Page One

Turning terrible 2 today 

By Judith Scherr, editor 

In the Daily Planet’s first days, there was no thick red wool carpet covering the office floor. Bathrooms were yet to be completed. A web of telephone wires and computer cords slung here and there confounded the fledgling staff, as the Planet’s founders doubled as paper boys, carting news boxes to their corners and handing out first issues of the paper – eight pages strong – to a skeptical public. 

When I came on board as a reporter a month or so after the first issues rumbled off the now-defunct Pizzazz Press in San Jose, people in the community were still taking bets about whether the Planet would survive another day, week or month. 

But soon the former 2-pound infant, breathing on its own, left the incubator. The bathrooms were completed. A coffee-maker was purchased – it uses fair trade, organic only, of course – and you, the community began to fall solidly in step behind the paper, telling us how thirsty you had been for local news, while demanding more and better. 

When we were about six months old, the City Council honored us for our work. At about a year, the San Francisco Bay Guardian gave us its Best of the Bay award, calling the planet the “best newspaper that could.” And recently, the Northern California Society for Professional Journalists honored us with a Freedom of Information “watchdog” award for our stories revealing instances when city government locked out the public from its deliberations. 

We’re still growing in many different directions at once, albeit not nearly as fast as you the readers would like us to. (Yes, that IS a preposition at the end of the sentence – how many e-mails will I get??) We’ve added a reporter to keep a vigilant eye on the city’s schools. Another part-time reporter is following traffic and transportation issues. We’re beefing up our arts and entertainment section. There’s so much more to come. 

Turning 2, with editions such as this one – Volume 3, Issue 1 – as large as 36 pages, and our eight-month-old sister paper in San Mateo rapidly catching up, we’re not becoming complacent. Quite the contrary.  

Like the toddler who investigates everything from the spider on the floor to whatever’s hidden on the highest shelf she can climb to; like the 2-year old who throws a tantrum at closed doors and won’t take “ no” for an answer, we intend to punch up our investigations and amplify our “scrappy” attitude. All the while, we’ll bring you more profiles of local news-makers and unsung heroes, and the day-to-day news that makes you want to involve yourselves in the planet of Berkeley. 

We know you our readers will be there in your valuable role as critics, friends and supporters – even if we never get that carpet. 

Enforcement is not enough 

Editor: 

I couldn’t disagree more with John Cecil’s letter of 4/4/01 and agree more with Zack Wald’s comments on pedestrian safety. 

For those who missed it, Zack was quoted as saying that relief for pedestrians from the dangers of automobiles will come only by creating a “...vision of how we want to share the roads, that the long term goal should be a change in the culture.” Cecil responds by reminding us that culture does not kill pedestrians, autos disobeying existing laws do. Cecil seems particularly concerned that Zack’s long-term visions trivialize the lives of people who have died on Berkeley’s streets. 

Cecil’s main point is that all we need to do is turn Berkeley into a police state, and our problems would be solved. He reminds us how few traffic officers Berkeley has, and that with more, there would be less need for engineering and education, two important issues for Zack. I wonder if Cecil has any clue how much money it would cost to hire enough traffic officers to control speeding on all our streets. Engineering and education can help control speeding all the time and everywhere in the city. But traffic cops are only effective where they are stationed and only when they are there. 

Studies have repeatedly shown, according to the Institute of Transportation Studies, that when enforcement leaves, the cars do speed. You simply can’t hire enough cops. More is needed, and that’s where re-engineering our streets and beefing up educational efforts come in. 

But Zack is right, beyond engineering and education, we need a change in culture so that people don’t speed because they feel it is wrong and dangerous to do so – a culture where people get an uneasy feeling when the speedometer goes above the speed limit; a culture where people are uncomfortable when they see other motorists speeding. Unfortunately, this is not the case because American culture breeds disrespect for speed limits. As a result, many people don’t feel it is wrong to unnecessarily endanger the lives of pedestrians by speeding down the street. It is this culture that results in way too many tragic and needless deaths. 

While Cecil seems to remember Sharon Spencer’s death, I wonder how many people can name the last five pedestrians killed in this city. If people can’t remember, who’s trivializing their lives? 

Cecil’s right about one thing, the culture isn’t pulling the trigger, but it sure makes it cool to buy the gun. 

Dave Campbell 

Berkeley 

We need a plan for pedestrians 

Editor:  

John Cecil’s letter about pedestrian safety says we should put all our funding into more law enforcement. We do not need to fund engineering, because “for the almost 25 years I have lived in Berkeley, there has been a full-time traffic engineer.” (Letters, April 4) 

Yes, but traffic engineers are trained to keep automobile traffic flowing, and they ignore pedestrian safety. I was at one meeting where Berkeley’s traffic engineer analyzed a change in a downtown intersection. His study projected the impact of five different scenarios on automobile traffic in every lane of every intersection within two blocks. But it did not say a word about the effect on pedestrians. This was at a time when Berkeley was doing planning to make downtown more pedestrian friendly.  

I am all in favor of more enforcement, but enforcement is so expensive that there are limits to how much we can do.  

There are many traffic engineering measures that will do more to reduce accidents than enforcement at much less cost. They range from traffic calming devices and street redesign to simple measures, such as making turn-radiuses tighter, removing free-right turn lanes, and adding zebra-striping at pedestrian crosswalks.  

Berkeley has a traffic engineer. But if we want to make the city safer, we also need a pedestrian planner.  

Charles Siegel 

Berkeley