18th Street Complete Streets Paving Project
About
The 18th Street Complete Streets Paving Project will repave 18th Street between Mandela Parkway and Market. It will make changes to reduce vehicle speeding and improve safety and connectivity for people walking and biking.
Timeline
Winter-Spring 2026: Public Engagement and Conceptual Design
Spring-Summer 2026: Detailed Design
Summer 2026: Construction
This timeline is subject to change due to coordination with other planned paving in West Oakland. To stay in the loop, sign up for the project email list below.
Scope
The 18th Street Complete Streets Paving Project will repave 18th Street between Mandela Parkway and Market. The project has the following goals:
- Repair and update aging facilities.
- Prevent drivers from speeding.
- Improve safety for people walking and biking.
- Connect and highlight community destinations.
To achieve these goals, OakDOT proposes the following changes, pending public engagement:
- Implement a “road diet” for the entire segment, reducing the number of through travel lanes from two to one in each direction and adding a striped median and buffered bike lanes.
- Upgrade curb ramps to meet ADA standards.
- Construct new pedestrian safety islands and stripe new marked crosswalks.
- Add traffic calming elements, such as speed humps, speed cushions, raised crosswalks, or raised intersections.
- Remove existing railroad track within the roadway.
- Maintain curbside parking, except where adding intersection daylighting.
- Evaluate loading, pick-up/drop-off and other curb management needs at key destinations.
- Make adjustments to recently completed projects on 18th Street between Market Street and Brush Street and between Wood Street and Mandela Parkway.
Project Background
In 2020, the City of Oakland was awarded an Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) grant to improve 18th Steet in support of the Mandela Station Transit Oriented Development. Following delays to the housing development, these changes will be implemented in coordination with a scheduled paving project, per the City’s 5-year paving plan.
Vehicle speeding on this corridor is common (85th percentile speed of 36 mph in 2016) and traffic volumes are very low for a four-lane road (2500 ADT in 2016). Let’s Bike Oakland (2019) recommended contiguous buffered bike lanes on 18th Street between Lake Merritt and its western terminus at Brush Street. From 2019-2023, there were 16 collisions on 18th Street, including three involving bicyclists.