Over the past decade, ridership at 19th Street Station has grown at one of the fastest rates in the entire BART system. Since 2005, ridership has increased by 54 percent, making it the ninth-busiest station (for comparison, 12th Street Station has grown by only 15 percent). 19th Street Station serves a diverse ridership base of office, entertainment, and residential trips from some of Oakland’s densest neighborhoods including Uptown, Lakeside, and Adams Point. As Uptown enters a construction boom, ridership will likely grow despite the fact that the station has no automobile parking.
- Broadway is the key north-south arterial for people biking to 19th Street Station. However, despite its ample space and low traffic volumes, Oakland’s Bicycle Master Plan seeks to divert people biking away from Broadway to Franklin and Webster. This inconvenient diversion not only discourages bicycling to 19th Street Station and Downtown Oakland, it also forces people biking to the Bike Station to deal with a multitude of conflicts with buses, parked cars, and automobiles.
- 19th St provides access to the Bike Station from the east, connecting to bike lanes on Franklin and Webster and the dense Lakeside neighborhood. It is a high speed one-way street flanked by parking garages. No bike lanes are planned on 19th St.
- 20th St provides east-west access to 19th Street Station. It is very bicycle-unfriendly, although the City is planning buffered, unprotected bike lanes as an interim improvement. 20th St connects to a number of key corridors including Harrison St/Oakland Ave and Grand Ave, but a four block-long speedway on Harrison St prevents a seamless, low-stress connection. A redesign of the 20th/Harrison intersection is planned, but the redesign is largely a missed opportunity for a more people-friendly street: Harrison St will remain six lanes-wide with unprotected bike lanes, including a very long stretch before Grand where the bike lane straddles in between two lanes of automobile traffic.
- Telegraph Ave provides north-south access to 19th Street Station and represents another key arterial for people biking. Telegraph will have Oakland’s first protected bike lanes, but people biking will still not be able to access the Bike Station via a continuous bikeway. Instead, it is necessary to either turn onto 20th Street (navigating numerous bus-bike conflicts at the Uptown Transit Center) and ride on Broadway, or disembark at the intersection of Telegraph and 19th St and walk a block.