Photo: Matthew Roth

Democracy in action, I suppose. Long-time bicycle advocates from the East Bay and San Francisco converged on this meeting, hoping to convince the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) to support using some of the new tolls ($5 on all bridges as of July 1, with $6 congestion pricing on the Bay Bridge during rush hour, and for the first time, a half-price toll for carpoolers) to fund a new west-span bicycle/pedestrian/maintenance/safety lane to make the bridge safer, and to finish the transbay route for bicyclists and pedestrians too, not just motorized vehicles. But that effort was bureaucratically sidetracked before this meeting even started.

Surrounding the MTC hearing room were bicycle advocates from around the region. Photo: Chris Carlsson.

The BATA's legal advice from a prior meeting was that they have no authority to allocate toll monies toward this new path, in spite of language in the law that allows for maintenance and safety improvements, which the new path unambiguously represents.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has asked for a second legal opinion from the State Legislative Counsel, which he said will take 2-3 months to get. Moreover, he followed the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) chair's admonition to the assembled cycling advocates to save their comments for another time (since the question of funding and building a new west-span side path would not be addressed in this meeting), by stressing that the fight was no longer at BATA or the MTC but had moved to the state Legislature in Sacramento.

It's hardly a surprise that the MTC wanted to duck this issue and pass the buck to Sacramento. The 15-member MTC is a lopsided status-quo minded entity. That was revealed again today when San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, responding to several public commenters who were casual carpoolers and feared the new toll would wipe out the phenomenon, proposed the $2.50 carpool toll be reduced to $2.00. A roll-call vote went 13-3 against the proposal, only Daly, Tom Bates, and Bay Conservation and Development Commissioner Ann Halstedt voting for it.

One comment from an employee of the Bay Area Air Quality Control District pointed out that casual carpooling reduces congestion, saves money for those who do it, AND builds community, but the majority of the commissioners were not inclined to tinker with their staff's proposed new toll schedule. Nor did any of them choose to question the formula by which truckers have new tolls phased in over 3 years, denying the bridge budget $60 million according to their own calculations (recreational vehicle owners also showed up to challenge their being classified as trucks for purposes of bridge tolls, which will raise their bridge-crossing costs by 150%).

There is a long and charming local history of bicycle advocates who have pushed BART, Caltrain, the Golden Gate Bridge, and local bus systems for greater accommodation for bicycles and cyclists. It's a thankless, Sisyphean task, and we can all be thankful for those folks who have stuck with it.

That said, I've always been astonished at the eager sincerity a lot of people bring to these governmental processes. As far as I can tell the system is deeply broken. The inordinate emphasis, even at this very late date, on automobiles, freeways, "level of service," etc., seems to always trump common sense efforts to promote the incredibly modest beginnings of a new infrastructure. After all, there are state laws mandating major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. How is that going to be achieved without an alternative as obvious as a Bay Bridge bike path?

It was Jason Meggs and some stalwart friends a decade ago who rode bikes across the Bay Bridge to dramatize the absurdity of denying access to a central transportation artery. But most of the energy these days goes into attending these hearings with homemade signs, with earnest behind-the-scenes message making so as not to offend the commissioners, or become unseemly or too aggressive.

The urgency of altering how we live day to day gets quite lost in these processes. The moods of commissioners, the technical language in obscure appropriations bills, the muscle-bound lobbying strength of corporate behemoths, together become the focus of political action, rather than the terrain of our daily lives. I like the slogan "Bridge the Gap" just fine, but I couldn't help but feel that the real gap needing bridging at today's hearing was between the building trades workers out front clamoring for "jobs" and the bicycling advocates inside who were firmly but cautiously seeking support for a maintenance lane to be added to the west span.

I wondered if anyone had spoken with the building trades folks about supporting the bike/ped/etc. lane? Or has thought to propose a much broader alliance on local projects? (And what is it with union workers and their leaders that they always abdicate control over deciding what work is worth doing to those with the purse strings? Shouldn't workers be central deciders in how their work is employed in our communities?) What about a massive overhaul of local roads and bridges, adding Copenhagen-style bike lanes on every street and span? Think how much work that would be! Oh but we can't pay for it is the immediate rejoinder.

