Oakland merchants seek help as bus lanes limit car traffic

You can't sell dishwashers to people who ride the bus, Oakland merchant Vincente Soto said.

And when Oakland closes half the lanes of car traffic along International Boulevard from downtown to the San Leandro BART Station and replaces them with a bus-only transit lane in the next few years, Soto said his customers won't be able to drive to his store, or find parking.

"My customers will be competing with residents for the parking spaces around here," Soto said through a translator. "The residents will be taking my customers' spaces."

Soto, who has run his humble U&A Appliance Sales and Repair store at 20th Avenue and International Boulevard in Oakland's San Antonio neighborhood for five years, was one of roughly two dozen merchants and residents who called on city and transit leaders Tuesday to support people who will lose parking or face traffic when Oakland and AC Transit open the bus-only lanes in late 2017.

Transit advocates say the bus lanes, called bus rapid transit, or BRT, will speed the commute along busy, congested International and offer a local, neighborhood alternative to BART. Dedicated bus lanes and raised bus station platforms in the center divide will make the system more like a speedy light-rail system than a local bus system that crawls along in traffic.

And a robust transit system will attract new customers who, if they ditch their cars, can hop on the bus at a downtown BART station and zip over to the San Antonio neighborhood. Both the city and AC Transit would invest millions in planting trees, installing better lighting and improving sidewalks.

"What we need in this corridor is customers," said Noel Gallo, the city councilman who represents the area. "We need to make the area more customer friendly so we can increase our customer base."

But residents and merchants along the corridor worry that the change, which has been discussed since 2007, will upset the few customers they manage to attract.

"Nobody wants to drive around for 15 minutes in traffic and looking for parking when you want to buy something," said Allen Nguyen, who owns Beauty Supply Generation, a wholesale beauty supplier on International. "We sell lotion by 8-gallon containers, 15-pound cotton boxes, and 99 percent of my customers drive here. They don't take 8-gallon containers of lotion on the bus."

Oakland is ready to support merchants so they can "prepare for a new business environment, operate and survive during construction, and thrive in a new economic environment," said Fred Blackwell, Oakland's city administrator.

See the article here:
Oakland merchants seek help as bus lanes limit car traffic