Public Comment

The Hopkins project is District 5 Councilmember Sophie Hahn’s baby, albeit a late and cranky adoptee. She initiated their special relationship in January 2018 with a budget referral that allocated $200,000 to add “placemaking” considerations for the part of Hopkins that lies in her district (Sutter to Sacramento) to the city’s plan to repave the entire street in the summer of 2023.

Due to Covid disruptions, the public process only got underway in October 2020. After working mostly behind the scenes for two and a half years, on May 2, 2022, Hahn presided over an online public meeting about major changes to the staff’s conceptual plan from the Alameda intersection up to Sutter. A few hours before the council convened on May 10, she sent her council e-mail list an impassioned appeal to support those changes and other amendments that were folded into the omnibus proposal that she and Mayor Arreguín submitted on the day of the meeting. Shortly after midnight, the council approved that proposal with a few amendments (see below) on an 8-1 vote, with Susan Wengraf casting the sole No. 

There’s another reason besides this history to focus on Hahn’s involvement in the Hopkins project. Many people, including myself, think that when Nancy Skinner is termed out of the State Senate in 2024, Arreguín will run for her seat, and Hahn will run for Berkeley mayor. Hopkins is only one among numerous items on which Hahn has taken a position as a councilmember and, before that, as a member of the Zoning Adjustments Board. But a close look at her work on this complex, protracted, and contentious project offers insights into her political character and style of governance. 

To understand Hahn’s moves, it’s essential to remember that city staff do not directly report to the mayor and council. Under Berkeley’s city manager form of government, staff answer to the city manager, who in turn answers to the electeds, at least in theory. At the same time, the mayor and council depend on staff to develop and implement the policies they pass. The potential for discord is obvious. 

Until a few weeks before the May 10 meeting, Hahn publicly applauded staff for having devised a “well-balanced” plan that addressed the concerns of the varied stakeholders. Behind the scenes, she had become convinced that Deputy Director of Public Works for Transportation Farid Javandel and his colleagues were not going to carry out the recommendation in her referral to emphasize “green infrastructure and aesthetics.” Nor, it appeared, were they going to replace the flawed bicycle facility that had been installed at the intersection of Hopkins and The Alameda shortly before she was elected to the council in November 2016. 

To achieve her referral’s aims and to correct the screwup at the intersection, Hahn enlisted a prominent member of the bike lobby. At the May 2 online meeting, she had Transportation Commission Chair Karen Parolek present ideas for extending the two-way, protected cycle track on the south side of Hopkins from The Alameda up to Sutter, and for re-designing the bicycle infrastructure at the intersection of Hopkins and the Alameda. Hahn knew that Javandel and his colleagues, who effectively represent the bike lobby in City Hall, were unlikely to challenge Parolek’s ideas. Those ideas were incorporated into the supplemental proposal that the council approved a week later. 

Rapprochement with the bike lobby was something new for Hahn. In October 2019, she abstained on Rigel Robinson’s proposal to dedicate 50 percent of all paving funds to bicycle and pedestrian improvements. The measure passed 8-1-1, with Wengraf voting No. 

And when the council deliberated on the city’s draft Bicycle Plan in May 2017, Hahn first noted that staff had inadequately consulted AC Transit and the Alameda County Transportation Commission about the plan, and that Ace Hardware and other small businesses hadn’t been consulted at all. Nor had they consulted anyone about the installation at Hopkins and The Alameda. Accordingly, Hahn proposed that all elements in the Bicycle Plan be subject to revision on a project-by-project basis, and that all stakeholder constituencies, which she specified, be consulted. 

Speaking at public comment, Karen Parolek objected, arguing that such requirements would doom the Bicycle Plan. Parolek suggested an add-on to Hahn’s amendment, whereby the low-stress bicycle network envisioned in the plan would take priority over other considerations. 

Hahn’s amendment was pared back to giving stakeholder constituencies the opportunity for “input” as each project is implemented, and to consider the special needs and hazards associated with commercial and manufacturing uses. The language about project-by-project revision was cut. Parolek’s amendment was incorporated into the Bicycle Plan. Five years later, Parolek helped Hahn do an end run around staff. 

But Hahn didn’t oppose all the staff work on the Hopkins project. The supplemental proposal she co-authored with Arreguín incorporated the rest of staff’s conceptual design for the street. She’s also publicly defended the staff-run public engagement process. 

When we spoke, over Fourth of July weekend, I asked Hahn how she could reconcile that defense with her 2017 appeal for inclusive, in-depth consultation on each bicycle project. Her response was equivocal. 

She cited a spreadsheet that staff had created to document their responses to the numerous comments on evolving Hopkins plan. I observed that they’d never made that spreadsheet public; that they should have done so ; and that even if they had made it public, inventorying responses on a spreadsheet was not a substitute for meaningful public participation, which involves ongoing give-and-take—not just a pat reply. 

Hahn then expressed her own frustrations with the public process, blaming Covid; the mismatch between the size of city staff and the volume of comments, which, she said, numbered in the thousands; and staff’s failure to publicly correct rumors about the elimination of all parking, the disregard of pedestrian safety, and other erroneous views that were circulating in the community. Several times she stated that responding to public comments, was staff’s job, not hers. 

