We are looking for some legal and city planning expertise to determine if the City has complied with the legal requirements for the installation of the cycle track on Hopkins Street. The City’s adopted bike plan provides as follows:
“Complete Street Corridor Studies are proposed multimodal transportation studies, not planned projects. Class IV Cycle Tracks and other bikeway types that might impact transit operations, parking, or roadway capacity will not be implemented without these Complete Street Corridor Studies that will include a traffic study, environmental analysis, public process, and coordination with all affected State, County, and local transit agencies.
Potential bikeways to be considered as part of future Complete Street Corridor Studies will be evaluated in the context of the modal priorities established by the Berkeley General Plan Transportation Element and the Alameda County Transportation Commission Countywide Multimodal Arterial Plan. For further information, see Section 5.7 of the Berkeley Bicycle Plan.”
We are worried that the bike track is being rushed through without the necessary study and analysis appropriate for a project with so many impacts. We need to determine if an adequate Complete Street Corridor Study has been completed and what is the legal impact if it has not been completed. We have observed that the Complete Street Corridor Study that was done for the “Southside Bike Track” (Bancroft from Telegraph to Oxford) is much more comprehensive and looks at many more issues.
For example, in the case of Hopkins Street, there was very little study done about the impact of the Bike Track on traffic flow heading eastbound from the Gilman/Hopkins intersection to Sacramento Street. We believe this small section of Hopkins will be severely impacted due to the removal of the “slip lane” and will cause traffic congestion leading to traffic “cutting through” on smaller side streets as well as a host of other problems that need to be studied.
As another example, although some work that would seem to be part of a Complete Street Corridor Study was done on Hopkins Street east of Gilman, the portion of the bike track proposed for west of Gilman has received minimal study and was added at the last minute.
We would like to have a small committee with legal and city planning knowledge or interest to examine these issues. We have one real estate lawyer who is willing to be on the committee but he has requested that we look for additional committee members so they can brainstorm ideas, do any necessary research, and work on a collaborative basis to determine if the City has complied with all legal requirements.