Traffic on Interstate 880 toward Oakland jammed packed with cars and diesel trucks midafternoon on Monday, June 28, 2021. The study on the decades-old ban of trucks on Interstate 580 in Oakland and San Leandro is expected to be completed next year.
(Joyce Tsai/KQED)
After years of controversy surrounding a large truck ban on Interstate 580, a long-awaited Caltrans study on the ban’s impacts is finally underway.
For more than 70 years, trucks weighing more than 9,000 pounds, with the exception of passenger buses and paratransit vehicles, have not been permitted on a section of I-580 that runs along the base of the East Bay Hills in Oakland and San Leandro.
As a result, large trucks nearly exclusively drive through — and pollute — neighborhoods along Interstate 880, a parallel highway running through Oakland and San Leandro’s flatlands.
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Residents along the I-880 corridor in East Oakland experience some of the highest rates (PDF) of asthma hospitalizations in Alameda County, according to the county’s public health department. In addition to the diesel exhaust, the communities are also near several stationary sources of pollution, such as the Port of Oakland.
Caltrans told KQED there is no structural safety reason preventing trucks from using I-580 and that “the freeway was designed to be safe for all vehicular traffic.”
Traffic on Interstate 880 toward Oakland flowing with cars and diesel trucks midafternoon on Monday, June 28, 2021. Big trucks like this one are banned on the I-580 freeway. (Joyce Tsai/KQED)
According to Caltrans’ website, the goal of the study is to understand how allowing trucks like big rigs on I-580 would impact “safety, efficiency, reliability and traffic speed along the I-880 and I-580 corridors” and how such a change would impact health equity.
Depending on the results of the study, the agency might “find common ground for its potential repeal” and “alleviate disproportionate health impacts for underserved communities of color within the study area.”
Caltrans presented the study plan to the Bay Area Air District this week.
“When I first even learned of this disparity — this truck ban on 580 — I was surprised,” said Vicki Veenker, an air district board member and vice mayor of Palo Alto. “I did not know it existed, and it just seems to create such an imbalanced situation.”
Board member and San Leandro Mayor Juan Gonzalez III cautioned the group not to have blinders on while considering the study.
“I don’t want to see us … try to attribute all variations due to air quality on the highway when there are many other factors that go into that,” he said, noting that employment and diet are also linked to health.
He also said there is more infrastructure for large trucks, such as warehouses, around I-880 in San Leandro.
Former Oakland teacher Patrick Messac called into the meeting. In 2021, his sixth-grade class helped reignite the debate over the ban.
“My students were in sixth grade when district staff said that there was going to be a study, and now they are in high school,” he said during public comment. “I just really want to encourage the district to move forward with haste and intention.”
Former 6th-grade science teacher Patrick Messac helps a student with his microscope at Life Academy of Health and Bioscience in East Oakland. In 2021, Messac and his 6th-grade class helped reignite the debate over the large truck ban. (Laura Klivans/KQED)
In 2021, Caltrans told KQED it would seek to undertake this study by 2023. At the Bay Area Air District meeting, the agency said the study would be complete by 2026.
Proponents of the ban cite the higher number of people and sensitive sites, such as schools, along I-580 and argue the restriction should remain in place. Removing it, they say, will simply spread more pollution throughout the East Bay.
Opponents argue the ban, which became state law in 2000 and would require action by the state Legislature to be overturned, is a clear example of environmental racism and overburdens lower-income communities of color that live along I-880.
The public can follow the study and weigh in on the Caltrans website.
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