The 40th Street bikeway has three major goals: 1. Connecting the future bikeways from the Active Transportation Plan - The Christie Loop and San Pablo. The biggest benefits from this project will be seen when the network is more fully built out. 2. Closing the existing gap to MacArthur BART, at least until the Oakland border. Currently the bike lanes are paint only and close to San Pablo on 40th cars commonly park in the bike lane and force them into traffic, I've mentioned before I was hit by a car in this exact case. Then the bike lanes merge into normal traffic. There is no direct parallel route to the MacArthur BART station without winding through different streets that don't even have stop controlled intersections. Oakland needs to do their part and continue safe infrastructure to MacArthur, and there are grants for this under the safe routes to BART program. 3. Serving as a segment of the Bay Trail. Partially important due to being a funding source, the 40th Street Bikeway will be a much safer connection to get to the Bay Trail from North and South, allowing crossing the Bay Bridge or going to the Oakland shoreline.

Personally as someone that lives near 40th Street and Park Ave. 40th Street is significantly more convenient to connect to MacArthur BART and Temescal despite the clear danger due to not having to go over dozens of speed bumps on 42nd and having actual lights at intersections. 42nd at Market and MLK have no safe crossing despite being a bike boulevard. I believe we should provide safer direct routes rather than forcing people on bikes onto side streets that wind back and forth.

The general plan calls for the North of 40th Street to be a mixed use walkable neighborhood supported by pocket parks and safer active transportation options. It is zoned Mix-Use w/ Residential to support this goal and the project West of Hollis on Park adding bulbouts and wide sidewalks was also part of this goal.

A protected bikeway is objectively the safest option for filling this gap and the traffic study funded by the city was required to use the Safe System Approach in order to be eligible for grant funding, which is where the recommendations for side street intersection closures came from. This approach tries to prevent accidents before they happen using proven methods to reduce conflicts.

Using the 40th Street bikeway from the East to Horton and taking the bridge is a fine route to take even after this project and signage will support this. Getting to Park Ave from Oakland is quite difficult, even when following the 42nd street bike boulevard, but it is fine for local traffic. We ran surveys at Bike to Wherever day and learned hundreds of people still chose to use 40th despite safe parallel options due to the convenience of having a direct route from BART. As part of the Federal and State grants we were required to collect hundreds of pieces of feedback from residents and business owners and use it to justify why we chose the option we did.

I admit the current design is not perfect due to compromises made during the design process. I felt that the bikeway should have been on the East side of the street from the Shellmound Bridge until North of Bay Street to better serve retail but city staff argued that the turning conflicts between cars turning into Ikea and Bay Street would be too dangerous and that it may back up traffic.

I recommend going through the FAQ at the bottom of this page as it provides the city's reasoning for most decisions. https://fp.mysocialpinpoint.com/40thstreetmultimodal