Thank you for reporting your concerns about street safety in Alameda. Your report will help inform the City of Alameda’s work to achieve our Vision Zero goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and severe injuries. We will use street safety reports, including yours, in combination with crash data and equity indicators to prioritize and design street safety investments. This evaluation will generally happen on an annual basis, with some exceptions for clear and pressing trends. Issues that the City deems to be immediate safety concerns will be elevated for quick action.

The City has made many street safety improvements on Fernside over the years. Most recently, in 2020 and 2021, the City did the following on Fernside from Tilden Avenue to High Street:
• Installed rapid flashing beacons, new striping, and signage at Fernside and Harvard Drive.
• On Fernside and High Street, installed leading pedestrian interval; prohibited turns on red for southbound High; upgraded to high visibility crosswalks, including one new marked crosswalk and one realigned crosswalk; installed an advance stop bar for Gibbons Drive right turn and a 50 foot centerline for Gibbons.
• At Fernside and Versailles Avenue, added a new marked crosswalk leg; refreshed crosswalk, bulb-out, and bike lane striping; daylit the intersection; and added new bike lane signage.
• Installed high visibility crosswalk markings at Fernside and Tilden/Blanding/Pearl.

Many community members remain concerned about speeding on this corridor, and some have expressed interest in removing Fernside’s center turn lane to discourage illegal passing and speeding. (If funding and staffing allow, this could be an opportunity for the kind of landscaping you mention). The City can consider the idea when we resurface Fernside’s pavement in the coming years, as restriping would be included in resurfacing. Current pavement management maps are kept on the Building Safer Streets webpage: https://www.alamedaca.gov/Departments/Public-Works-Department/Building-Safer-Streets#section-5

Whether or not Fernside’s final restriping includes removal of the center turn lane, the lane widths, bike lanes, crosswalk markings, and intersection daylighting will be designed to conform to the City’s current street safety policies: www.alamedaca.gov/VisionZero#section-6

Additional changes to the intersection of Fernside and Blanding Avenue will be determined as part of the Clement Avenue/Tilden Way project: https://www.alamedaca.gov/Departments/Planning-Building-and-Transportation/Transportation/Clement-Avenue-ExtensionTilden-Way

Finally, the Active Transportation Plan draft recommendations show Fernside from Thompson Avenue to Tilden Way being upgraded from a standard bike lane to a buffered bike lane (the rest of Fernside already has buffered or separated bike lanes): https://www.activealameda.org/Recommendations#section-3

The full draft Active Transportation Plan should be released in spring 2022. Stay involved by joining the mailing list: https://www.alamedaca.gov/Subscribe

You can use the same link to join the Vision Zero mailing list, which receives street safety updates every other month.

For more information and a list of current and planned transportation projects, see www.AlamedaCA.gov/SaferStreets