My name is Bryan Culbertson, I live in District 3, and bike on Telegraph almost every day.

Last week talked to the workers and managers of Telegraph who will have their lives impacted if the protected bikeway is removed. I learned they were not contacted about this proposal.

I spoke to the Moxy hotel. They told me OakDOT had not contacted them. Moxy has staff who bike, walk, and take transit to work, and they rent bikes to guests. They want a protected bikeway for the safety of staff and guests.

I spoke Shack Shack. They told me they did not know about this vote today. They want a protected bikeway for the safety of staff and customers.

I spoke to Little Giant. They told me they are concerned removing the protected bikeway would hurt the asian-american bike club that frequently bikes by.

I spoke to workers at Xolo, they told me they use Telegraph to get to work and want to keep the protected bikeway.

I spoke to bartenders at the Kon-Tiki room, they told me they bike to work want to keep the protected bikeway since it is how they get to work.

I urge you to listen to the workers, travelers, and residents:
1. Install the concrete curbs for the protected bikeway without any further delays.
2. Talk with people who live, work, walk, roll, and take transit in our city, instead of just echoing a couple owners with loud voices.
3. Support KONO businesses in their efforts to build community and attract customers, and do so without bringing them more cops and punitive fines.

I am a Transportation Planner and Engineer by training and profession. I work as a Project Manager for BART, where my job is to implement bicycle and pedestrian access improvement capital projects (two of which, currently in design, include separated bike lanes). I'm also a former Oakland BPAC Commissioner (2017-2020) where I served on the Infrastructure Committee. My bicycle has been my primary mode of transportation for the past 25 years, including from my house on 63rd at Telegraph to my job on Webster, one block from Telegraph @ 22nd St. I am writing on my own behalf, not BART's.

The existing separated bike lanes in KONO are dangerous because the sightlines between roadway users - especially cyclists/drivers and pedestrians/drivers - are blocked by parked cars. Good visibility is a fundamental principle of roadway safety, but here it has been sacrificed for the sake of separating cyclists from vehicle traffic at midblock locations. Collisions happen at intersections, not midblock; and at the intersections, cyclists are not protected in any way. They are, instead, hidden from view of drivers making turns.

The current installation was a pilot project. For it to be made permanent, it had to be a resounding success. It was not.

I strongly support OakDOT's recommendation to change the separated bike lanes to buffered lanes, which are a far more appropriate choice for the Telegraph Ave. context. Please vote to approve OakDOT's recommendations. Thank you. -Mariana Parreiras

KONO strongly supports OakDOT's proposal to install buffered bike lanes on Telegraph Ave. The parking separated lanes are dangerous as proven by “reported” collision data (also many go unreported). In addition to the safety issues, the negative economic impact to the businesses has been significant with a 25% decrease in sales tax revenue from 2016-2019, and this impact will be magnified by the reduction of vendor space for the Oakland First Fridays event if the separated lanes are made permanent.
Buffered Lanes are also supported by the Race and Equity Department and the Mayors Commission on Persons with Disabilities. KP Market gathered over 2,800 signatures in one week & KONO gathered 1,783 signatures. Both petitions are asking council to change to a buffered bike lane. Total 4,583 signatures from the community.
Cyclists oppose “protected lane”: Devoted cyclists and 2 former BPAC commissioners, engineers and planners speak out on the dangerous design of the lane. Data shows that stretch of Telegraph Ave/KONO exhibits the highest per mile bicycle and pedestrian collision rates and 2.3 times the average for pedestrian collision rates. AC Transit suggested that the issues with the protected lanes be solved by prohibiting cars from turning right or left off of Telegraph Ave.
The city should do an Economic Impact Study and include loss of parking impact to businesses, loss of real estate space for festival vendors, and impact from curb management program.

My name is Phil Erickson. I own a small urban design and transportation planning business in downtown Oakland in District 3. For over 20 years, we have successfully collaborated with city staff and Oaklanders on projects like the Telegraph Complete Streets Implementation Plan and 13th St. Commons. I, and others in the office, commute by bike. Years of experience riding in Oakland has shown us that near misses/collisions are more frequent where bike lanes are not protected. Removing protected bike lanes in KONO will negatively impact our transportation choices and physical health.

