Oakland Needs to Stop Building Sub-Par Infrastructure

See that drainage gutter pan to the left of the curb in the lead photo and the photo below? That's part of what qualifies as bike infrastructure on a brand new street in Oakland that will serve the Brooklyn Basin Housing development, currently under construction. That waterfront development will eventually house 3,000 people. The expectation is that many, if not most, of the new residents will get around by foot and by bike.

But if that's going to happen, first we need to stop pretending drainage channels make suitable bike lanes (even if a painted buffer is added later, which is reportedly the plan).

And in the rendering above, showing how Embacadero will cross the estuary channel, Oakland is repeating a bad design it put in place a few years ago on Lake Merritt Boulevard. The current design places the crash barrier on the right side of the bike lane instead of the left, where it could actually protect cyclists instead of just giving them something to get crushed against in a collision.

The irony is that for all intents and purposes they're already building a wonderful, truly protected, Dutch-style bike lane, that would be safe for all ages and abilities, as pictured below:

Officially, that's the sidewalk, but it's doubling as a mixed-use path during the construction. The plan is to move cyclists off it once construction is finished. However, imagine if this sidewalk were painted green and made wider, or a second, completely separate pedestrian path were added to the right of it. Whether you prefer to call it a "cycletrack," "Dutch-style bike lane," or the official state "Class IV" designation, the bottom line is that such a design would create a truly safe bike space for all ages and abilities.

That's also the preferred design in the Netherlands, as seen below. The only difference would be the Dutch use red asphalt instead of green paint.

And if your response to this photo is "what about the driveways?" please just watch this four-minute film. (Not that there are many driveways on Oakland's Embarcadero, since the road essentially goes along the coast).

It's a cruel irony that even as cities such as Oakland struggle to retrofit streets with parking-protected bike lanes with one hand, they continue to pour concrete and adhere to these outdated designs with the other. The excuse is that some of these projects were in the pipeline years ago, so the designs are outdated, but we're just stuck with them. From Streetsblog's view, that's incredibly lame: if the designs suck, then stop the project and fix them.

The good news is change orders can happen. Bike East Bay's community organizer Susie Hufstader, who commutes on Oakland's Embardero, pointed out that the City of Oakland changed the plans on its Lakeside Drive project to include protected bike lanes. This was in large part due to pressure from Bike East Bay--and to the change in management of Oakland's new Department of Transportation.

Can another change order happen so soon? "No reason that couldn’t happen, in theory, on the Embacadero," said Dave Campbell, Advocacy Director for Bike East Bay.

Will it happen? Campbell explained that change orders can be expensive and contentious. Streetsblog has a call in to the new officials at Oakland DOT to find out what they think and will update this post if any reply. Maybe Streetsblog readers could put in a few calls and emails too.

Either way, at some point all the cities in the Bay Area just need to stop building stuff like this in the first place. We have enough bad designs to fix and retrofit already. There is no excuse for Caltrans and area DOTs to keep installing dangerous infrastructure that future generations will have to fix.