At the July 28, 2025 BPAC Policy and Legislative Committee meeting, Liza Lutzker will present on “Examining the Safety-Safety Dilemma: Preliminary Findings from a Study of Conflicts between Safe Streets Improvements and Emergency Response”.
Cities across the United States (U.S.) are encountering mounting tensions between efforts to improve street infrastructure for pedestrian and bicyclist safety (e.g., protected bike lanes, speed tables) and concerns from fire departments that such changes can impede emergency response and evacuation. However, emergency response and street safety need not be incompatible goals. Cities across the U.S. are developing innovative solutions, addressing the physical, institutional, and cultural roots of these conflicts.
Under a grant from the US Department of Transportation and the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety, our UC Berkeley team is completing an exploratory research project to better understand the roots of conflicts and innovative means of overcoming conflicts. Under a grant from the US Department of Transportation and the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety, our UC Berkeley team is completing an exploratory research project to better understand the roots of conflicts and innovative means of overcoming conflicts between street safety efforts and fire and emergency response priorities.
An excerpt is below, followed by the full presentation.
At the July 17, 2025 BPAC meeting, Jasmine Stitt, Caltrans District 4 Complete Streets Performance Coordinator, provided a presentation on the draft Caltrans Bay Area Bike Plan Update, with a focus on recommendations and priorities related to Oakland. This updated bike plan analyzed conditions for biking along and across the State Transportation Network in the nine county Bay Area, and identified priority improvements to provide a more connected, lower-stress bicycle transportation network in our region.
At the July 3, 2025 BPAC Infrastructure Committee meeting, OakDOT Bicycle and Pedestrian Program staff will present draft recommendations for a Slow Streets network in Oakland. Slow Streets were initially an OakDOT innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide physically distanced outdoor spaces for residents. Staff are taking lessons learned from the pandemic and applying them to Oakland’s work-to-date developing bike boulevards and neighborhood bike routes (NBRs). Staff are proposing these routes be re-envisioned as slow streets for travel at human-powered speeds while simultaneously making these streets more welcoming for residents to use as public spaces. The presentation explains the purpose, planning criteria, and methodology for developing the draft Slow Streets network. View the interactive web map of the draft Slow Streets network.
An excerpt is below, followed by the full presentation.
The BPAC Infrastructure Committee meeting will be held on Thursday, July 3, 2025, 3:30-5:30pm in-person at the Broadway Conference Room (4th floor) at 250 Frank Ogawa Plaza building.
At the June 12, 2025 BPAC meeting, Caltrans staff will provide an update on the Vision 980 Study and upcoming summer outreach events. Caltrans is seeking public feedback on three potential scenarios for reimagining the I-980 corridor between I-880 and I-580. Interested members of the public can sign up for email updates on the project website, where the new public survey and details on June in-person events will be posted.
An excerpt is below, followed by the full presentation.
At the June 12, 2025 BPAC meeting, Kerby Olsen, OakDOT Shared Mobility Coordinator, will provide an update on the BayWheels E-Bike Expansion, the E-Bike Lending Pilot, and E-Bikes for Parking Enforcement.
An excerpt is below, followed by the full presentation.
Oakland BPAC Blog 