For this installment of Stories from the Field, Berkeley SafeTREC’s Kristen Leckie chatted with Megan Wier, Assistant Director at Oakland’s Department of Transportation (OakDOT). Wier calls out the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and focusing on the needs of the most vulnerable. Read her Safety Story below!
Do you mind telling us about your agency and then about the role you play within that organization?
Since March 2020, I have worked for the City of Oakland’s Department of Transportation. Oakland’s Department of Transportation (OakDOT) was created very recently (2017) with foundational principles rooted in Equity, Safety, Sustainability, and Trust. OakDOT is responsible for over 2,300 lane miles of streets and 1,100 linear miles of sidewalks across 78 square miles of land, serving one of the most diverse cities in the country and home to approximately 430,000 residents. Since Fall 2022, I have been one of OakDOT’s Assistant Directors – with a portfolio that includes our divisions responsible for delivering nearer-term improvements for safe streets, longer-term capital improvements and paving, and parking and mobility operations.
What inspired you to work in active transportation?
As an epidemiologist at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, I started working at the intersection of health and transportation when I was tasked with developing a model to predict how land use and transportation planning decisions impact area-level pedestrian injury patterns. Core to this work was developing partnerships with transportation planners, engineers, and community-based organizations to understand policy levers to prioritize and inform more equitable and comprehensive pedestrian safety conditions. How we design and maintain our transportation system profoundly impacts people’s daily lives and health – and through this work I became inspired by the many opportunities to advance equity, safety, and health through transportation planning and policy decisions.
How does your work with OakDOT encourage safety for people that walk, bike, or roll for transportation?
As an Assistant Director at OakDOT, I have the privilege of working with our staff to prioritize and implement plans, projects, and policies to advance safety and equity in our transportation system with a focus on our most vulnerable road users – including people who walk, bike and roll. OakDOT co-leads our Safe Oakland Streets initiative with the City Administrator’s Office, Department of Race and Equity, and Oakland Police Department, which sets a City goal of preventing severe and fatal traffic crashes as well as eliminating crash inequities on Oakland streets for low-income communities, communities of color, seniors, and people with disabilities. We are advancing this work by focusing our major capital improvements on Oakland’s High Injury Network—the 6% of streets where more than 60% of severe and fatal crashes occur– as well as in communities that have historically been underinvested in, specifically low-income communities and communities of color. OakDOT has developed a Geographic Equity Toolbox to help inform and prioritize our work in our Highest and High Equity Priority Neighborhoods. OakDOT also has an equity-driven paving program that prioritizes improvements on local residential streets in our most historically underinvested neighborhoods, while also routinely delivering safety improvements for people walking and biking – including enhanced crosswalks, pedestrian safety islands, curb ramps, and bike lanes—as we improve paving conditions in those same communities.
We also have several major and transformative projects actively under construction or soon to be under construction that will greatly improve the experiences of people walking, biking, and rolling in Oakland. On High Street, we have implemented a much needed road diet on the corridor between Foothill Boulevard and Tompkins Avenue, and in the coming months, numerous traffic calming features will be installed, including speed cushions, rectangular rapid flashing beacons (RRFB), concrete pedestrian safety islands, curb extensions, and enhanced crosswalk markings. On Fruitvale Avenue, construction is underway to install a sidewalk-level protected bike lane, widened sidewalks, curb ramps, curb extensions, pedestrian-scale lighting, and urban greening. Lastly, we will be breaking ground in the coming months to transform the heart of Downtown Oakland along 14th Street with protected bike lanes, transit boarding islands, a road diet, and much, much more. This is just a small fraction of the work we have in the queue to bring Oaklanders the safe, multimodal streets they want and deserve.
(Photo: Oakland DOT)
You previously worked at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and co-chaired San Francisco’s Vision Zero Task Force. How do these former roles influence your current work?
My public health background continues to inform my approach to understanding the challenges transportation agencies, cities and our society face – as well as solutions. I have been able to build on my experience as Director of SFDPH’s Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability and Co-Chair of San Francisco’s Vision Zero Task Force in many ways in my new role at OakDOT – including as co-lead of Oakland’s Safe Oakland Streets (SOS) initiative. SOS is focused on interagency partnerships, and data-driven, evidence-based measures to prevent severe and fatal crashes and address historic injury inequities. We are also working to deepen our work with the Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD), including data-sharing to improve the crash data that we use to prioritize transportation improvements – building on the work that I helped lead in San Francisco to develop and implement a surveillance system linking police and hospital data. Most recently, we have been able to work with ACPHD to use hospital collision data to help inform and prioritize segments for improvements as part of our International Quick Build project that will be implementing and evaluating surface safety treatments on approximately 75% of International Boulevard next year to save lives and address transit lane violations.
How can the world of public health help inform and strengthen the world of active transportation?
Honestly, it’s been amazing to see the change since I started doing this work over 15 years ago with respect to the interdisciplinary crossover between public health and transportation. For example, the Transportation Research Board has a standing Committee on Health and Transportation! A Safe Systems approach, which is grounded in principles strongly aligned with public health, is now being institutionalized into the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Of course, there is always more work to do. This is all happening at a time when our nation’s public health workforce and infrastructure, which has always been under-invested in, has been really challenged by the emergency response to COVID-19. So it’s a difficult question to answer – how can public health do more?
