Slow Streets are ending in Early 2022
We sadly received notice that Oakland's Slow Street program was being discontinued in last January/Early February 2022. The threat of being hit by a car is the biggest safety risk for anyone riding a bike with a child.
Slow Streets helped by reducing (but not eliminating) automobile traffic, and by promoting a sense of belonging for people who want to use shared public space to walk, bike, jog, and play.
We'll miss these slow streets. We've seen 10-20 children learn to ride their bikes on slow streets, and we use them for our monthly Bike Parades. They were integral to giving our child confidence to ride their bike on the road, and to giving us the confidence to safely ride bikes with our child.
Oakland Slow Streets Video
We ride on these multiple times a day, especially to travel to school and back with our child.
This is a video from a short ride on Shafter Avenue, one of Oakland's Slow Streets. The video is sped up to 3x normal speed. Oakland's Shafter Avenue Slow Street is used as a safe route to school for at least 2 elementary schools, 1 high school, and 1 middle school.
[…] that takes us 20-25 minutes. We selected our route based on Oakland's Slow Streets (which are being taken away soon, sadly!) and other low-car-traffic roads. Berkeley has done a decent job adding physical barriers […]