Oakland’s new Department of Transportation, backed by bond proceeds that voters approved in 2016, promised a renaissance in a city of potholes and rutted roads. And in the two years since the department’s genesis, it has unleashed a flurry of plans and ideas.

Protected bike lanes on 14th Street, from Lake Merritt to the edge of Interstate 980. Better crosswalks on 35th Avenue and High Street in long-neglected neighborhoods of East Oakland. New guardrails on winding roads in the hills, and traffic signals along International Boulevard.

But of nine major street projects funded with part of a $600 million infrastructure and housing bond, only one is under construction. One was delayed when the city lost a state grant because its construction contractor didn’t meet the requirements. Six are lingering in the design phase, and one is still being planned.

Cyclists and pedestrians are getting impatient.

“I’m experiencing what I’ve always experienced — the streets aren’t in good condition,” said Dave Campbell, advocacy director of Bike East Bay. He’s especially peeved about 14th Street, one of the arteries poised for funding. Its downtown section lacks bike lanes, and cars speed so fast that bicycles have to hug the curb, swerving around parked cars and delivery trucks. Campbell lives one block away but avoids the street at all costs.

At a time when Oakland finally has the capital and the political will to fix asphalt and paint bike lanes, plans are languishing on shelves. Transportation czar Ryan Russo acknowledged that the slow pace of change has been frustrating for voters who overwhelmingly supported the bond, Measure KK.

“Eighty-three percent of residents voted for that infrastructure bond,” he said. “They pulled that lever, came home that day, and said, ‘Where’s the paving truck?’”

Russo and others stressed that Oakland has issued only a portion of the bonds so far, and that city officials had always intended to spend the money gradually.

In reality, though, building a new department is challenging, and Oakland faces more acute difficulties than other cities. It’s suffered years of disinvestment, and although politicians tout a bright future of housing and commercial projects, the boom hasn’t quite arrived yet. Oakland doesn’t have a huge tax base to pay government workers, so Russo relies heavily on his employees’ passion and enthusiasm.

Yet passion only goes so far. The Department of Transportation — known as OakDOT — has a 20 percent job vacancy rate overall, and 27 percent of its engineering and planning positions are open. Those holes “severely” impact its ability to deliver projects, according to a report the city released earlier this month to track spending of the infrastructure bond.

“I love Oakland — it’s an emerging town, and I got to do a lot of things creatively,” said Mahendra Gautam, a former OakDOT engineer who spent two years with the department. Ultimately, he couldn’t justify Oakland’s modest wages or his hour-long commute from a suburb because he couldn’t afford housing near his job. Gautam departed six months ago for a higher-paying gig at a regional transportation agency.

The high turnover has stymied street projects that residents have desired for years. It’s also hindered OakDOT from spending its bond money. Of $5 million allocated for the nine “Complete Streets” projects that make roadways safer for pedestrians and cyclists, the city has spent less than $250,000 so far.

By contrast, the department has spent nearly half of the $25 million in bond money it directed toward paving, which is less complicated and doesn’t require the city to seek federal or state grants.

“Until they fill all these vacancies, we have this new department that’s really struggling to make the kind of change we need on our streets,” said Christopher Kintner, board president for the advocacy group Transport Oakland, which pressed for the infrastructure bond.

In some senses, Oakland’s struggle reflects a larger regional trend. As infrastructure booms in the Bay Area, many public agencies are scrambling to hire and retain engineers, amid intense competition from the private market. Tech companies are seeking people with the same skills and degrees, and Silicon Valley can dangle much higher wages. At the same time, Baby Boomers are retiring, leaving positions open and straining cities that have to pay for retirement plans.

“This is an almost universal problem for public agencies: as the cost of staffing government rises, tax revenues are not rising at the same rate,” said Jeffrey Tumlin, principal at the transportation consulting firm Nelson\Nygaard. He served as interim director of OakDOT before the city recruited Russo from New York City’s Department of Transportation in 2017.

Still, if demand for engineers is picking up across the nine-county Bay Area, other cities are faring better than Oakland. The vacancy rate in San Jose’s Department of Transportation hovers between 12 and 15 percent, and most of the openings are for electricians and maintenance workers, rather than engineers and planners. The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District has three engineering positions open out of 33 — a rate of less than 10 percent.

To Kintner, the delays seem more pronounced in the low-income neighborhoods that Oakland has tried to prioritize. He pointed to an urgently needed project that’s slated for infrastructure bond funding — a set of crosswalk enhancements along 35th Avenue in Fruitvale, near the area where a 14-year-old boy was dragged four blocks by a hit-and-run driver in January. After that crash, the city bumped the 35th Avenue improvements up on its priority list, and expects to finish the work next year.

“That’s a street where I’d really like to see the department have a rapid-response team that makes short-term fixes,” Kintner said.

OakDOT tried to chip away at traffic fatalities after hiring Nicole Ferrara to lead its street safety program in 2017. It’s made some progress, adding protected bike lanes on Telegraph Avenue and shaving out traffic lanes downtown. When a pedestrian was struck by a car and killed two years ago at Harrison and 23rd streets, the city responded with quick crosswalk improvements.

Yet OakDOT lacks the staff to handle such triage every time a pedestrian or cyclist is killed. Kenya Wheeler, chair of the city’s Bicyclist and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, said he’s waiting for a makeover of a treacherous stretch of 69th Avenue, an East Oakland roadway where one cyclist was killed and another injured by a hit-and-run driver two years ago.

The city plans to eventually repave that street, where a tattered, gully-ridden road feeds schools, churches, a library and rows of houses. But there’s no timeline for the proposed improvements, which include new crosswalks, speed bumps and extended red curbs. OakDOT spokesman Sean Maher said they should be done “in the coming year.”

Wheeler empathizes with OakDOT’s staff, who are trying to create new plans and sustain the fledgling department, while making up for decades of deteriorating infrastructure.

“The people who worked on the Telegraph Avenue bike lane project were great,” he said. “They put a lot of time into responding to public comment and meeting with merchant groups.”

He paused a beat, then added: “I wish we could clone them. There’s just not enough staff.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @rachelswan