Public Comment

Opponents of bike lanes on Hopkins were out-strategized by the local bike lobby. I say “lobby”, because unlike the neighbors, the merchants, and the merchants’ customers, the bicycling advocates are a well-organized constituency with financial and ideological support from Berkeley City Hall. They’re formally represented by two entities—Walk/Bike Berkeley, self-described as “an all-volunteer organization,” and its patron, the nonprofit Bike East Bay.

Berkeley’s grants to Bike East Bay

Documents obtained from the city via a Public Records Act request show that from 2015 to 2020, Bike East Bay received a total of $100,648 in grants from Berkeley: $16,622 annually from 2015 to 2018; $17,000 in 2019 and 2020 respectively. As documented below, in 2020 Transportation planner Beth Thomas told Bike East Bay Advocacy Director Dave Campbell that she was going to ask that the grant be increased to $20,000 in 2021. The city, however, has yet to provide me with an invoice for 2021. For now, let’s assume the grant was $17,000, which would bring the city’s total grants to Bike East Bay since 2015 to $117,648. 

That’s a fraction of Bike East Bay’s income, which the organization reported as $1,326,000 in 2019 and $876,000 in 2020. (I couldn’t find its 2021 annual report online.) As documented below, Bike East Bay uses its larger resources to support Walk Bike Berkeley. 

The Berkeley grants helped to fund Bike East Bay’s annual Bike to Work Day. In return, Bike East Bay publicized Berkeley and its council as pro-cycling. 

For a sense of the collegial relationship between the bike lobby and Berkeley’s Transportation staff, consider this email correspondence between Bike East Bay Advocacy Director Dave Campbell and City of Berkeley staffer Beth Thomas. (Planet readers may recall Thomas as the staffer who repeatedly blew off my requests that she post materials for the online Hopkins meetings before the meetings.) 

On January 30, 2020, Campbell emailed Thomas: 

“Have a moment to talk about Bike to Work Day? Our proposal for this year is to ask Berkeley to up their Bike to Work Day sponsorship to $20,000 (from $17K) last year and in return we will work with Walk Bike Berkeley to coordinate the Council Ride and press activities. Bike Happy Hour of course is still a part of all this.” 

On March 3, Thomas wrote back: 

“I wanted to close the loop with you about the City’s sponsorship of Bike to Work Day. Last year we increased our sponsorship from $15K to $17K. I plan to submit a budget request to increase our sponsorship to $20K for next year’s (the 2021) Bike to Work Day. But it would be a bit awkward for me to request an increase to $20K for this year when it hasn’t been budgeted and we just increased our sponsorship a year ago. If you can describe whether we’d be getting anything this year that’s in addition to what we have gotten years past, that would help me make the case for an increase to $20K for this year.” 

Campbell then pitted Berkeley against more forthcoming cities: 

“Yes, for $20K this year, we are working with Walk Bike Berkeley to plan a Council Ride and some kind of media event or splash at the end of the ride, details t.b.d. So, for an extra $3K, Berkeley gets this added attention beyond the Bike Happy Hour Party. Last year we were not able to do this as our staff were in other East Bay cities who had stepped up their sponsorship of the event and we wanted to show them some added attention and give additional support. Let me know if this helps, and of course a $17K sponsorship is always useful and super useful to ensure the success of Bike to Work Day.” 

Despite Campbell’s and Thomas’s efforts, in 2020 the city granted Bike East Bay $17,000. Presumably Berkeley did not get the “added attention” that would have come with an additional $3,000. 

Lobbying the council 

During the run-up to the council’s May 10 meeting, Walk Bike Berkeley and Bike East Bay coordinated appeals asking their followers to tell the council, the Transportation Commission, and Transportation staff to support the Hopkins conceptual design, with several amendments—most notably extending the protected bike lanes from Gilman to San Pablo. They also called for closing the westbound slip lane at the Hopkins and Sacramento intersection, adding a raised crosswalk across Hopkins at the Hopkins and Monterey-California intersection, and widening the proposed 8-foot, two-way protected bike lanes from Monterey to The Alameda. As of June 12, they claim to have sent the council more than 3,200 letters calling for these changes. 

On May 10, the council approved all of the above (the widening of the bike lanes was provisionally approved, and extending the lanes to San Pablo was designated for study) on an 8-1 vote, with Councilmember Susan Wengraf voting No. 

