Make Your Voice Heard to Improve Walking and Biking in Alameda
Published on January 17, 2020
PRESS RELEASE
January 17, 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Rochelle Wheeler, Senior Transportation Coordinator
510-747-7442
Make your voice heard on where to improve walking and biking in Alameda
The City of Alameda has collected over 1,400 comments via an online map that allows community members to note where they feel unsafe walking and biking, where they’d like to see street safety improvements, and where they’ve had close calls with vehicles. Open up the map at www.ActiveAlameda.org and provide your comments by January 26 to have them considered in the development of a new bicycling and walking network.
This interactive map is part of the Alameda Active Transportation Plan, an update of the City’s 2009 Bicycle Master Plan and 2010 Pedestrian Plan. Information from the map will inform not just the Active Transportation Plan, but the Vision Zero street safety planning effort as well.
“We encourage people to use this map to note where they’d like to see the City make it safer and easier to walk and bike,” said Rochelle Wheeler, the City’s Senior Transportation Coordinator who is leading the Active Transportation Plan project. “We also want to know where people have nearly been hit by a motorist, so we can get a fuller picture of the safety issues in the City.”
The map is available in English, Chinese, and Spanish. It is one of the many ways that the City is gathering input for the Active Transportation Plan. The Plan launched with a November 7, 2019 Open House that attracted more than 150 people, who wrote on large printed maps, described what it is like to walk and bike in Alameda, and interacted with a team of five consultants and eight City staff members. The Active Transportation Plan process will also include a statistically significant survey, pop-ups and presentations at existing events, and more large workshops. The City’s consultant on this project, Toole Design, developed the online map and will compile all the feedback received. The Active Transportation Plan Community Advisory Group will help guide the Plan’s development, along with the City’s Transportation Commission. The Plan will be complete by the end of 2020.
“The City takes street safety very seriously, especially for our most vulnerable road users,” said Eric Levitt, Alameda City Manager. “We want to develop a network where people of all ages and abilities feel safe walking and biking.”
In the immediate term, the City is improving 16 intersections where a child-involved collision occurred last fall, and an additional 9 nearby and priority intersections in two phases, which started in December and will be completed next month. This includes refreshing and enhancing high-visibility crosswalks, the addition of stop bars to encourage vehicles to stop farther back from crosswalks, additional red curb at intersections to improve visibility (daylighting), and additional signage. City staff are now developing the next phase of improvements to be installed before the fall 2020 school year begins.
To access the online map and read more about the Active Transportation Plan, please visit www.ActiveAlameda.org.
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