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Updated: The city of Berkeley plans to remove a hundred or more stop signs as a "traffic calming" measure

Steven Finacom
Tuesday September 27, 2016 - 09:41:00 AM

No, that headline is not an April Fool’s joke or something from the “Onion” satirical paper.

It’s the consequence of a serious proposal on the verge of being adopted by the City of Berkeley that may very well mean large numbers of stop signs will disappear throughout Berkeley in coming years.

That’s a real possibility if the current draft “Berkeley Bike Plan” isn’t changed in the next few months.

The bicycle plan proposes removing at least one hundred and possibly more existing stop signs in Berkeley. At least fifty-two intersections are specified for this “treatment”. You can see them as red “x” marks on a map, here:

If you live on or near more than a dozen key streets, there’s quite likely stop sign removal proposed near you. Virginia, Hearst, Addison, California, Channing, Ninth, Mabel, King, Hillegass, Fulton, Russell and Woolsey are the streets that would be most altered. (At the end of this article there’s a list of the intersections).

Some of the proposed removals are absolutely non-sensical. 

In my neighborhood at least two stop signs would come out at the intersection of Russell and Ellsworth which is adjacent to the pre-school play yard, and the two major student entrances, to Le Conte Elementary School. At the other end of the school block (Russell and Fulton) ALL four stop signs would be removed since that’s proposed as a crossing of two “bicycle boulevards”. 

Somehow the idea that allowing all traffic to move along Russell without stopping at the intersections adjacent to the elementary school made it through the “draft” process. 

And it gets worse. Along Russell Street, all the stop signs would come out for 7/10ths of a mile (I measured it). A car—or bicycle—could start moving downhill at Russell and Benvenue and speed or roll all the way to Shattuck Avenue without encountering a single mandatory “stop” except a traffic signal at Telegraph and Russell. 

If you’re concerned about the repercussions of changes like this all over the Berkeley flatlands, you must comment to the City this week, by the end of the day, Thursday, September 29. This is the close of the public comment period on the draft “Berkeley Bicycle Plan”. 

You can send comments to the City at info@bikeberkeley.com 

Thursday evening there’s also a crucial meeting of the Transportation Commission’s Bicycle subcommittee, where you can make a public comment (see details below). 

What should you write / comment? The most helpful thing would be to tell the City about your personal experiences with traffic on Berkeley streets and on your block and whether you value stop signs in our residential neighborhoods. Will removing stop signs on numerous residential streets and replacing them with “yield” signs make things better or worse for your street or others in your neighborhood? 

Here’s the biggest issue. Removing the stop signs means that not only bicycles but other vehicles—cars and trucks—can go through these intersections without stopping. The City proposes an initial palliative for this, “Yield” signs. And possibly other “traffic calming” measures such as additional traffic circles and “diverters”, if City staff decide they are needed. But there is no funding as yet identified to do that. 

You can find the draft plan here: bikeberkeley,com Go to “Documents” in the upper right hand corner. It shows several separate postings. #5, “recommendations reduced” and 5-10 “Recommendations Bike Boulevards Traffic Calming” are the ones you should look at first, for specific information on the stop signs. 

On the 12th page of “Recommendations Reduced” you’ll find Section 5.2.3 which includes this statement about stop signs. (The emphasis added is my own). 

Stop Sign Removal: 

This Plan recommends removing stop signs at specific locations along existing and new Bicycle Boulevard corridors. This enables riders to maintain momentum (with fewer stops). In many cases traffic calming devices such as traffic circles or diverters exist at these locations, or new circles are recommended, which reduces potential vehicle speed increases along these routes. The City should seek to comprehensively remove stop signs at existing traffic circles along Bicycle Boulevards and convert them to yield. 

Those same stop signs function as crucial traffic and safely controls for the surrounding neighborhoods. What some cyclists view as an annoyance many neighbors and pedestrians see as crucial safeguards for their neighborhoods, serving to at least force most motor vehicles to slow down and stop, and providing safer crossing opportunities for pedestrians. 

City staff say that removing the stop signs was, in fact, something that the City Council authorized sixteen years ago when the Bicycle Boulevards were created. Here’s what Eric Anderson, Pedestrian and Bicycle Programs Coordinator from the City’s Transportation department, told me in an email on Monday. The bold-faced emphasis below is mine, not his. 

