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Dear Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers, I took the attached photos a few days ago on what's left of Milvia Street near Civic Center. For scale, that's my bike against the railing. Because many of you voted to fund a "Milvia Bikeway," I'm hoping at least one of you can explain this latest idiocy from the City's Transportation Department? 

Granted, this project was specifically designed to make Milvia St. inaccessible to the 95% of Berkeley residents and working people who don't, or can't, travel by bicycle. Even so, was it really necessary to use taxpayers' funds to also block an extra lane by adding a wide, second sidewalk outside the southbound bike lane? 

Heaven forbid that this space could have been retained for travel, parking, or just pick-up and drop-off by the other 95% of our population who need to access City Hall, City offices and services, and Berkeley High. 

I'm in the charmed 5% who travel mostly by bicycle. As some of you will recall, I'm also a longtime bicycle advocate, who strongly urged you to reject this whole project – not least because it will worsen conditions even for us cyclists. The silly caged bike lanes, jammed between the curbs, will force cyclists of different speeds and abilities together, inviting collisions. They'll also make left turns impossible. 

But "everyone loses" is the predictable result when elected officials can't exercise basic oversight over a City department whose repeated past errors obviously demand extremely close oversight. And especially, when that department outsources its physical planning to a small, tendentious lobby of untrained nonprofessionals, located in downtown Oakland. 

I don't recall seeing any proposal for hard barriers like these in the Milvia bikeway "open houses" that the Transportation Department held before the pandemic. If this bizarre build-out is a surprise to you as well, I hope you'll ask City staff some hard questions about how this happened. 

And if you're still seriously thinking of outsourcing enforcement of life-and-death traffic behavior to this Transportation unit, please remember: This is the best they can do even with stationary facilities. 

Finally, in case someone claims that the second sidewalk beside Berkeley High was somehow designed for student drop-off or pickup: When that southbound curb lane was available for vehicles, it was constantly blocked on weekday afternoons by parents waiting to pick up their kids. Now that southbound Milvia will have one travel lane, and no place to park, those parents will simply block it – and nothing will move. 

Heck of a job, "Transportation" Managers.