Reconstruction Ahead
Removing Oakland’s I-980 Urban Arterial
Interstate 980 in Oakland (also known as the John B. Williams Freeway) is a short two-mile-long auxiliary Interstate Highway that connects Interstate 580 and State Route 24 to Interstate 880. The freeway separates Downtown Oakland from West Oakland and remains a physical reminder of racist planning policies of the past. The land that the freeway stands on has a vivid transportation and industrial history, which gave way to a booming blue-collar neighborhood. West Oakland was a prosperous place where African Americans and other people of color owned homes, small businesses, and lived vibrant lives. After the area was redlined, West Oakland experienced a significant economic and social decline. Years of disinvestment and white flight turned West Oakland from a peaceful, vivid neighborhood into a neighborhood with concentrated poverty, high levels of pollution, and poor health. Construction of the I-980 freeway and the demolition of 30 blocks in the heart of Oakland required for the freeway exacerbated the division between West Oakland and the rest of the city. Currently, West Oakland is experiencing rapid change, as regional pressures are driving gentrification and displacement in Oakland, especially in neighborhoods that were previously redlined like West Oakland. In 2014 an advocacy group named ConnectOakland assembled to propose their vision for an Oakland without the I-980 freeway. Their proposal includes using the underused I-980 right of way to create opportunities for jobs, housing, open space, and public transit while reintegrating West Oakland with the rest of the city. In 2019 the City of Oakland published a draft of the Downtown Oakland Specific Plan which included the opportunity to remove the freeway to make way for new development. The goal of this research thesis is to determine if removing the freeway is in the best interest of Oakland residents, and propose physical alterations to the built environment which support Oakland residents.
A download of the entire thesis document is available at the end of this page.
Oakland and I-980
The freeway was originally proposed in 1946 in an effort to connect to a second bay bridge starting in Alameda. Alameda residents voted against the construction of a second bay bridge, negating the need for the I-980 freeway, however, the City of Oakland and the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) moved along with the freeway project which already had a considerable amount of time, money and political will behind it. The 2.03-mile freeway is an extension of CA-24 and connects I-880 on the West end to I-580 on the East end. Demolition of the West Oakland neighborhood to make way for the 440-foot wide right of way (ROW) started in 1962, and construction on the freeway started in 1968. The freeway took considerably longer than expected due to protests from Oakland residents. For almost ten years the project remained unfinished due to a lawsuit that paused the construction, leaving a muddy gash through the middle of the city. Construction resumed again, and the freeway was finally finished in 1985. During redevelopment 503 homes, 4 churches, and 22 largely African American-owned businesses were destroyed.
West Oakland Today
Despite being less than ¼ of a mile away, Uptown and West Oakland would look like entirely different cities on paper. While Uptown is currently booming with economic growth and its fair share of gentrification, West Oakland has had a hard time recovering since the first HOLC redlining maps were drawn and the I-980 freeway cut off West Oakland and its residents from the rest of Oakland.
The California Environmental Protection Agency Air Resources Board found that West Oakland residents are exposed to approximately three times the average diesel PM ambient concentrations in comparison to the rest of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. West Oakland residents have some of the highest rates of asthma in the state of California (in the 99th and 100th percentile) and live an average of 7.3 years less than other Alameda County residents. Cancer (22%), Heart Disease (20%), Unintentional Injuries (9%), Stroke (7%), Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease (5%), Homicide (3%), and Diabetes (3%) make up the majority of deaths in West Oakland, while over fifty percent of deaths can be traced to diseases affected by poor air quality.
In addition to health problems due to air pollution, West Oakland has also felt the lasting economic and social effects of redlining, white flight, and disinvestment. The high levels of economic inequality and disinvestment in West Oakland have caused a widespread disparity in equitable food access. Without access to healthy food options, impoverished West Oakland residents suffer from higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases in comparison to more affluent Oakland neighborhoods. The concentrated poverty created by redlining and other racist policies made investment risky for more than just banks and homeowner associations. Large retail stores, including grocery stores, avoid impoverished areas favoring affluent neighborhoods. Previous to 2009 there was not a single full-service grocery store, and the large majority of other food options were fast-food restaurants or liquor stores.
Community Engagement
Early in the planning process for this research thesis, it became apparent that community involvement would need to be an important part of the decision-making process. As the city decides to either move forward with this project or scrap it, they must engage in more in-depth community engagement to involve residents during all stages of the process.