My commute also includes Shattuck. I often see vehicles use the bike lane as a driving lane. Experiencing this and other drivers behavior in Oakland convinces me that drivers will use a buffered bike lane on Telegraph frequently as a travel and parking lane. Also, people will driver faster with paint and cyclists next to them rather than parked cars. Increased speed will put all users at more risk along Telegraph in KONO.

Improved protected bike lanes will increase visibility between drivers and cyclists. Curb management can help address business concerns if combined with protected bike lanes. Design and management solutions can be found to address First Fridays’ concerns with protected bike lanes. I am willing to provide pro bono design assistance to identify solutions.

Please do not approve enhanced buffered bike lanes on Telegraph in KONO. Let’s make Telegraph work better for everyone.

I strongly oppose removing the protected lanes and replacing them with unprotected lanes — and frankly find it shocking that DOT would even consider such a retrograde proposal. Any experienced cyclist in Oakland will tell you the problem with unprotected lanes ("buffered" or otherwise) is simple: they are constantly blocked with illegally-parked cars. As long as I've lived here, the city of Oakland has never done any substantial enforcement on bike-lane parking, and they likely never will. From what we've seen so far from OakDOT, "Curb Management" is a farce and means nothing in terms of real-world results. A bike lane that's filled with parked cars is not a bike lane at all, and a city that cares about promoting cheap and zero-emission transportation will provide REAL bike lanes that are usable at all hours of the day and protected physically from errant drivers. Don't let the KONO merchants bully us into taking away one of our best pieces of safe biking infrastructure and replace it with what will essentially be an overflow parking lot for their customers. Do the right thing for the environment, for people who can't afford cars, for wheelchair users that use the protected lanes, for the families and loved ones of cyclists who are killed by drivers every year in this city because they don't have safe, protected routes to get around. Keep the protected lanes and use the $4.5 million in outside grant money to finish the job and fix the safety issues!

I am a Board Member of KONO and represent a major business on Telegraph. I support the removal of the protected bike lanes to a buffered bike lane. Since the installation of the current protected bike lane we have witnessed collisions, near misses and a lot of confusion between vehicles, cyclist, delivery trucks and our local customers. In a very short period we have collected over 2,800 signatures to remove the protected barriers and return to a buffered more logical bike lane. Those who signed our petition are local residents who live on Telegraph and shop in our stores. They also are voters who live locally and are not pleased with the current situation. Currently due to the confusion of the protected bike lanes many are double parking or not driving to our location. We have seen a reduction in business because some customer don't want to deal with the confusion and un safe issues currently on Telegraph. Please listen to local business and your voting constituents and not to special interests who live and work outside of Telegraph and return our street back to safety and a place for economic development. Thank you Curt Haven KONO Board of Director.

Testj’’alkj’;alkyd;Lakshadweep g

As a long time resident (more than 20 years) of the area and a user of the Telegraph bike lane, I support "Permanent Protected Bike Lanes (Continuous concrete protected bike lanes, bus boarding islands, and two protected intersections)". The current setup is too hard for drivers to figure out, and remains dangerous for cyclists. Permanent cement barriers are the standard in much of Europe and parts of Manhattan and other cities. They work. Our current buffers are an eyesore and don't protect cyclists or car drivers.

My name is Josh, and as someone who gets around primarily by bike and transit in the east bay, i strongly oppose this change Telegraphi worked for several years adjacent to the area in question and regularly biked in the protected lane and felt very safe doing so. Importantly, the proposed change will endanger people on bikes as well as pedestrians, and will encourage more dangerous driving behavior. To see the proposed innovative curb management in action, one need only look to other streets in Oakland such as Grand and Broadway or even farther up Telegraph to see how paint-only bike lanes endanger all road users, including people taking the bus, pedestrians, people on bikes, and even people driving cars. This regressive proposal, if passed, would be a huge blemish on Oakland's progressive action to make streets safe for all users. We must make Telegraph safe and accessible to people of all ages and abilities, as well as socioeconomic status, and regressing to buffered bike lanes will do exactly the opposite of that, and will jeopardize people's lives.

