Oakland Slow Streets, A Call for More Data in Iterative Urban Planning
Fair Weather is a new corner cafe just south of Ladd’s Addition on SE Clinton in Portland
We're back in Oakland and enjoying the reprieve from long-distance driving. The transition back into the workweek has been surprisingly gentle and we're thankful for that. Needless to say, I always have a mixture of feelings when we get back home from an extended trip away. On one hand, sleeping in your own bed and re-engaging old routines feels incredibly comforting, but on the other, you miss the daily thrill of exploring new places, finding new restaurants, and seeing people you haven't visited in a long time.
We've already fallen into our routine again — our morning walks on in our neighborhood, College Ave, or Piedmont Ave, striking the tenuous balance between home-cooked meals and DoorDashed pickups, and trying desperately to find time for the chores and errands we've been pushing off.
But there's a subtle difference this time. Just before we left for our bi-annual road trip to the PNW, we reached our 2 weeks of post-vaccination and suddenly a new door was opened for outdoor dining, being closer with friends and family we haven't seen in some time, and walking maskless on busy hiking trails.
The vaccine has opened so many doors that were shut over a year ago and it feels like we're coming back to Oakland with a new lease on life. Please excuse me if it sounds dramatic, but the prospect of trying new restaurants, supporting new local businesses, and taking in-person meetings has brought so much joy back to our lives.
But while things are slowly moving back to "the way they were," I think our local governments should be taking a very close (and measured) look at what we've changed in such a short time and how we as a local and global population have adjusted to new norms and conditions for the better.
Flexible streets
While restaurant parklets, use-specific parking zones, and multi-purpose sidewalks have been deployed around the country for decades, it's now crucial to understand and survey how the recent changes and expansions to these programs have impacted our well-being, connection to our communities, and safety of our city streets.
All around Oakland and during our short visit to Bend, Portland, and Seattle, parklets were a new norm, filling vacant curb space with outdoor seating — even giving a new life to car-centric neighborhood roads with closures and street art.
Seattle DOT Designated Cursbside Food Pick-Up Sign
Parklets and Outdoor Seating Arrangements in Portland
Nong’s Khao Man Gai Parklet on 417 SW 13th Ave in Portland
Again, while parklets are no new thing and street art has been around for generations, their use has evolved over time and become a stabilizing element to many neighborhoods.
In Oakland on the popular restaurant avenues College, Piedmont, Mountain, MacArthur, and Telegraph, parklets line the streets with designs that range from make-shift to luxury, often filled with laughing people, happy dogs, and hour-long stays — painted as the only opportunity to eat with friends and family in a CDC-approved format.
Flex Streets Eases Use of Sidewalks, Parklets for Business Use Bars, restaurants and other businesses that want to use the adjacent sidewalk, parking lane or traffic lane for outdoor seating are encouraged to look to the City’s Flex Street Initiative. All fees have been waived and permitting has been streamlined for business’ use of the public rights-of-way, including partial or full street closures. Businesses expanding operations to private parking lots and other private outdoor areas will also benefit from streamlined permitting processes at oaklandca.gov/flexstreets.
While the Flexible Streets Initiative in Oakland was originally created to explore how streets might be used to impact business recovery from COVID-19, they're also an opportunity to improve ongoing civic life and encourage a shift from cars to people. The fallout of the pandemic presents a rare opportunity for policymakers to revisit pro-pedestrian initiatives and utilize functioning programs to repurpose our streets to be more pro-small business, pedestrian friendly, and restrictive to cars.
Opportunities:
Measure and analyze the impact of parklets on city streets and parking, looking at the ability to bring average speeds down, while mitigating possible traffic jams or run-offs into neighborhood side-roads.
Explore the possibility of transforming long-term parklets with permanent curb extensions for neighborhood "institutions." Market Hall, a Rockridge institution in its own right, recently transformed a parklet used primarily for waiting into a permanent curb extension.
Measure and analyze the impact of short-term (5-10 minute) pick-up zones to reduce the impact of mid-term and long-term parking on flow in foot-traffic heavy streets.
Prototype new programs where 4-lane in-fill streets are reduced entirely to 2-lane streets without excessive infrastructural adjustments and instead with temporary full-length parklet streets.
Slow streets
Although Oakland may have received the most press coverage from its large-scale application of the Oakland Slow Streets Program, we visited public street shutoffs in Portland, Seattle, and even in Bend, with a tiny population of just over 100,000.
Oakland, in particular, mobilized the slow streets program at a record pace, rolling out 21 miles of "soft closure" streets within a month of California's shelter-in-place order (April 2020) and extending the program to a second phase of rollouts the following month of May.
Neighborhood “Slow” Sign Artwork in Portland SE
As with other city-wide pandemic programs in Oakland, what began as a program in pandemic preparedness, providing safe space for physical activity and safe access to essential services, evolved into a conversation about geographic equity and gentrification, encouraged walkability and placemaking, and improved relationships with our neighbors.
But with every nascent, widespread project comes feedback and backlash. While it's clear that not all demographics and voices were heard in the initial rollout of the program, it's important to note that #OaklandSlowStreets were designed and deployed with significant research and the program continues to emphasize ongoing research and review, including regular public distribution of survey findings.
Although Oakland's approach to urban data is both underwhelming and ill-equipped, it presents an opportunity to drastically improve its approach from intercept surveys, OPD crash data, and maintenance interviews. Lightweight automated tracking and sensor-based solutions present an opportunity to collect de-personalized movement and count data that is far more accurate and functionally cheaper than people.
Opportunities:
Transitioning from a manual data collection approach to a sensor-based data collection system removes bias from data and improves measurement averages over time through continuous collection rather than accepting a single day as a complete sample set.
Average implementation cost is reduced over time for long-term programs, requiring an initial upfront cost of technology and installation, with minimal ongoing maintenance — especially with low-tech solutions like Arduino, XBee, Raspberry Pi, and other open-source frameworks through a generic gateway or onboard storage.
Automated data collection provides an opportunity to detect anomalies and unanticipated effects of new programs.
Why these programs are important
Flexible Streets and Slow Streets both represent an important transition from traditional methods of validating and deploying citywide programs. Drawing parallels from software engineering, rather than taking a waterfall approach to deploying new programs and initiatives that are rooted in internal investigation and research, the Slow Streets and Flexible Streets programs were deployed almost haphazardly, with sparse rollout announcement and visibly low-cost infrastructure (i.e. signs and cones over installed blockades).
Its implementation asks for forgiveness, not approval. And while the mayor's office quotes that the program was "largely approved," the real truth is inconclusive due to a lack of survey respondents.
If these programs are designed to shed the waterfall approach in exchange for an agile approach, its research must be ongoing and implementation must be iterative. With a $160,000 budget (April to September 2020) largely allocated to physical implementation, maintenance, signage, and soft barricades, the program must make a concerted effort and set aside a budget to collect, measure, and analyze the data. As with any personal, business, and governmental pursuit, measuring results and performance is crucial to effectiveness. Program efficacy yields different results from subjective observation, but objective observation could shed light on:
pedestrian safety and well-being (beyond the OPD statistics)
vehicle impact on streets (beyond the cost of roadwork)
small business improvement (beyond tax returns)
neighborhood(ly) resilience (beyond real estate prices)
location-specific transit options (beyond typical bus routes and incorporating micro-mobility)
local government funding, budgets, and future programs
Not all cities are equal. Not all solutions are effective. But urban data and technology is a critical bridge to enhancing civic life and improving our relationships with our built and natural environments.
"Streets and their sidewalks — the main public spaces of a city — are its most vital organs."
- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities