Emeryville considering creating bus-only, bike-only lanes on 40th Street
A proposal for bus-only and bike-only lanes in part of Emeryville's busiest corridor has some businesses in the area concerned.
"It's a third-generation business, and I'm generation two," said Deborah Cohen.
She and her family have owned Rug Depot Outlet in Emeryville for the past 55 years. The store has more than 10,000 rugs in the showroom and warehouse. There are massive semi-trucks coming and going almost every day, not just for her business but others nearby like Pottery and Beyond, Granite Expo and more.
"A lot of our neighbors are light industrial or in the catering business, and so this street takes delivery on very heavy product," said Cohen.
That is why she and about a dozen neighboring businesses are so concerned about the 40th Street Multimodal project that's moving forward in the city council.
The plan is to make 40th Street more friendly to pedestrians, cyclists, and buses by closing side streets to vehicles, and eliminating one traffic lane in each direction, and converting it into dedicated bus and bike lanes.
The total cost of the project is just over $30 million.
"This project is in a big way looking to accommodate all of the users who want to come into the city," said Emeryville's Mayor David Mourra.
He said they've been studying the corridor since 2018 and have done traffic studies looking at what makes the most sense. He said this plan helps make the 40th Street area safer for not just pedestrians and cyclists, but people in cars as well.
"We are really trying to improve things for everyone, and sometimes there are tradeoffs, and we understand that and we understand that sometimes change can be difficult," said Mourra.
For Deborah and other business owners, they feel like the change is only a positive for a small few at the expense of legacy businesses that built Emeryville into what it is today.
"40th to me is a throughway that was made for this exact thing, which is deliveries of trucks coming off of freeways, and to make 40th street into one lane car traffic doesn't feel safe or relevant," she said.
The city council still has to vote on the plan and that vote is expected sometime toward the end of the year, and if it is approved, the project wouldn't be completed until 2028.
