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Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:36] How would you describe what it’s like to drive or walk or even bike on 18th Street?
Jose Fermoso [00:01:56] This is an old arterial road in West Oakland that actually led up to the old Cypress Highway, which obviously, if people remember, before the 1989 earthquake, used to lead from Oakland into San Francisco, and then it fell during the 1989 Earthquake. It’s dangerous less because of the potholes and more because of width of the street. There’s a lot of academic research that says that the wider. A local road is, the more likely it is that people will speed on it just because of psychological and visual reasons. The other thing is that there’s not a ton of traffic slowing infrastructure on it. There’s not modern street lights. You don’t really have bulb outs, which are the little, you know, little corner sections of a sidewalk at an intersection that jut out into the section in the little Sections of it that do have a stop sign. They’re like way on the side. You can’t really see it. People just don’t treat it like a normal street From 2019 to 2023, there were 16 collisions on 18th Street, including three that involved cyclists. I double-checked some of this data, and I didn’t see that any of those collisions were deaths. A few of them were serious injuries. But 18th street, still just because it didn’t lead to any people dying last year, doesn’t mean that it’s not dangerous. Sometimes this means that the community understands how dangerous it is and actually does not try to use it or cross it.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:44] Yeah, that’s actually, I’d say something I heard as well from colleagues who live in Oakland is that even if it might be faster for them to take 18th Street to get home, they’re going the longer way, just to avoid walking on that street or driving on it. And if they have to bike on it, they’re biking on the sidewalk. They’re not biking on that actual street itself.
Jose Fermoso [00:04:08] I saw that too yesterday, yeah, I saw a couple of people use the sidewalk as a mini bicycle highway.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:17] What kind of changes exactly are they going to make to 18th Street to make it safer?
Jose Fermoso [00:04:24] So on 18th Street, we’re going to have new protected intersections, pedestrian safety islands. There’s also going to be a road diet, which means that the road itself is going to narrow. In the map and plans that I’ve seen, I’ve seen all-way stops, which means that they won’t just put a stop red signal on the side of the road, but they will actually put a pole at the top where you see it right as you’re driving. And so it’s right in front of your face. So one of the worst things that they’re trying to figure out all across the city is to figure out how to get people to pay more attention when they’re turning right into the street. A lot of people everywhere will get to a stop sign and even if it’s not their green go, they’ll see a red and then they’ll turn right often while you’re looking to your left. It’s the quick turn, right? Well, what my grandfather used to say, the California turn. You’re not actually stopping, which means that if somebody’s coming from your right side, a lot of are getting hit by that. And so this project has protected intersections where you have this like little V, little concrete portion that is jutting out into the street where you’re literally, it’s physically impossible to do that.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:54] They have a lot of those on Telegraph Avenue, right?
Jose Fermoso [00:05:57] You’ve had some of them on Telegraph Avenue, yep. I think High Street also has a bunch of them now.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:03] I mean, it just sounds to me like they’re adding things on to 18th Street that maybe most of us aren’t even thinking about as we’re driving, but they’re just things that psychologically help us to slow down, drive more safely on a street like…
Jose Fermoso [00:06:23] And what I would also say is that it’s like science in terms of the encouragement of it, right? So if you have a terrible street, like 18th street, yes, I had the responsibility to look out for these signals, responsibility to drive responsibly. But when the street is not giving me any signals about what to do, then it is also encouraging me to not do the right thing.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:57] Coming up, how road fixes could unlock broader improvements to the city of Oakland. Stay with us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:20] Can you talk about why I guess this is happening? It seems like this has been a long time coming. Where is the money coming from to even do this?
Jose Fermoso [00:07:24] I believe that this is coming from a affordable housing and sustainable communities grant, which is connected to housing complex development at Mandela station, which is right next to the West Oakland BART station. This is actually happening a lot now, where the Oak Dot transportation department is working with other projects and other departments in the city in order to kind of, you know, I would almost call it like mooch off or like add to their little pile of money of what they’re doing so that the construction and the design of it all becomes cheaper.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:02] And it happens all in one go, right? If you’re gonna build a large building and block it all off, you might as well fix this street too.
