Four of the candidates vying to replace ousted Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao joined a transportation forum Tuesday evening to discuss their views for the future of the city. Readers can still watch the entire discussion, which was hosted by a coalition of Oakland transportation advocacy groups, by clicking here and entering the code: DZ1!0Y=c.
As readers are surely aware, for years now advocates have fought to promote the capping or removal of I-980, where it splits West Oakland and downtown. This project, as conceptualized in the lead image, caught the attention of the Biden Administration.
Streetsblog highly recommends readers listen to the full debate and do their homework before deciding how to vote for a new mayor. But the answers about removing I-980 (audio excerpt), the final question of the evening, might be a reasonable place to start. What follows is the transcript of the answers from Barbara Lee, Loren Taylor, Renia Webb, and Mindy Pechenuk on how (or if) they would work on removing and/or covering I-980.
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Barbara Lee: Okay. Well, of course, we all know that I-980 was built through Black neighborhoods, really displacing families and cutting off economic opportunities, jobs. And so the efforts in the previous administration, and I was really proud to work with president Biden and secretary Buttigieg in their reconnecting communities effort. Fortunately, we were able to get over a half million dollars to begin to do the study to determine what the options are. But I have to just say quite frankly, it's important that the community weigh in and that those who are working on this have community engagement before any decisions are made because ... examples can replace it with, green space, with mixed-use development, with pedestrian and bike lanes, better transit options, or transit villages.
But, for me personally, if I were mayor, I would wanna see a very, very strong and very engaged, community engagement process because I was very involved in many, many of the processes in the past, either opposing this freeway or supporting what we did, and reconstructed in terms of the Cypress, Mandela Parkway. And so I saw how the community process worked or didn't work and I believe in the reconnecting communities effort that it should be, community led and resident led. And we need to begin now to look at revenue and resources and investments for that because I've said over and over again, I don't know if we will have a federal government left, but believe you me, I know how to leverage our money—my experience and leadership with the state and private foundations and the private sector to come up with the revenue and the investments needed to move forward once the community makes the decisions on reconnecting the communities.
Renia Webb: On this 980 thing, I would say—and I'm gonna curse because it's no children online—hell, no. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of money. I just read an article that it's gonna cost over a million dollars just to do community outreach in the next two years.
I know they're talking about, oh, this was about disproportionately Black families, and this kept Black families out of areas. There's not even really any more Black families that live in Oakland. That live in West Oakland. It's only 20 percent in the whole Oakland, but we're talking about West Oakland. So what are you talking about?
We've already been moved out of that neighborhood, priced out of that neighborhood, gentrified out of that neighborhood. So this project isn't about making it right for Black and Brown people, because they don't even live in the neighborhood. This is going to take about four or five years of money, of community outreach of a highway that I actually think is a great access point to get to Downtown Oakland, to get to East Oakland. When I'm coming from San Francisco, I could go to Walnut Creek. I could go to Alameda. I could go to downtown taking 980.
To me, that's one of the most important corridors of transportation and access in our town. So I don't know why we would spend hundreds of millions of dollars, probably billions of dollars, when we're talking about public safety, when we're talking about investing in green space. My son and I just took a walk Sunday night up in Redwood Regional Forest. Why don't we invest in shuttles to take kids that live in East Oakland? I've lived in Oakland 48 years and had never been up there, and I lived on Reinhardt and Carson. I didn't even know about that park. Why don't we spend the money and invest in, let's go up there, take these kids and invest in shuttles. Invest in shuttles to get people to BART, to busing, and then forget about messing with the freeway that's gonna cost billions of dollars. That probably won't happen for twenty years now.
Mindy Pechenuk: Hi. On what I would do at this point, I-980 shouldn't have been built in the first place. But now that we have it, what do we do with it? And I think that takes a greater feasibility study that has to be looked at.
And I would put it in perspective of a vision of how we're gonna rebuild all of Oakland. How are we gonna rebuild East Oakland? How are we gonna make it a vibrant part of the city again? So I think before I would say, and it's something I need to think more about, to be honest. You know, I would want to see and think about how you would actually look at the totality of Oakland, all the parts of Oakland.
How can we redevelop different areas? What would it take? Does it make sense? Does it not make sense to, you know, the 980 is there. But I think if we take that kind of sort of whole approach rather than looking at one little part of the city and saying, okay, what are we gonna do with the 980? We take a bigger picture. And I do think with this federal government of president Trump that we can do a lot. He wants to build up this country. Oakland is part of that.
And Oaklanders deserves to have what they haven't had for leadership for decades in this city. And you could see because I asked the question. You look at Oakland today, and you look at the devastation we're all talking about, the drugs, the destruction of our children, the education system, the workforce, you know, the safety. To me, they're all one thing. You can't take them apart.
Just like you can't just say about the 980. You have to look at it all. And why isn't that. And that should be our biggest priority right now is to look at that whole package and say, we've got to sit down, discuss this thing through, and look at how we can make Oakland a model of the greatest city that has existed. It's gone from the pits of hell to a great city. Thank you.
Loren Taylor: Thanks for this question. I just wanna acknowledge that my family has been here for three generations. And my grandparents, when they moved here, they first landed in affordable housing at, at on land that is currently part of the Port's property. And the first home that they were able to purchase was on Grove Street. Grove Street, for those who have been here, was basically taken by eminent domain. My family was displaced in order to create the beginnings of what became 980.
I do believe that we need to seriously look at it and I am in favor of removing 980 or undergrounding it, either or. But building the additional 13 new city blocks that can be created through this project. That ... the reason why we would, spend millions and, billion or so dollars on this project is because it will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in terms of additional value. And this is ongoing recurring value created for our city that then can be deployed to address all of our needs, both public transit, addressing public safety, improving housing, and everything else that we value and need to spend money on. So, yes, I'm supportive.
It could be a game changer. It will also ... it could be funded through mechanisms like the uh, not just bringing money from the federal government, state government, and others, but we can also access that through enhanced infrastructure financing districts, a mechanism created, after the, loss of redevelopment so that we, as a city can borrow from what will certainly be the increased revenues from the project once it's completed, and pay that off over time to catalyze this project and get it moving forward. So fully in favor of, this as an initiative. I think it is something; we should be bold. We should look at big game-changing things for our city to stabilize and put us on a different path, and this, absolutely should be one of them.
The same coalition of safe-streets advocates has a District 2 forum scheduled for Thursday, March 13 at 6 p.m. Register for a link to attend online.
