Public Comment
What Has Happened with Hopkins, and Why
If you haven’t been following the Hopkins Corridor Project, the redesign to replace parking with bike lanes along the section of Hopkins with the Monterey Market and locally owned shops has created an uproar across Berkeley and into north of Berkeley cities. There is a sharp divide between the neighbors, shoppers, seniors and disabled people who support maintaining the parking and offer an alternate Ada Street bypass and the organization Walk Bike Berkeley, which is a key player in pushing the bike lanes.
When I saw the first forwarded email with the letter from Dee Williams-Ridley, Berkeley City Manager, to Mayor Arreguin, saying that the Hopkins Corridor plan was on hold, I thought it must be a late-arriving April Fools prank. I even emailed a response to the sender, “Are you sure this isn’t a fake?”
It was real. The City Council April 18 Special Meeting on the Hopkins Corridor Project (known on the City website as the Hopkins Corridor Traffic and Placemaking Study) was cancelled, for now “postponed” with staffing and fire code listed as the reasons.
That leaves a lot of questions:
- How did a project that started with a referral from Councilmember Hahn in January 2018, followed with the first community meeting listed as October 22, 2020 get this far without meeting the “Fire Department related statutory (state law) or best practice requirements”?
- How is it that Berkeley transportation planning employee Farid Javandel did not investigate state law and local fire code before embarking on the Hopkins Corridor Traffic and Placemaking Study? (Javandel, Deputy Director of Public Works, leader of the project was once called the transportation czar in a Berkeleyside article about his bicycle accident. )
- How is it that three consulting firms (Parisi Transportation Consulting, PlaceWorks and PGA Design) moved along on this project without recognizing there was a problem with not meeting fire code for evacuation?
It is not like the Hopkins Corridor Project happened in a vacuum. Margot Smith and former Mayor and Disaster and Fire Safety Commissioner Shirley Dean have been sounding the alarm for months: The Hopkins Corridor is an emergency access and evacuation route. Dean brought the issue to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission which voted to send a letter to City Council on January 25, 2023.
You will not find that Disaster and Fire Safety Commission letter anywhere on the commission’s webpage. Finding it requires going to the City of Berkeley website “records online” and searching through every council regular meeting supplemental (where letters are catalogued and posted) after January 25. I found it in the March 14 “regular” list under Hopkins Corridor.
What the commission requested was:
“[I]mplementation should stop regarding major changes to the Hopkins Corridor and any other street designated as providing Emergency Access and serving as an Evacuation Route until the Fire Department has formally commented and produced a written evaluation of the impacts of the proposed changes on their designated function or at least determined a process for putting in place such information or regulations regarding fire apparatus access roads that are contained in California Code Regulations, Title 19, Division 1, apply in Section 503.2.2 regarding width, and Section 503.4.1 regarding traffic calming devises and any other Sections that are applicable…”
The letter also references an attached map of evacuation routes. However, the secretary for the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission Khin Chin evidently did not attach the map, as it is not with the record. Nor did Chin include a link to the map.
It should be noted that almost every street already altered, marked or in the sights of getting a road diet to narrow traffic lanes and slow traffic are the same streets /routes designated in the City of Berkeley map as the “Emergency Access and Evacuation Network. Here is the link: https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Berkeley-Emergency-Access-Evacuation-Routes-06-2011.pdf
Fire codes and staffing are not the end of the story. What is not being included in the City Manager’s letter or the emails from Arreguin and Councilmember Hahn is that the City, with Farid Javandel as the lead on the Hopkins corridor, was in a rush to secure final City Council approval and award the Hopkins Corridor Project before July 1, 2023, in order to avoid complying with the new San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board stormwater treatment and green infrastructure regulations. This is the kind of infrastructure that would reduce stormwater runoff from the polluting impact on Cordornices Creek and Aquatic Park.
