rose sharply.<\/p>\n \u2022 The city approved a $1.2 million quick-build safety project on Marysville Boulevard<\/a>, a road on which four men have died in crashes since January 2024. None of the four fatal crashes occurred within the project\u2019s limits, but four separate collisions in the half-mile stretch have killed people since 2017. The project in North Sacramento will reduce lanes from four to two and add buffered bike lanes.<\/p>\n This report was produced with the assistance of a proprietary tool powered by artificial intelligence based on our own originally reported, written and published content. Before publishing, journalists reviewed this content in compliance with McClatchy Media\u2019s AI policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vehicles travel along Marysville Boulevard near Nogales Street in North Sacramento on Sept. 17, 2025. A quick-build safety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-262754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}