Features

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series on UC Berkeley’s expansion plans. Part two will look at other impacts related to the Long Range Development Plan and UC expansion, including fiscal impacts and impacts related to housing, construction and permit parking  

Planning for further expansion, the University of California at Berkeley has begun the process of preparing a new Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) to guide development on the Berkeley campus and in adjacent areas through the year 2020.  

The proposed expansion poses challenges for the City of Berkeley and its elected leaders. 

Will it result in more traffic, loss of tax revenues, a tighter housing market and construction-related disruption, or can these and other negative impacts be avoided or mitigated effectively? 

An environment impact report (EIR) will evaluate the potential impacts associated with the development of additional academic facilities, housing and parking, and the University released a Notice of Preparation (NOP) for the EIR at the end of last month.  

The NOP states that the University may add up to 2,200,000 square feet of academic and support space, an increase of 18 percent over 2001-2002. The number of students attending UC during the spring and fall semesters may increase by as much as 5 percent from 31,800 to 33,450.  

The number of students attending UC in the summer could increase by as much as 50 percent, reaching a total headcount of 17,100.  

UC Berkeley will continue to be strongly oriented toward research, and will expand thusly devoted space with new research units to be located on blocks adjacent to campus. While the maximum increase in faculty is expected to be 13 percent, the remaining academic staff population (postdocs & visiting scholars included) is expected to grow by as much as 61 percent 

Altogether, the maximum campus headcount during the fall and spring semesters could grow by a maximum of 5,320, from 45,935 in the 2001-2002 school year to a maximum of 51,250 in 2020. Students would account for only 31 percent of this headcount increase. 

Of course, if the current problems with the state budget persist, expansion achieved by 2020 may fall substantially short of the estimated maximum growth presented in the NOP. 

While the 2020 LRDP EIR process is now underway, no actual 2020 plan exists. The university plans to produce a draft LRDP in the spring.  

Two already completed UC plans, the New Century Plan and the Strategic Academic Plan, define the policy framework for an updated Long Range Development Plan. 

The NOP includes five pages of parameters that will serve as the basis for environmental review, referencing both previous plans. 

The NOP also includes a list of alternatives that will also undergo environmental analysis. These include: “Reduced Enrollment Growth,” “Limited Research Growth,” “Some Research Growth Offsite.” 

How will the city be affected by further university expansion? 

Traffic impacts 

The University of California is Berkeley’s biggest employer with close to 13,000 faculty and staff (not including student workers), according to the NOP. Not surprisingly, it generates a lot of automobile traffic. A recent UC commuter survey found that about 51 percent of faculty and staff drive alone to work, as do 11 percent of the students. 

Traffic on various streets leading to campus will increase along with expansion unless the university takes steps to encourage more faculty, staff and students to walk, bicycle, carpool or take public transit to campus.  

The university’s record of promoting transit use is a mixed one.  

On the one hand the university has implemented a “Class Pass” for students, which allows students—who have actively supported the program—to ride AC Transit buses for free in return for a modest payment that all students pay as part of their annual fees.  

The university also has an alternative commute program for UC Berkeley employees called “New Directions for Faculty and Staff.” Faculty and staff can get a $10 a month subsidy for purchasing transit tickets and can use UC shuttles for free, and carpoolers can get certain types of UC parking permits for reduced or no cost. 

On the other hand, the university recently cut off funding for the Berkeley TriP Commute Store on Center Street in downtown Berkeley. The store, which closed as a result of the funding cuts, had been selling 110,000 transit tickets and passes a year and answering over 50,000 public inquiries a year.  

In addition, the university has been in discussions with AC Transit for a long time about creating an “EcoPass” for faculty and staff, which, like the student Class Pass, would allow passholders to ride the bus for free.  

Unions representing UC employees have lobbied for an EcoPass, but oppose UC’s proposal that staff should pay for the pass. (The City of Berkeley provides an EcoPass for its employees at no cost to the employees, as do most employers in the few other areas of the country that have such programs.)  

It also appears that implementation of an EcoPass for UC faculty and staff has been delayed because the University has been unwilling to offer enough money to make the program work financially for AC Transit. 

Parking Expansion 

The most controversial aspect of the LRDP project as presented in the NOP is its proposal for a huge expansion in the supply of UC parking. In addition to the Underhill parking structure planned for the Southside—which would add 690 spaces—UC is proposing to build as many as 2,300 more spaces, bringing the total to a maximum of 9,900 spaces by 2020.  

Since some spaces are occupied by more than one car during the course of a day, this is enough parking for perhaps an additional 4,000 auto commuters per day.  

Should these additional trips by auto materialize, it will add to traffic volumes on Berkeley streets and increase traffic congestion. It will certainly not do anything to improve air quality or reduce the local contribution to the global warming problem. 

The NOP indicates that UC is planning to locate a large majority of new parking to the west and south of the campus. The Downtown and the Southside are the two areas of the city with the highest level of transit service.  

What kind of message will commuters get if UC goes forward with plans to add more cars to the two areas of the city where getting around without a car is most practical? 

Transportation Demand Management 

The Southside/Downtown Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Study, jointly funded by the city and UC and completed in 2001, proposed a series of actions that could be taken to better manage transportation.  

These included EcoPass, transit preferential measures, additional bicycle parking, promotion of bicycle use and better utilization of existing parking. The TDM Study also suggested an expanded role for Berkeley TriP, which seems unlikely to occur unless the university reverses its decision to withdraw funding. 

The LRDP NOP makes no mention of TDM or specific TDM measures. Nor do any of the alternatives that will undergo environmental analysis mention TDM or policies to improve transportation “mode split” to reduce traffic by encouraging alternatives to driving alone to work.  

One alternative that will be considered by the EIR is a “Reduced or No New University Parking” option, but this assumes no reduction in demand for parking and focuses only on use of non-university parking as an alternative to more university-owned parking. 

The university’s New Century Plan does include, as one of its strategic goals, the aim of “achieving drive-alone rates under 50 percent for faculty/staff and under 10 percent for students.” As a “near-term objective,” UC proposes: “By the end of 2012, achieve five percent reductions in the percentages of student and faculty/staff drive-alone commuters from 2001 survey data.” 

The TDM study looked at how much of a shift away from driving alone would be necessary to obviate the need for more parking while accommodating anticipated growth through 2010-2011. 

To eliminate the need for more parking, the percentage of faculty and staff driving alone to work would have to be reduced from 50 percent to 44 percent—achieveable if the percentage of trips by carpools increased from 10 percent to 13 percent and if trips by transit increased from 16 percent to 19 percent. 

The TDM study concluded that the number of parking spaces needed to accommodate possible university growth through 2010-11 with no change in the percentage who drive would be 665. This is far less than the up to 3,000 spaces that UC is allowing for in the LRDP Notice of Preparation. 

Will the LRDP EIR’s environmental analysis include looking at the possibility of building less or no additional parking while undertaking TDM measures to reduce demand for parking and the percentage of people driving alone to campus? 

In the late 1980s, Stanford University General Use Permit EIR found that “Stanford could reduce the number of single-occupancy automobile commuters to campus in numbers sufficient to offset its daytime population increases.” Stanford successfully implemented a Traffic Mitigation Plan with a variety of TDM measures. 

Rob Wrenn has lived in Berkeley since 1982 and is a member of Planning Commission and the Transportation Commission.