Public Comment

By now you must all be aware that many, many residents of the Hopkins Corridor are vehemently opposed to the proposal currently before the City Council to hijack our neighborhood and turn it into an ideological dystopia. We oppose it on many levels: its cavalier claims to increase safety when we can plainly see it won’t; its disregard of the needs of the elderly trying to age in place; its schizoid approach to wanting to attract people to the area and its shops, while trying to make it very difficult for them to come here by any means other than bicycle; its simplistic answers to complex questions (get an e-bike! take a cab or Uber!).

However, the most serious of our objections is this: in the process of trying to appease the bike lobby, to which some of you belong, with this neighborhood take-over, the city has placed itself in financial jeopardy and has put its residents at legal and financial risk.

By stating time and again that this is about safety, then proposing a very unsafe infrastructure for bikes and very little in improvements for pedestrians and drivers, the city may have taken on a huge liability risk. And it is not helpful that the city has received repeated public warnings about this, including this one.

By having allowed the Transportation Commission to run amok, sending forth a recommendation to adopt a plan that had 11^th hour additions that received no discussion among commissioners and no opportunity for public comment, and taking up that recommendation for action on May 10, you may very well be violating the Brown Act.

And by advancing the interests of one group of your constituents over the interests of the elderly, you may be committing a civil rights violation.

All of these things have consequences that can be quite costly to the city if they result in lawsuits.

You face another problem, too. Faith in the integrity of the Council has been seriously damaged, and that can result in a revolt against supporting other things the Council deems important, not the least of which is any future funding requests for infrastructure or other needs.

With this packet, we offer you all the information you need to understand that, despite your ideological purity, there are serious problems with the Hopkins Corridor Plan. We have not asked that you abandon it, just that you do that which is necessary RIGHT NOW to make the streets safer for everyone and save the controversial aspects for a time when we have a better idea that they are necessary. That is the one fact that the Commission and the staff have been unable substantiate: that this plan will actually accomplish a goal that is beyond just what the bike lobby wants.

Hopkins Corridor Information Packet