Public Comment

On Monday, December 12, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, the city conducted a “virtual community meeting” about the possible installation of protected bike lanes on Hopkins below Gilman. Along with nearly two hundred other members of the public, I attended the Zoomed event.

For some reason, the city chose to post the meeting via Eventbrite, which meant that to access it, you had to go through Eventbrite, supplying a password to that program—a requirement that flummoxed some would-be participants. I also heard that people couldn’t get in because Eventbrite said it had “closed” the “sales.” Why the Eventbrite gatekeeper?

As with prior virtual community meetings/workshops about installing bike lanes on Hopkins, the city failed to post relevant materials online before the meeting, so members of the public had no opportunity to form a pondered opinion about the options that were presented.

And as with prior virtual Hopkins meetings, this one began with the ritual invocation of the city-approved plans—the Bicycle Plan, the Vision Zero Plan, the Climate Change Plan—plus Councilmember Sophie Hahn’s 2018 referral, that staff and the bike lobby use to legitimate putting bike lanes on Hopkins. As I’ve explained in detail, those documents are problematic.

Add to that the Zoom format—in this case, one in which the hosts—the city, represented by Deputy Director of Public Works for Transportation and Engineering Farid Javandel; and Parisi Consultants—had decided to prevent the members of the public from making themselves visible to each other. I discovered that when I tried in vain to “start” the video. By contrast, Big Brother-like, the hosts allowed their own live images to be fully visible. 

We were shown three options for extending two-way, protected bike lanes down Hopkins west of Gilman—as I understood it, the first from Gilman to Acton (a single block), the second from Gilman to Peralta, and the third from Gilman to Kains. Depending on the location of the bike lanes and the width of the street, which changes, bike lane installation would require the removal of parking on one side or both sides of the street. I took a photo of the chart showing the number of parking spaces on the street. I didn’t see a chart listing the number that would have to be removed, but perhaps I missed it. 

Next, attendees were asked to vote a preference. The first surprise here was that there was a fourth option: “None of the above.” The second surprise was that the fourth option was chosen by fifty-two percent of the respondents. Javandel went to say that the poll results would not be taken seriously, since they were “not representative.” I can’t help wondering if he would have said that if the majority had voted for one of the three bike lane options or cumulatively for all three. 

Then on to the bulk of the meeting: the too-familiar exercise in which city staff and the consultant answer selected questions that have been posed in Chat or by people who’ve raised a virtual hand. Questioners were tightly held to a thirty-second time limit; you could see the seconds ticking down online. Not so, Javandel and Parisi. As usual, there was no follow-up to their answers—and hence no dialogue and certainly no debate. 

What distinguished this meeting was that unlike the one over which Councilmember Hahn presided last May, Chat had been activated. And there, lively, not to say, furious debates unfolded. Indeed, the most striking aspect of the two-hour event was the stark contrast between the crowd-controlled dullness of the exchanges between the hosts and members of the public, and the intensity of the exchanges among the members of the public themselves. Since the hosts had formatted Chat so that people could only reply to Everyone or to the hosts, you saw everyone’s messages. There must have been several hundred messages posted. I couldn’t keep up. 

Unfortunately, when, at the start of the meeting, members of the public repeatedly asked in Chat for the closed caption option to be activated, they were told by the hosts that it wasn’t technically possible, and that a recording may be posted. As of Wednesday evening, I couldn’t find it on the city’s website. And if and when a recording is posted, it ought to be accompanied by the transcript of the Chat conversations. 

So I want to recount one of the Chat dialogues that I found memorable, one in which I was involved. Another community member had written that Walk Bike Berkeley had received $10K from the city. WBB members adamantly denied it. 

Citing my Planet article “The Bike Lobby Rules,” I posted a message stating that the city had given Bike East Bay more than $100K since 2015, and that BEB had funneled money to WBB. 

Again, denials from WBB: we’re volunteers, we don’t get any financial support from BEB. 

That’s true, and I posted a correction: As a volunteer organization, WBB can’t get any money from the city or indeed from BEB. The latter, a nonprofit, can get grants. That said, the two organizations work closely together and tightly coordinate their activities. 

WBB member Liza Lutzker, a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, wrote back that they’ve only had a few meetings with Bike East Bay. 

My response: I don't believe it. What about the appeals you jointly issued in the run-up to the council’s May 10 meeting, the one at which the bike lanes from Gilman east were approved? I could have added that BEB provides WBB with logistical support, swag, and publicity. Also that when you’re already in a collegial relationship, you don’t have to meet formally to work in tandem. 

To my knowledge—as I said, I couldn’t keep up—nobody from WBB responded. After the meeting, I looked at WBB’s Twitter page, and saw that BEB had retweeted WBB’s tweeted appeal for its members to attend the December 12 virtual community event. 

Why is Walk Bike Berkeley so defensive about its collegial relationship with Bike East Bay? 

A final note: When I discussed the Chat activation issue with Hahn last spring, she said that she finds that conversations in Chat distract from the formal meeting. I disagreed. Based on Monday night’s experience, I see her point. I pretty much ignored the left side of my computer screen, where Javendel and Parisi were responding after a fashion to questions, and instead focused on the Chat conversations. 

The lesson isn’t to suppress Chat in future community meetings. Rather, it’s that the city needs to conduct public meetings, especially meetings about controversial issues, in ways that allow for genuine dialogue and debate. 

The arguments people were having in Chat on Monday evening were the ones that Javandel, his colleagues, and their consultants, have suppressed—disagreements over whether bike lanes would make Hopkins more or less safe; hurt or help the shops; and discriminate against those who, due to age, ability, or taste, can’t or won’t bike. And whether the city is using sound data to promote bike lanes on Hopkins and elsewhere in Berkeley. 

People were using Chat because they’re not being heard in the forma processes the city has established for public engagement. That needs to change. It means abandoning Zoom. It doesn’t mean “small groups” shepherded by city staff and/or consultants. 

Until the city comes up with a viable alternative, and as long as it uses Zoom, let us Chat.