Rob AriasEmeryville businesses along 40th Street and Park Avenue are beginning to mobilize to express their concerns over the planned 40th Street Multimodal Project that is expected to kick off construction later this year.
Two signs along Hubbard Street, presumed to have been installed by a local property owner, are urging businesses and residents opposed to the project to voice their displeasure with the city.
Project Overview
Conception of the project goes back to 2018 with several public meetings over the past six years. The project aims to enhance bike/ped safety and transit throughout the corridor through lane reconfigurations, a protected two-way cycle track and the addition of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lanes.
The project is split into two phases with the first extending from Adeline to the 40th/Shellmound overpass. The second phase would extend the project north along Shellmound all the way to Christie Avenue.
Estimated total cost of the project is expected to exceed $30 million with $17M of this currently procured and several applications for additional funding still being reviewed.
Public Works Director Provides Overview of Project Status
The latest City Council meeting held on November 19, 2024 included a traffic analysis, an update on grant efforts, and an updated construction schedule.
City of Emeryville Public Works Director Mohamed Alaoui presented highlights from the two part, 180 page traffic study conducted by Fehr & Peers noting 12 bike/ped collisions along the corridor between 2015 and 2019. Four of the five collisions that involved injury were near the 40th & San Pablo Avenue Intersection and one at the Target entrance on the southern side of 40th Street.
Data in the Fehr & Peers study claimed that these proposed closures would only amount to an approximately 20-second delay on Park Avenue for motorists.
Debate Over Traffic Data
The contentious part of the project involves several partial and full closures of streets that intersect the northern side of 40th Street in order to accommodate the cycle track and BRT lane.
Several business and property owners stepped forward to raise concerns over vehicle access, traffic data reliability, and transparency in the planning process.
“Access to small businesses located at these properties will be adversely impacted by those street closures,” said Tim Robison of Buttner Properties who own properties on the north side of Hubbard.
“One might conclude the city decided to present older data to make it look like there are a lot more accidents on Hubbard Street.”
Robison questioned the use of older data in the study and accused the city of using it to exaggerate safety risk. “We have significant concerns with the city’s traffic report. The city used accident data that was well over five years old,” Robison noted that collision data included in the 5-year study included data as from 2015. “One might conclude the city decided to present older data to make it look like there are a lot more accidents on Hubbard Street.”
Fehr & Peers consultant Rob Rees defended the methodology, explaining that post-2020 data was skewed by pandemic-related disruptions and data from these years was considered an outlier. “There are some communities that insist that we only look at three years worth of data or the most recent data. A lot of communities are not looking at that COVID period of 2020 to 2021 because it is so dampened,” he explained.
Rees referenced the DoT Safe System Approach, a more proactive approach for traffic analysis, as one of their guiding principles for addressing roadway safety in their analysis.
James McGoey, who owns a property on Watts Street, questioned the street’s partial closure since the traffic data noted zero collisions. McGoey predicted that delivery vehicles attempting to navigate this partial closure would inevitably cause back-ups on 40th.
Other businesses claimed the city failed to adequately notify affected businesses in the area. “We’re concerned with what is being prosed here. We never got adequate notice regarding this and we’re not aware of any community outreach regarding this,” expressed Ellis Partners representative Andrew Pomerantz. “We’re also concerned with the road closures and how they’ll directly impact the ingress and egress of the business that’s located in our property.” Ellis owns the former Westinghouse building that was converted into life sciences space at Park and Halleck Street.
“I’ve heard about debt and all the spend[ing] that the city wants to do, but you have no funding. You’re looking for more funding, but you can’t even take care of what you have now.”
Another speaker accused the city rushing the project without proper engagement. “We are reaching out to so many property owners and businesses that were never notified,” the speaker noted. “How could you never notify a business or a property owner of something of this magnitude? It was improper notification and you talk about transparency? There is no transparency. You’ve just been trying to slip this through the community as fast as you can.”
The speaker also criticized the city for pushing the project without sufficient funding while ignoring other basic services and simpler solutions like traffic signals instead of closures. “You’re looking for more funding, but you can’t even take care of what you have now. So closing businesses, closing roads, and [pushing] all that traffic to Park [Avenue]? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Another speaker criticized the plan for burying the closures in the girth of reports and not highlighting that Park Avenue would receive the brunt of the backups caused by them.
Safety vs. Accessibility Debated
Former council candidate and cycling advocate Sam Gould was the only speaker to step forward to express support for the project and criticized proposed funding to study traffic impacts at Hubbard where he noted he was recently struck by a vehicle. “You don’t need me to tell you that allowing right turns from 40th would be unsafe—the traffic study found this as well.”