That was just the latest, albeit the most substantial, of the bike lobby’s victories: the Hopkins project would be the second two-way protected cycle track in the city. The groundwork had been laid years before, with the council’s approvals of the Berkeley Bicycle Plan in 2017 and the Vision Zero Action Plan in 2019. The former plan aims to encourage bicycling, the latter to eliminate severe and fatal traffic crashes in the city by 2028. 

The encouragement of cycling and quest for safe streets are worthy goals. The problem is that in pursuing them, the city has adopted the bike lobby’s take-no-prisoners approach to public policy. Berkeley’s elected and appointed officials rubber stamp the lobby’s agenda, while they discount or, more often, ignore concerns that agenda has provoked. 

The official bias was evident during the council’s May 10 deliberations. The lead arguments put forth in the April 24 letter with a hundred-plus signers—that bike lanes on Hopkins “should be flatly rejected as way too dangerous for cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists alike,” and that pedestrian safety “should be the primary focus”—were never acknowledged, much less discussed. Scores of residents voiced the same concerns in emails sent to the council after the online meetings held in Fall 2021 and in the week before the council’s meeting on May 10. (I received those emails on June 7 in response to another Public Record Act request.) 

The council also disregarded the questions posed by Hopkins neighbor Donna DeDiemar about the validity of staff’s claims that Hopkins is a disproportionately high-injury street, and that 71% of Berkeley residents would ride bikes on the street if it had protected bike lanes. 

The only contested issue that got sustained consideration was how the proposed removal of parking spaces to make room for the bike lanes would affect the businesses at the Hopkins-Monterey intersection. Only one councilmember, Wengraf, raised it. 

Javandel to Wengraf: I don’t know exactly how many parking spaces will be lost  

When the council began to deliberate the Hopkins project, Wengraf was the first to speak. After calling the shopping hub at the Hopkins- Monterey intersection “a treasure” that she’s patronized for the past 45 years, Wengraf said that she’d spent the afternoon “going from store to store and talking to the owners of the businesses and was very disheartened to find out that they felt ignored during this entire process. They [had] expressed their concerns and felt like they hit a wall.” 

Wengraf proceeded to question Deputy Director of Public Works for Transportation Farid Javandel about many aspects of the conceptual design. She asked, among other things, “Are you comfortable with the lane widths that you’re proposing on Hopkins—ten and a half feet for garbage trucks and fire trucks. What are the impacts on Hopkins being an evacuation route?” 

Javendel deflected her question, stating that “the number of lanes isn’t changing, so the traffic capacity for the lane widths is not significantly different.” But the number is changing:a lane is being eliminated. 

Their most extensive exchange concerned parking. Javendel had stated that “not many parking spaces will be lost.” The May 10 staff report didn’t indicate the number. Wengraf asked him to “quantify that definitively.” Javendel said that the number would vary “segment by segment,” that from McGee to California three spaces would be eliminated, and that “all parking spaces from California to Sacramento would be eliminated.” 

Wengraf: “All the parking spaces. And how many is that?” 

Javandel: “I don’t remember the number off the top of my head. It’s at least twenty-five, almost.” 

Wengraf: “So that’s significant.” 

Javandel conceded, sort of: “No, it’s significant. And they’re not time-limited. They’re residential parking spaces. The business parking spaces have primarily been kept.” 

(I assume that Javandel was referring to the parking spaces on the south side of the block of Hopkins from McGee to Monterey. The May 10 staff report says: “All on-street parking with the exception of one stall would be retained along the south side of the street in this commercial block.” It says nothing about the parking that would be removed on the north side of the block. It also states that from McGee to Gilman, “[a]ll parking would be removed from both sides of the street…in order to provide enough space for the protected bike lanes.” Don’t Javandel and his staff realize that people shopping at the businesses in the area park in many of those spaces?) 

Wengraf demurred, pointing out that people currently park in front of the businesses on the north side of Hopkins—for example, the Hopkins Launderette which is on the block west of Monterey—and alongside Monterey Market. “I don’t agree that it’s not going to have an impact on the businesses,” she said. 

Javandel interrupted: “I’ll be happy to get you an actual count, if that’s important.” 

Wengraf: “So a total of 28 parking spaces are going to be lost on Hopkins.” 

