As the year ends, we at OakDOT want to share some of our reflections, progress on our priorities, and take stock of 2019. We’ll post threads for the next few days looking at some of our core values and what we’re doing to pursue them. [thread]
The Oakland Department of Transportation was formed in 2016 for a purpose much greater than moving vehicles from A to B. It was formed to serve Oaklanders and their values.
OakDOT plays a critical role confronting the City’s pressing challenges, stabilizing communities, and providing a better quality of life for our residents.
Three years ago we were asked to build a new department and deliver real change, and we’re proud to say we’ve made real progress.
We’re establishing a department that depends on Oakland commitment and expertise, Oakland innovation and leadership, and Oakland values like equity, belonging, justice and compassion.
While we’re building, OakDOT has quickly become a national leader in transportation equity.
We have much more to do and further to go, but our staff is committed to delivering more authentic engagement with underserved communities, more options to collaborate, and more responsive public service.
We are working together toward equitable outcomes and streets that reflect & preserve the culture of residents who have long made Oakland such a special place.
We do this work based on four core values that guide our decision-making and our investments: equity, safety, sustainability, and trust.
The first is equity. Equity is the essential lens through which we pursue every other goal and how we define our other values.
We established a chartered racial equity team of staff that helps us examine our procedures and systems with a critical, trained eye, so that we can build a department that reflects the community we serve. oaklandca.gov/topics/oakdot-…
OakDOT is working to center equity in every aspect of our organization. Our racial equity team has five subcommittees meeting monthly to increase the equity of our processes and outcomes , from hiring to community engagement and more.
Some of our accomplishments in this work include our nationally recognized paving plan, which invests paving dollars by weighing equally the condition of our streets and the proportion of our underserved communities who live in each neighborhood. 
(We also worked to FUND this plan, passing a Capital Improvement Plan Budget that increased two-year spending to $114M, doubling our planned paving expenditures.)
We adopted a bicycle plan rooted in community engagement and the needs that our most vulnerable residents voiced – and the plan was adopted unanimously by our City Council.
We’re working to reduce transportation costs, making sure the right roads are fixed and the best, most affordable range of transportation options are available to those who need them most.
New red bus lanes have been approved for downtown Broadway. The 7th Street Complete Streets Project in West Oakland is almost complete!
And we’re giving everyone in our City better ways to get around, working to give seniors and disabled persons more walkable paths, and supporting the production of new housing that Oakland desperately needs:
*Performed 42,149 square feet of sidewalk repair -- up 61% from the average of our prior three fiscal years!
*420 Traffic Control Plans Approved (up 62% vs 3 years ago)
* Processed approval for 70 Final Parcel Maps and 10 Final Tract Maps
*420 Traffic Control Plans Approved (up 62% vs 3 years ago)
* Processed approval for 70 Final Parcel Maps and 10 Final Tract Maps
And we launched an adaptive bike share pilot – possibly the nation’s first!
Stay tuned over the next few days, as we’ll be posting more about safety, sustainability, and trust.
