Toll Plaza / Radio Beach
CLOSED
NEXT MILESTONE
BCDC enforcement outcome
The Port of Oakland's gate on the only access road remains in place, with no plan to reopen. Before it closed, the site regularly drew 30 or more boardsailors and 80 or more users at a time. This was an important early season site and a reliable launch in winter northerlies. It is also a missing link between Treasure Island and the East Bay and could be a great beach destination for the region.
In February 2026, BCDC's enforcement staff told the SFBA that BCDC has an enforcement case against the Port. The case concerns unpermitted fill (trash) within the 100-foot shoreline band at Toll Plaza. Staff are also "exploring a potential violation involving the lack of public access." According to BCDC, the Port claims the beach is designated for cell infrastructure and calls the public's use of it trespassing.
A correction to the 2025 audit. BCDC staff noted that the earlier fines were for the McAteer-Petris Act violation, meaning the trash. They were not for failing to remove the encampment. BCDC has no authority to remove people.
What the plans say about Toll Plaza. The beach, called Radio Beach in park and planning documents, has been in regional plans for more than a decade, and recreation was once part of them.
- Gateway Park. Gateway Park is the regional park planned for the foot of the new East Span. The partner agencies were the Bay Area Toll Authority, Caltrans, the Port, the East Bay Regional Park District and others. The 2013 scoping plans drew Radio Beach with a sandy beach, restoration planting, a levee trail, limited parking, and windsurfing as a listed use. A new trail was to run from Key Point under the bridge to the beach's north end. The later park plan calls Radio Beach a "restoration and preservation area," with interpretive trails, sandy beaches and "fencing to protect wildlife." The Draft EIR in January 2018 found significant, unavoidable impacts to biological resources. Only the part south of the bridge was built: the 22-acre Judge John Sutter Regional Shoreline opened in October 2020, with the Bridge Yard building and a 600-foot pier on the old bridge's piles. The Radio Beach section, the only part of the park north of I-80, was never built.
- East Bay Crescent. Emeryville, Berkeley, Albany, Caltrans, EBRPD, the Port and EBMUD are preparing a subregional sea level rise plan, led by the SF Estuary Partnership. Its community visioning work ran from May 2025 to July 2026 and describes Radio Beach as a "bayfront beach with limited access on the north side of the Bay Bridge approach." Two nature-based measures are under study to protect the bridge touchdown: a horizontal levee along the Crescent, and placing Port of Oakland dredged sediment offshore as a "feeder mound" that slowly supplies the marsh. An Ocean Protection Council grant awarded in April 2026 now funds the plan. Either measure could build a beach or bury one. Nothing in the record yet says which.
- Caltrans Bay Bridge study. Caltrans District 4 has begun a sea level rise adaptation study for the Bay Bridge and the roads and shoreline around its East Bay touchdown, including West Oakland and Emeryville. Public workshops began in October 2026, with focus groups and a shoreline site visit to follow. Caltrans says it wants to know how people reach the area. Toll Plaza sits at the bridge touchdown, so this study could decide whether the beach comes back as access or is armored for the bridge.
- The marsh next door. The Emeryville Crescent State Marine Reserve covers about 103 acres from the bridge approach to the foot of Powell Street. EBRPD manages it as part of Eastshore State Park.
Toll Plaza is an overlooked and undervalued recreational site, and sits beside a bike corridor that is being finished in pieces. It is not hard to imagine this site literally being left off the map:
- The Bay Bridge Trail runs more than four miles from Emeryville past the toll plaza to Yerba Buena Island.
- The West Oakland Link is an elevated bike and pedestrian path along the south side of West Grand Avenue, connecting Mandela Parkway to the bridge path over the rail yards and port truck routes. The $63 million interim phase is fully funded: construction starts in 2027 and it should open in 2029. The full project, more than $100 million, is targeted for 2031 but has no funding yet.
- The Yerba Buena Island path to Treasure Island is under construction, due in 2028.
- The West Span path to San Francisco is in early planning and unfunded, and could open in 2034 at the earliest.
Within a few years, someone could ride from West Oakland past Toll Plaza to Treasure Island, ending at the island's northeast corner, the launch the island's development agreement committed to improve. Toll Plaza and Treasure Island would become stops on one continuous route. Toll Plaza would be the only boardsports beach in Oakland reachable by bike and it would serve families in West Oakland, a neighborhood cut off from its own shoreline by freeways, rail yards and the Port. Running the Bay Trail along the Emeryville Crescent to Toll Plaza and then to the bridge is the best way to serve the general public and align with the Bay Trail mission.
Balancing uses. The Crescent is valued by birders, and the park plan's wildlife fencing reflects that. Sailors need sand and a clear path to the water, not a marsh. A plan can keep both by re-enforcing a beach that sticks while protecting habitat with zoned or seasonal limits elsewhere. The SFBA would like to work out that plan with the birding community rather than against it.
2026–27 priorities:
- Support BCDC's public-access enforcement inquiry and press the Port to reopen the road.
- Ask BATA, EBRPD and the Port to finish the Radio Beach part of Gateway Park, with the water access shown in the 2013 plans.
- Ask that the West Oakland Link and Yerba Buena Island path plans include a bike connection to Toll Plaza, forming one route from West Oakland through Toll Plaza to Treasure Island's northeast corner.
- Make Toll Plaza an explicit access site in the East Bay Crescent plan. Insist that any horizontal levee or sediment placement keeps a sandy launch.
- Meet with Golden Gate Bird Alliance and EBRPD on a zoned access plan for the beach and marsh.
- Take part in the Caltrans Bay Bridge study's workshops, focus groups and site visit, and ask that Toll Plaza be treated as an access site and a link in the bridge's Bay Trail connections.
Plans and documents: SF Estuary Partnership, East Bay Crescent · Emeryville Crescent fact sheet · City of Emeryville, Sea Level Rise Adaptation Planning · Gateway Park plan areas · Gateway Park scoping exhibits, Nov 2013 · Gateway Park Draft EIR notice, Jan 2018 · MTC, West Oakland Link · MTC, Judge John Sutter Regional Shoreline · Knee Deep Times, nature-based solutions at the toll plaza, May 2026 · Caltrans, Bay Bridge sea level rise study