Editor's Note: Alamedans have enjoyed slow streets across the island—including on Pacific Avenue, San Jose Avenue, and Versailles Avenue—since the COVID pandemic. Several of these streets are slated to become permanent "greenways," with concrete diverters, speed bumps, and other features designed to give priority to cyclists and pedestrians. However, as the city delays this conversion, its traffic engineers are talking about removing the temporary barriers so that they cease to be slow streets at all until the greenway improvements are installed. Understandably, this move is alarming advocates. Bike Walk Alameda is pushing back hard, and demanding slow streets remain slow. Their post below explains the details and why they want the barricades left in place.
Neighborhood Greenways and Slow Street barricades will be discussed at the next City Council meeting as Item 7-C. Unfortunately, Staff is recommending an option that removes a lot of the barricades — about half of those along Pacific, Versailles, and San Jose. This despite their acknowledging the barricades’ effectiveness, the recent community survey that shows support for keeping them, and the Transportation Commission’s general preference to keep them, too.
They recommend keeping the barricades on Santa Clara in place until the Central Avenue project is complete.
Why Remove (Any) Barricades?
According to the staff report, the main reasons are to reduce complaints and to cut down on maintenance. They believe that by removing barricades not located at Slow Street entry points or at major intersections, they’ll address those two issues while preserving many of the benefits the barricades provide.
Will it work? It’s hard to believe that so many fewer barricades won’t lead to more cars on these streets, which goes against the program’s goals of reducing car traffic.
So the question becomes: Are the complaints and maintenance issues severe enough to justify potentially weakening the program by removing any barricades?
Complaints v. Survey Responses
There’s no denying that the barricades have critics, and staff and electeds like to be responsive to the public. But here’s the thing — the survey gauged the broader community’s views, and nearly 2,000 people responded, with more preferring to keep the barricades. Shouldn’t these results carry much more weight than unrecorded complaints?
Further, many of the complaints stem from misconceptions. For example, claims that the barricades are hazardous or that they’re not working are not backed by evidence. In fact, existing evidence suggests the opposite. The complaint that they’re relics of the pandemic shows a misunderstanding of their larger purpose as part of a transition to Neighborhood Greenways. Complaints about inconveniencing drivers miss the point that the barricades are meant to discourage fast, inattentive, and unnecessary driving (ie, thru traffic). The goal of the program is to reduce car volumes and speeds so that people of all ages and abilities are safer and more comfortable biking. This is critical for the program’s success.
Basing recommendations on these kinds of complaints—let alone legitimizing them—is counterproductive. Instead, these moments could be treated as opportunities to inform and educate the public. People may not understand how the barricades play a role in Alameda’s broader goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that they are a first step toward building the safer, slower street network that will encourage a shift toward greener transportation.
John Bauters, Emeryville Councilmember and Alameda County Transportation Commission Vice Chair, has mastered the technique of turning complaints into learnings. He explains in a recent interview:
You know, a classic example is our street-paving program. This last year we put in protected bike lanes around all of our schools, and we put protected intersections in. And I got an email from a parent who said, “These concrete islands, you put them out in the intersections here, and I have to slow down to an almost stop now. And you have this big, wide separated bike path in front of the school, but when I pick up my kids, I only saw 12 bikes parked in front of the school. And I don’t know if you ever enlisted a civil engineer to even design this. It’s totally stupid. Why did you do this, and did you really even talk to the parents about why we want the pick-up car lane in front of the school as opposed to where it was moved to to provide for bike safety?”
And my email begins, “Dear constituent, thank you so much for noticing and contacting me about our Safe Routes to Schools Program. The protected intersection that you are now navigating is designed by a licensed civil engineer employed here at the city of Emeryville, and meets all safety codes and standards for design. And did you know that over 60 percent of children who are hit and killed in a crosswalk in Alameda County die at an intersection within a block of their school? I am not interested in putting a teddy bear memorial up in front of the school so their classmates can walk past that every day as a reminder that it’s not safe near my school. I can prevent that. I can provide safety, I can provide livability, I can provide sustainability choice by doing this today.” And I said, “And I’m very happy to hear that it’s working exactly as it was designed to do.” I don’t usually get responses from those replies.
Maintenance v. Investment
The second reason for Staff’s recommendation is to reduce maintenance, which we understand is less than 5 hours a week. This doesn’t seem like much, and this compromise would only reduce part of it, since the remaining barricades would still need maintenance. The savings in time and resources would likely be a couple of hours a week at most. Is that really worth backtracking on the progress we’ve made?
More broadly, shouldn’t we be investing in this important program rather than trying to cut costs? It’s already suffered setbacks and delays. If we want to get our 2030 Backbone Low Stress Network built on time, a greater commitment of attention, funding, and resources is needed, not less.
Option 1: Keep All the Barricades
For these reasons, we still strongly support Option 1, which calls for keeping all the barricades in place until they’re replaced with Neighborhood Greenways. This option:
- best preserves reduced car speeds and volumes, the primary goal of the program;
- best aligns with the community survey results, which show support for keeping the barricades;
- was generally favored by the Transportation Commission;
- is consistent with the Active Transportation Plan and Council’s original direction;
- avoids any risk confusing residents by removing barricades on some streets but not others; and
- best maintains forward momentum of the program.
The Council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, September 17. The full agenda and registration details are here. Tune in and comment if you’re inclined, or submit comments in writing to all City Councilmembers by using this address: citycouncil-list@alamedaca.gov. Be sure to reference the Item (7-C) and cc the clerk at clerk@alamedaca.gov. Feel free to use any of our points if you’d like.
A version of this post originally appeared on the Bike Walk Alameda website and is reprinted here with permission.
