Housing and Traffic: What Alameda’s doing about traffic congestion

Published on June 14, 2018

This is the second of two parts.

On June 1, a commentary of mine was published about how the statewide housing crisis is impacting Alameda and how Alameda is providing our fair share of the state’s housing needs. Thank you to all who have engaged on the topic. It was meant not only to inform but to get people talking about our future and what we want it to look like.

This week, I want to try to answer a common question we get in City Hall: “What are you doing about traffic?”

Regionally and locally, automobile traffic is getting worse, especially during commute hours. In the Bay Area, congestion delay has increased 64 percent since 2000. Why is it getting so much worse? Well, about 2 million more people moved into the Bay Area (about a 27 percent increase) in the last 30 years.

During that time, the Bay Bridge, the Interstate 880 corridor through Oakland and most of the regional roadway network (including Alameda’s bridges, tubes and roadways) have remained roughly at the same size and capacity.

During these same 30 years, Alameda’s population grew by about 3 percent, so the worsening traffic we experience in Alameda is not the result of building too much, it is because we are linked to a regional roadway system that is at maximum capacity.

The I-880 corridor is one of the most congested corridors in the region, and when I-880 is congested, Alameda’s bridges and tubes connecting us to I-880 all back up. Meanwhile, the regional and local economy is booming. Local and regional unemployment rates are at historic lows, and we have more employed people in each household going to and from jobs each day.

Over the next 20 years, the Bay Area is projected to grow by another 2 million people, with no plans to widen I-880 or the Bay Bridge. The Bay Area is becoming more urban and more densely populated. Great urban areas have great transportation systems that allow more people to move around more easily with buses, trains, bicycles, ferries and on foot, which is what many Alameda residents already do.

Thirty-four percent of Alameda commuters use carpools, ferries, buses, BART, bicycles or their feet to get to work. That number has been increasing steadily in Alameda over the last 20 years and is one of the highest in the Bay Area.

We are working hard to continue improving transportation options. The city’s Transportation Element of the General Plan and the Alameda Transportation Choices Plan are policies that have been adopted by past and current City Councils after countless hours of research, listening sessions and public hearings, and they guide our work and priorities. Below are just a few of the plans we’re working on to mitigate traffic congestion and promote safety.

Transit options: Ninety-two percent of Alameda residents live within a half-mile of an AC Transit bus line. In addition, we all have access to two ferry terminals: one on the East End and one on the West End, both of which take roughly 20 minutes to get to San Francisco.

This is good, but we still need more transit services traveling faster and more frequently across Alameda and between Alameda, Oakland and San Francisco. Last year, working in partnership with AC Transit, we added the Line 19 bus service to connect the neighborhoods along the northern waterfront (from Clement Avenue to Atlantic Avenue) to two Oakland BART stations.

Several years ago, we built the Webster Street bus queue jump lane to speed bus service through the tubes. We require every major new project in Alameda to provide annual funding for additional transit service and provide free bus passes for each new residential unit and office worker. Ultimately, we envision making bus passes available for every Alameda resident citywide so that we can all jump on any bus any time.

Working in partnership with the Water Emergency Transit Agency (WETA), the city is working to improve ferry services between Harbor Bay, Main Street and the Alameda Point Seaplane Lagoon to San Francisco, South San Francisco, Mission Bay and the short hop to Oakland.

By 2020, ferries will be leaving every 30 minutes from our ferry terminals during commute hours and at least once an hour at all other times. We are also working to develop better bus, bicycle and pedestrian services and facilities connecting you to our three ferry terminals, with the third one — Seaplane Lagoon in Alameda Point — planned to begin service in 2020.

The city is also laying the groundwork for frequent water shuttle services between Oakland and Alameda. We require every waterfront development on the estuary to provide a public water shuttle landing, so that there will be lots of places to get a water taxi or shuttle from Alameda to Oakland.

We are also exploring the possibility of BART coming to Alameda. In a citywide survey, 65 percent of Alameda respondents expressed their support for an Alameda BART station. BART is planning its second crossing to San Francisco, and that crossing alignment could run directly under us, so that we would finally have a station on the region’s valuable commuter rail system.

Bicycle and pedestrian improvements: West Alameda needs improved access on and off the Island for pedestrians and bicyclists. The Posey Tube bicycle and pedestrian path is difficult to navigate, so we are working locally and regionally to develop the initial designs and preferred locations for a future bicycle and pedestrian bridge between west Alameda and the Jack London Square area.

As our residents become more active and begin to bike and walk more, we are seeing more vehicle accidents between these different modes of travel. Our goal needs to be zero bicycle and pedestrian fatalities in Alameda (known as Vision Zero). Every child, parent and grandparent should feel safe walking and riding their bicycles in Alameda, so we are investing more than $40 million in the next five years to make our streets safer and more convenient for all of us.

Automobile bridges: Alameda’s bridges have been retrofitted to what Caltrans calls a “No Collapse” status, but we need at least one bridge that will be guaranteed to function after a major earthquake. We continue to advocate for federal, state and regional funding to seismically upgrade the Fruitvale (Miller-Sweeney) Bridge so that it can serve as the city’s seismic lifeline structure.

What about a new bridge for cars? After years of studying this option, we are not spending limited tax dollars planning a new car bridge or tube to connect to the already badly congested I-880 corridor in Oakland. It would be backed-up and congested the day it opened.

Also, nobody in Alameda or Oakland wants that bridge in their neighborhood, which makes it impossible to get regional approval and regional funding for such a bridge. The citizens of Alameda collectively do not have the money or the legal ability to build a bridge over the estuary without regional support and money.

Building a transportation system is not easy work. It takes partnerships and sacrifices. It takes extensive public discussion in many different local and regional forums. It takes advocacy and perseverance. It takes vision and a lot of stamina. And it takes community support. That’s why we urge you to get involved. If you want the city to take a different approach to transportation, we need to hear from you.

In the meantime, try the bus once a week (or month), try out one of those cool new lime-green bikes or the new one-way car share. Meanwhile, your transportation planners down at City Hall will continue to follow the thoughtful plans created by our leaders who are trying to ensure a healthy and viable transportation network for all of us.