The Citys approach to Bike Boulevards removing stop signs and adding traffic calming -- was formalized by Council 16 years ago. Here is the three-phase bike boulevard implementation plan approved by the City Council when the current Bike Plan was adopted in 2000. The current Bike Plan update provides us with a framework to begin more fully implementing this Council direction: 

 

1. Install signs and pavement legends along all Bicycle Boulevards. 2. Install devices to facilitate bicycle crossing of major streets, and 3. Remove unwarranted stop signs and replace as needed with traffic calming devices. 

There is a major mistaken assumption in this statement. 

The Council did not authorize removing stop signs. Look at that last sentence. The Council mandate was to “remove unwarranted stop signs.” There’s a huge difference. 

But City staff and/or consultants seem to have now made a sweeping assumption that most, if not all, stop signs on Bicycle Boulevards, should be authorized for removal by this plan. In essence, 52 intersections have stop signs that are de facto “unwarranted” by staff fiat, before there’s any community process to discuss them. That’s essentially what the table in the draft Plan shows. 

I also asked Mr. Anderson if the City had determined that stop signs no longer serve safety needs better than “yield” signs, diverters, or circles? Part of his response. 

Many of the stop signs along bicycle boulevard streets were originally installed in many cases decades ago -- because of traffic safety concerns expressed by local neighbors. In that sense they were installed as a cheap form of traffic calming, whether or not they met the engineering warrants for their installation. 


This was further amplified in a separate email to me from Farid Javandel, the City’s Transportation Manager after I wrote him with questions. Here’s part of what he responded. 

There seem to be many locations where stop signs have been installed not as devices to assign the right of way at intersections, but as a form of pseudo traffic calming with the intent of slowing traffic or discouraging cut-through traffic. While stop signs are cheap, their effectiveness in achieving these goals is often marginal, and they have a variety of unintended consequences. On Bicycle Boulevards in particular, stop signs create a situation where cyclists must inconveniently stop at many intersections where there is rarely conflicting traffic. This is about as rational for bikes as putting stop sings every few blocks on University or Shattuck would be for cars. It also increases the tendency for cyclists to roll through or ignore stop signs that they perceive as unnecessary. Neither unnecessary delays, nor risky behaviors are desirable effects of stop signs. However, simply removing the stop signs may not address the traffic speed and volume concerns that are a shared interest of residents and users of Bicycle Boulevards. Thus, we need to determine what alternative measures can be implemented to allow these routes to efficiently serve bike riders, while managing traffic speed and avoiding cut through traffic. The alternative measures need to be determined on a case by case basis depending on the context and conditions at each location. While the process has not been spelled out in detail, it rationally begins with analysis of traffic and crash data to confirm whether a given stop sign is warranted in the first place. Based on that information we can determine whether removal of the stop sign is advisable and what alternative measures may be feasible. At that point we could engage the neighbors to share the results of the analysis and seek their input regarding any alternatives. That would form the basis for determination by the City Traffic Engineer of what change if any should occur in a given location.

Now City staff also say not to worry. Once the bicycle plan is approved, no one is going to go out and start taking down stop signs. As Mr. Javandel notes, there will be a process to analyze “traffic and crash data”, and “engage the neighbors” to explain this as well as “seek their input”. Then the City Traffic engineer will make a “determination”. 

And Mr. Anderson told me: The neighborhood-level outreach needed for changes to stop signs and traffic calming will be conducted as a follow-on activity before any changes are made to these streets. 

I’m not comforted by these statements. From past experience, you can be pretty sure that when your neighborhood has its “outreach” and you say, “Keep the Stop Signs”, City staff will reply that the Council has directed the removal of the stop signs. 

Now you may be wondering why, at the end of a two year City “planning process” you’re just hearing about this. I wondered that, too. But when I looked at the “Bike Berkeley” website where the plan is housed, I realized what had happened. 

While opportunities to comment and participate were open to all, City staff and consultants appear to have focused only on bicycle riders as the principal “stakeholders” they needed to consult about plan details. Over that two year process, the draft plan had seven opportunities for public engagement, not one of them with any targeted publicity or outreach that I can find to neighborhoods with bike boulevards, or to non-cyclists. 

