Friday Round-up: Contra Costa’s Vision Zero Survey, Caltrain Improves Grade Crossings

Contra Costa County Seeks Feedback on Dangerous Roads and Intersections:

Do you live in Contra Costa County and want to see safer streets? Then be sure to check out the county's Vision Zero poll and interactive map. The county is gearing up to reduce deaths and serious injuries--and planners are hoping to convince their bosses at the Board of Supervisors to join the Vision Zero Coalition. First step: identifying the County's most dangerous corridors and working out ways to fix them.

"We’re doing the investigation first," explained Colin Piethe, a planner with the county. "We’ve just been slowly gearing up this program and haven’t officially adopted Vision Zero."

Caltrain Finishes Grade Crossing Upgrades Ahead of Schedule:

Caltrain has completed upgrades to 15 grade crossings on its corridor. From the agency:

The project cost $3.5 million, with $1.06 million coming from the Federal Rail Administration and $377,000 from State Prop 1B funds. The remainder of the funding came from Caltrain’s Capital budget. A full list of the locations where work was done can be found here.

Of course, as Caltrain electrified and High-speed Rail comes on line, one would hope most if not eventually all grade crossings will be eliminated.

Estuary Channel Update:

And last but not least, Bike East Bay's Rob Prinz brought this to our attention on the battle to get Oakland's estuary-to-Lake Merritt bike path repaired.

That was from Monday. Streetsblog did another survey ride this morning and it looks as if things have progressed a little bit more (even less water and trash, at least in places, but some of that could just be because the rains have let up). We're still hopeful Oakland Public Works will repave and really fix and continue to maintain the path. We'll keep an eye on it.