building a better bay area

Oakland takes 'swift and effective' action to make intersection safer

Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Oakland takes 'swift and effective' action to make intersection safer

Officials in Oakland unveiled a newly created crosswalk near the Lake Merritt BART station that's supposed to be safer.

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Sometimes our stories about building a better Bay Area take the building part literally.

We were in Oakland Monday for the unveiling of a newly created crosswalk that's supposed to be safer. It's near the Lake Merritt BART station, at Madison and Eighth streets. You can see new plastic posts and paint.

It's what the city calls a "swift and effective" intersection safety project.

"This set of plastic bollards and paint is a very low cost and fast intervention that will make this really kind of complicated intersection so much safer. Not just for cars, but for bikes, for pedestrians, for wheelchairs, for baby strollers, for those crazy scooters that we see everywhere," said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf.

The city says this project will reduce racial disparities in pedestrian crashes, as 30-percent of streets in majority Asian census tracts fall on the "pedestrian high injury network."

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