Jose Fermoso [00:08:11] That’s right. And what I heard about this project was that they’ve been ready. The planning and design of 18th Street has been ready to go, but they’ve been waiting for this housing part of it to really start going. And that’s going to happen this spring, finally. I think that there’s a lot of positives that are going to come out of this, including I think you probably saw this, that once you have a better 18th street, people will be able to bike from downtown Oakland all the way to Peralta and Campbell and Wood Street in West Oakland, which is now the Oakland Ballers’ stadium. So people are very excited that they’ll be able to take a straight shot from downtown Oakland and just bike to the games.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:57] I mean, how much safer do you think this is going to make 18th Street? Is it is it pretty significant? Are people really hopeful?
Jose Fermoso [00:09:04] I think anytime you add new infrastructure to a road that has been basically untouched for decades, it will definitely make a difference. How much of a difference? We don’t actually know, but sometimes it is surprising. I mentioned High Street earlier. That was always a really difficult road. I used to take it as a kid with my grandfather to go to the A’s games and that was always a nightmare and just in the last few years when they added infrastructure there, including speed bumps with the little spaces. If you take that street now, which is in East Oakland, you can see that it literally does feel safer. I never wanted to cross the street on high street and now I feel there’s a couple of really nice restaurants over there, including a Jamaican restaurant that I like. And I’ve actually thought a couple times where I’m like, oh, I want to go to that restaurant and I don’t have this abject fear of having to park across or on the other side of the street to go there. So this might lead to a couple other developments that are unexpected, you know, maybe more people. Might be willing to have small businesses or another grocery store or a restaurant on 18th Street.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:24] That’s really interesting to think about how improving the road paves the way, if I may use that term, for maybe helping us to think about the potential opportunities in the community. Having more people walking around, I imagine, might encourage other kinds of development, maybe, in this area that didn’t maybe feel possible before.
Jose Fermoso [00:10:51] Absolutely. And again, this goes back to the Mandela station development. And this is why they kind of need to change this road. Because if you think about a 240 unit, affordable housing complex, then you’re going to have, you know, a thousand more people hanging out in that area. And you can’t have another thousand people at least walking up and down an absolutely dangerous road.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:15] In terms of the timeline, Jose, of this 18th Street project, you mentioned the spring, but I’m wondering about, I guess, the money that it takes to do this kind of stuff and also the political will. How much of a priority would you say this is for the city?
Jose Fermoso [00:11:35] Over the last, especially over the last five, six years, the changing of the roads has been a gigantic and important thing that the city has really focused on changing because it got to such a point that it was affecting your daily life. Politicians that pay attention and wanna serve their community and serve their residents in a way that really matters, pay attention to what people say. And so… I think they looked at it and they also were seeing some of the data. Only a couple of Did I actually start to see city council members list out specifically changes in road conditions as one of their top line first page goals of their administration? All this stuff that seems very, very basic, it became such a part of our environment in Oakland to expect nothing. I think at some point people were just like fed up.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:41] My last question for you, Jose, I mean, we’ve been talking about just this one street in Oakland, but I wonder what this story about 18th Street says about hopes for improving streets and road safety citywide and even across the whole Bay Area.
Jose Fermoso [00:13:00] What I mentioned earlier about the politicians knowing how important this issue is, is something that is replicated across cities, counties, and increasingly across states. People are seeing how much these changes can make to a city. When people come here and they want to see what’s happening, you might hear about and see a lot of these other positive changes. But if your streets are absolutely crap, you’re gonna be like, well, is it really, is Oakland really on the come up? Is it really doing well? But if the streets are doing well, if they’re well-developed and it feels like it’s safe to be there, to walk around in, that just becomes part of the story and it’s feels. A much better positive environment to be in, potentially bring in a new family, you know, with kids and everything.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:55] I guess if you see kids on 18th Street, that’s a good sign.
Jose Fermoso [00:13:58] If you see kids anywhere, that’s a good sign. Yeah, it shows that the infrastructure is better, that there’s good schools and that parents feel comfortable enough.
