The city will soon improve one of West Oakland’s most dangerous streets for driving, biking, and walking. 

According to Oakland transportation department staff who spoke at a recent infrastructure committee meeting of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, the city is expected to remove driving lanes in what’s called a “road diet,” and add crosswalks, buffered bikeways, and pedestrian islands. These changes are part of the 18th Street Complete Streets Paving Project, which has been in the planning stages for years — and has long been on the wish list of area residents.

“We’re excited about this project because we get to implement some long-planned and funded improvements on 18th Street in West Oakland through our paving program,” Elliott Goodrich, a transportation planner for OakDOT in charge of the project, said at the January 22 meeting. “We’re also excited about this project ’cause the whole design process will be done in-house.”

One of 18th Street’s biggest design flaws, according to OakDOT, is that it is really wide and yet sees little car traffic. That combination encourages speeding and makes it less safe for pedestrians and cyclists. Decades of research have found that wide local streets encourage drivers to speed, and the survival rate for people hit by speeding drivers goes down the faster people drive. Half of all people hit by a driver traveling 40 miles an hour die.

A project page created by the city said that from 2019 to 2023, 16 collisions occurred on 18th Street, including three involving bicyclists. The street’s width is a historical relic of West Oakland’s design, which prioritized cars headed toward the Cypress freeway.  

A decade-long wait
A map of proposed changes to 18th Street from the January 2026 Oakland Department of Transportation slide deck. The upgrades will include new pedestrian safety islands. Credit: OakDOT

The funds for this project were approved earlier this decade through a large Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grant, whose main housing element, a 240-unit affordable housing complex in Mandela Station, a new development at the West Oakland BART station, is also finally nearing construction, with the developers saying they expect to break ground in May. The grant uses state cap-and-trade cash for transportation projects that connect to transit. 

The project has taken so long that some of the stretch on 18th Street from Wood Street to Brush Street got paved by other means, such as through the development of the Prescott Market and the Oakland Ballers’ baseball field. OakDOT staff said at the meeting that since the improved road will help cyclists access the stadium, they will likely work with the team to promote the new road design to bike riders.

Rob Prinz, the Bike East Bay advocacy director, told The Oaklandside that this project, combined with the 14th Street Downtown protected bikeway construction, which is nearly complete, will set up “a pretty nice ‘Safe Routes to Baseball’ initiative, delivering even more bike riders to Ballers games in the near future.”

David Pené, the OakDOT staffer in charge of the 18th Street project design, said the delay has had one silver lining: It has allowed the city to add even more traffic-calming interventions by having time to communicate with other stakeholders, such as the Oakland Fire Department. 

“Could be speed humps, could be speed cushions, or it could be speed tables,” Pené said of the additions. He said additional pedestrian safety islands near DeFremery Park and at the Adeline and Market intersections were in the offing.

The project will remove any remaining unused railroad track in the area to create more complete, safer, easier-to-navigate sidewalks.

A rendering of West Oakland’s Mandela Station development project, which includes the 18th Street upgrade and a 240-unit affordable housing complex that is set to break ground in May. Credit: Strategic Urban Development Alliance

At the BPAC meeting, OakDOT staff said they considered adding a drop-off and pick-up area for students at KIPP, similar in scope and ambition to Berkeley High’s two-block-long pick-up and drop-off. But they said the department determined it was too expensive an undertaking for the current project budget. 

Thanks to the prolonged delays, many residents have forgotten about the road redesign, so Pené said OakDOT will lead a series of conversations with residents and community organizations as outreach. 

“We will be going back out to talk with folks, connecting with key stakeholders in West Oakland, and figuring out how this project continues to meet their needs and what additional needs they may have that we can try to accommodate,” Pené said. The main focus of outreach will be around the popular Defremery Park, including people who run and use the rec center, corner markets, and schools there, such as KIPP Academy. 

The 18th Street project will be jointly led by two divisions within OakDOT: the Complete Streets Infrastructure Division and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Program within the Safe Streets Division.

If outreach is successful, the construction on the project is expected to begin this summer. 

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