Biking to Oakland

[shannon_a]

Yesterday was another biking adventure. And, I use the word "adventure" purposefully. I enjoy the exercise I've been getting, and it's been great being down at the Bay or out in more rural California, but I've also really enjoyed exploring areas of the East Bay that I haven't been too before, discovering those new places that are just next door--even if some of them are a bit scary.

My plan for yesterday's biking was to once more ride out to the Berkeley Pedestrian Bridge, and then take the Bay Trail south from there. However, rather than heading home from Emeryville, I planned to press past the Bay Bridge out to the Port of Oakland, where the Bay Trail continued through a couple of parks, then ride out to Jack London Square and return to Berkeley through the heart of Oakland--and that's indeed what I did. It was a total of another 20 miles or so. I was out for 4 hours, but that included almost an hour just lounging around at the Oakland parks, plus a stop in at Endgame.

I've got Google to make me a little map, shown at right. It's 95% correct, with the biggest discrepancy being that Google doesn't recognize that you can cross the highway on the Pedestrian Bridge. The Port View Park is (B) and Endgame is (C). (D) marks my approximate start and end point.

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The patch of Bay Trail from the Berkeley Marina to the Emeryville Marina continues to be one of my favorites. It's almost exactly two miles, so not terribly long, but I think it's very pretty, since you're right on the Bay and the frontage road protects you somewhat from the highway. What's next isn't as nice, which is why I choose to do the nice segment first.

The Bay Trail from Emeryville out to the Port of Oakland isn't on the Bay (in fact, it's about 2 miles inland for the most part), and it's barely a trail. It's all city streets, usually with bike lanes. Presumably the Bay Bridge disallows an actual skirting of the shoreline. The signage is also occasionally missing, which is evidenced by the fact that I missed the turnoff for the Trail between Emeryville and Oakland and ended up cutting through a section of West Oakland that I hadn't intended to.

As a result I passed through the northwestern corner of Oakland on a major street called Peralta and I was amazed how eerily empty it was. It all used to be industrial, but now much of it looks empty. There weren't any homeless or anything like that, though, just empty streets. I was pretty glad when I rejoined Mandela Parkway, which is where the Bay Trail actually runs.

Here I was pleasantly surprised, because on Mandela Parkway between West Grand and Eighth the entire middle of the road has been landscaped into an attractive garden and walkway. It's officially off-street Bay Trail, something that wasn't marked on my maps (probably because it's too new). You could just as easily ride on the bike lanes to the sides of Mandela, but having a protected walkway is nice, even if there's no Bay to be seen.

Things turned bad again when I made a right onto Eighth Street, finally heading toward the Bay again. I was in urban West Oakland by this point, just a block from the West Oakland BART, and I now see what people mean when they say West Oakland isn't that nice. I passed at least one drug corner, and then as I moved over to Seventh Street, I entered a virtual urban wasteland. I was past the houses by that time and was instead entirely surrounded by roads and train tracks. Seventh Street dipped down into concrete canyons, their walls towering up above me, and this off-street" Bay Trail was revealed to be an old sidewalk widened to double width. At one time I passed under a (street level) overpass, going through a dark tunnel scarcely five or six feet wide to do so.

I was quite happy when I came up out of that concrete hell, passing over to an asphalt roadway that ran alongside BART until the train tracks disappeared underground. After that it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to the two parks out by the Port of Oakland that the Bay Trail connects to.

The Middle Harbor Shoreline Park is pretty nice. It's got lots of grass, lots of benches, an amphitheater, a playground, and plenty of Bayside sitting. There's also some marshland that's being reclaimed and some exhibits, such as a sample of the wall that used to keep water flowing down into the port (before the inlet was enlarged and the wall destroyed in 1999). Out west of the Middle Harbor Shoreline Park is the Port View Park, which is pretty much a hole. There's a narrow walkway out on the peninsula with cyclone fence along it most of the way--protecting the Port from tourists, I guess. You walk down that far enough and you find a teeny little playground and then an octagonal fishing pier. I dunno, maybe it was nice before fascists took over after 9/11 in the name of security, but I can't imagine anyone going out there now.

Neither park was very crowded. I saw two kids out at the ugly Port View Park, and maybe a dozen people spread throughout the Shoreline Park. It's all secluded, as evidenced by my talk of getting there, and with the port all around it's not as scenic as other public shores. I spent maybe an hour in the parks, reading some and pretty thoroughly exploring it otherwise, because I figured I'd never be out there again. I guess these parks were an attempt to make some use of the land owned by the decreasingly important Port of Oakland, but I think it was mainly wasted effort.

From there, I took a different route out, along Middle Harbor Road, which eventually hooked back up to Third Street, where the Bay Trail was. Middle Harbor Road is another big, deserted road, though this one is clearly used sometimes, since it runs along many of the port's berths. Still, I only had one or two cars pass me the whole time, which was pretty weird as I tracked through more urban wasteland. From Third Street I headed up to Jack London Square in Oakland, then turned northward to head home.

I briefly stopped in at Endgame, world's best gaming store, while I was in Oakland. I sometimes feel a bit distant from a locale when I've only gone there via motorized transportation. You know, I get on BART, and then I'm magically at Endgame. So, I was happy to "connect" Endgame up to my world, as it were.

I'd previously talked to folks about the absence of good bike paths from Berkeley into Oakland, and I was determined this time to find a good route, so I'd plotted out a path all the way up from Third Street to home using various resources that showed bike lanes and bike streets. My maps told me to take Broadway through downtown, and that turned out to be quite sucky. There were too many cars, too many very busy right-hand turn lanes, and no actual bike lanes. So, the trip from Third through Twenty-Eighth (on Broadway) sucked. But from there I found a great route, riding along Webster, Shafter, Colby, and Hillegass. They're all quiet streets, but in Oakland every one has a stop light across each major intersection. The Berkeley corners of Colby & Alcatraz and Hillegass & Ashby are a little worse, since Berkeley doesn't think bike riders need stop lights, but at least on Sunday afternoon, those streets were pretty quiet. So, I have a good route to get all the way into downtown Oakland without having to fuss with traffic, and that makes me pretty happy.

I also learned that Oakland signed off on a Master Bike Plan late last year, and so now they're much more actively working toward creating good bike routes throughout the city. Given that they already have some nice routes, presumably from last time it was an issue, this is great, and I look forward to seeing what they do in the coming years. They even have a web site on the topic, which is one of the most up to date I've seen (though give it a few years, and it won't be).

So that was biking on Sunday. I've now covered the Bay Trail from Jack London Square in Oakland to Richmond Inner Harbor in Richmond. Next time I hit the Bay Trail, I'm going to probably take a turn around Alameda.

Comments

[webmacher.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's quite a ride! I've been meaning to check out the harbor park(s) but I think I'll drive there :-)

One of my high school classmates works on bike transportation issues in Oakland; that's pretty cool that things are moving ahead!