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HAYWARD — Main Street in downtown will be narrowed down to two traffic lanes, with bike lanes and widened sidewalks under a plan proposed by the city.
The city has been looking at ways to make downtown more pedestrian-friendly and to slow down traffic since soon after Hayward created a one-way traffic loop downtown in 2013.
The loop, which in some spots is five lanes, was touted as a way to improve traffic flow, However, it has been blasted since before it was finished, with critics saying it has made it more difficult and confusing to get to downtown stores. Many merchants lost parking and customers, and motorists now speed through Hayward to connect from Interstate 880 to Interstate 580. The loop has no bike lanes except for a half-block stretch on Foothill Boulevard.
The narrowing of Main Street is the easiest of various proposals that have been floated to make downtown Hayward more welcoming for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists. Others have included restoring at least some of the streets in the loop to two way and adding bike lanes and parking.
Main Street is one of the few downtown streets that has remained two way, cutting roughly through the middle of the loop. And it has limited access at D, which reduces the amount of traffic it gets.
The aim behind changing the street between D Street and McKeever Avenue, a few blocks north of A Street, is to make it safer and more welcoming for cyclists and pedestrians.
The neighborhood north of A is also expected to have more housing in the coming years.
That housing includes 240 market-rate and affordable apartments that the City Council approved in February 2017 at a site bounded by A Street, Main Street, McKeever Avenue and Maple Court. That project has not started.
Reconfiguring Main Street is expected to start in roughly two years.
“The preliminary schedule for the start of construction is estimated around the spring of 2022 and should take approximately eight to 12 months to complete,” city spokesman Chuck Finnie said in an email.
Joann Pepperell, who grew up in Hayward and is the owner of the Funky Monkey, a bar on Main Street, said the city should concentrate its efforts to change traffic patterns around downtown’s loop.
“That’s the way to solve these issues,” Pepperell said about getting people to patronize businesses downtown in an interview.
Other city plans for the street’s makeover include adding bulb-outs, or curb extensions, and new curb ramps to make sidewalks more accessible for disabled people, as well as landscaping.
Kim Huggett, president of the Hayward Chamber of Commerce, said some businesses wanted parking on the street to change from parallel to diagonal, as a way to increase spots for potential customers, which is currently not part of the city’s plan for the area.
“I am very interested in what local businesses have to say about this,” Huggett said.
Alex Tat, the project manager for the street modifications, said in an interview that switching to diagonal parking would not free up street space for cyclists.
The project is federally funded through a grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Finnie said.
Currently, the overall estimated cost to complete it will be about $2.25 million, he said.
“We expect this cost to increase due to the refinement of the proposed conceptual design and the rising cost of construction,” he said.
The project is part of the City Council’s “Complete Streets Strategic Initiative,” which calls for the city to build an integrated network of streets that are safe, convenient for travel regardless of age or ability, and that accommodate motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists and users of public transportation.
