New Bike "Improvements" on Adeline Street Puts Cyclists in Harm's Way

Emeryville City Engineer to Adeline Street Bikes:  “Prepare to Get Doored!”

By John Fricke

Twenty years ago, Adeline Street (Oakland’s sections north and south of Emeryville, and Emeryville’s short section in the middle) included four travel lanes, in addition to parked cars on each side of the street. 

Adeline Street 20 years ago.

When I joined the city council, I pushed to convert the right travel lanes into bike lanes.  A vocal minority living in the Andante apartment building (Adeline and 40th Streets) sought to kill the project because diagonal parking spaces in front of their building would be converted to parallel parking.  They asserted that the whole exercise was meaningless given how short the Emeryville section of Adeline Street is. 

Thankfully, the pro-car voices did not prevail and the project was completed. 

Adeline Street up until two years ago.

(Several years after completion, the City of Oakland repaved its two sections of Adeline Street.  The City of Oakland striped its sections of Adeline Street nearly the same as in Emeryville.  The tail wagged the dog.)

For over fifteen years, Adeline Street was a relatively sound design for bikes; until Emeryville’s current city engineer (annual salary: $168,000) took a look at Adeline Street. 

The city engineer (duly licensed as both a civil engineer and a traffic engineer) recommended a plan which included, in one section near 45th Street, curving the bike lane up against the parked cars. 

Before:

Two years ago, before bungling: Note the ample space 
for car doors.

After:

Adeline today: Prepare to get doored. 

Bike riders are now sitting ducks for a passenger car door that abruptly opens in front of the bike.  So close is the newly-striped bike lane that a bike farthest to the left in the bike lane is still in harm’s way.

Bam!

Are traffic engineers allowed to arbitrarily shift a bike lane into harm’s way?  Not according to the California Highway Design Manual.  At over one thousand pages, the Highway Design Manual dictates exactly how all the public streets in California are to be laid out, including precise details regarding bicycle lanes.  “All city, county, regional and other local agencies responsible for bikeways or roads . . . shall follow the bikeway design criteria established in this manual and the California [Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices], as authorized in the Streets and Highways Code Sections 890.6 and 891(a).”  Section 115.1. 

According to the California Highway Design Manual, a bike lane shall be at least five feet wide and shall be at least eight feet from the vertical face of the curb.  The city engineer's new serpentine bike lane maintains the legally-required minimum width of 5 feet, but is only seven feet from the curb at its closest point.  This represents a swerve of four feet into the door zone.  The curving of the new bike lane is also in violation of the California Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices which states, “[b]icycle lane markings on Class II Bikeways (Bike Lane) should be placed a constant distance from the marked lane line or centerline . . ..”  Section 9C.04. 

Not only did the city engineer curve the bike lane into the door zone, he reconfigured most of the intersections to force bikes to make sharp turns. 

Street sign reads as follows- Bikes: now swerve right, then
swerve left.  Prepare to repeat until you reach the 
Oakland border.

These new intersection configurations violate the standards dictated by the California Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices: 

1:  the bike lane is to maintain a constant distance from the centerline (cited above).  Section 9C.04. 

2:  “Raised barriers (e.g., raised traffic bars and asphalt concrete dikes) or raised pavement markers shall not be used to delineate bike lanes on Class II Bikeways (Bike Lane).”  Section 9C.04.

Here is the required intersection configuration:

Normally, traffic engineers slavishly follow the state law requirements so that the city doesn’t get sued when someone is injured.  Not so in Emeryville.  How did this bungling design get approved by the city engineer, city attorney, city manager, and city council?  The Dunning-Kruger effect is alive and well in City Hall.

John Fricke is a longtime Emeryville resident, father of three, husband, lawyer, and former member of the Emeryville City Council.