Augment transportation efforts on the street with large-scale hillside stabilization, stormwater management, habitat restoration, and new trails in the surrounding basin to create a green gateway into Oakland.

  • The basin has been studied for decades to understand how to overcome landslide issues and also to restore native vegetation.
  • A history stream ran through this area before being undergrounded.
  • The street itself cannot easily support transit access without significant changes and lacks high quality bicycle and pedestrian connections including improvements to City steps. Making these improvement will likely necessitate work to better stabilize hillsides.
  • PennDOT is at very early stages of development plans to widen Bates Street between the freeway and Boulevard of the Allies that includes bike lane and enhancing walkability, may include the Frazier Street steps, adding a bike runnel, adding lighting based on community desire.
  • There are a small number of properties in this area that necessitate aging roads that have been difficult to maintain similar to other parts of the city. Instead of continuing to restore them and risking a future landslide event where the properties are damaged, another approach could be to buy property owners out of this area and eliminte development to help stabilize hillsides and avoid costly street repairs and remediations from future landslides.
  • This project could also benefit from investment from UPMC and DLC redevelopment uphill, allow for broader connectivity via a pedestrian bridge and potentially link to the Hollow Trail concept from Schenley Park below the visitor center.
  • In addition to connections proposed in the related Mobility strategy, this strategy includes the potential for trail connections as part of hillside stabilization and naturalization efforts here and connect to the propose for a trail connection to the riverfront from Lawn Street to the west.
  • Consider starting a program of property buyouts to reduce risks of harm and future landslide remediation costs.
  • Hillside stabilization through engineered and native habitat approaches.
  • Protection of environmentally sensitive areas including through assessing the role of existing limitations in the Zoning Code.
  • Consider stormwater management through area, including daylighting a stream that has been buried for over 100 years for stormwater management and habitat functions.
  • This sewershed has had relatively little planning by PWSA compared to others in Oakland, but covers a large swath from Litchfield Towers down through Central and South Oakland into this basin.
  • Expand this project further into Oakland with transportation improvements but consider additional stormwater management technologies such as semi-permeable crosswalks at Semple, McKee, and Oakland Ave or other appropriate locations within the sewershed.
  • Evaluate if this corridor has other potential uses such as solar panel installation. Phipps is analyzing options for off-site solar PV generation within 2 miles of their location due to net metering requirements.

When to start: 3-5 years

Duration: 5 years

Estimated costs: $$$ (out of $$$$)

Project lead(s): DCP, City Council

Project partner(s): DOMI, PennDOT, URA, PWSA, UPMC, DLC, Friends of the Riverfront, Landforce

Potential funding source(s): Grants, PWSA, PennDOT

Examples, illustrations, data