Dare We Say It? Upper Greenway Path Set to Open Friday

The word on the Ohlone Greenway—the latest of many such updates—is that the northern end in Albany will open Friday, Sept. 21. 

Both BART and city staff have said the path will open to the public along the Brighton-to-Portland section of the greenway. Fences may continue to block off areas being landscaped.

BART’s Gene Calderon, a community relations representative, said, in the coming week on that section of the greenway, we’ll see workers paving the jogging shoulder of the path with decomposed granite (that’s what’s been sitting in big piles next to Brighton for the past week) and installing trees, lawn and native grasses.

For more on the landscaping plans see past Albany Patch coverage. They city's urban forester, Tony Wolcott, has told Patch that BART can install only the landscaping already agreed upon with the city for now. However, he said, there will be room, once the work is done, to entertain ideas from the community for additional plantings. 

The greenway path will open without striping because of a change in plans. The city and BART had intended to paint one stripe down the middle of the path, creating two lanes, just like on the older parts of the path. However, with the much wider new path, community members, including members of Albany Strollers & Rollers, have requested three lanes of traffic—two for bikes and one for pedestrians.

Jacobs said the city has asked BART to hold off on striping, and that city engineer Randy Leptien is working with a traffic engineering company to study whether three lanes would be safe and legal. The city, instead of BART, will pay for the striping because of the change in plans.

In the Marin Avenue–to-Dartmouth Street section of the BART tracks, retrofitting is still not complete, Jacobs said. In the coming week, columns will be inspected, and edging board for the pathway installed. The path there is scheduled to be paved Sept. 24, Calderon said.

The section of work near Gilman Street in Berkeley is expected to be done by late October, with path paving and landscaping to follow, Calderon said. The Berkeley path will be as wide as the Albany path, he said, but striped for just two lanes.

The next section to undergo retrofitting will be from Brighton north to Fairmount Street in El Cerrito. Trees in that section will come down soon, Wolcott said. The suggested detours during that closure were described in a past Patch story.

Concerns about the project can be directed to the City's Public Works Department at 510-524-9543 or to BART's project information line for Albany, 510-412-5546, or by email to earthquakesafety@BART.gov.

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Everybody makes mistakes ...  even us! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, call editor Emilie Raguso at 510-459-8325 or email her at emilier@patch.com.