Oakland’s new Pedestrian Master Plan (August 2002) represents an important step towards inclusion of pedestrians in the urban transportation planning process here in California. At www.walkinginfo.org, under Exemplary Pedestrian Plans. [http://www.walkinginfo.org/pp/exemplary.htm]

The site provides links to 8 pedestrian plans, 7 combined pedestrian and bike plans, and 13 bike plans that have been produced in North America. Walkinginfo.org is an affiliate of the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center.)

Oakland’s Plan documents existing conditions for pedestrians, with a focus on safety, and contains detailed proposals for a pedestrian route network that includes a downtown pedestrian district, safe routes to school and safe routes to transit. It also identifies guidelines and elements for improving streets and paths — rather than design standards as proposed by SANDAG — and an implementation plan with priorities for action.

The Oakland Pedestrian Master Plan differs from Copenhagen’s long, slow process in a number of significant ways, not the least of which is an assumption in Oakland that cars and pedestrians can successfully share space in the city. Copenhagen challenged the dominance of the car and incrementally transformed public spaces from traffic to pedestrian oriented. Oakland’s Plan does not contain any discussion of or measures to redress the current imbalance in favor of the car, other than to provide a parallel infrastructure to accommodate pedestrians. Growing evidence from other jurisdictions suggests that to induce pedestrian activity, pedestrian travel, in certain areas of the city at least, must become the dominant transportation mode.

Oakland’s plan is also conspicuously absent of any quantifiable measures of increased pedestrian activity or satisfaction (notwithstanding proposals to measure to levels of service or predict pedestrian volume). The plan contains extensive details about the physical improvements that will be made to pedestrian facilities, but fails to establish any specific goals for increased pedestrian trips, reduced collisions with cars, or durations of use of public spaces. In this regard the plan adopts the infrastructure bias of transportation engineering and overlooks the crucial inducements to walking, such as pedestrian dominated destinations, which have made Copenhagen such a success.