EGCMP

The Elk Grove Compulsory Motoring Program is alive and well. We had to drive down to Grant Line Rd. and the highway to get to the Vespa scooter store. I'm in the northern part of this 'city' and I rarely drive around the southland, but I saw the new construction on the Sheldon Rd. overcrossing and the Grant Line Rd. overcrossing, in support of the new regional open air mall, shed-jooled to open sometime in 2009.

Massive construction efforts to widen the Grove's bridges have been going on for fifteen years, because the 'city' expanded both east and west of the highway. But these overcrossings, every one of them, are fit for fast moving vehicles, and fast moving vehicles only. It's not as if anyone ever walked across the original Sheldon Rd. bridge, but now it's most certainly suicide for pedestrians, bicyclists, and...scooterists.

I place 'city' in quotes only because Elk Grove is a city only in name. It's really a suburban slum with strip-mall retail. It's been underwritten by inexpensive gasoline for two decades, and with cheap gasoline, the City Council underwrote the Compulsory Motoring Program.

The thing is, we are continuing to fund this bad loan, but now with expensive gasoline. A quick look at the map will reveal that this new Open Air Promenade (i.e., big outdoor strip mall) has been placed at the extreme southern end of all current growth. 97% of the 140k+ Elk Grovians live to the north, of which 90% commute farther north to the job centers of this region.

No planner in their right fucking mind would put their retail crowning jewel (anchored by Target and Penny's, by the way) at the edge of development. You can see where this is going...they are planning for another 140k+ of growth to occur south of Grant Line over the next three decades...growth in low density suburbia to commute even further to the north and to shop at their mall.

This is just an extension of the EGCMP. Even if high gasoline reduces southern growth, we still have the issue that the existing 97% of the mall shoppers in this 'city' will all have to drive south to participate in mall shopping.