Javandel: “We can do a count. I don’t have the exact number.” He spoke about setting up a “paradigm” that “potentially” included parking meters and RPP [Residential Parking Permits], so that “employees can park a couple of blocks away, as they do downtown, and that frees up parking for the business customers”—who it appears, will now be paying to park near the shops. The map in the staff report showed parking meters on Hopkins and California Street. 

He didn’t explain that staff believe that employees are parking all day near the businesses or how staff came to that conviction. Nor did he say where neighbors who would lose off-street parking, and who lack driveways and/or garages—most notably the residents of nearby apartment buildings on Hopkins—would park in the future. 

It’s odd that Javandel didn’t know exactly how many parking spaces would be removed. The transportation engineer has worked for Berkeley for more than thirteen years and was recently promoted to Deputy Director of Public Works. More to the point, the removal of parking spaces was a spark point for controversy early in the planning process, with the merchants heading up the protest. 

I’ve obtained a spreadsheet prepared by Javendel a month after the May 10 meeting that shows the number of existing and slated-for-removal parking spaces. The spreadsheet indicates that a total of 60 spaces will be eliminated on all of Hopkins. The number that will be eliminated from California (Monterey) to Sacramento is 26. 

Shoppers also park on Hopkins east of California, at least all the way to Carlotta. The spreadsheet shows that on those blocks, seven parking places will be lost. That makes 33. 

The spreadsheet, however, does not show that the approved conceptual plan apparently calls for removing two spaces on California in front of Monterey Market (see the map in the May 10 staff report), bringing the total number of lost spaces to 35. 

Also notable was Javendel’s cheeky retort to Wengraf: “I’ll be happy to get you an actual count, if that’s important.” If the actual count hadn’t been important to the councilmember, she wouldn’t have pressed him about it. The implication was that the exact number was not important to him. 

Showing his pique at being pressed, Javandel hinted at the appreciative reception that he’s customarily accorded by the council. Indeed, Wengraf’s interrogation was followed by a return to business as usual, as all of her colleagues except Councilmembers Bartlett and Taplin vocally dismissed concerns about the effects of parking loss on Hopkins businesses. 

Councilmember Lori Droste volunteered the disputable claim that bike lanes improve business. (For details, see Part 2 of this dossier, “Bike lanes and business.”) 

Mayor Jesse Arreguín: the plan balances parking loss with safety  

Mayor Arreguín waited until after the vote had been taken to use the final two minutes of the meeting (which ended at 12:16 a.m.) to lend credence to Wengraf’s report that the merchants feel they were ignored. 

During public comment, Monterey Fish owner Paul Johnson, speaking for himself and other shopkeepers, had called the plan “incredibly dangerous.” But Arreguín declared that the city had been “responsive to business,” given that the approved “plan keeps 95 percent of the parking spaces and road access at a hundred percent.” 

But the parking spaces at issue are those most likely to be used by shopper—the ones on Hopkins from Sacramento to Carlotta. There are now 51. Thirty-three are slated for elimination. That’s a loss of 65 percent. 

In Arreguín’s view, the design is “improving safety” for pedestrians and bicyclists. “That,” he averred, “balances the concerns we’ve heard during the process about the loss of parking and the impacts it would have on businesses and some of the [recreational] institutions.” 

Arreguín did not mention the safety of people who have to drive to the area to shop, and who, if they park in front of Monterey Fish and other stores on the block between McGee and Monterey, will have to step into moving traffic, walk twenty feet to the curb, crossing the buffered two-way bike lanes, and reverse that trip when they’re loaded down with groceries. In fact, Arreguín didn’t mention shoppers or shopping at all. Nor did he comment on how the increased congestion that the plan is expected to entail—for example, by eliminating the westbound slip lane at Hopkins and Sacramento—might affect the accessibility and appeal of the commercial hub. He also ignored the Hopkins Corridor Bicyclists’ claims that bike lanes would make Hopkins more dangerous for cyclists. 

Councilmember Rigel Robinson: blame exclusionary, auto-obsessed neighbors 

Robinson shifted the focus from the merchants’ objections to the bike to a more politically palatable target: Hopkins neighbors’ allegedly exclusionary attitude toward people from outside their neighborhood. 