From where I sit in local government, the challenges facing our communities increasingly demand that our institutions get out of historic silos and work together to address the pressing needs of our residents, with a focus on those who are most vulnerable. This is the only way that we will achieve our goals – be it safety for people walking and biking, addressing the impacts of climate change, or responding to community violence. To do this, we need clear goals that focus on advancing equity, interagency partnerships, data-driven, evidence-based decision-making and practice, and transparency and accountability. We would benefit from more people with public health training helping to solve these problems, regardless of the agency they sit in.
One example of our departments in Oakland breaking out of our silos is the Neighborhood Enhanced Services Team (NEST) initiative, led by the City Administrator’s Office. The NEST initiative works to bring cross-departmental interventions and solutions to police beats experiencing the highest rates of violence in the City. As part of the NEST initiative, OakDOT worked with the Oakland Police Department (OPD) and the Department of Violence Prevention (DVP) on a pilot project to aid in the prevention of speeding and human trafficking concentrated on the East 15th Street corridor (NEST Beat 19X). OakDOT installed three temporary intersection diagonal diverters on East 15th Street at 16th, 18th, and 20th Avenues to prevent speeding, as well as soliciting drivers from cruising freely along East 15th Street. At the same time of the installation of these diverters, OPD conducted enforcement operations of soliciting drivers, while DVP provided outreach and offered services to people who are being trafficked. Following positive community feedback from the initial demonstration project, OakDOT leveraged an existing grant-funded pedestrian safety project to work with the community on the design and implementation of a permanent diagonal diverter at East 15th Street and 18th Avenue.
As a public health professional, what are the key elements of a successful active transportation project or program?
In our work in Oakland, we have to work every day to prioritize our limited resources to meet the needs of our residents, and advance safety, equity and sustainability. We are successful when we are focusing our policies, projects and programs on meeting the needs of our most vulnerable communities, and creating safer conditions to live, work, and play. Key elements that help support realizing those goals are strong leadership and commitment to those goals, resourced community engagement, interagency partnerships, clear communication, and dedicated resources to deliver.
What is one practice, tool, or approach you wish active transportation planners would adopt from public health?
A focus on equity and the needs of the most vulnerable in our transportation system. OakDOT prioritizes our near-term traffic safety improvements where the most severe and fatal crashes are concentrated, in high priority equity areas where low income residents and communities of color live, and also near land uses where the most vulnerable residents travel – like schools, senior centers, libraries and health clinics. In this way we are working to prioritize our limited resources to benefit the people and places that are more vulnerable, and address historic inequities in our transportation system.
What are some solutions that we can implement today for the future so that we can make it safer for those walking, biking, or rolling on our streets?
In one out of every four traffic fatalities in Oakland, unsafe speed plays a primary role. It’s difficult to over-emphasize the importance of slowing vehicle speeds to save lives and protect people and walking, biking, and rolling on our streets. I am thrilled that Governor Newsom just this month signed AB 645, which will allow Oakland and six other cities in the state to pilot Automated Speed Enforcement to help address the most egregious speeding on our streets. This is also why in Oakland we are working to lower speed limits near schools and in business activity districts
(Photo: Oakland DOT)
What is a story or take away from your work that's really stuck with you?
That change is truly possible – and you have to be ready when you are called on. It is important to have a vision of where you are trying to go and what change you need to get there. Things that can seem politically impossible one day, can become a reality the next – but you need to be ready with solutions when you are called to action.
If you had a superpower and could change anything, what would the future of active transportation safety look like?
Change anything?!?! A transportation system that replaces private vehicle use with: well-resourced, free public transit for everyone; safe, accessible, well-maintained walking paths to all key destinations with ample public art; separated bike infrastructure to key destinations; and affordable, safe, healthy housing, schools/skills training, child care, and comprehensive health care for all.
If that’s too aspirational for this question, I would have the auto industry implement globally the National Transportation and Safety Board recommendations to implement in-vehicle technologies to limit or prohibit impaired drivers from operating their vehicles as well as technologies to prevent speeding. We know these are leading factors in fatal crashes. The impact to save lives and prevent the dangerous driving behaviors that kill people would be profound.
Megan Wier, MPH, is an Assistant Director for the City of Oakland’s Department of Transportation (OakDOT) where her portfolio is comprised of four Divisions and over 200 staff delivering large capital projects, paving, parking management, innovative mobility, and near-term street improvements to advance equity, safety, sustainability, and transparent governance for the City of Oakland. Prior to starting at OakDOT in early 2020, Megan was the Director of the Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability at the San Francisco Department of Public Health where she worked for over a decade at the intersection of health, equity and transportation in partnership with city agencies and community stakeholders, and co-chaired San Francisco’s Vision Zero Task Force to eliminate traffic deaths. Megan has been actively engaged in work to prioritize safety, health, and equity in transportation decision making at local, regional, state, and national levels for almost two decades. Ms. Wier has a Master of Public Health from the University of California-Berkeley and a Bachelor’s in Sociology and Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan.
This Stories From the Field interview was conducted in collaboration with UC Berkeley SafeTREC. The opinions and perspectives expressed are those of the interviewee and not necessarily those of SafeTREC.
