CORRECTION (Published 5/20/2016)

A story about the city of Oakland’s new Department of Transportation incorrectly reported the tax status of Transport Oakland. The organization is a political action committee, not a nonprofit.

OAKLAND — Nearly a year after it was first created, Oakland’s new Department of Transportation is finally taking shape, a move transportation advocates say couldn’t come at better time. The city is undergoing tremendous growth, all of which impacts traffic, parking and transit, and the wear and tear on infrastructure. Plus, it is considering placing a $600 million infrastructure bond measure on the November ballot, which, if approved, would contribute $400 million to street and road repair.

Currently, streets and roads fall under the purview of the city’s very large Public Works Agency, which also oversees the city’s stormwater and sewer infrastructure, parks, maintenance of more than 3 million square feet of office spaces and buildings, and various other projects. With all that, planning for streets, parking and transit was often distributed around various divisions within the agency.

That changes with the new department, dubbed DOT for short, which Mayor Libby Schaaf introduced last year as part of the city’s fiscal 2015-2017 budget.

The new department has accrued $500,000 in unspent funds from fiscal year 2015-2016 and will have $1 million available in fiscal year 2016-2017. On Tuesday, May 24, the council’s public works committee will consider whether to approve a proposal outlining the department’s new responsibilities, as well as the hiring of an interim director until a permanent one can be found.

Liz Brisson, president of the political action committee Transport Oakland, is one of the people who have been advocating for the new department since 2014. Oakland’s transportation system is not being designed, implemented or maintained in an efficient way, she said, and that’s a problem for all residents, no matter how they chose to get around the city.

“The way transportation is layered throughout the (public works) department, there’s people in one division who do planning and people in another division who do bicycle and pedestrian stuff, and people in another division who fill a work order,” she said, adding that those divisions add to project delays and final products that don’t always reflect what residents want.

Dave Campbell, who coordinates policy work for the nonprofit Bike East Bay, used the city’s new protected bike lane on Telegraph Avenue as a recent example in inefficiency. The project was initially approved in Dec. 2012, he said, and the city celebrated the ribbon cutting for the first phase of the project earlier this month. By the time the second phase is completed, which is expected in 2018, more than five years will have passed between when the project’s design was approved and when it is completed.

“That’s five and a half years to literally put some paint down on the street,” Campbell said. “At least a department of transportation, we hope, will move things along more quickly than that.”

The inability to bring projects from design to completion is a criticism that Matt Nichols, Schaaf’s transportation policy advisory, readily admits. Although Oakland is frequently the recipient of transportation-related grants, the city does “have a problem having projects ready to go (to bid) and being able to deliver them quickly,” Nichols said.

There’s also a lot of money on the line. The city received $25 million in transportation-related grant funding this year alone, and $242 million since fiscal year 2009, according to city records.

Another crucial element to the new department, said Joel Ramos of the transportation advocacy nonprofit TransForm, is the expectation that DOT will communicate more regularly with community members during the design phases and implementation of any new projects. As Oakland becomes more densely populated, Ramos said better communication will be essential to ensuring that any improvements to the city’s transportation network benefit all residents.

But, Ramos, Brisson, and Campbell said they are all optimistic that the new department will be able to deliver more innovative planning and better management of the city’s transportation network.

“With this infrastructure bond, there’s a lot of things that the DOT can do to make the streets not only safer, but better,” Campbell said.

If approved by the public works committee on Tuesday, the proposal will move on to the full council for approval later this month.

Erin Baldassari covers transportation. Contact her at 510-208-6428, or follow her on Twitter: @e_baldi.