Major pieces of transportation infrastructure, like freeways, airports or rail lines, are costly and complicated, so most people rightly assume that they will get heavily used. This perception is so prevalent that “bridges to nowhere” make evening newscasts and the monologues of comedians. Most Bay Area freeways fit the former category with high traffic volumes and congestion. However, one freeway in Oakland is a clear exception to the rule.
While not a freeway to nowhere, the I-980 freeway in Oakland is a freeway with a questionable purpose since it was originally designed to access the unbuilt second Bay Bridge. As a result, the below grade portion of the freeway is one of the least busy freeways in the Bay Area for daily traffic, and may have the lowest peak hour traffic of any interconnected Bay Area freeway. I-980 is a six-lane highway that is only used at 25% capacity during peak periods. By comparison, neighboring freeways like the MacArthur Freeway (I-580), the Nimitz Freeway (I-880), Highway 24, and I-80, are operating between 36-43% of capacity during the same time periods. Can this piece of public land dedicated for transportation be used for a more efficient and higher use?
Let’s examine the portion of I-980 between West Grand Ave and I-880 in more detail. We’ll look at its right-of-way capacity and consider how repositioning it as a boulevard and rail tunnel that can carry many more people than the current highway, and provide a higher capacity. I-980 currently carries about 6,240 people in its peak hour, and 73,000 vehicles per day. The highway has an hourly capacity of 18,870 vehicles or 22,643 people per hour(1). With new rail infratructure in the same alignment, trains could carry over 50,000 people per hour(2) through the corridor – more than double the capacity of the existing highway.
Capacity Comparison: Highway and Rail
| Hourly Capacity | Hourly Passenger Capacity | |
| I-980 Freeway | 18,870 vehicles | 22,643 |
| Rail | 48 trains | 60,000 |
Source: 2014 Caltrans AADT: http://traffic-counts.dot.ca.gov/, Assumes crush loads on current BART and Caltrain vehicles, and seated only ridership on Amtrak and High Speed Rail trains.
From a vehicular traffic perspective, I-980 is also well suited to boulevard conversion. Although the highway is built to handle nearly 19,000 vehicles per hour, only 5,200 vehicles currently use it during peak periods. Despite the current congestion on I-80 and I-880, I-980 carries less than 30% of their traffic — a clear indication that this infrastructure is poorly positioned and deserves reconsideration. Many avenues and boulevards in the Bay Area can handle 6,000 vehicles per hour and handle up to 63,000 vehicles per day such as Octavia Boulevard in San Francisco and with additional interconnection into the Oakland street grid, the I-980 corridor would only require capacity for 45,000-60,000 vehicles.
I-980 is one of the least used freeways in the inner Bay Area.
I-980 is built with 6 lanes, but the right of way has room for up to 10 lanes, enough extra capacity that the traffic for a second Bay Bridge would have needed if it had ever been built. Based on Caltrans Highway Traffic Data, the average annual daily traffic (AADT – traffic totals counting both direction) the freeways have the following daily traffic (both directions):
Freeway Traffic in vicinity of Downtown Oakland
| Freeway |
I-980 |
I-880 | I-880 | I-580 | I-580 | CA-24 | I-80 |
I-80 |
| Location |
14th St |
DWTN | West OAK | Grand Ave | San Pablo | Telegraph | Powell |
Bay Bridge |
| Traffic (avg daily # of vehicles) |
73,000 |
225,000 | 126,000 | 202,000 | 236,000 | 151,000 | 147,000 |
253,000 |
| # of lanes |
6 |
8 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 6 | 6 |
10 |
Based on 2014 Caltrans AADT: http://traffic-counts.dot.ca.gov/
In short, the I-980 freeway could easily be converted to a boulevard constructed above an underground rail tunnel that would easily accommodate the current traffic, while increasing overall regional and Transbay capacity.
High Traffic Boulevards
| Street |
I-980 (between Grand and I-880) |
Future Boulevard? | Octavia Blvd | Shattuck |
Ave d’Italie |
| Location |
Oakland |
Oakland | San Francisco | Berkeley |
Paris |
| Traffic (avg daily # of vehicles) |
73,000 |
45,000 – 60,000 | 63,000 | 35,000 |
30,000 |
| # of lanes |
5 |
4-6 | 6 | 6 |
4 |
1. Assumes 1.2 persons per vehicle.
2. Assumes fully loaded train cars. BART: 200 people per car with 10-car set. Commuter Train (Caltrain): 120 people per car with 6-car sets. Amtrak Capitol Corridor: 90 people per car with 5-car sets. 360 people per High Speed Rail train-set (10 cars). High frequency of BART and commuter trains.
I”m glad you’re thinking of this. How are we going to pay for the new tunnel?
This is a good question. Including currently overburdened BART and CalTrain systems in the project may conceivably help attract federal funding, but any implementation of this scale demands a complex recipe of funding from local, state, and federal sources, and real estate investors. We plan to investigate funding as the concept develops.
I think it’s an exciting idea that does right by Oakland. It’s crazy to let a piece of obsolete infrastructure hold back the potential of a great city. Gotta be a way; keep at it!
This is a plan to get commuters into SF, not a plan to expand BART in the East Bay nor even in Oakland itself. If we’re going to spend money on BART, I’d rather we expanded BART into our unserved city neighborhoods, such as Jack London Square, at Broadway and MacArthur, Montclair, and the Laurel District.
