The Road reconfiguration is actually quite inexpensive and straight forward, because basically it is a matter of removing the current pavement markings and replacing with marked lanes for the 3 traffic lanes and bike lanes. Since the Alameda lanes currently are not painted, but instead marked with lane-bumps , only the bumps need to be removed and only a small amount of paint. That cost is roughly $5 per linear foot of road way.
Providing for added administration time, design/engineering, signage, and allowing for contingencies costs, the full price would be in the $35,000 range for our section of Alameda. (see FHWA Cost of Road Diet and check it out yourself.)
Putting that into perspective, this cost is about the same as a non-injury accident and an order of magnitude less expensive than a moderate injury accident. If you can put a value on the cost of saving a school child from being hit, then please use your own judgement on applying that cost to this perspective.
The stats on a road change from 4 to 3 lanes can reduce accidents by 19 to 47%. With dozens of reported accidents in recent years, the road diet actually saves money and reduces liability and risk. Please add to the discussion by using the Comments section at the bottom of that Pro & Con page.
Why so inexpensive? The road diet from 4 to 3 lanes does not require much and is is relatively cheap($35,000 range, double that for County doing it). Remove the current lane markings and paint the new lane markings, this is often called a ‘scrape-n-paint’. There is a requirement for ‘design layout’ to mark the new lane configuration, but this work is straight forward for this short section of Alameda and has, for the most part, already been designed in the county designs. This design layout defines where the new bike lanes, bike buffers, parking, travel lanes, and left turn/merge lane will exist. Although not part of a simple ‘scrape-n-paint’, the new lanes markings take into consideration where the expanded width of sidewalks will be placed.
One of the reasons the road diet is not expensive is that while it addresses the traffic lanes, bike lanes, and shorter crosswalks, it doesn’t build new sidewalks. That sidewalk task would be at a future time.
Good news is that a road diet could be put in place while funding for the sidewalks is found and budgeted, a process still years out.