Thanks again for signing this petition. There was a long discussion regarding the proposed realignment East Bay Greenway in Hayward at the Alameda CTC Commission meeting yesterday.
The realignment did get conditionally approved so that I can get the funding on studying the new route, even though the Mission Blvd already went through traffic & parking studies. The commission seemed to just want to keep the project moving forward, after having to go through 7th realignments requested by city & a 2 year delay.
The Commission Chair, John Bauter (who's a major bike advocate), did add a couple of conditions for approving the funds to study the proposed realignment:
- that the new realignment includes at least class IV bike lanes
- that the City of Hayward creates an Active Transportation Working Group to continue the studies of the East Bay Greenway routes.
They don't fully rule out protected bike lanes on Mission Blvd yet and we don't think there's enough space for class IV bike lanes along part of the new proposed route, so we still have hope that the project can be rectified & moved back to Mission Blvd.
In the meantime, the agenda doc lists that the Lake Merritt to Bayfair section has achieved a number of project development milestones, including completion of California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) clearance, 35% design, and in September 2023 the Commission approved a funding plan for this segment which supports a ready to list for construction in spring 2025. And the section in Ashland is going through the conceptual design for environmental clearance. So the rest of the project is moving forward as proposed in last year's alignment, while the section in the city of Hayward continues to be delayed with realignments.
Follow Bike Hayward on Instagram or Facebook for more regular updates. We will provide a more detailed summary of the meeting in the upcoming days.