Dear North Oakland Stakeholders:                                                                             March 23, 2011

We are writing to thank everyone in the Upper Broadway/Caldecott Lane/Tunnel Road, Rockridge and Temescal neighborhoods for your participation in the development of the final list of projects to be funded through the City of Oakland’s $8 million Settlement Agreement with Caltrans over the Caldecott Tunnel Fourth Bore EIR. The final list of projects is attached.

Settlement Agreement Language

These projects are intended to ameliorate the operational impacts to the North Oakland Hills, Rockridge and Temescal districts of adding the fourth bore to the Caldecott Tunnel.  According to the Settlement Agreement, projects must “have as their primary purpose the improvement of pedestrian, bicycle, transit and local street improvements, noise barriers, including projects that support the use of transit (and the reduction of single-occupant motorized vehicles, such as transit signal coordination and amenities), to the greater community in the Highway 24 corridor between I-580 and the Caldecott Tunnel.” The project list meets the intent of the Settlement Agreement.

Public Input in Creating the List

Through a series of three three-hour-long walking tours and over 250 comments communicated at and subsequent to a public meeting in November 2010, the project list has been finalized.  More details on the intent and conceptual design of these projects are available at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16069359/Oakland-Caldecott/Caldecott%20project%20fact%20sheets_03-14-11.pdf The project cost estimates include budget for public involvement in the determination of the ultimate design of each project.

Next Steps

An agreement with the Alameda County Transportation Commission and Caltrans must be signed regarding funding and the list of projects. While this process is underway, each project will be evaluated to determine if more design work is needed prior to further community meetings (or vice-versa). We intend to begin by focusing on the first six projects on the list. Once the design of those projects and pre-construction work is underway, we will ask you to participate in the development of projects farther down the list, and so on.  You will be directly notified of opportunities to participate in the design of these projects.  In addition, the Fourth Bore Coalition will continue to track this process at www.fourthbore.org.

Please let me know if you have any questions.  Thank you.

Iris Starr, AICP
Division Manager of
Infrastructure Plans and Programming