Ninth Street in Berkeley is an overly wide street that, on large parts of it, encourages speeding. "Until 1941, there was an interurban train down the center of the street," said Bike East Bay's Robert Prinz during a block party Saturday designed to explore alternative configurations for the street. "That's why it's wider."
That width, explained Prinz, encourages cut-through traffic. "The neighbors don't like it."
But there was no cut-through traffic on Saturday, thanks to $6,000 worth of temporary pop-up bike lanes and traffic calming measures made out of plastic and painted roofing paper. Prinz estimated 1,000 people either biked or walked by to check out the goings on.
One of those people was David Boone of The Towne Cycles in West Oakland. "It's great to see this turnout and have the opportunity for feedback." People were out with their kids doing chalk art on a street normally reserved for car traffic.
More details on the event from Bike East Bay which organized the whole thing on 9th...
...between Dwight Way and Channing Way to install a series of traffic calming and bikeway features, so people can ride through and let us know what they think!
The plan includes a 2-way protected cycletrack segment, a traffic-calmed shared lane segment, and different types of car diverters on each end.
The outcomes of this demonstration may help to inform Berkeley’s Bicycle Plan Update underway now, and Alameda County's upcoming San Pablo Ave Parallel Bike Improvements Project in Berkeley, in addition to follow up opportunities.
Karen Chapman came from Albany to check it out. "I live across from Solano Avenue, and my street is used as a bypass too," she said. She explained that there's so much reckless driving that in the time she's lived on her street in Albany "nearly every parked car has been hit. We desperately need help."
She wants Bike East Bay to set up a pop-up on her street too to start building support for traffic calming.
"Bancroft and Milvia have such great bike lanes. It's made such a difference," said Aliosha (who only gave his first name). But, he cautioned, there are too many dangerous gaps in Berkeley's bike network. He sees the type of Bike East Bay pop-up event as a way to inspire cities to fill in those gaps at low cost. "9th Street can be like Bancroft."
Streetsblog readers may recall this isn't Bike East Bay's first pop-up style event. They did a similar event in San Leandro in 2022, which got that city improving its bike plans. Since then, Bike East Bay has put together a kit of safe-streets pop-up equipment, as pictured in this post, to help neighborhoods visualize what's possible "at real scale," said Prinz.
The idea is to make these materials available to other east-bay advocacy groups who want to use them for their own traffic-calming demonstrations.
This will encourage people to see what's possible and facilitate change. "Streets are constantly evolving," he explained. And these are some tools to encourage that evolution.
