San Pablo Avenue has a pedestrian circulation problem



Most bicycle riders don't find San Pablo Avenue comfortable to bicycle on. Just as challenging, it is difficult to bicycle or walk across. The street grid on the El Cerrito side does not align with the street grid of the Richmond Annex. As a consequence most streets that intersect with San Pablo Avenue don't line up with streets on the other side of the Avenue.

If you walk down streets approaching from the west side of San Pablo Avenue (mostly from the Richmond Annex) you'll find almost no crosswalks at San Pablo Avenue, plus you’ll find at 16 intersections a median on San Pablo Avenue that blocks your eastward travel across the Avenue. From the other direction, El Cerrito streets are only blocked at one street by an Avenue median, and the El Cerrito intersecting streets have crosswalks at San Pablo Avenue, but they are of limited worth since most of those streets don't cross the Avenue to an Annex street.

As presently designed, the Avenue is a barrier between our two communities. Someday in the future, San Pablo Avenue will be redesigned with bicycle and transit lanes, but any future designs for the Avenue also need to address the challenges of crossing. It is hard to imagine a vital economic future for the Avenue if people can't safely circulate back and forth to both sides.

Image above: Google Earth

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