Park Blvd is a long, hilly, curvy and busy street serving many thousands of Oakland residents every day. Park Blvd is a key commute route, but also has numerous schools, from East Lake to Cleveland Heights, to Glenview and Oakmore, with kids crossing Park Blvd in the morning and afternoon at many locations. Park Blvd is also one of the most intimidating streets in the city, with wide traffic lanes and few traffic lights, which promote speeding  and distracted driving.

The goal of our Park Blvd campaign is to support the community’s requests to get Oakland to redesign the street for safer walking and bicycling but also to slow cars to a reasonable speed, raise drivers’ awareness of the neighborhood they are in, and fix some problematic intersections such as the one at Edna Brewer Middle School. Now is the time for you to act. Park Blvd is first and foremost a neighborhood street where residents live and are raising a family.

The Park Blvd community, with additional support from WOBO members, have a history of putting pressure on the city to address these safety concerns. We are happy to report that your collective voices have created a squeaky wheel that is finally getting oiled. Processes are starting up again to answer these pertinent questions that includes the city’s new Department of Transportation (OakDOT). They have teamed up with local consulting firms to begin an initial study into formalizing the most prudent and effective plan of action. In November 2016, two packed neighborhood meetings were held, allowing the team to listen to numerous community’s concerns and recommendations.

With the restart of this process, OakDOT is going to develop recommendations for the entire corridor, including the most contentious segment between Grosvenor Pl and Leimert Blvd (Middle Park Blvd, according to OakDOT’s terminology). OakDOT is still taking public input and come Spring 2017 they will return with a summary of public input and an evaluation of potential improvements. We want OakDOT to return with a preferred design for lower Park Blvd (below Grosvenor), which would hopefully include a 2017 repaving of lower Park Blvd.

We have worked with Bike East Bay to develop our own Park Blvd designs.

Concerned about any changes to Park Blvd, a Trestle Glen neighbor said recently online, “[t]here is More of Us than them!” The rhetoric is entertaining, but unnecessary. Park Blvd can work much better for everyone who uses it daily, including commuters who drive and local residents concerned about cut thru traffic, and do so with a bike lane.

Oakland Department of Transportation (OakDOT) agreed to our request for a focused open house discussion at Oakland High School in January 2017, to talk safety issues on lower Park Blvd below 580. Oakland High students, staff and parents joined us for a constructive discussion where the City got to hear first-hand from our young community members how important it was to create a safer environment. The members of Oakland High School were not shy to point out the important areas of Park Blvd that needed improvements and even came prepared with viable solutions!

To say that the City Representatives were impressed is an understatement.

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