"Through this work her spirit will live on," said safe-streets advocate Sheila McCracken, to a crowd of some 80 people assembled to mark the groundbreaking of a concrete-protected bike lane on Lakeshore in Oakland Friday afternoon.
McCraken's four-year-old niece, Maia Correia, was bicycling with her father on Lakeshore in 2023 in the paint-only striped bike lane when an inattentive driver opened his door into them. The little girl sustained a brain injury in the crash and later died.
After the tragedy, McCraken and Maia's grandmother Hydeh Ghaffari, met with advocates and politicians and demanded that the city install protected bike lanes on Lakeshore to make sure her death was not in vain. Friday the construction began.
"Too many of our residents are killed or injured biking and walking in our city," said Mayor Barbara Lee, who also spoke at the event. "That is unacceptable. Today, we break ground not just on infrastructure, but on a promise to a family."
From Bike East Bay's backgrounder on the project:
This 2-way concrete-protected cycletrack was expedited 2 years ahead of the original 2027 construction schedule in response to a tragic crash that occurred in the summer of 2023. We are pleased to have worked with city staff and local advocacy partners to move this project forward, as part of our greater Lake Merritt Loop campaign for protected bikeway facilities all the way around the lake.
Maia's family, meanwhile, thanked Oakland DOT staff for their hard work in getting the project to this point. They also praised the current mayor and former city councilperson, Nikki Fortunato Bas, and the current councilperson, Charlene Wang.
And Ghaffari thanked the advocates at Traffic Violence Rapid Response and Bike East Bay "for the work they do every day to make Oakland safer."
Of course, the city still has a long way to go. A larger project to ring the lake with protected bike lanes is still off in the future. As to Mayor Lee, it would be remiss not to mention that while she was telling the crowd it is paramount to keep people on bikes safe, her own car was parked in the bike lane.
Meanwhile, advocates were hopeful that, rather than waiting for another tragedy, the city will become proactive and start building protected bike lanes as the default. "I hope this is the new standard for the city, the new baseline," said Carter Lavin, a climate activist in Oakland.
"This will be a big improvement over what was here before in terms of safety for cyclists and pedestrians," said advocate Brian Simmons, also in the audience at the event. "My ultimate goal is streets that are so safe my grandkids can bike to school in Oakland."
At the end of the event, a new sign was unveiled over Lakeshore, naming the soon-to-be-protected bike lane after Maia Correia.
The Lakeshore project should take about a year to complete.
"This is also a painful reminder of all that loss," said McCracken, adding that building protected bike lanes on Lakeshore isn't enough. "We need this work to continue to make sure the entire city is protected."
