City of Berkeley Transportation Commission

On April 15th, 2016, I attended the public meeting organized by the City of Berkeley Transportation Commission. The Transportation Division at the City of Berkeley is under the Department of Public Works. It “oversees citywide transportation planning, traffic engineering, parking, bicycle and pedestrian planning, and alternative transportation programs.” It develops long term and short term policy recommendations and directs program implementation in Berkeley.

This meeting is the follow-up public workshop after the first open house on March 16th when the Commission gave out surveys about the public opinions on evaluation criteria for the Berkeley Strategic Transportation (BeST) Plan proposed projects. The main purpose of this meeting to showcase and explain the ranking of the projects (which the Commission will submit to Alameda County Transportation Commission for grants) according to their scores on each criterion and their readiness, that is, how feasible and how close are they to completion.

Most of the Commission members are transportation planners from principal to intern. There is only one person of color. About 40% are women. They have prepared big boards to display the whole process of BeST Plan. And they are there to answer questions from the public before and after the presentation. On the participant’s side, most of them are white senior residents. The only group of young people are mostly students of this class. It is noteworthy that there are a couple “familiar faces” which are the participants who also attended the first open house.

In the presentation, the speaker talks about the evaluation criteria which are for filtering out projects suitable for further investment and advancement and the BeST Plan goals which comply to “Complete Streets” – streets for everyone. He explains how the BeST Plan would be used for prioritization for projects that are economically viable, socially beneficial, and politically appreciable. Therefore, the discussion between members of public and the Commission mainly revolves around priority and funding.

There is no specific amount of money mentioned in the meeting. However, the speaker says that the funding will be consisted of county-wide sales tax, competitive grants, and outside sources. The BeST Plan is established for the application for the Alameda County grants so that the projects proposed and ranked high are those in the interest of the city of Berkeley as well as Alameda County.

Since the projects follow the policies of Complete Street, the Commission members claim the proposed projects are going to benefit all users. Nonetheless, several participants raise concerns about taking away street parking would hurt small local businesses and restaurants. It gets intense every time members of the public ask questions about how would the commission spend the money in details because the answer the commission members give is quite vague and