Thank you for your interest in the City of Oakland's work to make it safer for families to travel to and from our neighborhood schools. Below please find links to important reports and updates on this work. OakDOT performs this work in coordination with the citywide Safe Oakland Streets initiative.
School Traffic Safety Requests
Travel to and from school can be a challenging part of day-to-day life for students, parents, and school staff. We seek to encourage safely walking and bicycling to school while accommodating drop-off and pick-up traffic and minimizing neighborhood impacts. OakDOT handles requests from schools on an ongoing basis. Generally our toolkit of short-turnaround measures includes signage, pavement markings including crosswalk markings, and curb paint. Local, residential streets near schools may also be eligible for the City's Speed Bump program.
How to Get Involved:
If you're a parent concerned about school traffic issues, please reach out to your school administrators and raise your concerns with them. They will work with us and Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) transportation staff to make an appropriate recommendation. OakDOT and OUSD meet regularly to discuss school travel needs, which helps us to ensure that requests are consistent and prioritized within OakDOT's other activities.
If you're a school official, please indicate this in your 311 request to flag it for prioritization. We are happy to work with you! For schools affiliated with OUSD, please also notify District transportation staff who meet with OakDOT regularly and may also be able to suggest ideas from the perspective or school operations
Walk Audits and School Capital Projects
OakDOT partners with the Alameda County Transportation Commission (ACTC) to hold around five walk audits per year at schools with the support of a professional engineering team. The recommendations from these walk audits help to build a pipeline of school transportation capital projects. These are long-term efforts; most school traffic safety issues are better addressed through the service request process.
OakDOT Crossing Guard Program
Crossing Guards are an important school and community resource for safety. The Oakland Department of Transportation Crossing Guard program (formerly managed by the Oakland Police Department until early 2021) is comprised of part-time employees under the supervision of the School Traffic Safety Supervisor in the Safe Streets Division of OakDOT. Learn more about the Crossing Guard program here.
Collaboration within OakDOT
The Traffic Engineering team partners with other groups within OakDOT to promote traffic safety around schools.
Complete Streets Paving - We coordinate with OakDOT's paving teams to include traffic safety elements near schools when streets are repaved. Review the current OakDOT 5-Year Paving Plan here: 2022 5-Year Paving Plan.
Traffic Capital Projects - When grant-funded projects are located near schools, our team works with project managers to ensure that school safety elements are included in the plans.