And if you accept the narrow constraints of institutional political reality as it is, then the argument is lost. But what about repealing Prop 13, at least as it applies to major corporations in California? What about ending the U.S. empire's military bases in over 100 countries around the world? Why is the U.S. spending as much on guns and bombs and death and mayhem as the rest of the world combined? Why did the federal government give away $1.5 trillion to the wealthiest owners of businesses instead of embarking on the much-promoted "Green New Deal" that if done honestly, might have provided resources for just this kind of drastic and dramatic reorganization and rebuilding of our urban physical infrastructure?

Common sense is trivialized and marginalized in the public process.

The west-span bike lane is a pipe dream for now. But by making it contingent on a massively expensive new lane being added to the existing bridge (and done under the design and control of the brazenly anti-bicycle Department of Highways, oops, I mean Caltrans), aren't we shooting ourselves in the foot?

A bike/ped/safety/maintenance lane could be put on the top deck of the Bay Bridge in two weeks if we had the political vision to do it. Here's how: Admit that traffic on the inbound west span rarely exceeds 30 mph and make that the new speed limit during rush hour. It's a pretty drive anyway, who cares if you have to go slower? And most of the time you can't get near 30 mph anyway, given the congested traffic. Narrow the five lanes from 12 feet to 10 feet, take the new 10 feet of space and barricade it with a cement railing. Voila! You have a bike/ped/safety/maintenance lane. The other five lanes are open during rush hour, but only 4 lanes are open the rest of the time, leaving a buffer lane next to the bike/etc. lane for additional safety. When traffic is light and only four lanes are open, the existing 50 mph speed limit can prevail... If we wanted to do it, we don't have to wait 3 months for a new legal opinion, and then another 2-plus years for another toll increase, and then 5-7 years for design and building of this new lane.

We could do it by March 1. Why not?

Photo: Matthew Roth

And who should they hang for granting variances permitting higher than 2:1 ratios, as happened last week when a two-unit home at 2626 Larkin Street in Russian Hill received permission from the San Francisco Planning Commission to build five parking spaces, one with a parking stacker for additional cars?

When these questions are asked of city planners and developers, like they were during the struggle to limit parking at 299 Valencia Street, advocates and political leaders are led to believe that it is impossible to finance new developments, particularly condos and non-rental properties, without the maximum parking ratio possible. Less parking, goes the developer refrain, banks will refuse to loan and the units will be impossible to re-sell.

Not all developers buy that argument, however, and some have buildings that disprove it.

"If you are doing a project next to BART or many buses, you really don't need to have a lot of cars," said Oz Erickson, Chairman of the Emerald Fund, Inc, a developer who has built more than 2,000 units in San Francisco. Emerald's newest development, a rental building at 333 Harrison Street in Rincon Hill, will be built with a .5:1 parking-to-unit ratio, even though the developer could appeal for a variance to build more parking.

Above all else, Erickson argued, a city should provide as much flexibility in developments as possible. "You really should be in a position where zoning laws do not require you to put in parking," he said.

Patrick Kennedy's Gaia Building in Berkeley has 91 units and only 35 parking spaces. Photo: jeremydw

Referring to cyclists and others who don't own cars: "I think it's important to provide them with an opportunity to live a car-free life if they choose to."

Berkeley and East Bay bicycle commuters will have many more bicycle parking options with the opening of a new storefront bicycle station near Downtown Berkeley BART later this year. East Bay Bike Coalition Executive Director Robert Raburn and a spokesperson for BART confirmed that a lease was signed last week at the site of the former Shoe Pavilion store on Shattuck Avenue, just steps from the Allston Way entrance to the BART station. The new bike station will be operated by Alameda Bicycle, which runs the current station.

"BART and the City of Berkeley look forward to opening a world-class bike station by the end of the year," BART Public Information Officer Luna Salaver wrote in an email to Streetsblog San Francisco. "The new Berkeley Bike Station is a triple win for BART and Berkeley. It will support cycling to BART, help protect the environment, and increase access to jobs, to other transit systems, and to shopping, arts, and education. The new Bike Station will include over 200 secure bicycle spaces and commuter support services such as bicycle repair and retail, bicycle rentals, showers and lockers, and community bike education classes."

The new bike station is at least partially the result of successful lobbying from the East Bay bicycle community, including the EBBC and Bicycle Friendly Berkeley, which saved the proposal after it neared the brink of losing funding late last year.