This thesis's primary mode of engagement is youth engagement through virtual visits into 3rd-year physics classes for McClymonds high school in West Oakland. 53 students participated in the charrette, the majority of which currently or previously have lived in West Oakland. The youth engagement used in this thesis could not afford the time to provide the civil tools necessary to properly engage students in order to make decisions on the freeway. It can be marginalizing to ask people their opinion without providing them with the ability to engage properly. The purpose of the community engagement activity for this thesis was to plant seeds in the student’s minds that they have the power to be part of the decision-making process; in addition to finding out where they wish they had more power to change things, to identify what their needs and desires are, and if removing the freeway would help or hinder those needs. If the city wishes to carry through with the plan to remove the freeway and has the intention of serving the best interests of Oakland residents as they state in the Downtown Specific Plan, they are going to need to spend a considerable amount of time engaging with Oakland residents, getting their feedback, incorporating their ideas, and most importantly rebuilding trust between city officials and the residents.
It is impossible to generalize an entire community’s opinions about the removal of the I-980 freeway based on the accounts of 53 youth, nevertheless, many of the themes that the students brought up reflect the concerns and ideas brought up in the community involvement processes in other freeway removal projects. The students identified housing and gentrification, transportation and traffic, and community building places as the main topics they were interested in surrounding the concept of removing the I-980 freeway.
Removing the I-980 freeway from Oakland provides immense opportunity for the city to reclaim acres of priceless land, during a time of extraordinary economic and population growth. When first introduced the idea of removing the I-980 freeway, the first response from the majority of the McClymond students was concern that higher land prices would cause gentrification and displacement.
Gentrification and displacement is a regional issue not a hyperlocal issue like the freeway, and displacement already exists in West Oakland. From 2000 to 2010 Oakland’s African American population decreased by 25%, a net loss of 33,000 African American residents. That number is only expected to grow as West Oakland and many of Oakland’s other African American strongholds become increasingly unaffordable. The reason the Bay Area’s housing prices have been skyrocketing over the past twenty years is housing production has not kept up with the vast population increase over the past two decades. This population growth is largely due to massive job growth in high-paying industries such as finance, science, and technology across the Bay Area. It is projected that another 136,000 residents will move into Oakland from 2017-2022, and employment is projected to rise by over 2% every year, meanwhile, vacancy rates are very low at only 3.1%.
While removing I-980 could further the existing pattern of gentrification and displacement in Oakland, removing I-980 could also be the answer to Oakland’s serious lack of housing. The Oakland specific plan determines that 5,000 housing units could be built on the I-980 ROW. Under Oakland’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) the city must build 14,765 new housing units between 2015 and 2023 to meet the needs of the current and future residents of Oakland. Out of the 14,080 new units that have been built over the past four years, 13,135 of them have been above moderate-income units, meanwhile, there have only been 662 very-low-income units, 213 low-income units, and 70 moderate-income units built, leaving over 6,000 subsidized units to be built over the next two years. If Oakland wants to solve its housing crisis it needs to start building more housing units to house the incoming population and existing residents, especially market-rate and affordable housing. Demolishing I-980 opens up valuable land to do just that.
Concerns about increased traffic congestion were the second most common concern that the McMclymond’s high school students had about removing the I-980 freeway. Concerns included high amounts of traffic, and higher speed cars on city streets leading to dangerous pedestrian and bicyclist environments.
The 2017 CalTrans Traffic Census Program indicates that during the average peak hour, 6,600 vehicles used the I-980 freeway to bypass Downtown Oakland, meanwhile, 3,600 vehicles used the on or offramps on I-980. This means that drivers who use the 27th, 18th, 12th on-ramps, and offramps who are either coming or going from Downtown, Uptown, or West Oakland make up a little over one-third of the traffic on I-980. Therefore, if the I-980 freeway was to be removed, around two-thirds of the peak hour traffic would have to use city streets, find an alternative mode of transportation, or stop making the trip altogether. They would only experience negligible increases in travel time if the I-980 freeway was removed because their distance of travel from either I-580 or I-880 would not change, and their time traveling at freeway speeds would be reduced by only a small amount. On the other hand, the other two-thirds of drivers who use I-980 to bypass Downtown Oakland during peak hours would have larger travel time increases.
