Holy Sacrancisco!

Drive the Interstate-80 corridor west out of Sacramento and consider the creep. Yes, it often seems inevitable that one day our region will become fully joined, by virtue of development crawl, to the San Francisco Bay Area. Planners herald this future as the coming of a true Northern California “megaregion.” Ugh.

In the spirit of making this eventuality a little less ugh-worthy, it was heartening to hear that efforts are underway to improve regional coordination along this corridor when it comes to transportation and land-use planning. A “summit” meeting on the middle-ground turf of UC Davis was held earlier this month and those gathered—transportation and planning sages from east and west—agreed to work together to find holistic approaches for solving the increased congestion problems that come along with being a megaregion. Hopefully, this joint planning effort will include initiatives for much improved public-transit options.

We have one gripe, however. The phrase the planners came up with to designate this new era of Joint Transportation Think is a stinker: Sanframento. This word has all the charm of a fallen soufflé. (See above suggestion?) Attention planners: Maybe it’s time to host a Name That Megaregion! contest, so as to arrive at a more inspiring slogan.