The February 23, 2023 letter from Friends of Five Creeks to the Mayor, Council, City Manager, Public Works, Transportation Manager Farid Javandel, the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission and the Environment and Climate Commission includes these comments:
“[T]he City of Berkeley should be ashamed to having planned this project with no effort to reduce the street’s polluting impact on Codornices Creek, our area’s only trout stream, running just a half block north. This is a particular disgrace to a city that claims environmental credentials. The Monterey Market area is the exact spot where foam from a city fire truck ran in a short, straight storm drain to the creek in 2019, wiping out nearly the entire population of threatened steelhead trout…Transportation Director Farid Javandel has admitted, in writing, that the City is rushing this project to contract in order to dodge stiffened pollution-reduction requirements that go into effect on June 30.”
The last day to avoid the new regulations is June 30, 2023. The new regulations go into effect on July 1, 2023.
I confirmed with Susan Schwartz, President, Friends of Five Creeks, that this letter was sent to all the parties listed on February 23, 2023.
The Five Creeks website is a little busy, but if you go to the bottom of the home page you can catch the link to the full letter under “F5C recent letters to agencies.” https://fivecreeks.org/
I attended the Environment and Climate Commission meeting on March 29, 2023. Though communications were listed in the meeting agenda and the commission would have received both the February and March letters on the Hopkins Corridor Project from Five Creeks by the March 29 meeting, neither letter was included in the agenda packet, nor was the content of the letter on pollution and reducing the environmental impact on Cordornices Creek discussed in the meeting. Instead, commission chair Ben Gould confirmed there was a speaker representing the commission in support of the Hopkins Project for the April 18, 2023 Special City Council meeting.
The Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, of which Javandel is the staff secretary, includes in the March 16, 2023 commission meeting agenda packet a March 7 Walk Bike Berkeley letter and two March 16, 2023 emails from Pamela Webster on the long term network of bicycle boulevard. It also includes Javandel’s responses to Webster, but NOT the February 23, 2023, letter from Five Creeks on the Hopkins Corridor Project. Walk Bike Berkeley, as its name says, is the key community supporter of the Hopkins Corridor Project with its controversial bike lanes. Given Javandel’s friendly response to Pam Webster she is evidently another strong supporter.
The regulations going into effect on July 1, 2023 are no surprise. In fact, it was on May 11, 2022 the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board passed the new regulations Order No. R2-2022-0018. The order states under C.3.b.! (3) “Any pending Regulated Project that has not yet been approved as of June 30, 2023, and for which a Permittee has no legal authority to require new requirements under Government Code sections 66474.2 or 65589.5., subd. (o) is subject to the Provision C.3 requirements in effect on the Permit’s effective date.”
The full order with all the provisions can be read at: https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/sanfranciscobay/board_decisions/adopted_orders/2022/R2-2022-0018.pdf
Contra Costa is under the same regulations. A quick summary can be found in the Contra Costa Clean Water Program with this link: https://www.cccleanwater.org/development-infrastructure/development/stormwater-c-3-guidebook
The new order requires projects of 5000 square feet or greater to comply with stormwater infrastructure. Previously the threshold was 10,000 square feet.
The important message is that the Hopkins Corridor Project is a mess, but for anyone who thinks the Hopkins Corridor Plan is dead, it was listed in the agenda packet for the Monday, April 10 Agenda and Rules Committee on page 179 under Unscheduled Workshops and Special Meetings. This bears close watching.
This isn’t the first bungled project with Javandel’s fingerprints on it. Remember that Milvia had to be revised after it was constructed, because the turning radius of large vehicles had not been taken into account. And then there is the disaster at the intersection of Hopkins and Alameda with floating curbed islands that has been a source of complaints for years.
One would hope there would be some internal housecleaning.
On the bicycling and pedestrian side, what actually makes a street safer? This is not a settled question, and yet Walk Bike Berkeley and like organizations, plus planners and consultants and City staff including Javandel are pushing street redesigns with road diets and protected bike lanes and two way bike lanes as if it were settled.
