Oakland Advocates Demand a Safer Harrison Street

Harrison Street in Oakland is six lanes wide through a residential area with families, children, and a middle school—it’s yet another totally inappropriate, overbuilt, and dangerous street for its environment. “Over the past 4 months alone, a cyclist was struck with serious injuries, there have been countless near misses at the crosswalk serving the school, and cars have spun off the street and into the sidewalk leaving cars in pieces. Segments of the corridor are on the City’s High Injury Network, where severe and fatal crashes concentrate,” wrote a coalition of advocates with Bike East Bay, Traffic Violence Rapid Response, Students from Westlake Middle School, and various other community groups and members, in a statement.

The group will hold a rally Friday morning at Harrison and Hamilton Place to demand immediate improvements between I-580 and 27th Street. Also from the joint release:

On Valentine’s Day, the community is holding a protest to make their message known to City Officials that enough is enough. Community members will demand critical safety improvements that will lead to meaningful change, including a lane reduction, a continuous safe bike facility, and pedestrian crossing improvements. Protesters will relay their disappointment that after over 15 years of talk, the City has yet to take any action that will improve safety.

Well, technically the city did stripe some bike lanes and put in sharrows on the massive street.

Streetsblog, meanwhile, put out an inquiry earlier this month about the one substantial safety improvement on Harrison that the city has at least started—at the intersection with 27th and Bay Place by Oakland’s Whole Foods. As part of the 27th Street Complete Streets project, improvements are, in theory, coming to this particularly gnarly intersection with Harrison.

But almost as if Oakland wants to keep all of this stretch of Harrison as dangerous as possible, the protection at the intersection drops out (see the area in red circled below—that’s where Harrison meets 27th).

A spokesperson for the city of Oakland said that corner will get protected sometime in the Fall, although it’s unclear why it wasn’t done along with the plaza to the right and the protected bike lane in the foreground on 27th. After all things only had to be reconfigured to have the bike lane pass to the right of that planter in the above image instead of wedging cyclists between the curb and turning traffic. As is, that corner practically invites a right-turning driver coming off 27th or going straight down Harrison from straying into the bike space and mashing someone.

The rally for a safer Harrison is Friday, February 14, from 8–8:30 a.m. at Harrison Street at Hamilton Place, Oakland.