Council to Make Doyle Street Traffic Diverters Permanent

COVID-19 Delivers Emeryville's First Bike Boulevard

Newly Calm Street Very Popular

Could Other Bike Boulevards Also Get Traffic Calming?

News Analysis

The City Council has placed on its October 6th docket, the permanent closure of portions of the Doyle Street Bike Boulevard to vehicular traffic, a move that likely would bring the street into full compliance with Emeryville’s Bike Plan, a first for any bike boulevard in the City.  The Doyle Street Bike Boulevard, with its temporary ‘K rail’ traffic calming measures placed last April, is now safe for bicycling for the first time in years with fewer cars on it than the maximum allowed in Emeryville.   Every other bike boulevard is still unsafe for bicycling according to the Bike Plan, because of too much vehicle traffic.

The much reduced vehicle traffic load on Doyle has come about because the City of Emeryville, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, blocked some portions of the street from vehicle usage with the water filled plastic K rails.

The temporary K rail diversion was done administratively owing to its low cost and the COVID-19 emergency invoked by the City.

View of an Emeryville Bike Boulevard
COVID-19 made something better
in our town.
K Rails will be replaced with
permanent (more attractive)
concrete  barriers. 

The new traffic calmed street has become so popular in the north Emeryville neighborhood and among regional bike commuters, the City Council has been prompted  to vote to make the changes permanent.  Emeryville will be helped with this expenditure by Alameda County Measure BB funds the City announced.

The Council action comes as a ‘consent agenda’ item (10.7) at the October 6th meeting, a sign they will almost certainly vote in favor.  Consent items are grouped together in bulk and voted on without discussion barring some new negative revelations.    With funds fully secured to permanently add traffic diverters to Doyle Street, a 5-0 Council vote is near certain. 

The diverters have not only made bicycling on Doyle Street safe but also enjoyable, say neighbors.  The reduced traffic street has also helped Emeryville to finally be able to make a claim of bike boulevard legitimacy.  Ten years after the City Council certified its Bike Plan that calls for a network of five bike boulevards, Emeryville finally now has a legitimate bike boulevard in Doyle Street thanks to the diverters.  

COVID Upsets the Dominant Paradigm

The Bike Plan calls for traffic counts to be made every two years for each of the City’s five bike boulevards to inform the Council as to the necessity of increased traffic calming.  Each bike boulevard is only allowed a certain number of average daily vehicle trips (ADT) and any overage is supposed to set off a new round of prescribed traffic calming measures.  That’s the way its supposed to work anyway.  The highest level of calming according to the Plan is Level Five, or traffic diversion, as Doyle Street now has.  The City of Berkeley has used Level Five diverters to great effect to help bike safety over the years.  But Emeryville’s bike boulevards have never progressed beyond Level Three traffic calming despite traffic counts that have called for increasing calming.

Many years ago,  the late City Councilwoman Nora Davis famously announced Emeryville will never have traffic diversion like Berkeley and she would only allow up to Level Three traffic calming on any bike boulevard (signs and paint on the asphalt, no diverters).  She stated Levels Four or Five traffic calming would disrupt vehicle traffic and therefore not be tolerated here regardless of what the Bike Plan says.  That default policy has been followed ever since by every iteration of the Council, making the COVID traffic diversion for Doyle Street a paradigm shifter for Emeryville.

The newly safe Doyle Street could ‘go viral'.  The street is now so popular in the North Emeryville neighborhood, others might demand the Bike Plan be followed in their neighborhoods as well, forcing the City Council to add diverters on the rest of the bike boulevards.

Councilman Bauters Gets Full Funding For Emeryville 

Council member John Bauters sits on the Alameda County Transportation Commission and has been instrumental in getting the funding for the traffic calming needed for Doyle Street (and possibly the other bike boulevards in Emeryville).  Measure BB, passed by voters in 2014 allows for this kind of safe street infrastructure but Council member Bauters was able to convince his Commission colleagues to waive the normally required matching funding from the municipality.  Mr Bauters argued that Emeryville’s small size made the matching funds requirement an undue burden and that the spirit of Measure BB would be subverted if Emeryville were to be forced to pay as much as the big cities.  His colleagues agreed and Emeryville has subsequently been released from the matching funds requirement as has two other small cities in the County. 

 Emeryville's Latest Traffic Count Results (2019)

Every bike boulevard is shown to be in violation of the Bike Plan due to too much vehicle traffic. At only 4% over the maximum allowable traffic before the COVID pandemic, Doyle Street certainly has been brought into compliance with the emplacement of the diverters.  However the other four boulevards are in even greater need for traffic calming.  Will the Council follow the success at Doyle Street and make the other bike boulevards safe too?

