At the August 17, 2023 BPAC meeting, Bicycle and Pedestrian Program staff, Patrick Phelan and Pierre Gerard, will summarize progress implementing the projects and programs in “Let’s Bike Oakland,” the citywide bike plan adopted in July 2019. View the city existing & proposed bikeway map here.

An excerpt of the presentation is below, followed by the full presentation and summary of discussion.

Progress on Programs

With the Oakland Public Library (OPL)

• In Place
  • Bike repair toolkits for checkout
  • Cargo bikes as mobile repair shops
  • Upcycle Program with Cycles of Change
  • Bike Fix-it Clinics and giveaways at the 81st Ave and MLK library branches
  • Bike parking (200 spaces at 18 libraries including eight eLockers at Rockridge)
• Underway
  • The Shed for OPL (in design)
  • Scraper Bike Team moving to Arroyo Viejo Park
• Up Next
  • eLockers at additional branches

With Community-Based Organizations

• In Place
  • UpCycle Earn-a-Bike Program with Cycles of Change (since July 2019: 6 courses, 75 attendees)
  • Street Skills Courses by Bike East Bay (since July 2019: 34 courses, 506 attendees)
  • Bike to Wherever Day with Bike East Bay and Walk Oakland Bike Oakland
  • Transformative Climate Communities grant ($1 million) awarded to fund (a) youth-focused bike library, (b) Afterschool Enrichment Sessions, and (c) Bike Repair Sessions by Higher Ground and the Scraper Bike Team
  • MTC “Quick Strike” grants for programming to Cycles of Change, Red Bike and Green, and Spokeland
• Up Next
  • Other bike and pedestrian programming to be funded over the next two years, $75k allocated from Capital Improvement Program (CIP) in FY23-24 budget
• Challenges
  • Turnover at community-based organizations causing delayed invoicing and contract implementation
  • City contracting limited by understaffing

Presentation

Summary of discussion

• The Bancroft Ave bike lanes are used as travel lanes. Drivers drive in the bike lanes as passing lanes. In the most recent restriping, an effort was made to break up the extra space to deter drivers from passing illegally on the left or right of the travel lane.
• Buffered bike lanes shouldn’t be considered low-stress bike lanes. More physical separation needs to be provided between travel lanes and bike lanes.
• It would helpful to bring bike parking installation in-house.
• In the future consider tracking how much of the total miles of proposed protected bike lanes have been implemented. This has been followed up at the January 11, 2024 Infrastructure Committee meeting.
• Three pedestrians were killed on Bancroft Ave after the paving project. OakDOT needs to prioritize traffic safety improvements that get delivered through paving.
• Address other means of measuring outcomes, including bicyclist counts and survey responses. OakDOT does annual counts of pedestrians and bicyclists at 35 locations and follows the annual releases of the American Community Survey data from the US Census Bureau.
• The ramp-up to building protected bike lanes has been slow. But there are a lot of funded projects underway, particularly in the downtown.
• Focus on the quality of bikeways, particularly with neighborhood bike routes and buffered bike lanes. Some may be low stress but others are not.
• The utility coordination has been very beneficial. But it is opportunistic and it may not be advancing our equity goals. It would be good to back-check where this work is being done to see if more needs to be done in priority neighborhoods.
• It would be helpful to see a report of projects that did not include the bikeway proposed by the Bike Plan.
• Put more resources into collecting speed data and communicating it publicly.