Council Discusses, Deliberates
Council Member Kalimah Priforce raised concerns about the project’s impact on local businesses beyond just traffic studies. “When I did meet with some of these businesses, many of their staff, the people who who are workers are folks of color. I’m concerned about how it affects their families.”
PWD Alaoui reiterated that the data and studies were focused on traffic counts and safety and not the downstream impacts on individual businesses or their employees.
Jennifer Harmon, a consultant in charge of engagement with property owners, also noted their concerns on the impact of future developments in the area.
Councilmember Bauters, finishing off his tenure on council at the time, defended the initiative, arguing that safety should take priority over any business concerns. “I never want to be the council person who installs a teddy bear memorial in my community because we didn’t take some proactive action to actually make our community safer.”
Bauters also dismissed claims that the project would deter customers, pointing to studies showing economic benefits of improved bike and pedestrian infrastructure. “Studies have been done and more are being commissioned right now that actually show economic enhancement to communities that invest in this type of infrastructure.”
Despite the many concerns expressed, the council voted 3-1 to approve the project’s funding (Priforce dissenting and Kaur absent).
The next step for the project involves further environmental review and final council approval of the proposed street closures.
Construction is anticipated to begin at the end of 2025, with completion scheduled by the end of 2028.
Discussion of the item from the Nov. 19, 2024 Council Meeting can be viewed below at [2:13:11].
Additional information on the project can be viewed here.
Those areas are absolutely dangerous for pedestrians. I avoid 40th Street because I have a close call nearly half the times I walk there. If these businesses thought long term about it they’d realize more foot and bicycle traffic would be a boon to them once it’s completed. It’s not like I don’t want to buy local.
I support this project and believe when it is finished, there will be more people supporting these businesses. There are too many people now living on the 40th Street corridor for it to continue to be a highway for car traffic. Safety first.
Strong support for the 40th Street project.
These businesses prioritizing their own profits over Emeryville resident’s safety is terrible. I will not be shopping at these locations in the future. I hope council isn’t swayed by these real estate groups like Buttner Properties and their expensive lawyers.
Smart business owners will realize that the completed project will bring more foot traffic and business to them.
Safety is a priority here. Dead residents deters business.
While I wholeheartedly support Emeryville’s continued push to make the city more bike and pedestrian friendly, I don’t agree that this is a responsible use of resources to do that. As others have mentioned, less obstructive solutions like traffic lights might accomplish very similar results without the massive cost to the city, or the large burden that this project would place on local businesses and residents. Emeryville has made a point of attracting many successful businesses that require frequent deliveries and efficient transportation of goods, patients, etc. — and this project, as currently planned, would severely and negatively impact them which in turn would create problems for the city.
As someone who has spent many of my days and nights near the intersection of 40th & Hubbard since 2021, the claim that the north side of the intersection is dangerous (and thus needs to be closed) does not match my experience. I have not seen any accidents on the north side of 40th at Hubbard. Maybe it has changed since the 2015-2019 period that the Fehr & Peers report uses, so I looked in the more recent public traffic data that California Highway Patrol publishes at https://data.ca.gov/dataset/ccrs and which UC Berkeley makes more-easily searchable at https://tims.berkeley.edu. In the five year period of 2020-2024, there has only been one bike/ped collision at 40th & Hubbard, and it was on the south side, with the car attempting to enter the Target parking lot. Rob Rees from Fehr & Peers says that they don’t want to look at the more recent data because COVID dampened the collision data, but I don’t think this is a good argument because in the same time period, there were nine bike/ped collisions in the whole corridor (compared to 12 collisions in 2015-2019) and five in the San Pablo Ave Transit Hub alone (compared to four collisions in 2015-2019). COVID did not dampen the collisions in the San Pablo Ave Transit Hub at all!
A better explanation for why the collisions at Hubbard have decreased are the improvements that the city made to the intersection in 2020. Old Google Street View photos show that up until 2019, there were only a few bollards to separate the north side and south side lanes, so cars entering or leaving Target were able to make illegal time-saving moves, sometimes hitting pedestrians and bicyclists. In 2019, they added more bollards to the north side, but still left a large gap that cars could still go through. In 2020, they added bollards to the south side, which completely closed the gap. So it appears that the city has already solved the main problem at this intersection!
I also looked at the 2015-2019 data in detail – I could only find three collisions at Hubbard, not four that the city is claiming. Maybe they included one that happened inside of the Target parking lot, but that should not be included! The three true Hubbard collisions also don’t support the city’s theory that right turns from 40th onto Hubbard on the north side are to blame – almost all of them happened on the south side at the Target parking lot entrance.
I’m all for better street safety, but the city should be spending taxpayer money on solving real problems. Hubbard St isn’t one of those problems!