Mike B, Thanks for your comment. The plan does get commuters from Oakland to San Francisco. It also gets commuters from El Cerrito to Alameda, and San Bruno residents to jobs in Oakland.
A second transbay tunnel that uses this plan’s alignment (or any alignment for that matter) should be built on to expand the regional and urban core transit network. The plan presented shows the chance to bring rail from the Peninsula to the East Bay, and possibly on north to Emeryville and north in a later phase.
Although not specifcally part of the ConnectOakland vision, bringing rail transit to some of the neighborhoods you mention should be included in a larger vision to expand transit options in the Bay Area. In a later phase, rail could spur off of a 980 BART line at Grand or 27th Street, and head east along the Grand corridor and on along MacArthur Blvd to Northgate, Grand Lake, Dimond, Laurel District and on to Eastmont.
Currently the transbay corridor is saturated – and its true the tide of travelers go from the East Bay to San Francisco, so that’s why a second crossing is important to build today. But the I-980 vision may be a catalyst for more growth in Oakland, and the rail built there should be the first step to building an expanded rail network in Oakland.
I think this is a bad idea. If we have something that works and is underused that’s OK.I remember when it wasn’t there and it took forever to get from downtown to 580 or 24.
This is a great idea. Thank you for pursuing it. Connecting the East Bay and SF with a new rail tunnel would be very beneficial, especially if Caltrain, HSR, and Amtrak/Capitol Corridor could utilize this infrastructure. There are commuters today that travel from Sacramento to SF via the Capitol Corridor, enduring time consuming transfers and Bay Bridge bus travel (with its frequent delays). We can afford this. Our gas tax has remained nearly unchanged for decades, not even keeping pace with inflation.
Good idea; freeways have proven to be an extremely inefficient method for moving people. If you are serious about moving people and healing the community, however, this avenue would need to replace at least one car lane with protected bike lanes. People on bikes take up less space than people in cars and so greater volumes of people can travel in less space. Also, wide roads still divide a community (van ness. Geary), so keep this in mind when designing for a prosperous future
Hmmmm. 980 may be underused but it is used, and with the inevitable increase in population, its use will continue to grow. Major changes are happening as we speak. Uptown will experience incredible growth in the next few years (Thanks Uber). West Oakland will be changing in the near future, for the better. Brooklyn Basin is coming. And downtown has proposed projects that will most likely be built in time. There is plenty of space for the continued development of downtown without removing a highway.
But perhaps there is a compromise? Much of the space surrounding the 980 is pretty & green, but has become nothing but wasted space or homeless camps.The on- and off-ramp system does take up ridiculous amounts of space. The one-way streets make navigating downtown a pain-in-the-ass. Grabbing some space from 980 and its ramps sounds interesting but don’t remove a major freeway because you think that removal will cure all of West Oakland’s problems. It won’t! There is plenty of work to be done to improve Oakland as it is without creating new projects that may look good on paper but may not work in reality. And if organizations are willing to throw money at tearing down a freeway, let’s use that money to build up neighborhoods that have immediate issues to fix.
Or keep the 980, bury the below-grade portion, make it a tunnel and build on top? Just as ALL of Bart should’ve been built underground to leave the land open for development.
I would love to see the I980 to go underground, especially since I live right on the 880 /980 on ramp. But the big question would be who would pay for it. The cost VS lease of airspace is way off. Why not do away with 980 all together – connect the end of the emeryville 880 to 580 North/East – Cost would be most likely half and most of that end of 880 is still unincorporated and industrial.
Another intriguing opportunity to utilize the 980 corridor for mass transit is to build BART express tracks along any new BART/Caltrain line. This line could take trains from greater east bay to a new transbay tube and bypass downtown Oakland and the Oakland Y. Trains could be express from the Caldecott tunnel or Berkeley to the new transbay tube with a transfer station at McArthur or a new 980 station with Caltrains.
This could dramatically shorten transit commute times which would help to encourage greater use of public transit and make it faster than driving to San Francisco. Adding express trains with separate tracks would ease congestion at stations in downtown Oakland and leave seat available for passengers from Oakland which are normally taken by other east bay riders.
I was pleased to see that the question of 980 was being pondered somewhere. I do have to say that the alternatives being discussed do not go far enough in my opinion. I think that presuming that all the 980 property must remain transportation focused is part of the problem.
I live just blocks from 980, and the long time residents of my neighborhood see 980 as the thing that divided them from the rest of Oakland (well, 580 does so as well.)
I think the “big vision” that the city should consider is removing the freeway, south of the maze at least, putting BART underground, and rebuilding the corridor that was decimated in the name of getting suburbanites through Oakland as fast as possible.
San Francisco has removed freeways and neighborhoods have thrived (see Hayes Valley and the Embarcadero.) Oakland can do the same. That corridor would be perfect for high and medium density housing, like we have seen in Uptown, and would all be well served by BART. We could do away with all of the overpasses and underpasses that make walking in and out of West Oakland so unpleasant.
I think this idea has merit but I would hesitate to take the I-980 freeway out altogether. Since it is running far below capacity, let’s take out HALF of it and put transit in the other half. Then (mostly) cover both halves so that we can connect the two sides at street level. Seems like there would be enough space for a 4-lane subterranean freeway with perhaps one exit (14th/18th) and then all the train lines on the remainder. Remember how important I-980 was after Loma Prieta. We do have to admit that cars are here to stay, thousands more people will be living/working in the area on both sides of I-980, so some form of traffic artery will provide a lot of benefit.