Broadway Auto Row, Oakland, California

Oakland's Broadway Auto Row is a strip of land along Broadway between Grand Avenue at the Southwest, and 40th Street to the Northeast. The strip has a history of land use for car dealerships, light industrial businesses, and other automotive service businesses that serve motorists. The businesses and sales in the area are a part of Oakland's economic base. In recent years, the area is seen as ripe for mixed-use development intensification, and other bicycle and pedestrian improvements

Tax Base

With annual tax revenues of more than $3 million for years, the dozen or so dealerships on Broadway have historically been one of the city's largest sources of sales tax revenue. During his term in office, former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown appeared in a series of televised "Buy Oakland" commercials. [cite web
url = http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/21/BA7IVNSOC.DTL
title = Oakland's Broadway Ford runs out of gas
work = San Francisco Chronicle
author = Chip Johnson
date = 21 March 2008
accessdate = 6 October, 2008 ] Notwithstanding Browns public advocacy for Oakland-based businesses, sales taxes on new automobiles sold in California are remitted to the buyer's municipality of residence, no matter where in the state the vehicle was purchased.

Development Intensification

In recent years, real-estate developers, city planning officials, politicians, and others have discussed and made plans to relocate the historic Auto Row to a site at the old Oakland Army Base at the foot of the San Francisco Bay Bridge in West Oakland. Plans are to build a Bay Bridge Auto Mall on 28 acres at the site.

Transportation Infastructure

Originally developed as Oakland's first street leading from the Jack London Square waterfront, Broadway remains one of Oakland's busiest streets, carrying copious quantities of peak period private automobile trips, in addition to bus, bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

AC Transit's 51 line runs through the area down Broadway to connect the people of the Rockridge district, and other neighborhoods of North Oakland and Berkeley, with Oakland's Downtown. The 51 line is one of the systems busiest, carrying a large volume of passengers through the corridor.

A lighted, flashing pedestrian crosswalk is located on a long block of Broadway near 30th street, in-between intersections, to give greater visibility to pedestrian traffic in the area.

A Class 2 bicycle lane runs along the right-hand edge of Broadway, but only between 27th Street and and MacArthur Blvd. As of the summer of 2008, an Oakland bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organization: Walk Oakland Bike Oakland (WOBO) has advocated for expansion of the bike lane to a greater portion of Broadway.