The new station will be paid for by a mixture of a Safe Routes to Transit (SR2T) grant, a program funded by Regional Measure 2, and contributions from BART ($53,000 per year) and the city of Berkeley ($60,000 per year). BART is also paying the utilities, estimated at $24,000 per year.

The SR2T grant, which is managed by TransForm and EBBC, was in serious danger of being forfeited last December, when its three-year term was set to expire if Berkeley didn't contribute its portion of the funding. Advocates showed up in force to the December 8 meeting of the Berkeley City Council, concerned that the Council would not provide the funding, or would support a stripped-down proposal for a less visible station located in an existing auto parking garage. District 3 BART Director Bob Franklin also strongly urged the council to take action at the meeting.

These efforts paid off, as the Council unanimously approved providing $60,000 annually in funding for the expanded station, and TransForm consequently extended the grant's term.

"This is exactly the kind of project that SR2T conceptualized: a transit station that has no car parking and a desperate need for safe, convenient bicycle parking to attract riders," said TransForm Executive Director Stuart Cohen. "The existing bike station was both overcrowded and difficult to get to, as it was subterranean. This will put bike access to transit where it should be, at ground level in a visible space."

The existing bike station in the Downtown Berkeley BART station. Flickr photo: emptyhighway

Streetsfilms documented the existing Downtown Berkeley Bike Station in 2007, which the EBBC's Raburn calls "just a cage," since it lacks even a counter for customers with bikes to sign in and receive a claim check, and provides no additional services to commuters. Though it was a major advancement for biker commuters when it opened in 1999, it has since outgrown its 77-bike capacity, and regularly holds 100 bikes, some of which overflow into racks outside the cage.

"A bike station should offer full service," said Raburn. "We want a product mix that's very commuter-oriented." Its storefront location will also give it extra visibility to passersby downtown who may have missed the existing subterranean station.

When the new bike station opens, it will represent a strong political victory for East Bay bicycle advocates, as well as an encouraging case of multiple jurisdictions coordinating to build a deserving project. Raburn explained that SR2T "ideally rewards multi-jurisdictional projects, to get past finger pointing between different jurisdictions, and 'incentivize' multi-jurisdictional projects."

With the Embarcadero BART bike station holding 97 cycles, less than half what the new Berkeley facility will hold, and with San Francisco's bike injunction nearing its end, cyclists in San Francisco may be looking to best practice examples of facility design and advocacy just across the bay.

I got an email forwarded to me over the weekend titled "BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA HATES URBAN GARDENS" which naturally sparked my interest. Turns out to be a lot more interesting than the title even suggested. Asa Dodsworth has lived in his place on Acton and Allston Way in Berkeley for about a decade, which he owns. He's a gentle, lanky fellow who decided some years ago to plant food in his front yard and on the six-foot wide median between the curb and the sidewalk running in front of his property. He's not officially associated with Transition Towns or any of the many new initiatives cropping up (pun intended!) that are trying to find local ways to address a world out of kilter. But clearly his dedicated effort to use his small area to grow food instead of keeping it strictly ornamental or recreational is part of a bigger agenda of urban redesign and transformation that benefits us all, and sets a standard that many more of us should be working towards.

I took my bike on BART to seek out this controversial streetscape and see for myself. As luck would have it, I arrived in late afternoon and found Asa pruning some of the foliage in his median, while a cluster of folks stood around discussing not just his situation, but the also the larger dynamic associated with the overblown "crisis" of the light brown apple moth. (For a full download on this topic, go to www.DontSprayCalifornia.org). To get to Asa's place I got off at Ashby BART and rode north on Acton until I found it, not knowing precisely where it was, but having seen some photos on-line. As I rode along I couldn't help but notice that LOTS of homes along Acton are characterized by dense foliage in the front yards, sometimes fruit trees, sometimes just a variety of thick shrubs, flowers and on one occasion at least, artichokes!

Artichokes on Acton Street median.

The rest of the yard where the artichokes are growing.

Another dense front yard on Acton St.

Obviously lots of Berkeley neighbors want to use their front yards in non-suburban ways!

