There is a plan to make some of Emeryville’s busiest streets bus-only and bike-only, which worries some companies in the area.
“This is the third generation of the family business, and I’m the second,” Deborah Cohen said.
For 55 years, she and her family have run Rug Depot Outlet in Emeryville. Inside and outside the store, there are more than 10,000 rugs. Huge semi-trucks come and go almost every day, and it’s not just for her business. It’s also for Pottery and Beyond, Granite Expo, and other nearby businesses.
“A lot of our neighbors are light industrial or in the catering business, and so this street takes delivery on very heavy product,” Cohen said.
That’s why she and a dozen other nearby businesses are so worried about the 40th Street Multimodal project that the city council is going forward with.
The plan is to make 40th Street better for buses, pedestrians, and cyclists by blocking off side streets to cars and turning one traffic lane in each way into lanes just for buses and bikes.
The project will cost just over $30 million all together.
Mayor David Mourra of Emeryville said, “This project is a big way to make room for all the people who want to come into the city.”
It was said that the route has been studied since 2018 and that traffic studies have been done to see what makes the most sense. He said that this plan will help make the area around 40th Street safer for everyone, not just folks on bikes and foot.
“We are really trying to improve things for everyone, and sometimes there are tradeoffs, and we understand that and we understand that sometimes change can be difficult,” Mourra said.
Deborah and other business owners think that the change is only good for a few people and hurts the big companies that helped make Emeryville what it is today.
“40th to me is a throughway that was made for this exact thing, which is deliveries of trucks coming off of freeways, and to make 40th street into one lane car traffic doesn’t feel safe or relevant,” she added.
The city council still needs to decide on the plan, which should happen sometime near the end of the year. If it passes, the project won’t be finished until 2028.
