Sanframento, California

A study conducted by the San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association (SPUR) has explored the possibitliy of a megaregion encompassing the Capital Region and the Bay Area. The findings were discussed at an April inter-regional summit at the University of California in Davis and appear in the November 2007 SPUR Newsletter.

This new mega-region is divided into the core area and the sphere of influence. The core is formed by mapping a two-hour commute, and includes Sacramento, San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. The sphere of influence is extended to a four hour commute, and extends to Fresno & Oroville California, and Reno, Nevada.

About 14,000,000 people live in Sanframento, which includes over half of Californias 58 counties, and almost 6,000,000 people are employed in the region.

The report concentrates on three areas where local governments can work together: extending rail transportation as well as high-occupancy highway and toll lanes; maximizing growth management near high-speed rail stations; and implementing travel-modeling₍₁₎ stimuli such as tax sharing and building economic districts near major transport cores.

The Davis conference also discussed the approval by the California Transpotation Commission of $825 million for the Trade Corridor Improvement Fund to go toward projects in Northern California, including the ports in Sacramento, Stockton, and Oakland.

The SPUR study, 'The Northern California Megaretion', published in the November/December 2007 issue of The Urbanist,  can be accessed online at SPUR.org

(1) Travel-modeling is the use of a set of procedures and equations that are defined to simulate travel.