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Daily Planet Staff 

With some 935 bicycle accidents in the five years between 1994 and 1998 Berkeley has the dubious honor of having a bicycle accident rate that is four times higher than that of any other city in California. 

Of course, there are a lot of cyclists, too. Some 5 percent of Berkeley residents commute to work by bike. Numerous others ride bikes to school, to shop or recreate. 

With the goal of creating safe streets for cyclists, local bicycle aficionados pushed city planners to create a plan for safe bike routes. 

Tonight, the City Council will be asked to adopt the bicycle plan – a network of “bicycle boulevards,” with a bike safety education component. The council will also be asked to approve the engineering tools to make the bike boulevards work. 

The bicycle plan includes engineering a network of seven bike boulevards – Ninth Street, California and King streets, Milvia Street, Bowditch Street and Hillegass Avenue, Virginia Street, Channing Way, and Russell Street. 

The goal is to create safe streets where bicyclists will share the road with drivers, who will drive slowly and be on the alert for cyclists. 

These streets already have relatively low volumes of traffic, thanks to speed humps, traffic diverters and stop signs. 

Tonight’s action is one more conceptual step toward making the bike boulevards a reality. Once the consultants have approval to use the tools, they will go to the various neighborhoods involved and work with them to configure the actual design. 

The council will be asked to adopt an arsenal of tools that can be used along the bicycle boulevards. One is signage alerting people to the boulevards. Another is the use of various textures and colors for the pavement and/or for crosswalks, again, reminding people that they are using a bicycle boulevard. 

“Bulb-outs,” which extend a sidewalk or plaza in a bulb-like shape out into the street, are another engineering tool. Bulb-outs create a shorter distance for pedestrians to travel across the road and cause traffic to move more slowly.  

Round-abouts, popular in Europe, are another tool planners want to be able to use. Traffic signals that can be activated by bicyclists and pedestrians for ease in crossing busy intersections are another tool. The planners also want permission to remove some stop signs at four-way stops, which impede the flow of bike traffic. 

The bicycle task force, a subcommittee of the transportation committee, has thrown out one proposed tool: the “vertical deflectors.” The Commission on Disability asked that the deflectors, which include speed bumps, be taken out of the plan. They argued that the traffic-calming devices cause pain to disabled and elderly people when they are in cars or vans that ride over the bumps. They further argued that the speed humps slow down emergency vehicles. 

If the council approves the plan and environmental document tonight, the next phase of the bike boulevard project will begin. Consultants will go to the neighborhoods in question and talk about the specific tools to use in their particular neighborhood. The City Council will be asked to approve the specific plans incrementally, as neighborhoods agree to the plan and funding becomes available. 

The plan, which is to include a safety education component, is expected to cost more than $7 million to fully implement.