On Wednesday, August 28, the Transportation Commission will discuss the future of our Slow Streets while we wait for Neighborhood Greenways. Staff is presenting three options:
1. Keep the barricades in place until Neighborhood Greenway treatments are implemented
2. Remove all the barricades immediately
3. Remove all the barricades and replace about half of them with temporary flexposts/paddles
Our preference is to stick with the original plan to keep all of the barricades. Results from the recent survey show community support for this direction, too:
Below is the letter we submitted ahead of the Transportation Commission meeting. Feel free to borrow any of these points if you’d like to send in your own comments. You can email comments to tc@alamedaca.gov.
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Dear Transportation Commissioners and Staff,
The temporary barricades have reduced automobile speeds and volumes, and made these few streets feel a little safer for all users, particularly people walking and rolling. We’re very eager for more effective infrastructure to be implemented, and lament every delay, but we discourage potentially jeopardizing the gains that have been made by removing or scaling back on barricades in any way. We strongly prefer Option 1 (keeping the barricades in place) over the other options because:
- It best preserves reduced automobile speeds and volumes, the primary goal of the program.
- It’s supported by the majority of respondents in the recent community poll.
- It aligns with the Active Transportation Plan and original Council direction.
- It avoids having to create new signage and communications that might introduce confusion and risk making the transition to Neighborhood Greenways more difficult.
Below are our responses to the “cons” for Option 1 as noted in the staff report:
- Continued Public Works maintenance resources: Any quick-build solution will need on-going support from Public Works. That’s the reality of quick-builds: they’re fast and inexpensive in terms of materials and installation, but to be effective over time, maintenance is required. Rather than something to cut back on, we see this support as a critical investment in a program that’s vital to meeting our city’s goals around street safety, climate action, and livability.
- An additional winter with barricades being blown over. We propose using the $25-$30K referenced in the staff report to address this issue to make a few minor tweaks:
- Purchase more sandbags and removable anchors if feasible to better secure the barricades for winter storms.
- To improve flow around the barricades, repaint barricade markings to position barricades so there’s a 4-foot opening between the barricade and the flexpost, or between the barricade and the curb. This will give people on bikes an alternative to going around the outside of the flexpost.
- Swap out flexposts at major crossings with wider paddles with a QR code as proposed for Option 3.
- Continued community complaints about the safety, aesthetics and inconvenience of the barricades. In our minds, the larger issue here is not really the barricades, but communication and managing change. Per the staff report, concerns about safety around the barricades have been unfounded, so it should be countered, especially given the broader context of safety gains overall. ‘Inconvenience’ is largely by design, to discourage fast, inattentive, and unnecessary driving on these streets. It’s not something to be fixed, but to be explained. Aesthetics is probably the most compelling of these complaints, and no one will argue that the barricades are attractive. However, safety is our primary concern, and they’ve helped on that front. In making these spaces more welcoming, the barricades have allowed people to enjoy active transportation and a greater sense of community, and we’d argue there’s a beauty to that — barricade aesthetics are something we can live with a bit longer, given those upsides!
Regarding the implementation strategy for conversions and broader roll-out, we hope that keeping things on track will be a priority, given the time already lost and urgency for progress. A few further thoughts and suggestions:
- Leverage insights from neighboring cities like San Francisco and Oakland to accelerate our rollout and improve our program.
- Apply consistent/minimum standards across the program.
- Anticipate and include Public Works/maintenance costs in future budgets for all quick-build projects.
- In collecting data to study diversion, consider also collecting data on a few streets outside of Neighborhood Greenway streets and their parallels, to serve as controls and benchmarking.
We hope you share our interest in keeping the momentum of this important project moving forward by supporting Option 1. Thank you for your consideration.
Bike Walk Alameda Board
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