‘Slow streets’:
Oakland’s move to close roads to cars while opening them up to residents has spread, and it won’t end soon.
In the month since Oakland began closing some neighborhood streets to through traffic, a move replicated by other cities across the country, a core truth of the “slow streets” movement has become clear — the more exuberant claims for the program might be overstated, but its benefit to nearby residents is very, very real.
Nor will it vanish on the day — next month? — when shelterinplace orders end. Instead, slow streets fit into a larger rethinking of the role that pavement can play in large American cities.
“We’ve opened a lot of Oaklanders to the idea that people can use streets in all sorts of ways,” said Ryan Russo, director of the city’s Department of Transportation. “Where things go from here, we’ll have to figure out.”
Since Oakland put its first barriers up, similar initiatives have been launched in San Francisco, Alameda and Redwood City. San Mateo, Berkeley and San Jose are all exploring the idea of letting restaurants place seating on closedoff asphalt. Urban centers from New York to Seattle have restricted ac
cess to streets large and small.
Still, Oakland’s initial move to provide protected space stands out.
The program launched on April 11 with the closure of 4.5 miles of streets around the clock to nearly all traffic except for people heading to or from their homes, emergency vehicles and delivery vans. Several expansions later, 20 miles of residential blocks are now tucked behind temporary barriers.
This is far short of the 74 miles announced as the city’s overall plan — a number so big it attracted nationwide attention at a time when people were being ordered to stay close to home. But that number was always a target, and the city expects to add more segments by the end of May.
In terms of providing a relief valve — thinning out crowded “official” public spaces so people can exercise or seek fresh air with enough room to maintain social distancing — there’s a gap between reality and hype.
Last Saturday, on a pleasant spring afternoon, I rode my bicycle past Lake Merritt and saw no shortage of people filling portions of the sidewalk or dotting the lawns. But on Alice Street, a cordonedoff “slow street” within three compact blocks of the lake’s western edge, I had the asphalt to myself. The same was true of a carfree corridor leading from Wayne Avenue to East 19th St. on the east side of the lake.
“In terms of (counterbalancing) the popularity of the lake and parks, we’re realizing there’s still work to be done,” Russo admitted this week. “In terms of people being able to go outside in their neighborhood and feel comfortable, feel safe in the roadbed, the slow streets are serving their purpose.”
That was evident a few days later, when I revisited the streets set aside in North Oakland. The scenes weren’t festive so much as relaxed: couples walking hand in hand, parents with young children piloting bikes and scooters even smaller than they were. One couple was jogging — the mother behind a baby stroller, the father gripping the leash of a large white dog.
“I love it,” grinned Yvonne McGrew, who has lived on Howe Street since 1973. It’s a street that seems bucolic. It’s also near enough to the Rockridge BART Station that impatient commuters would cut through the tangle of small blocks to shave a few moments off their drive.
“You would never have seen that — kids on bikes,” McGrew said, pointing to one pair of helmeted adventurers. “You’d see adults and their dogs, but not the kids. And I’m catching up with neighbors I’d hardly ever see.”
There was a similar mood late Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco, which is trying out several “slow streets” as well.
Page Street was empty except for the stray passerthrough, perhaps because Golden Gate Park’s Panhandle is a block to the south. But Lake Street in the Richmond District was another story, a widely spaced promenade of families getting fresh air at the end of the day, joggers loping past mansions, even a pair of surfers on their bicycles, boards attached securely on the side.
On Kirkham Street in the Inner Sunset, meanwhile, there’s now a basketball hoop outside one home near Funston Avenue. Kids from the neighborhood use the gently sloped blocks as an elongated chillout zone.
“It’s kind of freerange out here,” offered Sebastian Haas, a ninthgrader who lives near 15th Avenue. He had a skateboard; his younger brother had a gocart the pair had built in their garage.
I asked if there was much traffic in this quietlooking area before restrictions came down in March. “Actually, yeah. This gives you a chance to get outside and not think about it.”
Seattle has now gone so far as to announce that 20 miles of its streets will remain closed permanently to through traffic. Neither Oakland nor San Francisco are prepared to take such an emphatic step, at least not yet.
“Before anything is made permanent, we need to have a conversation as a whole community,” Russo said. As he points out, traffic diverted from one street in usual times is likely to head to others — “but we don’t have that right now.”
What we do have is a glum but growing awareness that the path ahead is murky. There won’t be some magic day where every adult is back in the office and all the kids are at school.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that crisis recovery is a slow road,” said Jamie Parks, director of the Livable Streets program at San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency. In fact, he promised additions next week to the four protected street segments now in place: “Slow streets will be in place for as long as they’re needed.” This is as it should be. The impacts of the slow streets initiatives are modest, not sweeping. But they offer another alternative to neighborhoods that in recent years have come to feel increasingly constrained — even before the pandemic arrived.