Oakland streets already worst and getting worse (East Bay Times My Word)
Inadequate pavement maintenance:
All over Oakland one finds streets that have been neglected for decades and left to deteriorate. Examples can be seen and experienced almost anywhere in the city, but the problem especially acute in Oakland’s less affluent neighborhoods. Nowhere else in Alameda County or in the Bay Area are the streets as deteriorated and torn up as they are in Oakland.
Fanciful street planning:
Instead of making Oakland’s streets drivable, Oakland’s traffic planners increasingly opt for politically-correct street “enhancements” that often don’t work.
Almost $2 million was spent near the intersection of Lakeshore and Lake Park with little to show for the money spent and a 10-year implementation period. Recent traffic-lane closures along Grand Avenue are causing 2-mile long afternoon traffic backups. El Embarcadero at the north end of Lake Merritt used to consist of two well-functioning streets between Grand Avenue and Lakeshore. That ended when the city replaced the two streets with a single two-lane street, which now adds greatly to the traffic congestion at the north end of Lake Merritt. A recent city street improvement project at MacArthur and Telegraph backed up traffic for a period of eight months. When the traffic barriers were finally removed, it was apparent that nothing much of consequence had resulted.
AC Transit reports that planned reductions in traffic lanes elsewhere along Telegraph Avenue will slow down and otherwise impede AC Transit’s important No. 1 and 1R lines.
Heavy Alameda-bound traffic heading south on Webster Street adds significantly to the traffic congestion now interfering with Oakland’s once vibrant but now struggling Chinatown. Ill-conceived street enhancement can be worse than doing nothing, especially if it takes resources away from street maintenance.
http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/05/31/oakland-streets-already-worst-and-getting-worse-east-bay-times-my-word/