I arrived and chatted with the folks there. Max is an activist with the Don't Spray California campaign and pointed out that the nearby pocket park has several insect traps placed in it, just in the past week or two. She felt that the harassment the city was subjecting Asa to was part of a broader campaign that would use the presence of food-growing urban gardens as an excuse for extensive pesticide spraying on behalf of the state's agribusiness interests. I wouldn't dismiss that out of hand, for sure, but it's hard to think that local Berkeley code enforcers are working for the big ag interests that dominate state politics... so what is really going on?

Neighbors discuss politics in front of Asa's house.

Here's an excerpt from Asa's appeal:

The City of Berkeley Code enforcement has decided my front yard fruit trees and garden beds are an "unpermitted violation" and must be removed. They have fined me $4,500- already and threatened daily additional fines of the same. That's $135,000 per month!

In conversation they tell me that I'm supposed to have a lawn just like all the other houses, they say that the front yards is for recreation. But they don't put those crazy statements on paper, on paper they write citations for

    * vegetation over six foot tall, a five hundred dollar a day fine, now cited twice in a two week period
    * Unpermitted Trees, a five hundred dollar a day fine, cited twice
    * Unpermitted Garden Beds, a five hundred dollar a day fine, cited twice
    * two counts of obstruction of the right of way, at five hundred dollar a day each.
    * And a we already told you so citation, a five hundred dollar a day fine
    * and to further damage me, they mailed copies of this mayhem to my Bank

In recent walking surveys of our Berkeley yardscape: 25% of Berkeley Properties have a fruit tree in the right of way, 80% have vegetation obstructing the sidewalk, or egress for cars, and 90% have vegetation over 6 ft tall. These numbers establish a clear community standard of appreciation and support of front yard gardens. And that community standard is defensible position in a court of law.

And I will fight these citations all the way, Code enforcement Officers Maurice Norrise and Gregory Daniels have selectively enforced these laws, as a tool of harassment, against myself and every community garden, and activist household I know of in Berkeley. Its time to turn this tide. Its time for an investigation into the questionable practices of Berkeley's code enforcement department.

Step in for a fellow neighbor, and Stand up for your right to plant you own Victory Garden, for your right to choose the trees that you are responsible for pruning and sweeping up after. Don't let them take away this valuable tool in the fight against global warming.

We need you to call these important local decision makers and tell them how you feel, call and leave a message tonight
Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna, (510) 981-7600
Neighborhood Services Officer Angela Gallegos-Castillo (510) 981-2491
City Manager Phil Kamlarz (510) 981-7000

if you wanna see pictures of the Garden, visit www.berkeleyvictorygardens.tk
If you want to help us organize events, email fruit-jam-renegades (AT) googlegroups.com
if you want to stay in touch, or come to a garden building party, check out
http://groups.google.com/group/food-not-lawns-eastbay-events

Sincerely, Asa Dodsworth, moped45 (AT) gmail.com
oh, and dont forget to forward this message to your friends

Asa Dodsworth

It's pretty difficult to imagine a city with Berkeley's self-image of progressivism and ecological sanity standing behind this kind of obsolete, suburbanite bureaucratic behavior. Take a moment to make a call, or if you live in Berkeley, lean on your council members and the Mayor to not only back off, but honor and reward Asa! His actions are a model that should go well beyond the medians and front yards and extend to narrowing roads and taking up a lane wherever possible for food production...

Coming soon: One Lane for Food!

A Sunday Stroll on International Boulevard, Flickr photo by madpai

I live on Mission Street, a few blocks south of Cesar Chavez, on the side of the street that the Post Office includes in its Bernal Heights boundary.  If I tell people I live in Bernal Heights, most assume I'm up on Cortland Street in the commercial center of Bernal Heights, a fifteen minute walk.  If I say Mission, they assume the area north of Cesar Chavez between 24th Street and 14th Street, a 10 to 20 minute walk.  No one knows what I mean if I say Precita Valley.  Inevitably, I just say I live across the street from the bar El Rio and most people know exactly where I am.

Berkeley landscape architecture graduate student Robert Lemon was recently awarded the Landscape Architecture Foundation's Dangermond Fellowship to examine questions of neighborhood identity in the Oakland districts of Fruitvale, West Oakland, and Chinatown. He's hoping the information he gathers will inform city planners and politicians not only about how members of a community define themselves, but ways the city can improve the neighborhood according to those geographic and cultural identities.