New Traffic Count Report: Emeryville's Entire Bike Boulevard Network Unsafe

Mounting Traffic Puts Bicyclists in Danger

All Five Bike Boulevards Now in Violation 

A recently released report by the City of Emeryville shows an alarming rise in vehicle traffic that now exposes bicyclists to danger on every bike boulevard in town due to unsafe volumes of traffic.  The internal report, entitled Vehicle/Bicycle/Pedestrian Counts (Fall 2019), was generated as a result of a Bike Plan required bi-annual traffic count and shows a rapidly deteriorating environment for bicyclists in Emeryville as compared with the last traffic count conducted by the City.  All five bike boulevards in Emeryville are now unsafe for bicycling according to the City’s own metrics and one, the 45th Street Bike Boulevard, is saddled with vehicle traffic 96% in excess over the safe limit.

The City has been aware the increase of vehicles using the town’s bike boulevard network is putting bicyclists in harm's way for some time but up until this latest traffic count report, at least one bike boulevard has always been shown to be within safe parameters.  Now that the Doyle Street Bike Boulevard has gone over the limit, that can no longer be claimed.

From the New Traffic Count Report
Emeryville's High Average Daily Traffic Allowances: Not High Enough.
Palo Alto's bike boulevard network allows for a maximum of 750 ADT.

The bike boulevard network was created in 2009 as a response to Emeryville’s anticipated growth the new General Plan provided for.  It was determined at the time, some streets should be set aside as bike priority streets to allow for bicycling to remain a viable alternative to driving.  Emeryville spent $200,000 on consultants who recommended the City create a network of these streets, bike boulevards, based on how other cities have done it.  The business and developer community however, not wishing their driving clients/tenants be constrained, cried foul.  As the Bike Plan was being finalized, the City Council unilaterally increased the allowable traffic on the network (over any other city in the Bay Area) to mollify the business community's concerns, especially on the highly contested Horton Street where the allowable traffic loads were doubled.  Traffic however has risen apace since then and now, even that increased allowance for traffic on our bike boulevards is not enough.

Against this backdrop, the City Council has been unwilling to implement the traffic calming remedies spelled out in the Bike Plan to reduce the rising vehicle traffic to the safe-for-bicyclists minimum called out by the Plan.  Developers and businesses near the bike boulevards have repeatedly told the Council that the specified traffic calming remedies are unacceptable and these have been the voices the Council has listened to up until now.  The predictable unsafe traffic volumes now seen on the bike boulevard network is due to the Council’s inaction in this regard.

It’s Going To Get Worse

Already Approved: the BMR Project
2400 parking spaces netting 4800 driving
trips per day will be added to an already
overburdened Horton Street.

The recent leap in traffic is a portent for what is to come.  The General Plan targets Emeryville with a population of 16,600 residents by 2029, the Plan’s sunset.  Added to the increased driving population will be a dramatically increased business footprint.  These eventualities will likely add lots of traffic to our existing grid regardless of Council hopes for a wholesale turn in public sentiments towards public transit.   Additionally the City Council, entertaining overturning existing housing unit mix regulations to accommodate residential super towers such as the Onni project slated for Christie Avenue, has hinted the 16,600 mark is a number they intend to race past rather than target.

One looming non-residential project, the BMR life science 'Center of Innovation' slated for Horton and Hollis Streets, will include 2400 new parking spaces delivering a new glut of 4800 Average Daily Traffic (ADT) trips to Horton Street.  Adding to that number, the approved Sherwin Williams project with at least an extra 4000 ADT and an unspecified amount of traffic from the newly completed but not yet fully rented Transit Center, Horton Street, already 38% over the limit, will not be a street for conducive for biking regardless of the plethora of purple signage proclaiming its bike boulevard status.

The City Council effectively took Horton Street out of contention as a possible street for bike transit when they issued a 'Statement of Overriding Considerations' in the run up to the approval for the Sherwin Williams project in 2016.  The SOC stated that the project will overturn the Horton Street Bike Boulevard but the community benefits of the project outweigh bike concerns.
More recently, the Council decided to not implement the Bike Plan  traffic calming treatments for the 45th & 53rd street bike boulevards, choosing instead to let the clock run out for the two streets.  The remaining boulevards on the network, Doyle Street and 59th Street don't seem likely candidates for traffic calming given the City Council's lack of concern for the Bike Plan combined with an aggressive view towards growth the Council has exhibited over and beyond what the General Plan provides for and traffic, accordingly, will likely overrun these two streets as well.