Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley

Traffic calming is increasingly used by cities as a strategy to reduce speeding, improve safety, and support walking and biking on neighborhood streets. While many studies and evaluations focus on whether traffic calming is effective on the street where it is implemented, far less attention has been paid to what happens beyond the treated street. In practice, traffic calming interventions can influence driver behavior, traffic volumes, and perceptions of safety on nearby streets, producing spillover effects that can be positive, negative, or unevenly distributed. Understanding these spillover effects is especially important as cities like Oakland scale up neighborhood traffic calming programs as part of broader Vision Zero and Safe System strategies.

We find that UBM has the potential to increase equity and accessibility for those who face barriers to accessing transit due to many factors including the cost. Additionally, we find that these kinds of programs can be impactful for those classified as “unbanked” or “underbanked”, who are low income at much higher rates than traditional banked folks. Though there are many benefits to these programs, they often have unreliable funding sources that can make it difficult to make these programs long-term. In the case of OakDOT’s UBM program, we find that it is mostly funded through grants. Within this report, we seek to look into ways that OakDOT can better fund its UBM program in the hopes of making it a permanent program. Additionally, we find that there are other ways that Oakland may be able to expand their UBM program that would greatly benefit the region. Through our case studies of the cities of Los Angeles, California and Portland, Oregon, we find the ways in which they are conducting their programs as well as how they have leveraged funding to create a robust UBM program.

This report evaluates Oakland’s speed camera pilot through a safety and equity lens, using a thorough academic literature review, descriptive analysis of Oakland Police Department stop data, spatial analysis of speeding-related crashes, regression models, and comparative case studies from San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon. Findings show that officer-based traffic enforcement has deeply declined since 2020, leaving a large gap in traffic enforcement that automated cameras appear to be positioned to fill. Spatial analysis shows that speeding-related crashes are highly concentrated along major corridors in East Oakland and Hispanic/Latino communities experience higher exposure to the effects of speeding. Additionally, road width and speeding appear to have a very strong relationship, especially on Hegenberger Road. Our regression analyses indicate that camera placement is strongly associated with crashes, rather than race, income, or age alone—suggesting that Oakland’s implementation is largely data-driven. Our comparative case studies further demonstrate that automated speed enforcement can substantially reduce speeding across different U.S. municipalities.

Oakland, California’s road network contains some of the most dangerous streets in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2022, 36 people died in traffic incidents in the city, with pedestrians and bicyclists making up half of all fatalities. Crashes in Oakland disproportionately occur in the city’s Equity Priority Communities and along its High Injury Network, and across the region, Alameda County has one of the highest rates of pedestrian fatalities.

Oakland’s roadways are also home to nearly 100 slip lanes: separated, one-way right-turn lanes designed to improve traffic flow. While slip lanes enable drivers to make smoother and faster turns, they prioritize vehicle speed and efficiency and increase the risk of pedestrian collisions at intersections. This report documents the locations and existing conditions of 94 slip lanes in the City of Oakland. We find that one-third of all slip lanes in Oakland are located along the city’s High Injury Network, with just over half (52%) located in Equity Priority Communities. We then examine the inequitable distribution of safety infrastructure that puts pedestrians, communities of color, seniors, and low-income residents at higher risk of traffic injury. We find that 75% of slip lanes do not have crosswalks, and nearly 90% of slip lanes do not have pedestrian crossing signals. Since 2014, 592 traffic collisions have occurred at intersections with slip lanes, resulting in 806 injuries. We assume the lack of safe pedestrian crossings may be contributing to increased traffic risks and collision outcomes.

Our work revealed that the current status quo may be dangerous for people living in the Berkeley Hills. As the City considers upzoning single-family residential districts in the Berkeley Hills, impeded emergency response access, hindered evacuation, and traffic violence have the potential to compound existing risk. To address these challenges, a diverse set of infrastructure and policy prescriptions should be implemented.