Mapping Oakland is based on previous experience Lemon had as a planner in Columbus, Ohio, and research he did for a Berkeley class on the relocation of the I-880 in West Oakland after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed a section of it. 

Lemon has completed most of the survey work he intends to collect and is now filtering through the data for patterns, which he expects will vary by demographic and cultural subsets.  Lemon and a Berkeley counterpart will create GIS maps to give a visual representation to the dynamics of those neighborhoods.  He explained that three respondents will have three different perspectives on the boundaries of a neighborhood and, using GIS, he will map the errors of disagreement among all respondents.  If a block within a neighborhood is repeatedly excluded from the boundaries, he wants to know which that is and why it is defined the way it is.

Shopping in Oakland Chinatown, Flickr photo by Old Jingleballicks

"The reason we study what makes humans interesting is because they never think the way you assume they will," he said.

In Fruitvale, for instance, Lemon said that most of his respondents were Mexican immigrants who identify the boundaries of their neighborhood by referring to two streets, Fruitvale Avenue and International Boulevard.  Respondents south of Fruitvale Avenue identify their neighborhood as the area southeast of Fruitvale and International, while respondents north of Fruitvale Avenue said that their neighborhood was to the northeast of both streets.  None of the respondents to his surveys consider BART's Fruitvale transit village to be "Fruitvale" (Lemon did not survey residents of the transit village, who he said might define their neighborhood much differently).

In West Oakland, preliminary data show that many residents of the section of the neighborhood to the west of Mandela Parkway who were previously circumscribed by the elevated freeway still consider their neighborhood to be the "real" West Oakland, despite twenty years without a physical boundary separating them from their neighbors to the east. 

In addition to the maps, Lemon expects to analyze a number of other important signifiers that inform neighborhoods.  As a trained planner and human geographer, he is very interested in how residents in various neighborhoods experience public space, and thus his survey questions seek to discover why, for instance, public parks in West Oakland are not often used as social spaces by residents there (the general feeling is they are unsafe, other meeting places on streets and near businesses), or why Chinatown residents prefer busy sidewalks and socializing on the street over meeting in parks (cultural traditions and nostalgia from busy cities in China, traditional dance and ritual performed on hard, even surfaces, not on grass). 

The results of Lemon's surveys will be compiled this year and presented at a September conference of the American Society of Landscape Architects, though he said he expected a future Berkeley graduate student will perform a similar study in a few years to track changes in the neighborhoods.  The data for the survey is not meant to be prescriptive, though the planner in him had a hard time halting at analysis. 

In Oakland Chinatown, he said that most respondents liked the crowded conditions on the sidewalks, which they said reminded them of home, and didn't think widening the sidewalks was a priority.  Lemon suggested that Oakland could widen the sidewalks, taking up some or all of one of the underutilized vehicle lanes, then design in physical elements to the sidewalk that would re-create a slowing effect.  He suggested that the City of Oakland could grant permits that allow vendors to move their wares further into the widened sidewalks and could create sitting areas and planters that would break up the newly enlarged area to encourage and enrich the social activities that currently occur there.

Businesses and residents of Oakland Chinatown had previously banded together to use federal and state grants to redefine several pedestrian and streetscape features along four blocks there, including stylized crosswalks, signage, and pedestrian wayfinding.  A short history of that project can be found here.

Like efforts in Los Angeles to define and map neighborhoods, Lemon said there is often disagreement over what exactly a neighborhood is.  After City Homestead, a West Oakland blog, wrote about Mapping Oakland and readers began to compare notes online, they discovered there was some disagreement about what constituted West Oakland.  Some were quite upset when their friends and neighbors disagreed with their own neighborhood boundaries. 

"People aren't happy when their neighbors don't agree with the boundaries of the neighborhood," said Lemon.  "It's some psychological issue there; we don't want to be the one that is different." 

Lemon said some of the survey respondents, especially among those were were white and had completed graduate eduction, were concerned that he didn't include maps with the survey questions.  He heard comments such as "I wish it had a map so I could look at my boundaries," or " I had to go get a map" to compete the surveys.  Others added comments like, "I hope I got all the answers right," or "Now you can tell me how wrong my perceptions are."

"There's no right or wrong with people's perceptions," said Lemon.  "But we as policy makers and designers want to understand how people use space."

Though new surveys won't make it into the current study, interested readers can take the survey here for inclusion in later work.