A 10.6-mile protected path will soon be built through East Oakland and San Leandro, giving locals a continuous, safe way to walk or bike in what is otherwise one of most dangerous areas in the state because of vehicle collisions.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the Alameda County Transportation Commission $30 million to begin construction of the first phase of the East Bay Greenway Multimodal Project in 2025. This green transit development will eventually connect Oakland to Fremont, with the entire greenway reaching 30 miles at an estimated cost of $133 million.
Running in Oakland mostly along E. 12th Street and San Leandro Street, the greenway will add wide pathways, intersections with better crosswalks, new crossing signals, and beautification and accessibility like benches, landscaping, and better lighting. Unlike other redesigns that make roads safer by removing lanes to narrow roadways and slowing cars down, this project keeps most vehicle driving lanes. The streets where the path will be added are wide enough to accommodate the new greenway while also keeping it anywhere from two to 11 feet away from vehicle lanes, including parking spaces.
The first phase of construction will span Lake Merritt at Fallon Street along E. 12th Street past the Clinton, San Antonio, and Fruitvale neighborhoods and stretch through most of San Leandro Street, from the Coliseum to the farthest eastern edge of San Leandro at the Bayfair mall.
According to the last 12 years of publicly available data, the roads in Oakland where the greenway will be added have been fraught with violent collisions. An Oaklandside review of data from UC Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System found nearly 700 collisions reported on or in the immediate vicinity of roads where the greenway will be built, with about 1,000 people suffering injuries, 34 severe injuries, and five deaths. More than 130 pedestrians and cyclists were involved. 12th Street and San Leandro Street are on Oakland’s high injury network, a handful of roads where a disproportionate number of collisions occur.
Connecting low-income neighborhoods in a safe way to regional transit
The path’s big promise is that it will make it easier for low-to-middle-income families, mostly living in East Oakland, to choose the safest and most environmentally friendly transit options of walking and biking to get around their neighborhoods. Greenway users will likely also benefit from connections to other transit, as Greenway designs have pathway connections at many AC Transit bus stops and five BART stations.
The Oakland segment of the East Bay Greenway will also connect to other major streets that have been or are being redesigned for greater safety. One is Calm East Oakland Streets, a new bike infrastructure project on several streets, including 81st Avenue, that is being paid for with state funding.
“Reconnecting communities that have been underinvested in will increase safety and access, and result in more equitable opportunities for people who live and work in this corridor,” Alameda CTC Chair and Emeryville Councilmember John Bauters said in a press release about the grant.
“For too long, communities along this corridor have been in need of these types of investments to advance economic development, community connectedness, and cleaner air,” Mayor Sheng Thao said on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
“This will be a critical piece of high-quality bikeway that will run in communities where the bike network is still sparse and good biking and walking routes are hard to come by,” Justin Hu-Nguyen, the executive director of Bike East Bay, a local bike advocacy organization, told The Oaklandside.
The greenway grant was one of 17 awarded to California projects by the USDOT this year and the second largest behind a $130 million Los Angeles project that will improve bus infrastructure and reliability. The federal agency gave $3.3 billion to US projects through its Reconnecting Communities & Neighborhoods Grant Program, funded this year by the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. Last year, Oakland was also part of the first Reconnecting Communities round of funding, with the California Department of Transportation receiving a $680,000 planning grant to begin studying the feasibility of removing the I-980 freeway.
While the Alameda County Transportation Commission coordinates with individual cities and their transportation departments on these projects, it manages the design, funding, contracting, and project management. According to Bike East Bay advocacy director Rob Prinz, this project, as well as the San Pablo Avenue project, are part of the first wave of projects in the Bay Area that planners call “multi-jurisdictional,” where a regional agency can apply for larger grants that can help multiple connected cities with similar infrastructure needs.
Local transportation departments, though, are still procuring funds from other sources, like the Bay Area Quality Management District and an assortment of county and state measures, to build up parts of these projects.
OakDOT, for example, is expected to build a six-mile section of the greenway from Fruitvale BART to 54th Avenue later this year. It already built half a mile of protected lanes from 73rd Avenue to 85th Avenue in 2019 and will break ground on a path on San Leandro Street from Seminary Avenue to 69th Avenue later this month. The latter project will include 50 new trees, lighting, and upgrades to connected traffic signals and crosswalks.
Bike East Bay’s Rob Prinz, who leads the organization’s advocacy, said investing in historically disinvested Oakland communities can help raise the quality of life.
“This project is an incredible opportunity to reimagine these corridors in a way that puts people first, not just cars, bringing more benefit to local businesses and saving lives in the process,” Prinz said.