That said, she also described her efforts to supplement the staff response, such as organizing meetings with people living up to a half-block off four segments of Hopkins. To provide what she called “a protected opportunity for the people most affected to discuss the plan without people from beyond the neighborhood,” the gatherings were not advertised on email. Hahn personally knocked on doors and dropped the flyers. She said the meetings were well-attended. What she didn’t say is what the attendees told her at those meetings, and if what they said was reflected in the final plan, and how so. It was the first I’d heard of these meetings, whose existence was never publicized beyond the local flyers and, whose proceedings are not to my knowledge documented in the city’s public records. 

Hahn also voiced her dissatisfaction with the Zoom format, noting that it didn’t offer enough time and opportunity for consultation. So why, I asked, did you announce at the start of the May 2 online meeting that “we’ve disabled Chat, because it’s distracting”? Distracting to whom? Distracting to the people running the meeting, she said, comparing the messages in Chat to people having side conversations at live meetings. 

I demurred, arguing that when it comes to public participation, Chat is one of the few good things about Zoom. And it’s different from talking at a live meeting: Chat is silent. Just ignore it. 

Hahn disagreed, stating that, unlike at meetings that can be called by “anybody,” the May 2 meeting had been called by people with “some plan”—the implication being that such their intentions might be subverted by the open discussion facilitated by Chat. 

But perhaps our most revealing exchange about public engagement, or the lack thereof, in the Hopkins planning process came after Hahn remarked that the city didn’t receive real “critiques,” just “ideas.” 

I asked: What about Donna DeDiemar’s deeply researched critique of the major rationales that staff and the bike lobby bandy about to justify putting bike lanes on Hopkins and the construction of a citywide low-stress bicycling network: 70 percent of Berkeley residents would ride bikes but don’t because they feel unsafe doing so; and, more importantly, Hopkins is a high-injury street? 

To my surprise, Hahn expressed deep skepticism about traffic engineering studies in general. When I asked why she hasn’t challenged such studies, she downplayed their importance in her own decisionmaking. 

To my knowledge, Hahn has never cited the 70 percent figure, which, both DeDiemar and I contend, is based on a bogus survey. But the background section of her 2018 budget referral begins by citing two fatalities on Hopkins that resulted from car accidents, stating that “[t]hese tragedies are just two of the most recent and deadly incidents in this busy area.” 

Her curiosity spurred by those very citations, DeDiemar delved into state of California data and found that one of the two 2017 accidents was the fault of the cyclist. Moreover, the period covered by the city staff’s study, 2016-2019, was an anomaly in Hopkins history. 

Perhaps Hahn didn’t remember that her 2018 referral cited the high-injury charge. When we spoke, I didn't bring it up. I did say that her failure to challenge these pseudo-scientific claims or to insist that staff respond to respond to researched objections, is cynical. 

But true believers don’t need science to justify their positions. Just so, Hahn told me that if the Bicycle Plan study had found that only 20 percent of Berkeleyans don’t cycle because they feel unsafe, fighting for such a network “is worth it. I still support increasing the ability of people to bike safely in Berkeley, period.” 

As I wrote in Part Four, coming from a democratically elected official, such dogmatism is unconscionable. Unfortunately, the council’s deliberations on the Hopkins plan made it clear that except for Wengraf, the mayor and council share Hahn’s doctrinaire attitude toward bicycling. 

The electeds’ zeal shouldn’t stop Berkeleyans from demanding a reasoned city policy. The 2017 Bicycle Plan is being updated, with a draft scheduled for public review this fall. That review should offer an opportunity to scrutinize the data behind the plan’s major rationales. If that data and the accompanying rationales prove to be questionable, the council needs to order new inquiries. 

Until such investigations are completed and publicly vetted, both the Bicycle Plan update and the installation of cycle tracks on Hopkins should be put on hold, even as the much-needed repaving of the street and new pedestrian safety measures go forward in the summer of 2023. If it turns out that Hopkins is not a high-injury street after all, the major rationale for installing bike lanes on it will have been invalidated. 

The bike lobby will howl about not installing cycle tracks at the same time as the street is re-paved. But the debacle at the intersection of Hopkins and The Alameda should be reminder enough of the cost of replacing a poorly designed facility. It’s possible, after all, that new studies will conclude that bike lanes don’t belong on Hopkins—which would save the city a great deal of money. In any case, there’s a lot more at stake here than money: the future of a unique hub of commerce and community life. And real safety. 

To see a more fully documented, much longer version of this article, click here. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Correction, Part Two: 

“Bus lanes and business,” stated that the staff plan removed the bus stop at the northeast corner of Hopkins and Monterey. Indeed, the bus stop icon does not appear in that location. In response to my inquiry, Deputy Director of Public Works for Transportation Farid Javandel said that the icon had been inadvertently omitted, and that the bus stop will be retained. Note, however, that the lane in which the bus now stops, the parking space “lane," will be eliminated to make way for the bike lanes. In the reconfigured street, the bus will stop in the westbound auto lane.