As an LGBTQ, mixed race, disabled small business owner and resident on 20th & Telegraph I strongly oppose the recommendation to use buffered bike lanes instead of protected bike lanes as originally planned. I don't know how to explain that people should care about the lives of the residents and visitors to our city more than the convenience of drivers who see the painted lines and feel entitled to use them as parking, forcing bikers and other mobility device users (scooters, motorized chairs) into street traffic which is dangerous for everyone. I see this every single day outside my home; I fear for my partner's life whenever she bikes to run errands (she's been hit and harassed multiple times by entitled drivers in buffered "bike lanes"). It's truly horrifying to see that the DOT weighed the safety and protection of human lives at the same level as the slight inconvenience of business owners' perceived profit loss from the removal of a few parking spaces. Going back on the original plan will jeopardize the grant funding we need for other road improvements and make telegraph less safe for everyone. It is irresponsible in the face of climate change to prioritize drivers over the lives of people using the street responsibly and sustainably by using other modes of transportation. Please, for the future of Oakland, safety of our community, and wellbeing of our planet, do not approve this modification.

My name is Ryan Tesluk, and I am an artist who is based at FM Studios on 25th street. As I have been in my current space there since July of last year, I have yet to experience the diverse audience and potentially handsome source of revenue that the festival can provide. Today’s vote on whether to install permanent concrete bike lanes may prevent me and artists less privileged than I am from ever doing so.

Considering the lack of research on whether protected bike lanes would be safer than the buffered option, I believe we, the people who live and/or work in Oakland should ask whether there is more to the city’s motivation of installing lanes than cyclist safety. Why, for example, would they want to install barriers that would be as useless protecting bikers from drunk and manic drivers as their barrier-less predecessors? Why would an elected official endorse such a plan that would eliminate an affordable, diverse, and primarily BIPOC festival that, without it, the Oakland (and Bay Area) Art scene could cease to exist?

Considering that some city officials have openly been against the event happening on first Friday nights, it could be to say that those council members who wish to install protected bike lanes have malevolent, and possibly racist intentions to do so. Many American cities have a history of using “safety concerns” as an excuse to cancel primarily B.I.P.O.C. jewels such as Oakland First Fridays. I beg the city council to not destroy it.

As a cyclist, I feel less safe riding on Telegraph with the current configuration. As I cross each intersection I worry that a car coming up behind me won't have seen me as clearly as if I were riding in a lane adjacent to traffic and will turn across my path. I also worry about pedestrians stepping into the bike lane without checking for traffic, both from their cars (people don't expect a bike to be coming up between their parked car and the curb) and to and from the outdoor dining parklets that require patrons and servers to cross the bike lane to reach. I've also come across groups of people who use the bike lane as a pedestrian path. From my perspective I'd rather see and be seen on my bike and I tend to choose alternative routes than Telegraph since the changes were made.

The protected bike lanes are safer and universally considered better than buffered bike lanes. We should be moving forward, into the future, with what we know works. If there are problems with the protected bike lanes lets fix those, not throw the whole thing out.

Please oppose the OakDOT staff's recommendation.
1. This recommendation jeopardizes 4.5 million dollars in funding that can be used to create better visibility facilities such as the one that is currently being used around the lake and has rave reviews from everyone. The bollards were never meant to be a permanent solution but moving to the painted buffered bike lanes would be a huge waste of resources.
2. KONO needs support for their businesses and extended traffic calming measures, not a nebulous innovative curb management strategy. As a resident who lives up on Vernon near 27th, I frequent the KONO district a bunch for food, shopping, and as a means of getting to and from Berkeley Lab where I work. Drivers still maneuver around the neighborhood dangerously, and this is not because of the bike lanes. During my walk the other day, I encountered a driver doing a U-Turn who was clearly under the influence. A buffered bike lane would not only threaten the structures on that stretch of road, but the barrier of safety protecting cyclists from dangerous drivers would also be compromised. This accident happened one block up from the proposed area just recently. https://twitter.com/dt8k/status/1407880819817947138
3. Cyclists who often travel at speeds of 20-25 mph have no awareness of what is safe for children and seniors who often cycle at speeds of 5-10 mph. They should not dictate what is good for the rest of us who don't ride fast.

I am one of the founding members of the Oakland bike/walk commission, appointed by then-mayor Jean Quan, and an Oakland resident of 17 years who uses Telegraph Ave almost every day by either foot, bike, bus, and car.

I oppose the paint-only buffered bikeway option, and support the protected bikeway alternative to replace the 3' high flex posts with 6" high curbs and concrete, which will be much more compatible with First Fridays.

This work is already 100% designed and funded by a $4.5M state grant which also includes bus stop upgrades, new traffic signals, new curb ramps and many more accessibility features. I also support adding curb management to the protected bikeway alternative to increase loading zones and disabled parking access.

