Advocates Work with San Leandro, Build Pop-up Protected Lanes

Advocates with Bike East Bay spent roughly $20,000 on plastic bollards, tape, and other temporary street markings, and set up pop-up protected bike lanes in three locations in San Leandro on Saturday. "Most of the materials are reusable," explained Bike East Bay's Dave Campbell. "We could have used paint instead of paper and tape, which would be cheaper, but these looked nicer and you can use these things four or five times."

The pop ups, which took about 24 hours to set up, ran for about a block each at Toyon Park, Victoria Park, and Wilson Elementary School. The idea was to get neighbors excited about the upcoming San Leandro Crosstown Corridors project (which Streetsblog covered when it first started outreach).

As seen in the above map, the green indicates where the pop ups were done. The yellow indicates the two proposed protected bike lanes, which would ultimately get concrete barriers. "Bancroft goes all the way north south, and Williams goes all the way east west, so this is the start of a backbone of a safe bikeway network," said Campbell.

The pop up was combined with an organized ride to see the infrastructure in context (as seen in the lead image).

Campbell told Streetsblog the event was well attended and that the quality of the materials had many residents thinking the installation was permanent. "Without this the community often doesn't know what you're talking about when you say protected bike lanes," said Campbell.

Overall, he said the response was positive. He added that his favorite moment was when some kids took their push scooters on the lane next to Toyon Park. "I overheard one of the kids say to his two buddies 'this is the best day of my life,'" said Campbell. Streetsblog will speculate that may be because it's the first time the kids experienced some semblance of independence, even if it was just for a block. The pop-ups are now removed and kids are back to depending on their parents to pack them into cars and drive them to school, play dates, etc.

The city will now seek grants to actually build the project. More photos of the event below:

Photo: Bike East Bay