The city of Oakland added six additional routes to its “slow streets” program Friday, allowing residents to safely walk along city streets while practicing physical distancing.
The city added soft closures on:
- 16th Street between Wood and West streets;
- 34th Avenue, Davis Street and Humboldt Avenue between Foothill Boulevard and School Street;
- 59th Street, Howell Street, Ayala Avenue and Forest Street between Adeline Street and Claremont Avenue;
- Alice Street from 11th Street to 19th Street;
- Colby Street between Woolsey Street and Claremont Avenue;
- and Wayne Avenue, Athol Avenue, Wayne Place and East 19th Street between Hanover and 13th avenues.
The six routes will add five miles of walkable streets to the city’s program, which previously had roughly nine miles of closed walking routes throughout the city. The city also plans to add another four-to-five miles of streets to the program next week.
City officials chose the six new routes after reviewing technical feasibility studies and a community survey of what streets residents wanted to be added to the program. However, survey respondents were overwhelmingly white, high-income residents of North Oakland, a factor that city officials plan to control for by conducting outreach specifically in East Oakland, where residents are more likely to be affected by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, and among people of color in general.
Residents can take the city’s survey of the next streets added to the program at tinyurl.com/nextslowstreets by Monday.
A full map of walkable streets can be found at oaklandca.gov/projects/oakland-slow-streets.
