City Council's April 2021 Traffic Safety $800k Allocation for High Priority Traffic Calming and Speed Bumps: OakDOT Prioritization and Process

$800k Allocation: OakDOT Prioritization and Process

In April 2021, the Oakland City Council allocated an additional $800,000 total for minor, high priority traffic safety projects. Split equally among the eight Council offices (seven geographic districts and one citywide at-large office), this would provide $100,000 per Council Office to identify specific expenditure priorities. This page offers background information on the costs of traffic safety treatments and how OakDOT organizes and approaches traffic safety work in an effort to align the Council process of identifying projects for funding with existing programs including prioritized OAK 311 service requests, speed bumps, Safe Routes to School improvements, and rapid responses to fatalities.

Process for expending these resources:

• OakDOT will share lists of projects in the queue (311, Speed Bumps, Safe Routes to School, Rapid Response) with each district's Council office.

• OakDOT will work with Council offices to identify and implement their priority project from the above existing queue of prioritized requests.

• Projects/costs that exceed the $100K threshold will be referred to the CIP process.

Estimated Costs:

Most costs below include materials costs and staff costs for design and implementation, estimated at 30% of materials costs.

*One on each sidewalk with a third in the median, solar powered

** Lower estimate is for surface mounted materials installed in-house by Traffic Maintenance

OakDOT Prioritization of Traffic Safety Improvements to Address Injury, Death and Equity:

The City of Oakland has a high demand for traffic safety improvements that increased under the COVID-19 pandemic. OakDOT prioritizes locations for traffic safety improvements based on crash history and equity factors - targeting limited resources to the communities most impacted by the most severe crashes. The recently launched Safe Oakland Streets interagency initiative focuses on this approach to achieve the following goals:

1. Prevent severe and fatal crashes and related disparities impacting Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, seniors, people with disabilities and low-income populations​
2. Eliminate severe and fatal injury inequities including racial disparities impacting BIPOC communities that exist today in Oakland​
3. Inform effective and equitable safety strategies that prevent injury and injury inequities, and do not have adverse equity impacts on BIPOC communities, seniors, people with disabilities and low-income populations

OAK 311 Service Requests: One of the most public-facing processes to address traffic safety concerns of Oakland residents is the OAK 311 service request process. OakDOT’s Safe Streets Division has a traffic engineering team that evaluates every roadway safety request we receive and provide a response regarding whether OakDOT will be taking engineering action.  We receive, on average, more than 800 service requests each year from our residents, merchants, schools, advocacy groups, contractors, neighboring jurisdictions, and partner transportation agencies.  On average, about 200 requests per year are considered for engineering treatments. The OakDOT traffic safety service request team is uniquely positioned to implement efficient, effective solutions- typically using traffic signs, pavement markings, and common traffic calming devices like speed bumps —to support safer traffic speeds and lower traffic volumes. These improvements are focused on specific intersections or street segments.

In July 2021, OakDOT will begin using an updated OAK 311 service request prioritization criteria for traffic safety requests that prioritizes locations for improvements based on the most recent available 5 years of crash data, OakDOT Priority Equity Neighborhoods based on factors including race, income, ability and age, and proximate land uses accessed by vulnerable populations (e.g., schools, seniors centers, libraries, health care services).

School-generated Requests and Safe Routes to Schools: Traffic safety requests OakDOT receives from schools are handled separately from the prioritization process described above. We assign all school-initiated requests to staff and funding sources set aside for school-related improvements. Every request from a school is investigated for engineering improvement. In addition to responding to the requests, OakDOT also conducts walk audits of school sites managed and paid for by the Alameda County Safe Routes to Schools Program. The walk audits result in capital improvements developed in collaboration with school safety stakeholders such as parents, teachers, neighborhood residents, and Community Resource Officers. These projects are funded by the City’s two-year Capital Improvement Program cycle.

Speed Bump Program: The Speed Bump Program is primarily resident-driven, requiring support from two-thirds of the addresses on the block in request. This is different from the Traffic Safety Request Program mentioned above which uses a data-driven prioritization process. Residents may apply for a speed bump any time by filling out an application found here on our website: https://www.oaklandca.gov/services/apply-for-a-speed-bump. Every speed bump request is evaluated by OakDOT's Safe Streets Division with input from the Oakland Fire Department and AC Transit for their operational needs such as vehicle size and travel/response time.

Rapid Response: A Rapid Response is a coordinated OakDOT effort in the days and weeks following a traffic tragedy, focused on fatalities involving people walking or biking, that may include investigations, targeted maintenance, innovative near-term improvements, and the identification and prioritization of longer-term capital needs.

Status by Council District

As of May 2023, the following projects are identified and being advanced:

At Large Member, Vice Mayor Kaplan - Identified East 18th Street from 5th to 14th avenues to install stop signs on East 18^th Street resulting in all-way stop-controlled (AWSC) intersections. OakDOT retained an engineering consultant in late 2022 to conduct a study and received a draft report in April which is currently under review.

District 1, Councilmember Dan Kalb – 1) Identified hardened centerlines at the intersections of Shattuck/55^th and Shattuck/56^th as a Rapid Response project. The second phase of this project is to add two-phase, left-turn bike boxes and signal timing and detection adjustments at Shattuck/55^th. Both phases have been completed as of May 2023. 2) Identified side-street stop sign installations at the intersections of 53rd/Gaskill streets and Fairmount/Bayo Vista avenues. (53^rd/Gaskill was enhanced to all-way-stop given both intersecting streets are designated as a Neighborhood Bike Route) . The stop signs were installed in November 2022. 3) Identified all-way-stop sign installation at the intersection of Adeline/61st streets which was included in the all-way-stop sign study by a consultant (see update for the at Large Office above).

District 2, Council President Nikki Bas – Identified raised pedestrian median on Lakeshore Avenue at the Prince Street/Santa Ray Avenue crosswalk. Design is underway with an estimated time of completion set for December 2024.

District 3, Councilmember Carroll Fife – Identified Frontage Road flex post installations in the median. Installation was completed in April 2023.

District 4, Councilmember Janani Ramachandran (these projects were identified by Mayor Sheng Thao when she was the District 4 Councilmember) - Identified improvements related to crosswalks on Redwood Road near Safeway and on 35th Avenue at Kansas Street. The estimated time of completion is set for December 2024.

District 5, Councilmember Noel Gallo – Identified locations on Park Boulevard to reduce the number of traffic lanes approaching marked crosswalks at 1) El Centro, 2) Everett, and 3) Beaumont Avenues. Installation for the first two locations was completed in September 2022. The remaining location, Beaumont Avenue, will be completed after the current construction of the “Crossing to Safety” (https://www.oaklandca.gov/projects/crossing-to-safety-project) is completed in late 2023.

District 6, Councilmember Loren Taylor – Identified Ney Avenue quick-build traffic calming. Installation of speed bumps and an intersection diverter at Ney/75^th was completed in December 2021. Identified paint-post pedestrian refuge islands on Bancroft Ave at 61^st and 62^nd avenues as a Rapid Response project. Installation was completed in December 2022.

District 7, Councilmember Treva Reid – Identified Crest Avenue measures to address night-time crowd gatherings and associated violence. The installation of the water barriers was completed in August 2022.