State transportation officials are weighing a controversial idea to allow large trucks on Interstate 580 in Oakland. Many people are not happy about it.
That much was clear when Caltrans held a virtual town hall earlier this month, to discuss the agency’s ongoing study on what could happen if the 74-year truck ban were reversed.
Three hundred sixty-one people tuned in, and nearly a hundred clamored to submit questions in a live chat. Attendees expressed concern about noise, congestion and air pollution if truck traffic were shifted from its current home on Interstate 880, to I-580 farther east. They also wanted to know if Caltrans would build sound walls, if garbage trucks and 18-wheelers would wind up parked on city streets, what would happen if one of these behemoths crashed, and whether planners had considered all the homes and businesses clustered around I-580 today…