San Pablo Ave. Multimodal Transit Study

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

San Pablo Avenue is an approximately 20-mile-long arterial roadway that runs from downtown Oakland north to Crockett, spanning nine cities and unincorporated areas across western Contra Costa and Alameda Counties. As part of the Lincoln Highway that preceded Interstate 80, it frequently parallels that freeway facility and links all of the jurisdictions in West Contra Costa and Alameda Counties. Two-thirds of the project corridor runs within Contra Costa County and is controlled by the jurisdictions though which it travels, except for approximately two miles in El Cerrito, between the Alameda/Contra Costa County line and Cutting Boulevard, which is controlled by Caltrans and designated as State Route 123. AC Transit operates frequent local and rapid bus service between Contra Costa College in San Pablo and Downtown Oakland, a distance of approximately 12 miles. In El Cerrito, the Ohlone Greenway multi-use path parallels San Pablo Avenue between one and three blocks to the east. Beginning in 2018, the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (Authority) partnered with the West Contra Costa Transportation Commission (WCCTC) and the Alameda County Transportation Commission (ACTC) to undertake a comprehensive analysis of San Pablo Avenue in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, spanning 13 miles and seven cities from Downtown Oakland to Contra Costa College in San Pablo. Phase 1 of the San Pablo Avenue Multimodal Corridor Study (Study) focused on addressing current and future conditions in the corridor and identified solutions designed to promote multimodal mobility and safety, including a protected bicycle facility vs. parallel facility and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) improvements. Safety is a particular concern along San Pablo Avenue as it has been identified as a high-injury facility in both MTC and CCTA’s high-injury network. Led by WCCTC, Phase 2 of the Study focused on the Contra Costa portion of the corridor due to the highly variable width of the San Pablo Avenue in the County and tested which types of Draft Scope of Work – San Pablo Avenue Multimodal Corridor Project 1 improvements could be implemented within the limited space. Phase 2 resulted in a set of active transportation, transit priority, and road safety recommendations for the Contra Costa portion of the Study corridor, which runs approximately 5.5 miles from the Alameda County line to Contra Costa College and includes the cities of El Cerrito, Richmond, and San Pablo. The Study recommendations included the construction of multimodal safety improvements at up to 75 locations in the Corridor and included technical analysis of a variety of roadway configurations that could improve transit speed and reliability. At the conclusion of Phase 2, the WCCTC Board supported the implementation of the multimodal safety recommendations, and it sought more extensive public feedback on which of the transit facilities to implement. The WCCTC Board also supported the implementation of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) pilot project designed to test the applicability of transit-only lane operations and impacts to other modes. Before design and construction can take place on either of the two Phase 2 recommendations, the Authority is committed to a robust and meaningful public outreach effort to develop a unified concept for San Pablo Avenue, which operates as a “main street” through the three Project jurisdictions. The cities foresee that many sites along San Pablo Avenue will be redeveloped into transit-oriented development projects with moderate-to high-density housing and therefore the cities support robust transit service along the roadway. The businesses along the corridor are a combination of newer development with off-street parking and older storefronts that utilize on street parking and loading, and, in some areas, a two-way, center turn lane utilized at times by delivery vehicles. Newer housing development has minimized parking requirements in anticipation of residents’ greater utilization of transit.