Oakland, CA – Over the next few months, residents in neighborhoods across Oakland will see a flurry of street paving that will deliver four times as many miles of fresh smooth streets as the City repaved in recent years.
At a kickoff event at the corner of East 16th Street and 37th Avenue in the Fruitvale district today, Mayor Libby Schaaf and OakDOT Director Ryan Russo detailed plans to repave streets across Oakland between now and when local asphalt plants close for the winter. In all, OakDOT anticipates that at least 25 miles of city streets will see smooth new pavement this year, compared to an average of 6 miles per year over the last few cycles. Oakland residents, workers and visitors drive an estimated half-million trips over these roads every day.
This “Summer of Paving” represents an important step in addressing Oakland’s paving backlog. City crews, which OakDOT has been growing to provide more capacity, will perform full repaving on smaller neighborhood streets. These crews are working 12-hour days and repaving streets seven days a week. Contractors will supplement this by performing preventative maintenance on larger streets and fully repaving others. This work will begin to make a dent in Oakland’s paving backlog, which is approximately $443 million over 830 miles of city streets.
The funding to provide this work is relatively new. In November 2016, 82 percent of Oakland voters approved Measure KK, which is providing $350 million in bond funds over the next decade to address the City’s backlog of needed street repairs. That money is being put to work now, with $25 million in Measure KK spending approved by the City Council in the 2017-2019 budget. OakDOT has been putting other new resources to work as well. Funding from Senate Bill 1 – the gas tax adjustment passed by Sacramento in 2017, which brought $7 million to Oakland – is being used to hire 20 new workers dedicated to street maintenance, as well as acquiring the new equipment those workers need.
More than 20 miles of the streets being repaved help fulfill the City of Oakland’s five-year paving plan, passed by City Council in 2014. Initially, the plan languished behind schedule for the first few years with insufficient funding, this season’s projects alone will complete 20 percent of the 96-mile five-year paving plan. While the five-year plan focuses largely on major streets where more Oaklanders drive, repaving will also occur on smaller neighborhood streets that are in especially poor condition.
Every street and every block are different, but examples of the kinds of streets identified for paving in this initiative include:
A local residential street, near schools and close to a BART station: E 16th between 35th and 37th Avenues
- Fewer than 500 trips per day
- Pavement condition: Poor
- Last paved: Before 1960
- Length: 0.14 miles
- Paving treatment: Full repave
A neighborhood street that connects people: Seminary Avenue, E 16th to Foothill
- Approx. 7,000 trips a day
- Pavement condition: Poor
- Last paved: 2001
- Length: 0.6 miles
- Paving treatment: Full repave
A major arterial that carries a lot of trips every day: Golf Links Rd, between Fontaine and 98th Avenue
- Approx. 18,000 trips a day
- Pavement condition: Very Good to Fair
- Last paved: 2004
- Length: 0.6 miles
- Paving treatment: Preventative maintenance
Although this initiative reflects a significant increase in paving activity, there are still many residents out there whose streets are not immediately included and will need future attention. Community input is critical to the ongoing process of identifying where those streets are. Oaklanders are encouraged to continue reporting their potholes and damaged streets to OAK 311:
By Phone: Dial 311 from any phone within Oakland
Online: Submit a request at 311.oaklandca.gov
E-mail: OAK311@oaklandca.gov
Mobile App: OAK 311 (powered by SeeClickFix), available free for Apple and Android devices
The Summer of Paving is occurring in the same time frame when OakDOT historically announced its annual Pothole Blitz. As the department announced last year, while pothole repair work and other short-term repairs continue year-round, it is important to shift focus to the more expensive, long-term work of repaving Oakland’s roads. The Summer of Paving reflects the first major step in that direction, investing heavily in the long-term solutions Oakland desperately needs. Please see the map for streets included in the Summer of Paving.