One was a Transportation Commission subcommittee meeting. Three were “open houses” or “community meetings” targeted specifically at “people bicycling in Berkeley” according to published publicity. One was a “Bicycle Plan Update Bike Tour” in which City staff and Transportation Commissioners biked around Berkeley with a limited number of consultants and members of the public (public participants had to register for a space, and presumably had to ride a bike). And the remaining two public “events” of the planning process were “Bike to Work Day Happy Hour” celebrations featuring “tasty New Belgium beer”. (I kid you not). 

If you feel moved to go to a City meeting and speak on this issue, there are two scheduled. 

The first is on this Thursday evening, September 29, 7:00 PM at the North Berkeley Senior Center. This is a meeting of the Transportation Commission’s Bicycle Subcommittee. This meeting should have a “public comment” period at the beginning. Arrive by 7:00 and turn in a public comment card to speak. 

Second, the Transportation Commission will be acting on the plan at its October 20 meeting. Also at the North Berkeley Senior Center, and also with the same opportunity for public comment at the beginning of the meeting. 


Then it goes to the Council where it’s tentatively scheduled for action on December 13. 

INTERSECTIONS APPARENTLY PLANNED FOR STOP SIGN REMOVAL 

These are the intersections that are marked on the draft Bike Plan map with red “X” marks to denote “stop sign removal”. Since the map provided by the City is very small and does not identify most street names, some of the locations are unclear. In those cases I’ve put a (?) after the intersection. You can scrutinize the map yourself you to decide. 

 

  1. Virginia and Ninth
  2. Virginia and Eighth
  3. Virginia and Chestnut
  4. Virginia and California
  5. Hearst and Ninth
  6. Addison and Fifth
  7. Addison and Seventh
  8. Addison and Ninth
  9. Addison and Bonar
  10. Addison and Acton
  11. Addison and California
  12. Addison and Grant
  13. California and Allston
  14. California and Blake
  15. California and Parker
  16. Near California and Ward, or Stuart (location unclear on map)
  17. California and Russell
  18. California and Woolsey
  19. Channing and Seventh
  20. Channing and Ninth
  21. Channing and Tenth
  22. Channing and Browning
  23. Channing and Bonar
  24. Channing and California
  25. Ninth and Camilla
  26. Ninth and Parker
  27. Ninth and Pardee
  28. Ninth and Grayson
  29. Mabel and Blake
  30. Mabel and Oregon
  31. Mabel and Carrison
  32. Mabel and Sixty-Seventh
  33. Sixty-Sixth and Idaho (?)
  34. King and Prince
  35. King and Fairview
  36. King and Harmon
  37. King and Woolsey
  38. Woolsey and Harper (?)
  39. Milvia and Parker (?)
  40. Milvia and Oregon
  41. Fulton and Parker (?)
  42. Fulton and Blake (?)
  43. Russell and Fulton
  44. Russell and Ellsworth
  45. Russell and Hillegass
  46. Russell and Regent (?)
  47. Russell and Pine (?)
  48. Hillegass and Parker
  49. Regent and Derby
  50. Hillegass and Webster
  51. Woolsey and Colby (?)
  52. Woolsey and Dana (?)
    UPDATE FROM THE AUTHOR, SEPTEMBER 27, 2016
City staff say that the official "BikeBerkeley" website I discuss in this opinion piece is outdated and will be revised. In response to a question about what sort of outreach the Bicycle Plan process conducted, Eric Anderson from the City writes:
"We need to update the text on this page (the website), as it no longer reflects the actual process we followed for the plan. The outreach process was community-focused in the sense that most of our outreach involved us going out to the community rather than asking the community to come to us. This outreach took the form of a random zip code door to door public survey and approximately a dozen direct outreach events at Farmer’s Markets, street fairs, and on the UC Berkeley campus. In addition we conducted two formal public Open House meetings and several Bicycle Subcommittee meetings as more conventional outreach methods."
I am glad to include this information with my article. I've also asked the City for further clarification on the "random zip code door to door public survey" and the results from it.