Your Support Needed Now for the Estuary Bike-Pedestrian Bridge!

Alameda City Council will soon weigh in on a major project administered by Alameda County Transportation Commission (ACTC) called the Oakland Alameda Access Project (OAAP). This decades-long project was envisioned as a multimodal cross-estuary project, but the environmental impact report just released shows that it's not that. Bicyclists and pedestrians traveling in this corridor will not see any significant benefit from the project as currently proposed. This shortcoming needs to be addressed.

Please take a minute to sign our petition and let our leadership know that OAAP needs to deliver real enhancements for bicyclists and pedestrians crossing the estuary, specifically by advancing the bike-pedestrian bridge.

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What OAAP Proposes

OAAP proposes opening up the Webster Tube walkway to bicyclists and pedestrians. This walkway, however, is more environmental clearance and mitigation for Caltrans than a multimodal connectivity enhancement. The experience for bicyclists and pedestrians using this path will be similar to the experience of the existing Posey Tube path — noisy, dirty, confined, and intimidating to the vast majority of people. The Webster Tube walkway will be only slightly wider than the path in the Posey Tube, it will not meet National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) standards, or even Caltrans' standards for a bikeway.

We think funding that was allocated specifically for multimodal projects, in this case Measure B/BB funds, should be spent advancing true multimodal solutions, like the bike-pedestrian bridge. 

What OAAP Should Deliver Instead

We would like to see progress on the bike-pedestrian bridge, which is the only alternative that will offer bicyclists and pedestrians 24x7, safe, enjoyable, equitable, and standards-compliant access between West Alameda and Oakland. The bridge has made steady progress over the years and is now in most local and regional planning documents.

While it was considered 'out of scope' for OAAP, we feel the bridge should have been included, as it squarely addresses multimodal access and connectivity, the charter for this project. A recent study shows that by 2030, a bridge could induce significant mode shift within this corridor, projecting potentially 8-13% of trips by bike or foot, as opposed to 0-3% for the proposed Webster Tube walkway. The bike-pedestrian bridge would mean significantly fewer vehicle trips through the corridor as compared to the new path (approximately 50,000 fewer vehicle trips per week). This would benefit the broader community in many ways, particularly Chinatown, while fixing the gap in our bike-pedestrian network, stimulating local economies, and enabling us to address climate change imperatives.

We'd like our leadership to ask ACTC to advance the bike-pedestrian bridge by providing funding through OAAP, or elsewhere if more appropriate, for key upcoming bridge studies, and place the bridge in its Capital Improvement Program. The specific amount of money needed for these studies, $6M, is just a small fraction of OAAP's overall cost. Incidentally it's less than the cost of opening up the Webster Tube walkway. In addition, because of the regional, cross-jurisdictional nature of the bridge project, we ask that ACTC manage it going forward, instead of continuing with management by the City of Alameda. ACTC manages similar cross-jurisdictional projects, like the East Bay Greenway, HOV lanes, and freeway interchanges, and is better positioned to move the bridge along expeditiously.

Thank you!

More information on OAAP (Learn more about OAAP, and submit comments directly)

More information on the Bike-Ped Bridge