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Kudos to city 

Editor: 

Thank you, thank you...College is open and smooth! I have waited 15 years for the street to be repaved.  

No longer is it necessary to own a SUV in Berkeley...we can go back to the Volvo Station Wagons! 

Kudos to the politicians, construction crews, planners, what a success! 

Steve KoneffKlatt 

Berkeley 

Poor bus service isolates elders 

The Berkeley Daily Planet received this petition addressed to Rick Fernandez, AC Transit general manager and the AC Transit Board of Directors: 

The signatures herewith represent the over 200 residents of the HUD-subsidized low-income, elderly and disabled, housed at Redwood Gardens, 29051 Derby St.: 

(We) charge the above officials with violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and the United States Constitution by discriminating against the undersigned because of age, sex, race, ethnic origin and failure to extend equal treatment to the undersigned as American citizens. 

The effects of the unfair schedule of AC Transit Bus line #7 departing its last run from the Berkeley BART Station each weekday at 9:12 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday at 6:36 p.m., only running every hour, causes the isolation of the inhabitants of Redwood Gardens from participating in the life of the community and our inability to actively become involved in the duties of citizenship. We would like the immediate restoration of the schedule which permitted us to engage in evening activities in the community. 

200 signatures 

Another view on iceplant 

Editor: 

Apropos Tony Morosco’s “Perspective” about iceplant, here is a contrary view: 

We think there is nothing more beautiful than a large area of iceplant, with red and green leaves and exquisite pink and yellow flowers, spilling down a beige sandstone cliff, with the white-flecked blue ocean in the background. 

Contrast this with the weed-patch collection of mangy-looking “native plants” which appears where iceplant has been destroyed with toxic herbicides (shame on you Native Plant Society), and which grow up to obscure the ocean view. 

So cheers for iceplant, long may it prosper, and cheers for the Postal Service e for producing a stamp which sows its beauty. 

Mary Ann and Bair Whaley 

Berkeley 

Wednesday, Sept. 13 marks the 101st anniversary of the first automobile fatality in North America. Since then, four times as many U.S. residents have been killed in motor vehicle accidents as were slain in all our nation’s wars since the 1776 Revolution. 

Are we so incentive to violence that we’ll accept it to such an extreme degree in order to have independent mobility? 

Among the rights we all enjoy in the United States is (or should be) the right to equal access to all public accommodations without having to rely on modes of transportation so dangerous that they require eat belts, air bags or crash helmets. 

Land-use decisions (consistently ignoring public transit and other alternatives to the auto as necessary infrastructure) leave increasing numbers of us faced with a choice of driving illegally or being disenfranchised. 

All planning codes should prohibit any development that is not at least as accessible and functional for non-motorists as it is for those who drive. We have a serious civil rights issue here: development that accommodates motorists only violates the equal protections provision of our constitution. 

What kind of fools would build the biggest public works project in human history – our interstate highway system – for national defense and then force themselves into dependence on a mode of transportation that’s deadlier than war? Our land use decisions are a greater threat to our well-being than any allegedly hostile elements outside our borders. 

Art Weber 

Transportation Chair, Berkeley Gray Panthers