At the January 11, 2024 BPAC Infrastructure Committee meeting, the City of Oakland’s DOT (OakDOT) Major Projects Division will provide an update and accept input on the 7th Street Connection Project from Mandela Parkway to MLK Jr Way in West Oakland. The project aims to reconnect West Oakland and Downtown, create safer and more comfortable ways to travel for those walking, rolling, and taking the bus, improve air quality, and reflect the rich history of 7th Street.

An excerpt of the presentation is below, followed by the full presentation [PDF], presentation and discussion notes.

Presentation

Presentation and discussion notes

• Oakland DOT’s major projects division is working on this project. Overall goal of enhancing connections between West Oakland, Jack London Square, Downtown, and Chinatown.
• Project is on 7th Street between Mandela Parkway and MLK Jr Way.
• Oakland DOT conducted an equity analysis to better understand who will be impacted by the project, and looked who has been most impacted by crashes based on data analysis—this area indicated as highest equity priority category, and Black Oaklanders are most impacted by crashes in the area.
• Project currently at 35% design—an initial design phase where what design features will fit is determined.
• Comment: Was there any community input about the pavement quality?
  • As part of this project the street will be fully repaved, though there weren’t a lot of comments made about this via the community engagement.
• Portion between Mandela and Union only one car lane each direction.
• Initial designs (35%) to be released to the public in March, and more detailed 65% designs in Summer 2024.
• Not yet shown in design plans, but more greening is planned via added street trees in the medians.
• Hope to complete design by June 2025, construction start in 2027 to be completed by 2030.
• Partial improvements at 7th Street and Filbert to be constructed in 2024.
• Comment: Fire department has resisted 20-feet clearance at some locations, requiring 26-feet instead. Just one building between Filbert and Adeline is tall and unsprinklered, which the fire department is most concerned about.
  • Oakland DOT staff have negotiated for 20-foot clearance via this project.
• Comment: Via conversation with fire department staff they indicated interest in flex posts instead of concrete, a 2-way cycletrack on one side, and whether tall, unsprinklered buildings can be retrofitted.
  • Staff are looking at concrete islands—not flex posts, moving forward with protected bike lanes on each side not a 2-way cycletrack on one side. Not able via this project to look at building retrofit projects for fire safety like sprinkler installations.
• Comment: What are the barriers to further reducing vehicle lanes? During most of the day it isn’t highly used
  • Consultant team has done a traffic analysis, based on vehicle count staff doesn’t know if further reduction is feasible.
  • 7th St is currently used by Port of Oakland trucks.
• Comment: Greening in the medians isn’t a benefit to pedestrians. It would be better at the sidewalk where there is a benefit from shade.
• Comment: Is there going to be a consistent median, or if the median is dropped will there be pedestrian refuges?
  • Some parts of 7th are much wider, so median is retained there but not elsewhere. Still working through this in some other areas with the fire department.
  • Staff will explore pedestrian refuge medians.
• Comment: The left-turn pockets look very long, can they be shortened?
  • Will look into this.
• Comment: Like the bikeway design so far, 6.5 foot protected bikeway width should be the minimum to enable passing & side by side riding. Try to maintain this in negotiations with the fire department.
• Comment: Median street trees are also less desirable than at the sidewalk because they’re impacted more by large passing vehicles, and more hazardous to maintain by city crews.
• Comment: Would be good to see outcome of community engagement to make sure that priority demographics are being represented in the project plans.