Features

AIN’T BUYING IT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Here’s a modest but radical proposal: Isn’t it time Berkeley stopped promoting knee-jerk anti-automobile policies that threaten to run businesses, cultural institutions, and their patrons out of town? 

Berkeley residents aren’t buying Rob Wrenn’s notion that reducing parking somehow reduces traffic congestion (“Taking Away Parking Did Not Increase Europe’s Traffic Congestion” Daily Planet, April 9-12). At least, not judging by the contrary letters the Daily Planet has run both before and since his April 9 commentary. I think Berkeley will ultimately reject his broader “pedestrianization” notions too, and Wendy Alfsen’s specific proposal (in an April 16 commentary) to close Center Street. 

Mr. Wrenn took up a whole page trying, but failing, to rebut Jon Alff’s earlier letter about how limited parking and good transit have failed to reduce traffic congestion in European cities like Bilbao, Spain. Mr. Wrenn failed because he presented no evidence that excluding or inconveniencing motorists improves anyone else’s quality of life. 

Certainly, such evidence is hard to find locally. Berkeley’s most “pedestrianized” areas are Telegraph Avenue north of Parker Street, and the Shattuck Avenue BART/bus/movie plaza from Center to Kittredge. Given American realities, both strips have drawn such hostile sidewalk dwellers that many Berkeley residents either stay away entirely, or dash through as fast as they can. 

Does Mr. Wrenn seriously propose expanding these no-linger zones? Do he and Ms. Alfsen really want to extend Shattuck’s chain of gaping, vacant storefronts onto Center Street? Center now hosts a thriving restaurant/commercial row, thanks to both city investment and automobile access. 

Mr. Wrenn also blithely writes that “London has implemented congestion charging which has reduced traffic in the center.” But let’s be specific: Surveillance cameras now photograph the license plate of every car driving into central London, and computers send the owner a bill for $9. This is arrogant Orwellianism up with which Americans will not put. 

Does Mr. Wrenn want to dig a similar electronic moat around Berkeley, to kill off the rest of the city’s businesses? This intrusive scheme is failing even in London—where traffic volumes are creeping back up, but businesses are failing. 

I heard a sad radio report last week about a venerable London bookstore that’s closing down specifically because of the congestion charge. Its employees don’t want to pay it, and nor do its (former) patrons, who’ve stayed away in droves. 

Berkeley can manage cars and traffic through reasonable incentives, design, and enforcement. But we shouldn’t risk our city’s vitality by deferring to unelected nonprofessionals who have an ideological axe to grind—and whose abstract schemes are running on too few cylinders. Evidence matters, and so do consequences. Let’s have the broad public debate that Jon Alff’s April 6 letter called for. 

Henry Sloan 

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BICYCLE REVOLUTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Beginning with Rob Wrenn’s thoughtful, articulate and well-researched commentary on traffic in Berkeley (“Taking Away Parking Did Not Increase Europe’s Traffic Congestion” Daily Planet, April 9-12) to Malcolm Carden’s letter in response to Wrenn’s article (April 13-15) to UC Berkeley students Andy Katz, Brandon Simmons and Jesse Arreguin’s commentary “UC on Collision Course with Traffic Jam” (Daily Planet, April 13-15)...are we seeing a trend here? 

Mr. Carden begins his agenda with a boost-business pitch: “Restricting parking and vehicular access in downtown Berkeley will mean less retail sales since shoppers will be required to schlep their shopping bags large distances from the stores to their cars.” He then assumes the role of the devil’s advocate by entertaining the Berkeley-moonbeam idea of a “totally pedestrianized downtown” as a possible alternative scenario. Finally, he tightens his stiff collar and gets back to business when he admonishes readers: “Don’t complain about the absence of quality retail stores. You can’t have your cake and eat it.”  

UC Berkeley students Katz, Simmons and Arreguin seem near paralysis struggling with their apocalyptic vision: “Imagine 2,900 new commuter parking spaces in Berkeley’s downtown and southside making Berkeley’s traffic nightmare only worse.” Only once in their long commentary did they allude to bicyclists and pedestrians, and then only as victims of tailpipe emissions in a landscape of marooned cars: “People getting to campus by bicycle and on foot will travel in clouds of car exhaust as 2,900 cars rest parked in the middle of major streets if the vision of the UC Berkeley Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) is realized.” 

While many people are concerned about the connection between public health, transportation and land use in Berkeley, the Alameda County Transportation Improvement Authority (ACTIA) is actually doing something about it. Recently it’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee recommended large cash disbursements of Measure B Alameda County Sales Tax Revenue to two Berkeley-based programs: The UC Berkeley Bicycle Plan and the Tinkers’ Workshop. The UC Berkeley Bicycle Plan addresses issues of bike access with the goal of increasing bike commuting and safety, access to the campus and bike parking. The Tinkers’ Workshop offers free opportunities for Berkeley residents to develop skills using bike repair and maintenance tools. The also offer bike workshops for youth (averaging 75 participants per week) as well as a rides-program for 100-youth participants. 

California, and Berkeley in particular, are experiencing a huge bicycle revolution: In the biggest bicycle commute event in state history, an expected 35,000 cyclists will take part in “California Bike Commute Week 2004” from May 17-21. More than 200 pit stops will operate during the event offering riders an attractive alternative to the currently soaring gasoline prices. 

While some Berkeleyans see only traffic jams others, like author Iris Murdoch in “The Red and the Green,” see the dark side of run-away technology, as well as a more life affirming vision of the future: “The bicycle is the most civil conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.” 

Joe Kempkes, Vice Chairperson 

Bicycle and Pedestrian  

Advisory Committee,  

Alameda County  

Transportation Improvement Authority