Oakland Update: Heavy Construction Finally Starts on Lakeshore Avenue Protected Bike Lane

Steam rollers, earth movers, and construction crews were busy transforming Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland Tuesday afternoon, implementing a street redesign that will finally bring protected bike lanes to another portion of the lake.

From the city of Oakland’s bulletin:

This major construction will occur on Lakeshore Avenue in two phases:  

• Phase 1 (WEEK OF JUNE 22): East 18th Street to Brooklyn Avenue
• Phase 2 (WEEK OF JULY 6): Brooklyn Avenue to MacArthur Boulevard

DRIVERS AND BICYCLISTS ARE ENCOURAGED TO USE OTHER ROUTES TO AVOID THE AREA FROM JUNE 22-26 AND FROM JULY 6-10.

Actually, cyclists don’t really have to change up that much—the adjacent mixed-use path along the east side of the lake will remain open. Either way, it should go without saying that everybody on one, two, four, or more wheels should “go slow, yield to pedestrians and pass with care,” wrote Bike East Bay’s Robert Prinz. That’s exactly what is happening in the photo below, also taken Tuesday afternoon:

As The Oaklandside covered earlier this month, completion of the two-way protected bike lane was delayed to the Spring of 2027. The groundbreaking was in July of 2025, and work was supposed to be completed later that year. But as explained by the city of Oakland:

During initial construction for the roadway portion of the project, the project team identified pavement failures that were more extensive than originally anticipated. Subsequent investigations also revealed shallow underground utility conflicts within the work area. To address these unforeseen conditions, the City project team and designer performed additional engineering analysis and redesigned portions of the project to avoid utility conflicts.

Previously, Lakeshore Avenue had the usual door-zone paint-only lanes that wedge cyclists between parked cars and moving traffic. Those lanes are now gone. When the project is completed, there will be a two-way lane protected by parking and a wide concrete buffer, as seen in the rendering above.

In 2023, on Lakeshore around Hanover Street, Maia Correia, 4, who was riding on the back of her father’s bike, was killed when a parked driver opened his door without looking. Maia, who was wearing a helmet, suffered a fatal brain injury in the crash.

Oakland installed protected bike lanes on Lakeside Drive, on the west side of Lake Merritt, in 2018. This is part of an overarching project to loop the lake with protected bike lanes. However, other sections continue to be delayed and, until recently, that included the mile along Lakeshore Avenue. The Correia family lobbied the city to accelerate the timeline for installing protected bike lanes on Lakeshore, which were, at the time, still many years off. Sheila McKracken, Maia Correia’s aunt, told The Oaklandside that despite the delays, she still looked forward to the eventual opening of the Lakeshore section of protected bike lane.