District 2 City Council member Pat Kernighan is “holding open the comment period” on an upper–Lakeshore Avenue lane-reduction proposal until Friday, February 2, as a “final effort” to make sure that all residents who live, drive, walk, or bicycle along the affected section “know about and have an opportunity to comment on the proposal to reconfigure the lanes.”

Comments should be emailed to Pat Kernighan at pkernighan@oaklandnet.com or snail-mailed to her at 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland 94612. Please include your name and address and send by Friday, February 2.

The concept was first presented to the Grand Lake Community Council (formerly the Grand Lake Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council) in August 2006. The City mailed a notice of the traffic-calming proposal to over 1000 residents in October, inviting comment. This was followed up by a community meeting on this topic on January 10. (See “Community meeting Wednesday to discuss upper Lakeshore lane reduction.”)

The project would reconfigure a five-block stretch of Lakeshore Avenue between Mandana Boulevard and Winsor Avenue. (see map)

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The proposal would re-stripe the lanes on these five blocks to change it from:

• the existing configuration: in each direction there are two lanes of traffic and 1 lane of parking, for a total of four traffic lanes and two parking lanes.

to…

• the new configuration: in each direction there would be one traffic lane, one 5-foot bicycle lane, and one lane of parking. In addition there would be a center lane between the two opposing traffic lanes for left turns.

The net effect of the new configuration would be to decrease the traffic lanes from four to two, while adding two bicycle lanes and a left-turn lane for cars. It would not change the number of lanes for parking. (See diagram.)

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In a posting to her website by Council Member Pat Kernighan, she explained:

The purpose of the change is to discourage speeding by cars and to provide for safer pedestrian and bicycle travel. The Public Works Agency (PWA) Transportation Services Division has evaluated the traffic volume in the area and determined that lane reduction is feasible and will not create congestion.

Note that this stretch of Lakeshore Avenue is in the upper, residential part of Lakeshore. This project is completely distinct from a lane-reduction project on lower Lakeshore Avenue that is part of the Lakeshore Avenue/El Embarcadero Project, which is funded by Measure DD bond monies.

For more information on this project and the request for comments, see Pat Kernighan’s entire posting to her website on this issue, as well as Jason Patton’s article “The neighborhood benefits of bike lanes.”