He began by calling the street and the neighborhood “such a gem,” stating that “I admire deeply that the neighborhood is willing to fight for it.” Then he denounced neighborhood opponents of bike lanes as elitist reactionaries who are blocking the struggle against climate change. 

Robinson claimed that the council had received “hundreds of emails from residents asking us not to change anything on Hopkins.” 

On May 28, I filed a Public Records Act request to see all emails that Councilmember Robinson received from residents asking the council not to change anything on Hopkins. Of the 181 documents I received, only one made that ask; it came from a resident of Hopkins below Gilman. (Space doesn’t permit citation of the many affecting appeals. I think they can be viewed on the city’s online public records request portal; look for Request 22-513.) 

Wagging his finger, Robinson asserted that 

“many in our community will be benefited by being reminded that they do not own the street, not even the street right in front of your house, that the street is public right of way and should be designed for the public. That means designing our streets for more than just the storage of cars….[and] mak[ing] it possible for the people who can live car-less lifestyles to do so….Our roads can and must work for everyone….Building bike lanes is for access for people can’t afford to drive, and for mobility that does not pollute the planet….If we’re going to have this drawn-out and intense and protracted process for every Complete Street in the city, we’re going to run out of time in the fight against climate change.” 

Robinson also noted that he’d heard that a flyer had circulated in the Hopkins neighborhood “which rather prominently presented a picture of me in association with the project and the threat of reduced parking.” In fact, he said, “I’ve had nothing to do with [the project].” 

It’s true that he had nothing to do with the project. But the leaflet was making a different point, albeit obliquely: When it comes to bike lanes, Robinson and the council majority are sloganeering ideologues. 

The leaflet was addressed to people living west of Gilman. Under the headline “YOU MAY BE ABOUT TO LOSE YOUR STREET PARKING!” appeared a tweet from Walk/Bike Berkeley announcing that District 1 Councilmember Kesarwani wanted to extend the bike lanes from Gilman to San Pablo. The leaflet commented: “That could mean the elimination of all parking on Hopkins from Monterey to San Pablo.” It urged its recipients to register their opposition. 

At the bottom was the photo of Robinson. What the councilmember didn’t say is that in the photo, he’s wearing a tee shirt that says “Street Parking is Theft.” 

Seriously? What would Robinson tell people who live on Hopkins, need cars to get to work or medical appointments or school or to transport disabled family members (for starters), have no off-street parking and are slated to lose their street parking to make way for the bike lanes? For lack of viable alternatives, they can’t stop driving. 

The councilmember’s antics did not go unnoticed by the bike lobby. On June 7, Bike East Bay Advocacy Director Dave Campbell tweeted that he had “just donated to Rigel Robinson for Berkeley City Council. Rigel knows safety projects and repaving go together.” 

Councilmember Kesarwani: absent bike lanes down to San Pablo, West Berkeley families can’t access Hopkins area amenities 

In working the “opportunity hoarding” meme, Robinson echoed Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani’s earlier pitch for her supplemental proposal to extend the protected bike lanes to San Pablo. 

Kesarwani began by thanking “our heroic Transportation staff, not just for the presentation this evening but for the extensive community input process.” In accordance with the city’s bike plan, Hopkins, she said, “should be a Complete Street with bike and pedestrian upgrades.” 

Like Robinson, she expressed love for the Hopkins shops but ignored the shopkeepers’ objections to the proposed bike lanes. Instead, she associated opposition to her proposal to extend the lanes from Gilman to San Pablo with the city’s ugly racist past. That extension, she asserted, is 

“essential for ensuring that our West Berkeley families can access the public services and amenities that are only available on Hopkins like Ruth Acty Elementary School, Mustard pre-school, and King Middle School, all of the amenities on the King Middle School campus, like the pools, tennis courts, playgrounds, sports field and track—of course, Monterey Market, which we all love, and the other commercial establishments, and the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library. I really want to emphasize that this is really a matter of equity for West Berkeley, which as we all know, are formerly redlined neighborhoods, do not have this level of public services and investment. So it’s really very important to me that we have this opportunity to extend the protected bike lanes, so we can ensure that those communities have a way of getting to these public services and amenities in a way that is equally safe as the neighborhoods east of Gilman, as proposed by staff.” 

Does Kesarawni think that West Berkeley families are being denied public services and amenities along the eastern portion of Hopkins? If so, she needs to provide specific examples of such discrimination. 