Oakland DOT's preferred scoring of the buffered bikeway option is entirely reliant on their ability to keep it clear of double parking obstructions via enforcement. If the DOT can accomplish this (very unlikely) then the greatly increased ticketing and towing will be bad for KONO businesses & customers, but if they can't then by the DOT's own analysis the street will be much less safe. The report from the Department of Race & Equity did not consider these impacts, but I still urge council to take them into account.

The buffered bikeway alternative will also add at least a year delay in construction, at least $250k in added expense to redesign the project, and may put the entire $4.5M state grant at risk.

I am an Oakland resident who rides frequently in the KONO area in order to patronize local businesses. I love Oakland and believe that we should be an example for other cities of how to support multi modal and emission free transportation. In biking Oakland, I have been close to cars striking me at least 5 times.
Anyone who thinks that cars will respect buffered bike lanes and not park in them is ignorant of reality and has never biked in Oakland. Cars will park in them and will pull through them quickly to park on the other side. Law enforcement does nothing to make cars follow the law and the buffered bike lanes will only set up more conflicts between bikes and drivers.

Please follow Walk Oakland Bike Oakland’s recommendation (https://twitter.com/walkoakbikeoak/status/1405963532122853379) and reject OakDot’s proposed plan to remove protected bike lanes for Telegraph. Instead, we should stick with the originally proposed and paid for plan to install permanent protected bike lanes between 20th and 29th (Option #3).

I strongly oppose the proposal to revert the existing protected bike lanes to buffered bike lanes on Telegraph. Firstly, this project will reduce safety for all road users on Telegraph Avenue. Second, the added cost ($250,000) to redesign the roadway and the extra schedule for implementation is wasteful and could imperil state grant funding not just for this project, but for Oakland's ability to be grant-competitive in the future. There are existing construction documents for the protected bike lane that have already bid-out under-budget. Thirdly, the Equity Study for Telegraph failed to analyze the very real impacts to low-income residents & people of color if the buffered bike lane with "innovative curb management" is implemented. This would mean more parking enforcement, more tickets, and more towed cars - the burden of which would fall the hardest on those least able to afford it. The buffered bike lane project is likely a greater negative equity impact than the protected bike lanes - but we'll never know because OakDOT and DRE failed to study this glaring potential impact. Protected bike lanes are safer, they have a lesser financial impact on the City, and they generate a lesser equity impact than buffered bike lanes by replacing police enforcement with concrete curbs.

I live on Telegraph and 29th and the protected bike lanes make me feel safer to ride. I keep hearing about friends just barely avoiding gnarly bike accidents along paths that don't have them. Right now, it's great to see so many people choosing to bike but we would think twice about making this choice if they were removed, because we KNOW this will increase car speeds and likelihood of accidents. Listen to the constituents who actually live in and commute through this area! Bike-friendly cities are the future--let's do all we can to help Oakland set the right example and lead the charge in the right direction.

Please follow Walk Oakland Bike Oakland’s recommendation (https://twitter.com/walkoakbikeoak/status/1405963532122853379) and reject OakDot’s proposed plan to remove protected bike lanes for Telegraph. Instead, we should stick with the originally proposed and paid for plan to install permanent protected bike lanes between 20th and 29th.

I do not own a car. I walk and bike for transportation. I frequent this stretch of Telegraph often. Most recently, I've been riding this section of telegraph to go to Wednesday night group runs at Renegade, and stop at Xolo afterwards for a burrito

OakDOT’s proposed plan to remove the temporary protected lanes on Telegraph and return to a buffered bike lane is a serious misstep and reverses progress our city is making toward becoming a more walkable and liveable city. The unprotected bike lanes on Telegraph and elsewhere in Oakland are all-too-often used as temporary parking, forcing bike riders into traffic. Installing permanently protected bike lanes solves this problem without the need for expensive and dangerous police enforcement.

Since the temporary protected bike lanes have been installed, bike traffic on Telegraph has doubled, and safety has increased (see slides here: https://twitter.com/prinzrob/status/1400561017780948993). To remove the protected bike lanes would discourage new bikers who are not comfortable riding in or near traffic, would lead to more speeding, and more preventable bicyclist and pedestrian injuries and deaths.

I support the resolution to install buffered bike lanes on Telegraph.