Oakland

Wednesday afternoon, at SPUR's Oakland office, a crowd of some fifty people came to hear a panel discussion about knitting together the various attractions at the foot of Lake Merritt in Oakland.

With a road diet, new parking configuration, and protected bike lanes on Telegraph Avenue, Oakland is saying to its car drivers: slow down, take it easy. And to its bike riders: you're welcome here and safe.

Note: This story has been corrected since it was originally posted. Thank you to sharp-eyed readers.

“Caltrans is prioritizing safety,” says Friday's press release announcing that the bike path on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge will be closed, beginning today, for the entire month of March.

On a rainy morning in Preservation Park in Oakland, I met with Andrew Faulkner and Jonathan Fearn, advocates with “Connect Oakland,” to discuss their organization's vision to remove the 980 freeway, which sits between downtown and West Oakland.

Egon Terplan is SPUR’s regional planning director. This piece is reprinted with permission from the October 2015 of The Urbanist.

Matt Nichols is Oakland's newly hired policy director for infrastructure and transportation. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf created the position to shepherd her proposed reorganization of transportation planning, design, engineering, and construction into one department, and to oversee the creation of a cohesive transportation policy. Nichols has been in his new job for about two months, and he's excited about this chance to formulate policies to guide infrastructure.

This week, Streetsblog California takes a look at changes occurring in Oakland, California, related to the way the city plans and implements transportation projects.

New Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf showed promise as an executive with a smart vision for her city's streets at the annual kick-off party for Young Professionals in Transportation's SF Bay chapter this week.