Her reference to redlining brings to mind the recent observation of the distinguished Black scholar Adolph Reed, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, that the current “interpretive environment encourages extracting events, people, and tendencies from their contexts in the past to treat them as appendages to moralistic claims for the present.” 

Councilmember Kate Harrison: technocrats know better 

Unlike Robinson and Kesarwani, Councilmember Harrison expressed no affection for the businesses. Commenting on whether the city should limit parking or install meters near the commercial hub, Harrison opined: “I don’t think it’s appropriate that it’s only the business community to decide that. The parking is not just there for them; it’s to help the neighbors not have people who are shopping park in their area “for overlong periods of time.” She urged “a whole city approach” that encouraged turnover in parking. 

The implication that the merchants had played or will play a decisive role in the Hopkins project was at odds with Wengraf’s report that the business owners felt that their concerns had been ignored during the entire planning process. Harrison was likely responding in part to Sophie Hahn’s too-little, too-late gesture, shortly approved by the council, to involve the Office of Economic Development in future planning for the Hopkins reconfiguration. 

Harrison subsequently made it clear what she meant by “a whole city approach.” Noting that Berkeley has “always had a tradition that it’s the neighbors who’ve decided they want RPP [Residential Parking Permits], Harrison said she wants “professional staff’s opinion to play a role, and not just what people think.” She was fine with the elimination of street parking. “While we’re losing three spots in terms of shopping area, these parking management tools [RPP, meters],” she said, “are going to be critical to making up their loss and the loss of other twenty-plus spaces.” 

Even so, Harrison was the only person on the dais who questioned the claim that parking is the neighbors’ main issue: 

“People have said several times that the neighbors are talking about parking. I barely heard them mention parking. What I heard them mention is safety.” 

That’s true. But the questions the neighbors raised about safety are not the ones that Harrison proceeded to voice. The neighbors regard the bike lanes themselves as dangerous. Harrison welcomes the lanes—with conditions. 

“Who-all is going to be in these bike lanes?” she asked. Noting that so far “we have” electric scooters and wheelchairs, Harrison wondered “about conflicts among these different kinds of vehicles” and “regulating the speeds within the lanes.” Wheelchairs, she said, belong on sidewalks. Her conclusion, again, was to hope that staff would use their “professional expertise” to address these issues. 

Good idea. But why didn’t Javandel and his colleagues take a whole city approach and tell the council that these issues needed to be resolved before it approved bike lanes on Hopkins, or for that matter anywhere else in Berkeley? 

Bike lobby: neighbors only care about parking  

Harrison’s rendering of the neighbors’ position was only partly correct. As she noted, parking is not their main issue. But as per the April 24 letter to Councilmember Hahn, it is a concern. As Harrison also noted, the neighbors’ top concern is safety—meaning, as she did not say, alleged threats to safety posed by bike lanes on Hopkins. 

It’s the bike lobby that’s spread the false claim that parking is the neighbors’ only concern. 

In a commentary posted in April, after the three online community sessions about the final conceptual designs for Hopkins, Bike East Bay wrote: “‘Pro-parking residents are outraged by the removal of any existing parking, however minimal.” 

In repeated calls to support the conceptual design, also posted in April, Walk Bike Berkeley wrote: “There will be a lot of neighbors and motorists upset about these safety improvements because they require some on-street parking removal.” 

By disregarding the reasons that “neighbors and motorists” object to the removal of on-street parking, as well their concerns about the dangers posed by bike lanes on Hopkins, the bike lobby can portray its opponents as zealots. It’s a neat case of projection. 

Like all true believers, the bike lobby won’t acknowledge, much less engage, its critics, because doing so would expose the weaknesses of its position. 

Coming from a private lobby, such dogmatism is merely unpleasant. 

Coming from a Berkeley mayor and members of the city council, which is to say, from democratically elected public officials, it’s unconscionable. 

The Hopkins bike lanes would be the second, not e first, two-way protected cycle track in the city. Note, however, that unlike Bancroft, Hopkins is a two-way street. 

The space for westbound auto traffic that would be eliminated at the intersections of Hopkins at Monterey and at Sacramento are not “slip lanes,” but just room on the street for westbound drivers to pass by cars in the westbound lane proper. At each intersection, that space would be eliminated to make room for the protected two-way cycle track.