Last week, in their second and final Grand Street community meeting, City staff presented an updated design that we’re really excited about! Grand Street is a high-injury corridor and a key north-south connector used by many school kids. With goals to improve safety, pavement condition, mobility for all modes, and to align with many of the city’s plans and policies, notably Vision Zero and the newly-minted General Plan, this design proposes lots of great safety enhancements. Especially near and dear to our hearts are the separated bike lanes between Otis and Encinal. These are a significant safety upgrade from the original proposal of paint-only bike lanes, and will encourage so many more people to bike.
One of our asks at the meeting was for more robust bike lane protection than what’s shown in the visual here (think of the bollards and concrete curb stops along the Cross Alameda Trail on Clement as an example). Staff said this was possible, so we’re hoping the next iteration will look even more beautiful than what’s shown here.
Even though our city explicitly prioritizes biking infrastructure over parking in its allocation of street space, any reduction in parking is usually contentious. In this case, however, we’re hoping parking reduction will be less of an issue: there is so much unused on-street parking here, this recommended design will still meet existing parking needs.
Next up, this project goes before the Transportation Commission on the evening of Wednesday, May 25 (along with a presentation on the great improvements proposed for Lincoln). Despite all the great benefits, we anticipate a lot of opposition. If you want to see this vision become a reality, please plan to dial in and speak up for protected bike lanes!
The meeting link hasn’t been posted yet, but you can find it here once it’s available.
We’ve also created a Grand Street project page on our website that we’ll keep up to date with any developments, here.