One Size Does Not Fit All: Bike Lanes, Communities, and How City Government Needs the Humility to Evolve
by Ryan Russo, Director of the City of Oakland Department of Transportation (OakDOT)
Over the first few years since OakDOT was founded in 2016, we have prided ourselves on pushing the envelope for our values and our community. We’ve challenged the traditional models DOTs take for granted in approaching our work, in part because traditional models have failed so many communities — we’ve moved paving funds where they’re most needed by prioritizing our historically underserved communities; we’ve pushed hard for widened mobility access (at one time boasting the only city portfolio in the U.S. with shared e-scooters, shared e-bikes, car share, adaptive bike share, and moped share all at once); and we’ve brought safety innovations in from elsewhere with the first known west coast installation of hardened centerlines to protect people crossing the street near our schools. We adopted a bike plan built on the leadership of East Oakland communities where bike lanes can often signal unwanted gentrification; we overcame the hurdles of pandemic-driven shelter-in-place orders to conduct community engagement in lines where drivers were getting free groceries or dropping door-hangers in priority neighborhoods. We adapt and innovate to do better.
Without taking risks, we wouldn’t be making this progress to better serve Oakland. But it’s just as important that we maintain the humility to recognize when an experiment isn’t working, and when we need to acknowledge it’s time to change course.
This is the case along Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue, where we are preparing now to ask our policy makers to support a change in course. (A staff report will be published shortly, a link to it will be provided once it is posted.)
In 2016, right around the founding of our department, OakDOT installed protected bike lanes on Telegraph from 20th Street to 29th Street, establishing a parking lane between the vehicle lanes and the bicycle lanes — a growing, proven approach to enhance safety for all modes of travel in many circumstances. At the time this project was championed by our cycling advocates and it earned the support of the local business community to try something new.
As a fledgling local government department, OakDOT sought to serve several priorities with this project. Our mission is to consider all the users and stakeholders of the public infrastructure we manage, as well as everything a street needs to do:
- Move people safely in buses, on bicycles, on foot, and in their own vehicles
- Facilitate deliveries and customer access to local businesses
- Provide a joyful, friendly community space for pedestrians
- In the case of Telegraph Avenue especially, a street needs to accommodate street festivals like Oakland First Fridays — events where belonging is expressed and community ownership of public space is celebrated.
Up front, we believed this project would serve those needs — and five years later, we need to recognize that it’s not working, learn from it, and adjust. This is what pilots are for: trying something new, learning from it, and moving forward with the new experience and information to deliver better, dynamic service. Pilots shouldn’t be an ideological foot in the door, used to foist permanent change on communities without an honest willingness to adjust. If pilots are used this way, they undermine one of core values, and an essential building block to delivering positive change: trust between government and those it serves.
In the case of protected bike lanes — we still recognize their tremendous value, AND we recognize that value doesn’t fit to every circumstance. In the case of Telegraph Avenue between 20th Street and 29th Street, staggered intersecting streets produce an unusual number of uncontrolled (no stop sign or traffic signal) T-intersections where on other streets there would be a smaller number of four-way intersections. Each intersection is a potential conflict point between people walking, biking, and driving. A cyclist at each intersection has to be concerned at the same time with vehicles coming from behind turning right, vehicles coming from the front turning left and vehicles coming out from the side street. Short of signalizing every offset T-intersection, closing side streets and restricting many vehicle movements — protected bike lanes may not be the best way to keep all Oaklanders safe and comfortable at these intersections. Even if all of those changes were pursued, there are too many intersections and driveways over too short a span with too many people traveling in various modes for the lanes to function as intended — which are as all ages and abilities bikeways.
It’s important to make iterative efforts to grow a struggling project before making a recommendation like this; we didn’t just walk away when Telegraph’s installation was having challenges. We brought in well-received bus boarding islands, two kinds of plastic posts, and planters designed to both beautify and protect the installation. But each of these interventions proved temporary and insufficient. The challenges remain.
So we worked with our stakeholders to create and review our essential criteria, the things the street needs to achieve — and we’ve ranked them. This remains a tough call and a close call — and based on that shared ranking, we’re proposing this shift in approach. These are difficult decisions that communities and local government have to make together. While still not perfect, the shift to buffered bike lanes with innovative curb management strategies to keep the bike lanes clear, on this stretch of Telegraph is in our assessment, the right change for this location and its specific circumstances, now.
This has reinforced for us some of our core best practices as transportation professionals:
- Context matters — design should be informed by a wide range of factors including:
- Existing vehicle speeds, volumes, and parking behaviors
- Collision rates, patterns, and locations by mode
- Street grid layout, including intersection and driveway frequency
- Past harms associated with previous public and transportation investments
- Design flexibility to address specific safety, access, and special events needs
- Listen, collaborate, refine
We’re grateful for the participation and insight of our community; we grow best by growing together, and we’re excited to continue growing and serving Oakland better. When the challenges of this feel overwhelming, we remind ourselves how lucky we are to make our living in purpose-driven service.
As a colleague told me recently: “It’s the purpose that brings you back.” Here are OakDOT that’s true for us all, and we’ll keep at it — we’ll keep working to earn and build our community’s trust, even (and perhaps especially) when that means listening and recalibrating.