Our project was largely inspired by the report Decarcerating Transportation - a Mobility Justice Framework, by the Anti-Police Terror Project. This report gives background on the link between transportation and the criminal legal system and the negative repercussions especially for communities of color. It also provides a roadmap with concrete policy recommendations for localities to take on the task of decarcerating transportation, with the goals of removing police from public transit and traffic enforcement, universalizing accessibility to public transportation, and ending punitive systems involving fines and fees that further exacerbate financial insecurities of marginalized communities.

College Ave is an important north-south corridor in the City of Berkeley, extending from the southeast edge of the UC Berkeley campus down into Oakland. It is home to a mix ofresidential and commercial buildings and is well known for its quaint community character,especially within the Elmwood District. This makes it not only an important link in the street network, but also a bustling destination for many. Vehicles, buses, bikes, and pedestrians share the narrow corridor, which can lead to conflicts between users. The corridor has been identified as one of three “Priority Development Areas” in the City to be upzoned, which would entail changing parcel-level zoning codes to incentivize denser development. Though the City currently has no plans to improve the right-of-way along with the parcel-level zoning codes, this will be vital to ensuring a functioning and thriving CollegeAve as density increases in the years to come.

Our report identifies existing conditions for College Ave and uses this information, along with guidance from City staff and other stakeholders, to provide recommendations for right-of-way and other transportation improvements. Our recommendations focus primarily on the portion of College Ave from Bancroft Way to Ashby Ave, though some recommendations are applicable to the entire street within Berkeley borders. Based on ourobservations and meetings with stakeholders, we chose to use safety and community vitality as the guiding principles for our report.

The Link21 Program includes a new train crossing under the San Francisco Bay, which will improve connectivity between the Peninsula/Downtown San Francisco and the East Bay, as well as improve service frequency and mitigate congestion across the Bay Bridge. Six concepts have been developed for Link21, two of which involve a BART transfer station in the Jack London District. The scope of our project involves an existing conditions analysis and plans/policies review prior to conducting a BART station siting process for a potential Jack London BART station. Jack London is one of Oakland’s oldest business districts and is located south of Downtown Oakland, bisected from the city core by Interstate 980 and Interstate 880 overhead. Jack London’s position by the Oakland Estuary waterfront positions itself as a hub for port/industrial activities, commuter ferry passengers, intercity rail (Amtrak) passengers, and tourism.

Oxford Street is the western boundary of University of California, Berkeley campus and connects the university to downtown Berkeley and the BART station. Oxford for All is a vision developed by the UC Berkeley Department of City and Regional Planning Transportation Studio that envisions an Oxford Street that seeks to serve all users, regardless of ability or mode choice.

To better understand the planning context and needs of the corridor’s residents, the project team conducted the following: Historical context research, Academic literature review, Review of relevant planning documents and plans, Interviews with professional and academic subject matter experts, Case studies of other urban university campuses, Review of planned developments, Pedestrian and cyclist counts, Community outreach event, Survey of businesses.

This work revealed that Oxford Street does not serve all road users adequately. The street design prioritizes driving, with wide streets, narrow sidewalks, and poor facilities for pedestrians and bicyclists. The lack of character means the street is a psychological boundary between Berkeley’s downtown and campus.

The looming mass transit fiscal cliff threatens the viability of long term operations of BART and future Link21 projects. BART’s historic reliance on farebox recovery for financial stability necessitates an evaluation of available funding sources in an effort to increase funding for both long term project planning and ongoing operations. Given existing State and Federal policies that call for increased investment in public transit and rail and California’s stated goals around greenhouse gas emission reductions and equity improvements, the time is ripe for changes to the current funding mechanisms which have long favored highway and road projects over transit and rail. A streamlined process to ensure continuous and advanced planning is necessary for the successful completion of megaregional transit and rail projects that cross political jurisdictions. Further, this type of planning and funding is necessary for California to remain competitive for Federal funding opportunities, especially given the unprecedented amount of funding currently available from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021).