An important part of the plan to remove the freeway revolves around Link21, the plan to build a second Transbay tube sponsored by the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART), the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority, and CalTrain. Link21 plans to expand mobility with passenger rail throughout the 21-county Bay Area Megaregion, including connecting the San Francisco Bay Area, with the Monterey Bay area, the Sacramento area, and the Northern San Joaquin Valley. The plan to remove the I-980 freeway is still in its earlier stages, however, it is safe to assume that the chances of Link21, the construction of a second Transbay Tube, and the removal of the I-980 freeway happening are likely highly dependent upon the success of each other.
All four of these precedents are in different cities, with different political processes, economic backgrounds, and stages in development, however, all four had similar effects on their cities. In general, what has been found is that after cities remove freeways environmental pollutants are reduced, the city’s connection with nature is increased, traffic is reduced, land values increase, and more people take public transportation. These are all positive impacts of freeway removal. However, when dealing with low-income communities, improving the built environment can often result in gentrification and displacement, meaning that the effort made to improve the current resident’s lives will never actually benefit the current community.
The ultimate purpose of this thesis was to discover if removing the I-980 freeway would improve the lives of current and future residents of Downtown, Uptown, and West Oakland. While researching the social, economic, and environmental conditions of Oakland, the lack of housing availability and affordability came up as a common theme. Naturally, any project involving the scale of land in Oakland that the removal of the I-980 freeway would provide needs to address the dire need for more housing availability and affordability. The predominant reason for removing the I-980 freeway is to rectify the racist policies of the past which have caused health and social problems for West Oakland residents especially for the African American residents of West Oakland.
The plan that this thesis proposes places a stronger emphasis on the creation of housing rather than the transit emphasis that ConnectOakland proposes. This is because of the evidence that Oakland is in need of more housing, from doing literature reviews and community engagement. This thesis’s proposal calls for the freeway to be removed from 6th street, to 27th street, opening up 44.5 acres of land stretching across 19 blocks for the development of mixed-use neighborhood oriented development. Instead of building an at-grade boulevard over the site of the current I-980 freeway as ConnectOakland suggests, this plan would propose converting Castro and Brush streets into four-lane, two-way streets with ample multimodal lanes. This would open up more space for the development of affordable housing, without requiring significant reconfiguration of existing street patterns.
GIS Transit Service Area Map
GIS Green Space Service Area Map
Using a GIS Service Area analysis, the optimal location for services such as the Link21 transit hub, parks, and athletic facilities were determined. The entire I-980 corridor is within a ¼ mile walk of green space, however, the section of the corridor that is above West Grand Avenue is lacking access to a substantial park with adequate athletic facilities. With the overhead freeway being removed from West Grand to 27th Streets, it opens up more space for a generously sized park located at 27th and Northgate Avenue. The portion of the I-980 corridor that is adjacent to Downtown is within a ½ mile walk of a BART station, however, the section of the corridor above West Grand Avenue is missing walkable access to BART. While it makes the most sense to place the transit center between West Grand Avenue and 27th Avenue to serve the largest number of people, this would require unnecessary excavating when the I-980 trench is already cut. ConnectOakland proposes placing the new transit center at 14th street, however placing the station at 17th street will serve more people. Another option would be to add more than one station along the corridor similar to Downtown Oakland and San Francisco. Currently, there are several local and Transbay busses that run on adjacent streets to the I-980 corridor. This thesis suggests adding a new local AC transit bus line that runs down Castro Street and carries on to Martin Luther King Jr. way.
If this project is going to be successful, and work for all Oakland residents, not just the wealthy, this needs to be a project of social infrastructure, just as much as traditional infrastructure. Perhaps the most important lesson that was learned during the community engagement period with McClymonds High School is that many of the residents in West Oakland do not trust the city or their intentions with planning matters. If the city wants to serve all the members of the city as they state in the Downtown Specific Plan, they are going to need to spend a considerable amount of time engaging with Oakland residents, getting their feedback, incorporating their ideas, and most importantly rebuilding trust between city officials and the residents. Many of the students have great ideas about what could be done with the land, unfortunately, they did not trust that any of their wants or needs would be respected or enacted by the city, and so they preferred the freeway to stay. If the City of Oakland is to remove the freeway, they would need to do extensive community outreach to gain the trust of the residents of Downtown and West Oakland, and they would have to keep to their promises.
Download the full-length thesis here: