Would dismantling Interstate 980 repair damage to Black neighborhoods?
Divisive highway could be on its way out as Caltrans studies ways to reconnect neighborhoods
The arrival of $680 million in federal funding could revive proposals to eliminate Interstate 980, the relatively little-used highway that separated West Oakland neighborhoods from the rest of the city when it opened almost a half-century ago.
With the grant funding in tow, state transportation department Caltrans will begin studying how those communities could be reconnected and if the highway could be replaced by a city street that's less invasive to the mostly Black neighborhoods it divided.
“For too long, I-980 has been a scourge on the East Bay: instead of bringing communities together, it has been a barrier to economic opportunity for the primarily Black neighborhood of West Oakland,” Congresswoman Barbara Lee said in a statement celebrating the new funding.
Construction on I-980 began in the 1960s, but wasn't completed until 1985. The roughly 2-mile stretch was meant to provide East Bay motorists taking Interstate 580 and Highway 24 with a direction connection to I-880, past the Oakland airport to San Jose. For many, I-980 is the quickest route to Jack London Square.
But the highway project led to the destruction of over 500 homes, nearly two dozen businesses and several churches. And while planners had envisioned a connection to a second transbay bridge linking San Francisco to Highway 24, that span was never built.
Today, urban advocates in Oakland say the highway was always unnecessary, a product of mid-20th century investment in car culture that separated Black residents in West Oakland from downtown, with a noise-polluted pedestrian pathway surrounded by vehicle traffic in between.
“The design of the freeway was typical of large scale 20th-century infrastructure projects, which disproportionately affected low-income communities of color in a quest to improve commutes for affluent white suburbs,” according to a 2017 report about the highway by the Congress for New Urbanism titled “Freeways without Futures.”
Past efforts to convert the highway to a tree-laden city street have consistently fallen short. Even a project included in President Joe Biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal in 2021 was later left out of the approved spending package.
But the latest grant could signal new life for Oaklanders who believe removing the highway is the best way to make their city whole again.
“This grant will help us set the stage for reconnecting West Oakland and downtown, part of our continuing effort to address decades worth of environmental injustices and deliver more equitable outcomes,” said Mayor Sheng Thao in a statement.
The funding is part of the “Reconnecting the Town” initiative headed by U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who even posed in front of the highway last year to promote the collection of grants.
“Reconnecting communities divided by transportation infrastructure is a historic step toward addressing injustices that tore apart neighborhoods, especially in communities of color,” Tony Tavares, the director of Caltrans, said in a statement.