A stretch of the East Bay Greenway in East Oakland was officially completed this month, along San Leandro Street under the BART train tracks, with a festive ribbon-cutting ceremony. The nearly one-mile stretch of trail takes the form of a bike and pedestrian path from Seminary Avenue to 69th Avenue, and a bike path from 69th to 75th avenues. The project will ultimately extend for 16 miles from Lake Merritt through Oakland and San Leandro into Fremont.
The first small section of the greenway opened in 2019 below the Coliseum BART station and connected to bikeways leading to the 81st Avenue library. Parts of the stretch Seminary to 75th Avenue were opened in an incomplete form last year but are now complete.
At the ceremony, Oakland transportation director Josh Rowan said he was especially pleased that the new segment of the greenway was connecting people in East Oakland communities to other parts of the city, an important part of building infrastructure given that these communities have faced historic disinvestments and lie far from the city’s center of politics and administration in Downtown.
“This transportation project we’re creating networks and connecting people,” he said. “It’s not just Oakland; it’s the region.”
Kevin Jenkins, the Oakland councilmember who represents District 5, also attended the ceremony. He said the new segment showcased the city’s dedication to alternative forms of transportation.
A section of San Leandro Street shows how it was redesigned for the bike and pedestrian lanes. Credit: City of Oakland
“I’m thrilled,” the Alameda County Transportation Commission’s lead project staffer, Farid Javandel, said. “Every segment that we build connects the network and is transformative for the region.” He said the cities alongside the commission are developing grant applications in order to secure funding for other segments of the greenway.
The new protected section includes a painted two-way bicycle path alongside San Leandro Street, which pedestrians can also use; an unpaved section separating the path from the road; street lamps every few feet; landscaping including 70 new trees; and heavy bollards at the entrance of each block to prevent cars from using the lanes as a drive-around during heavy traffic. There are also new pedestrian crossing signals at each intersection.
The path was first proposed in 2008 as a rail-to-trail conversion along the old Union Pacific tracks, which would have provided a wider greenway with more robust landscaping and playgrounds, like the Ohlone Greenway that runs through Berkeley, Albany, and El Cerrito. According to Bike East Bay advocacy director Rob Prinz, the tracks are still owned by Union Pacific Railroad, which prevented the original rail-conversion proposal from proceeding.
Union Pacific occasionally runs trains on those rails, Prinz said, to maintain its right-of-way. Because railroads are federally regulated, there is very little the city can do without the company’s okay, he said. The environmental cleanup of those Union Pacific rails was also estimated to be “extremely high,” he said, and a major reason ACTC didn’t push hard against the railroad company.
“It’s frustrating to see the underused and decrepit rail right-of-way sitting there nearly unused,” Prinz said.
A Union Pacific spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Prinz’s view, the new greenway section is better designed than the first completed section, including the section along San Leandro Street between 75th and 85th avenues, because the pedestrian lighting is oriented toward the pathway rather than toward the street and passing drivers.
Many more miles to build
City Council president Kevin Jenkins joins city and county staff to officially open a newly completed section of the East Bay Greenway along San Leandro Street in East Oakland. Credit: Bike East Bay
Two other sections of the greenway are moving forward. Construction is on track for a three-mile path from Lake Merritt to Fruitvale, running along 10th, East 10th, East 8th, and East 12th streets. That section will have a 13-foot-wide cycle track with a seven-foot-wide landscape buffer, rather than simply painted bike lanes on each side of the street. Driving lanes will be removed to accommodate the tracks.
The design of a section from 35th to 54th avenues, along San Leandro Avenue, is now complete, and contractor bids recently went out. Bike advocates, including Bike East Bay, say that means that section could be completed by the end of next year.
San Leandro is also working on a 2.2-mile stretch of the greenway this year that runs along San Leandro Street and East 14th Street, which will include protected bikeways. Bike East Bay said in a post on its website that the group is advocating for the removal of slip lanes in the area that make it easier for drivers to make right turns but also make it more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians to cross intersections.
In the weeks since the ribbon-cutting, Oakland residents have noticed the new stretch of greenway.
Saumitra Kelkar, the Oakland naturalist, commented on Instagram that he hoped the greenway would be vegetated “with 100% local native plant communities, especially since the majority of the ecosystems that make Oakland so special have already been destroyed.”
Another person posted saying the new lanes were “nice” but that getting to them sometimes feels hard and unsafe, noting that “after 54th Street it gets very rocky, bushy and dangerous.”
Another Oaklander posted on Instagram that they didn’t feel the area was safe enough to ride a bike in at all. “I don’t trust ever riding between Seminary to 75th I don’t care if the road was paved with gold!” they said. “Nah.”
San Leandro Street has long been considered dangerous, and is the frequent site of collisions. At the beginning of the month, a major collision between a driver in a stolen van and an Oakland police officer occurred nearby, on East 12th Street, killing two people inside the van, not far from where the new section of bike lane was installed.
Parts of the existing greenway are strewn with trash, especially near the Fruitvale BART station. The Oaklandside has reached out to the city to ask about its specific plans for greenway maintenance; we have not immediately received a response.
Last month, as part of Oakland’s Bike Month celebrations, the city asked members of the public to sign up for the city’s newsletter for updates on the status of bikeway projects, including the latest bike plan maps and access to bikes. Anyone interested can sign up for those emails, produced by the transportation department, here.
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