Commentary: Caltrans, Aren’t we Entitled to the Same Safety You Provide for Yourselves?
At the corner of Jackson and 5th in Oakland, there’s a big concrete pedestal, a pole, and Jersey barriers forming a protected corner to force motorists to slow down to a safe speed as they exit the Nimitz freeway.
Caltrans workers have built crude but effective protection that, for the first time, make a subset of the corners at the intersections at Jackson and 5th and Oak and 5th safer for pedestrians. The layout is an even more robust version of the safe, concrete and granite-protected corners I’ve long advocated for; the kind one can find in New York, London, and cities in Europe that are reducing fatal and serious collisions or have already achieved Vision Zero. Basically, Caltrans has built giant protected intersections, albeit without incorporating any bike lanes in them.
These temporary installations are part of a $175 million freeway ramp-widening, deceptively named the “Oakland Alameda Access Project.” The protected corners and other areas were built to protect their workers, who are redoing gutters and sidewalks in preparation for their freeway widening. Sadly, when the ramps are reconfigured and widened, when the construction workers and engineers with their clipboards deposit their checks and go on to the next project, all the safety features described above will be gone. Reckless drivers will once again fly off the freeway and speed around the corners in the neighborhood with impunity.
Does Caltrans think safety is a joke?
Meanwhile, advocates with Bike East Bay pushed back hard on this project when Caltrans violated its own guidelines and inexplicably removed the painted bike lanes on Oak and replaced them with sharrows at the start of all this construction. As mentioned, Caltrans already installed Jersey barriers to protect their work areas and themselves. All they had to do was move them over a few feet to incorporate the bike lanes using the same barriers.
Instead, in answer to Bike East Bay’s complaints, they painted a stripe along the side of the barriers that is exposed to traffic (see below). They now use the bike space to park their trucks.
Now they can claim they gave us our bike lanes back. To be frank, I sincerely believe when the public is not in the room, they laugh about all this. This really seems deliberate.
Safety for thee, but not for me
All of this proves that Caltrans officials know exactly how to keep vulnerable road users safe; they just chose to do it only when it’s about their own safety, rather than the public’s. As soon as the construction is finished, all of these concrete safety enhancements will be no more. Drivers will once again be facilitated by the designs to take corners dangerously fast. Pedestrians and cyclists will pay the price with their limbs and lives. Just look at the images below and note the difference in the turning radius between the temporary orange barriers routing drivers around the construction site and the permanent concrete gutter Caltrans is building.
The mess is emblematic of everything at Caltrans
There are people at Caltrans trying to reform the agency from within, but they don’t seem to be having much success. Occasionally, strong politicians can really push and get a safer design, as happened in El Cerrito on San Pablo Avenue. But I can say with certainty that the people running this particular project in Oakland, and many like it in other parts of the Bay Area, have a stark double standard when it comes to safety. That should surprise no one: it’s the same crew from Alameda County and Caltrans that built the asphalt hellscape in Fruitvale. Or look at what they did on Hesperian Boulevard in San Lorenzo—a supposedly multi-modal project that is oppressive and dangerous to anyone not in a car.
Living next to a Caltrans widening project underscores that the people who run the agency knowingly and deliberately put pedestrians and cyclists in danger. Thousands of people bike and walk on the same streets and sidewalks they are working on and walking around today, but without car-blocking barriers and speed reducing radii corners to keep them safe. Caltrans staff routinely expose the public to a level of risk that they don’t tolerate for themselves.
The double standard is stark and appalling. Advocates and lawmakers need to be clear-eyed about this reality and hold agency staff and managers accountable.
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