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At Tuesday's hearing of the Oakland City Council to decide whether to support significant safety upgrades on 14th Street, Councilmember Carroll Fife asked outgoing OakDOT Director Ryan Russo about quick-build strategies to get protected bike lanes on 14th Street and elsewhere as soon as possible.
Part of Telegraph where all the resources for a protected bike lane were installed, but in a buffered, unprotected configuration instead. Photo: Bike East Bay's Robert Prinz
There's a lesson here as Oakland looks for Russo's replacement.
It is not, and never was, a resource issue. And it's not about outreach, the other excuse given by Russo. We don't do years of outreach for curb ramps, hi-viz crosswalks, traffic lights, daylighting, or a dozen other well-understood measures that save lives. When a disproportionate number of people hurt and killed in bike vs. car collisions are Black, it's warped to insist on years of equity outreach before safer infrastructure can be installed.
The scene in March 2019 when Tess Rothstein was killed in San Francisco in an unprotected bike lane when she was run over by this truck. She was killed within sight of infrastructure that makes this kind of crash impossible. Photo: Streetsblog/Rudick
There will never be a bell loud enough, a helmet strong enough or clothing bright enough to make up for poor infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/zPTbQE1wbL
The Dutch have long recognized that, except in the quietest residential areas, designing streets that put people next to two- to fifteen-ton cars and trucks is tantamount to criminal negligence. If there should be any difference between Dutch and Bay Area street designs, it would be that the Bay Area's protected lanes will need more robust concrete and iron barriers, given the popularity of large vehicles in the U.S. and the DMV's inability to get dangerous drivers off the roads.
L.A. County needs to embrace physically-protected bikeways, robust traffic calming around schools, and similarly transformative, safety-focused projects
Caltrans, we need complete streets everywhere, including at freeway interchanges (or maybe especially there); Public agencies and academics join forces to develop AV standards; Republicans really want to suspend the gas tax; More