Public Comment

Something kept bothering me at the second presentation in two days of the "Ohlone Greenway Safety Improvements Project" at the North Berkeley Senior Center. A small thing perhaps. But there was nothing safe about the safety project.

That wasn't all. It was being raced through a process as though lives were at stake. And the only lives in jeopardy I could see were those intending to use the pathways as pedestrians after having them widened to accommodate electric bike and electric scooter users as well as bike commuters.

I walked home thinking, what is this all about? There's no actual safety in this plan, which my neighbors and I only discovered that night included the removal of eleven mature trees unmarked on my full color map. Only one tree was marked on the map for removal, a coast live oak referred to as dead. One was left to guess where the other trees were, what kind of trees they were, and how long they might survive and contribute to a natural landscape if they were not considered to be, as the map put it, "constraints". It shocked the room to hear of eleven trees planned for removal to accommodate bicycles and electric vehicles intending to "share" a widened pathway with pedestrians. Pedestrians in Berkeley know what "shared-use" means. It means leaping out of the way, if one can, of 30 mph vehicles heading right for you and expecting you to move because, well, because they can. Here at the corner of University and San Pablo you can expect derision from the police if you report this kind of thing. Their attitude is, what do you expect; you live in the wrong part of town. 

The ecologists know that even a dead tree has profound ecological value in a natural setting. And diseased trees, as they die back, still offer habitat, shade, fruit and nuts greatly appreciated by birds and bugs barely hanging on in most cityscapes. Although dead trees might be less attractive, they are essential to a natural setting's health. Dead wood decomposes with the help of fungi, bacteria and other life forms, aiding new plant growth and returning nutrients to the soil while teeming with new life. 

I am a lifelong bike commuter. I routinely used a compass during my working life to dial a five mile circle around my home and only ever entertained job possibilities within that circle. I grew up with a family library which included the first edition of Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe'. I would gladly walk my bicycle on any pathway too constricted for safe "shared-use" by both bikes and pedestrians if it would save a tree. Any tree. 

In the case of this proposal, it would save a Monterey Pine between Cedar and Virginia Gardens, a Red Oak between Cedar and Rose, a Loquat between Cedar and Rose, a Raywood Ash at Rose, a Blackwood Acacia between Cedar and Hopkins, a Callery Pear between Cedar and Hopkins, a dead Coast Live Oak at Hopkins and Peralta, and a Willow at Santa Fe. 

But the map doesn't show the location of any of the trees proposed for removal. None of the members of the public who attended the presentations, unless they asked the specific question asked on Thursday, January 18, 2024 by local reporter Kelly Hammargren, would have any idea that their parks were about to get the axe. Ms. Hammargren at least got a number. It took further requests behind the scenes to get at least eight of the trees identified by species. And they are not on the map. Three trees remain, as of this writing, entirely unidentified by species, location, or alleged disease, and the project is nearly done with its public presentations. 

No one should be making presentations about this project without this information. The presentation didn't offer any alternative to tree removal. It left three trees slated for removal unidentified entirely. One cannot, for instance, walk with a local arborist and independently check on the health of the trees slated to be removed due to a city engineer's determination that they are "substandard" or "diseased" - as well as, apparently entirely coincidentally, right next to the pathway the city wishes to widen - on behalf of a bike lobby vying with developers for most powerful voice in civic political discourse. 

When my generation sparred with the police in the earliest days of Critical Mass bike rides, we were told that we were "blocking traffic" despite being, under California code, traffic ourselves - vehicles entitled to the road. Vehicles equally dangerous as any car, any bus, any taxi. This is why we are not allowed on sidewalks; it is too dangerous, despite what former City Councilmember Rigel Robinson seems to have thought. His ill-considered proposals apparently have a life of their own without his participation. 

But, unlike Albany, which has separate bike paths on the Ohlone pathway beginning right at its city boundaries, Berkeley wants to see if it can get away with a "shared-use" grift which puts us all at risk. The irony is that it is in the name of safety. 

My fellow bike commuters and I had a shared joke about "two-way shared-use pathways" being promoted long before this plan. "Shared-use" has an accompanying death rate which instead of resulting in "One Less Car" as the t-shirts claim, results in "One Less Life", usually that of the bicycle rider who would undoubtedly be found at fault because, after all, it was a bicycle rider. 

We have a choice; we can remake our parks to accommodate bike commuters unwilling to use the roads they have a right to, the roads that the fierce early pioneers of Critical Mass made sure they have a right to. We will lose not just trees. We will lose the sense of space and pace that makes a park different in the first place. Parks are not about getting anywhere in a hurry. Parks are, or should be, about peace, about quiet, about picnics and conversation on a bench with friends. Certainly about knowing your kids won't be killed by a bicyclist late for work banking on pedestrians jumping out of the way as is now common on all Berkeley sidewalks. 

Bike riders in a hurry should use the roads meant for them. And if the roads aren't safe, they should work to make them so, as my generation did. The net result, when bikes are forced to be treated as the natural part of the vehicle traffic they honestly are, will be that a certain ratio of car drivers, forced to slow down to accommodate bicycle traffic at a slower pace, will get on the bus. Congestion all over the Bay Area will reduce. Traffic speeds will naturally slow. Less gas will be used. People will become acquainted with the most green way to get to work, available to everyone with and without disabilities, the bus and rapid transit system. 

Before we sacrifice trees, living beings, before we sacrifice the safety of pedestrians never told their natural landscape of neighborhood trees would need to be treated like furniture, let's at least require the City of Berkeley to be honest when they walk about handing out proposals with most of the story missing. 

We pay our city officials to be fair. We pay them to be honest. We pay them to offer us straightforward opportunities to discuss community plans. There should be no hurry toward proposals which concomitantly include death sentences disguised as safety projects, especially not right before an election. We pay them to do a better job than this. 

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Carol Denney is a lifelong bike commuter, writer, editor of the Pepper Spray Times, and musician.h