What Rockridge Bikeways Need Repaving?

Many of Oakland's roads are in bad condition. But potholes that are merely jarring in a car can be considerably more hazardous when encountered on a bicycle. For years, a few disintegrating blocks on Colby Street terrorized bicyclists. The half-mile stretch was a rotten link in the bicycle route that connected Berkeley to downtown Oakland.

The street hadn't been repaved in more than 20 years, and in the cash-strapped calculus of public works, the street had reached a point where it no longer made financial sense to repair.

The Winter 2013 newsletter from the city's bike and pedestrian department explains: How does this happen? In recent years, Oakland has had approximately $6 million/year to invest in paving. In contrast, it would require $27 million/year to keep the pavement in its current state of repair. With $400 million of deferred maintenance, the City is unable to keep streets from deteriorating. And once a street reaches a certain stage of decay, it becomes very expensive to repair. In fact, it is more cost-effective to spend those resources on other streets to keep them from reaching that critical stage of decay. In the case of Colby St, it was falling into the category known as “worst streets”: streets that are no longer cost-effective to repair.

But last fall, using county funds designated solely for bicycle and pedestrian projects, the city repaved only the travel lanes on the wrecked portion of Colby, not the parking lanes. This method cost the city 40 percent less than it would have to redo the whole road, according to the city's Bicycle and Pedestrian Facilities Program. 

Public Works wants your suggestions about what bikeways "are critically in need of repaving." 

In the last five years, Oakland has added 40 miles of bikeways to its streets, added 3,000 new bike parking spots and installed 40 bike-friendly traffic signals.