History
A letter from the Alameda County Congestion Management
Agency (ACCMA) to the City of Oakland dated July 19, 2005
acknowledged requests received by ACCMA for eight different soundwalls in Oakland. (ACCMA
later changed its name to the Alameda County Transportation Commission, ACTC.) In a
letter dated July 14, 2006 from the City of Oakland to ACCMA,
Joe Wang of the Transportation Services Division wrote
“Please find, enclosed, qualifying petitions for two out of the eight proposed locations for freeway
soundwalls in Oakland. Unfortunately, we have not received the required percentage of signatures for
the remaining six locations…” Six of the eight requests were for locations adjacent to Highway 580.
Two were for locations next to Highway 24,
and neither of those met the signatory requirements. One of the Highway 24 requests was described in
the first letter as “Highway 24 between Claremont Ave. and Broadway Ave. – Westbound traffic side”.
This location is identical to that of one of the recently proposed soundwalls for Highway 24.
The two Highway 580 soundwalls requested in 2005 that met the signatory requirements were true
grassroots efforts by affected residents. The soundwalls requests made at that time for Highway
24 were not and those requests died from lack of community support. Nevertheless, one would later be
resurrected as part of the Caldecott Settlement Agreement.
On March 23, 2011, the City of Oakland announced the
Caldecott Tunnel Settlement Agreement Final Project List
of 37 projects to be funded under its $8 million settlement with Caltrans. Of these 37
projects, 21 were "above the line" on this ordered List, meaning that they were likely to
be funded, with 3 of those being soundwall studies. Of the 16 projects "below the line"
and thus unlikely to be funded, 7 were soundwall studies. See the
Final Caldecott Project Fact Sheets for detailed descriptions, location
maps, and photos of these projects.
The settlement was the result of work by the Fourth Bore Coalition. The project list was
created by the Coalition and the City of
Oakland with the aid of input from the public. Should some projects not be
undertaken, other projects below them on the list would move up accordingly and become more
likely to be funded. The highest ranking soundwall projects were numbers seven and eight.
A public meeting on the topic of the Settlement projects was held in North Oakland on November 8, 2010.
Within Rockridge, publicity for these projects has been mainly via The Rockridge News (RN),
a monthly newsletter published by the Rockridge Community Planning Council (RCPC), a member of the
Fourth Bore Coalition. At both the public meeting and in many articles
published in the RN, the basis of the approval process for the soundwall studies was stated to be the
Alameda CTC Freeway Soundwall Policy. On August 21, 2012, ACTC declared that "The City of Oakland
has not requested any Alameda CTC assistance with the development of the proposed soundwalls. Therefore,
the Alameda CTC Freeway Soundwall Policy is not applicable". This means that ACTC is not a participant
in the current soundwall study approval process. The City of Oakland created its own freeway soundwall
study approval policy, which was not published, publicly vetted, or approved by the Oakland City Council.
Another public meeting, this time on the topic of the soundwall studies, was held in the Rockridge
Library on September 27, 2012. The City tentatively proposed that if 67% of affected property owners
signed petitions, the soundwall studies would go forward. This contrasts with ACTC's signatory
requirements: 100% of owners of properties adjacent to the freeway and 75% of owners of other
properties that would see at least a 5 decibel reduction in freeway noise. The City's proposal
lowered the bar to approval in these ways:
- A lower percentage of property owners would be required to sign.
- Added weight would not be given to the wishes of those living adjacent to the freeway, whose property
values would be most affected by the aesthetics of a soundwall.
Yet another public meeting was held at the Rockridge Library on January 17, 2013.
Prior to the meeting, on January 11, Victoria Eisen, Principal, Eisen|Letunic Transportation,
Environmental and Urban Planning, Berkeley, who is coordinating the Caldecott Settlement Agreement
projects for the City of Oakland, e-mailed me a
list of properties whose owners would be eligible to sign soundwall study approval petitions.
This list was consistent with the story, "The Soundwall Study
Process", in the January 5, 2013 Rockridge News, which advertised the upcoming meeting. The article stated
that "135 properties in close proximity to SR24 … meet state and local agencies' criteria for soundwall
construction funding". These properties were selected according to criteria in
Alameda CTC Freeway Soundwall Policy.
The key requirement is that "A reduction of at least 5 decibels resulting from the installation of
a soundwall can be achieved" (Page 4). The calculations in the
State Route 24 Oakland, CA Pre-NBSSR Noise Study Final Report December 2009
indicate that 133 properties near Highway 24 meet this 5 decibel noise reduction requirement.
140 properties were listed on January 11 by the City as the ones whose owners would be
eligible to sign the petitions. So the number of eligible owners was somewhere between 133 and 140.
However, between January 11 and January 17 this all changed. On January 17, it was announced (verbally)
at the meeting that property owners within 3 rows of houses of the freeway (and in some cases even farther
away) would be eligible to sign petitions. Instead of 133-140 properties, 400-500 properties would qualify.