Vision Zero, Complete Streets and Road Diets are the buzz words for redesigning streets to make them safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. Liz Amsden wrote about increased pedestrian deaths after Los Angeles embarked on Vision Zero, traffic calming designs in the article, “Artificial Gridlock: Who Put the ‘DIE’ in LA Road DIEts?” https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/24745-la-traffic-who-put-the-die-in-road-diets And you can watch what happens with road diets and emergency vehicles in this YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PamppHOHTs
The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) states under Urban Stormwater Guide, “A flooded street is not a complete street. During storm events, people walking, bicycling, and using transit are the first users to encounter barriers and lose access to the street, and are the last to regain it. Green street design tools, which integrate stormwater control and management within the right-of-way, are a critical component of complete street design, ensuring the street remains usable and safe for all people during storm events, regardless of mode.” https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-stormwater-guide/streets-are-ecosystems/complete-streets-green-streets/
I certainly wouldn’t put all my eggs in the NACTO basket. The second picture on the front of the 2018 NACTO Annual Report is an example of the exact problem my bicycling friends cited with the curb on the bicycle lane in downtown Berkeley. It is a place where debris collects. Leaves, especially wet leaves, create a slick surface for dangerous spills. In fact, the friends I spoke with say they avoid Milvia whenever possible, because they are trapped in the bicycle lane with the curb and have no place to maneuver to avoid debris and hazards in the bike lane.
John Newton went further in his response in Berkeleyside as a bicycle commuter “…I find the protected bike lanes to be a hazard to my safety. The more protected/separated they are, the less they are cleaned by street sweeping and the more they accumulate dangerous debris…” Newton referenced glass and needles.
Another problem for bike lanes is drivers backing out of driveways looking at the camera in the dash in front of them instead over their shoulder and missing when there is a bicyclist headed their way.
There is a fantasy that if new housing is built without parking and Berkeley residents have no place to park their cars, they will give up their cars, get on bicycles and take mass transit.
Thomas A. Rubin’s March 11 2023 presentation Land Use, Housing and Transportation – Wishing Will Not Make It So to Livable California challenges not only the fantasy of people giving up their cars, but also that complete streets is another fantasy. Traffic lanes, bicycle lanes, bus lanes and parking do not “play well together.” More than that, Rubin points out the difficulties with getting where someone wants to go on transit and the amount of time it takes to do it. And the poor, low income employed, people with jobs that require using equipment need cars and trucks the most. https://www.livablecalifornia.org/transportatio-expert-tom-rubins-presentation-to-livable-california/
None of this is easy.
We should know by now we are in a climate crisis and we must decrease our CO2 emissions. Yet each day the measured CO2 level is higher than the year before. Today it was 422.37 ppm. A year ago, it was 420.85 ppm. In 2008 when Bill McKibben started 350.org CO2 was at 385.46 ppm. We are obviously headed in the wrong direction.
According to the EPA from a 2020 analysis, 27% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) in the U.S. came from the transportation sector and 57% of that from our cars and light duty vehicles (18-wheelers, medium and heavy duty trucks are 26%).
There is or a least should be a push to get us walking (if we can) and onto mass transit, bicycles, tricycles and whatever mode of moving will get us out of our cars, SUVs, vans, and modest sized trucks. And if we aren’t making that move to at least get us into EVs (electric vehicles).
Remote work is here to stay at least for part of the week. Offices in San Francisco are 27% to 29% vacant depending on the day and which article one picks up to find the figures. People are back in their cars and bridge traffic is at pre-pandemic levels, while low ridership is pushing mass transit off a financial cliff.
There are no simple solutions.
I couldn’t make it to the San Pablo Avenue Corridor Project open house with poster boards and no presentation on March 30. I was attending another City meeting, I only heard second hand that it had good attendance and the plan is for bicyclists to use the quieter parallel streets.
I didn’t hear that the San Pablo Corridor Plan considered what it would look like if people actually took to the variety of modalities that are already at our door, electric bikes, pedal bikes, scooters and adult tricycles. These all travel at different speeds and don’t fit together in protected bike lanes.
It is a good thing that the bike lanes have only an occasional rider as none of the planning that I have seen so far is actually a plan for all these different modalities together and broad utilization.
Several things are clear. The singular focus on a narrow group of bicyclists, brushing aside the warnings of our wiser elders, ignoring fire codes and rushing to beat regulations with which the City should be anxious to comply is not working and leaves a very bad taste.
How this will all turn out is still a question.
