Public Comment

The innocuous title of Item 30 on the Berkeley Council’s December 12 agenda—“Letter to AC Transit Regarding Draft Realignment Scenarios”—downplays an issue that is anything but innocuous: the transit agency’s proposed changes to bus routes in Berkeley. The agency says it is responding to changes in rider travel patterns and community input. Its board will decide what to do at its meeting on Wednesday, December 13. 

Authored by Councilmembers Wengraf and Humbert and co-sponsored by Mayor Arreguín and Councilmember Hahn, the item calls “many of the changes in AC Transit’s Realign plans…positive” but also says that “many were deeply concerning to the Council.” 

After reading the Council’s one-page letter to the agency, which is attached to the item, I agree. 

Specifically, Wengraf et al. urge AC Transit “to revise its plans” so as to 

1. Increase, or at the very least, maintain the current level of service, including preservation of both the 65 and 67 lines in the north-east Berkeley Hills. 

2. Maintain direct service to the Berkeley Marina. 

3. Preserve the 72 Rapid line (72R) on San Pablo. 

The 65 and 67 lines should be expanded, not shrunk The authors of Item 30 note that the 65 and 67 bus lines offer the “only transit access and connection to BART for the steep NE Berkeley Hill Area. The Frequent Service Scenario’s merger of these two lines would cut service and access for home healthcare workers, students who would then have to be driven and visitors to Tilden Park, among others….If anything, the currently anemic service should be expanded to include later nights and weekends, as well as greater frequency.” 

Wengraf et al. didn’t say that when the California Department of Housing and Community Development warned the city of Berkeley not to limit ADU development in the hills, it cited the availability of public transit in the area—just one more example of HCD’s preposterous rationales for the ultimatums it’s issuing to cities regarding their housing policies. 

Comment on AC Transit’s website 

Someone forwarded to me Wengraf’s letter to her constituents. There I learned that anyone can comment on the proposed changes by going to the AC Transit Realign page on the agency’s website. There you find that there are four scenarios, some of which replicate each other’s proposals for specific lines—creating a bit of work for would-be commenters. What you don’t find, unfortunately, are the agency’s rationales for specific, proposed changes. 

My online comments echoed the Council’s recommendations, and I added one more: Do not extend the 18 line, which runs on Solano Avenue to downtown Berkeley and then to Oakland’s Chinatown, to Montclair. That extension would make it difficult if not impossible for the 18 bus coming back to Berkeley to stick to its schedule. 

And though I might have missed it, I wrote that I couldn’t find the 79 line, which goes from El Cerrito BART to downtown Berkeley via Colusa, ending at Claremont and College Avenue, on any of the scenarios. Please don’t eliminate line 79. 

When I weighed in online last week, fewer than 900 people had commented. Please check it out. 

People can attend the AC Transit Board’s meeting next week. An open house starts at 4 pm; the meeting proper begins at 5 pm. The agency is encouraging online attendance. Info at the bottom of the Realign page.