Major excavation resumes on Lakeshore Avenue the week of June 22, Oakland officials announced — a milestone for the protected bike lane named after a four-year-old killed there in 2023, though workers have pushed completion back to spring 2027 after discovering extensive street damage beneath the pavement.

The Maia Correia Bikeway is one of the East Bay's most freighted road-safety projects: it took a child's death to start it, two rounds of budget cuts to nearly kill it, a July 2025 groundbreaking to finally get shovels in the ground, and now an unexpected layer of crumbling pavement to delay its finish. As heavy machinery moves in next week, the project enters its most disruptive construction phase — and the family that inspired it is still waiting for the result.

The city of Oakland's contractor will perform major excavation and base repair on Lakeshore Avenue in two phases starting June 22, the Oakland Department of Transportation announced. Phase one runs June 22-26, covering East 18th Street to Brooklyn Avenue; phase two covers Brooklyn Avenue to MacArthur Boulevard from July 6-10. The city is urging drivers and cyclists to use alternate routes during both windows. On-street parking on Lakeshore will be unavailable on weekday construction days.

The construction is the latest chapter in a saga that began on August 6, 2023, when Maia Correia — age four — was riding on the back of her father Jadd Correia's bicycle near Hanover Avenue when a driver opened a parked car's door directly in their path. They fell into the street. Maia hit her head. She died from a brain hemorrhage days later at Children's Hospital Oakland.

At the time, Lakeshore Avenue had only a painted "buffered" bike lane — a narrow strip of paint between parked cars and moving traffic. According to UC Berkeley's Transportation Injury Mapping System, 98 people had already been injured on that stretch of Lakeshore between El Embarcadero and Lake Merritt Boulevard from 2011 to 2022. Advocates had long called the corridor dangerous by design.

OakDOT's initial post-death response — adding door-zone warning signs and commissioning a new study — was dismissed as inadequate by safe-streets groups. At a September 2023 vigil organized by Bike East Bay and Traffic Violence Rapid Response, advocate George Spies told The Oaklandside that the city's plan "won't make a dent." Natalie Mall, another organizer, called the street "deadly by design."

Over the next two years, the project to build a physically separated two-way bikeway along Lakeshore nearly died twice from budget problems — including the city's delayed sale of Measure U bonds in late 2024. City Council voted in December 2024 to re-approve $5 million in Measure BB funds to keep it alive. Maia's aunt, Sheila McCracken, told The Oaklandside at the time: "We are all relieved to hear the news because it's been such an up-and-down process. Death is so preventable. If you can put in the infrastructure to make people not lose their lives, that should be the priority."

In July 2025, Mayor Barbara Lee, OakDOT Director Josh Rowan, and Maia's family used golden shovels to break ground on what was officially named the Maia Correia Bikeway. The project was expected to take at least a year to complete. "Too many of our residents are killed or injured while biking or walking on our streets," Lee told a crowd that wiped away tears. "That's unacceptable in a city that cares about all of its people."

Councilmember Charlene Wang, speaking at the same ceremony, framed it as a lesson in infrastructure failure: "We really can't get there when we address things with paint alone. What we saw with Maia's story is that paint alone is not protection."

Six months into construction, workers discovered the pavement was in worse shape than anticipated. The Oaklandside reported on June 12 that the project has been pushed back to spring 2027 — roughly a year later than originally hoped, and nearly four years after Maia's death first forced the issue. The excavation beginning June 22 is the base-repair work required to address that damage before the protected lane can be built on top.

Maia's grandfather Richard McCracken, who spoke at the July groundbreaking, captured the bittersweet arc that the family has lived through. "I never wanted to pay the price to be here today," he told The Oaklandside.

District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife, who has been developing a pilot program to speed community-led infrastructure projects, said the city's pattern of moving only after crisis is the broader policy failure. "I don't want to have to wait for a crisis to have solutions," she told The Oaklandside after the groundbreaking.

The Maia Correia Bikeway will run from El Embarcadero to East 18th Street with a separated two-way track, pedestrian bulbouts, and refuge islands. When it opens — now expected in the spring after next — it will be the most significant road-safety upgrade around Lake Merritt in a generation. Residents on Lakeshore should expect lane closures and the loss of on-street parking throughout June and July during the active construction windows.