If the full NBSSR Noise Study were carried out and was consistent with the Pre-NBSSR Noise Study,
the vast majority of the property owners eligible to sign the petition for soundwall studies would
not be eligible to sign the petition for soundwall construction under ACTC rules.
Documents released in April, 2014 show that this policy change was made immediately after
Stuart Flashman, the main organizer of pro-soundwall study petitions,
e-mailed Victoria Eisen asking for
changes to the process. The effect of these changes (confirmed by the petition
results) were:
- To give people known to favor soundwalls, but who didn't live close to the freeway, the opportunity
to sign petitions.
- To make eligible lots of property owners who lived far enough away from Highway 24 that the visual
impact of soundwalls would not bother them as it would for many who reside right next to the freeway.
And what explanation was given for the City's latest approval policy change? The larger pool of
eligible property owners was justified by City staff by claiming that this would make the process
"more inclusive". That is true. It would include people who would not see a noise reduction of even 5
decibels at their property, and who would not be eligible to sign petitions required for soundwall
construction.
The 2/3 approval percentage was justified by City staff by saying that the soundwall study
petition process is equivalent to other petition processes already in place and that the 2/3
approval percentage already applies to them. The examples mentioned at the January 17 meeting
were Residential Permit Parking (RPP) and Speed Bumps.
RPP petitions require that 51% of eligible residents sign petitions, not 2/3. The rules for creating
RPP zones were not simply mandated by City staff - they were voted on and approved by the City
Council. And every RPP zone that is petition approved must still be approved by a separate vote
of the City Council. See
Oakland, California, Code of Ordinances >> Title 10 - VEHICLES AND TRAFFIC
>> Chapter 10.44 - RESIDENTIAL PERMIT PARKING PROGRAM.
Speed bumps are currently not funded, so no speed bump petitions are being issued or accepted by
the City of Oakland.
Any uncertainty was later clarified by a
letter from Wlad Wlassowsky, Transportaion Services Division Manager, City of Oakland, dated
March 12, 2013, which notified the owners of some properties located close to Highway 24 in Rockridge
that they are eligible to sign soundwall study approval petitions; and that the last date that the City
would accept signed petitions would be March 15, 2014. This letter stated:
"…A 2009 study entitled 'State Route 24,Oakland, CA Pre-Noise Barrier Scope Summary Report (NBSSR)'
found that your property is one of 481 that could experience a minimum of 5 decibel noise reduction
if soundwalls were constructed...."
But this statement is false. According to the Pre-NBSSR only 133, or 28% of those
481 properties, would experience a minimum of 5 decibel noise reduction if soundwalls were constructed.
For a detailed analysis of this letter, see Approval: VII. More lies.
The March 12 letter has had the effect of tilting the playing field in favor of approval by exaggerating
the amount of noise reduction that most eligible property owners would obtain.
There was another public meeting held on October 17, 2013 at the Rockridge Branch of the Oakland
Public Library. As reported in
The Montclarion "Rockridge: Residents sound off on sound walls", Victoria Eisen released the (then)
latest version of the
Caldecott Tunnel Settlement Agreement Final Project List.
Due to cost increases on projects near the top of the list, the funding line moved up. Only 11
projects were "above the line". If the soundwall studies (Projects #7 and #8) were approved,
funding for intersection improvements on Broadway would disappear. And Ms. Eisen also stated that it was
questionable when or even if actual soundwall construction would be funded if the soundwall studies go
forward, due to competition for limited funds among many transportation projects within Alameda County.
This all changed again with the release of yet another
Caldecott Tunnel Settlement Agreement Final Project List. Six more projects were now expected to be
funded as a result of cost reductions and grant funding. Projects #19-23 on this List (more intersection
improvements and pedestrian lighting) would not be funded if the soundwall studies were.
When the period for submitting soundwall study approval petitions expired on March 15, 2014, the
City had received
petitions containing 300 signatures out of 485 eligible owners (62%), less than the 67% needed.
Therefore, soundwall studies #7 and #8 were removed from the Caldecott Tunnel Settlement Project List
and the $1.482 million that might have been used for the studies will be allocated to projects further
down the Project List.
Proponents appealed to the Public Works department to
approve the studies anyway based on "substantial support" for them and a "flawed process". The appeal
asked for more time to collect signatures, that the percentage of signatures required for approval be
reduced, and that eligibility requirements for signing be weakened. Public Works Assistant Director
Michael J. Neary denied
this appeal, saying that one year was sufficient time and that the approval requirements had been in
place for more than a yearwithout any complaint from the group making the appeal.
The City also released the
names and addresses of the property owners who signed the petition. A comparison of this list
with the
list of 140 properties that would have had noise reduced by at least 5 decibels if the soundwalls
had been built shows that only 76, or 54%, of these 140 property owners signed the petition.
This same group of 140 would later have been eligible to sign approval petitions for the actual
construction of the soundwalls (assuming that the results of the full Noise Study would have been
similar to those of the Pre-NBSSR). 52% of first row owners and 56% of remaining owners signed - far
below the 100% and 75%, respectively, that ACTC would have required later for construction approval.
