Berkeley has to establish a LRTRP - Long Range Traffic Reduction Plan. In a nutshell, I'm pushing for (1) bike lanes on commercial corridors, where the destinations (including bike shops) are, as well as (2) a "scoping" type study to create alternative transportation for the hills. At some point, probably after I'm dead and gone, or every last gas station is, there will have to be ski-lift type gondolas taking people, and possibly their bikes, to hillside neighborhoods, with three or four stops on each of three or four lines, to serve hill neighborhood stations that are ready for our walk and roll future. I realize this is visionary if not hallucination, but the reality is for such long range changes. Scoping and planning need to start being talked about by city officials. Same with light rail. Even if AC Transit rights of way are locked out of Berkeley’s reach, litigation could be pursued to get out of this (no sunset clause?) hegemony of Death by Diesel. In the short range AC Transit has to learn to put the bio in diesel instead of the die in diesel. Asthma can be fatal. The City of Berkeley lambastes the University LRDDP (Long Range Death By Development plan) but pursues and approves its own parking and car intensive development. A City of Berkeley Long Range Traffic Reduction Plan has to be a vital part of City opposition to the University LRDDP. And long range always seems to apply to transportation planning; the prefunded bike lanes on Telegraph Ave in Oakland have languished in a snare of litigation and Environmental Impact Reports after approval by Oakland City Council 6 years ago, just involving easy to modify striping/signage work! Signage or striping for bikes and bike shoppers on Shattuck Avenue should have been provided already, but of course Berkeley will have to condense, plan, bicker and litigate any such mere signage and striping for a decade during which the transportation circumstances will devolve and change so much, by the time anything is approved and permitted, whatever got approved and permitted will be obsolete. Berkeley’s process is like a dog chasing its tail. And Shattuck Avenue needs a redesign, it’s no longer the 1960 no one’s noticed this YET in a town purporting to be encouraging bicycling?!?! Berkeley, like the rest of the US, has degenerated from the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, to the competition for death, parking, and validation!!! This can only change for the better; Berkeley has become a bottom feeder for the last gasps and gulps of the gasoline/automobile age, and has nowhere to go but by that old religion of walk and roll!!!!! Here’s to the bikers, skateboarders, rollerblades, wheelchair riders, scooter champs and walkers!!! May they no longer have to cope with two Hummers passing each other on those crumbling narrow strips of hill neighborhood asphalt petroleum ribbons, never designed to carry all of the above. Surrey bikes are the greatest and the ONLY four wheeled vehicles I try and share a sidewalk deprived narrow, winding, sliding down the hillside crumbling asphalt with!
P.S. Jim’s afternoon in Berkeley, starting at Noon, February 16, 2005, all by errand bike outfitted with nothing more than a pair of large waterproof saddlebags (Ortlieb brand world tour panniers from Berkeley’s MISSING LINK bicycle shop; I never wear a backpack, due to a spinal injury.) Hargrove library on UCB campus Wurster Hall Upper Sproul Plaza Meridith Morgan eye clinic Lower Sproul Plaza Zee Zee Copy, Durant Walk Starbucks Oxford Cartridge World Gaia Building Rex Lock and Key Kragen Auto Berkeley’s Office of Planning and Building Berkeley City Hall Provo Park Radstons Mac Store Alko Supply Mac Store Again Missing Link Mikes Bikes shop Then home - six hours of Shopping Berkeley by Bike, a water driven fuel cell vehicle. Office of Planning and Building’s water fountain kindly allowed me to Tank Up at midday. Water plus courtesy, Caution, Civility, Care and Community is all I need to run my errands and SHOP BERKELEY!!
P.S. Jim’s afternoon in Berkeley, starting at Noon, February 16, 2005, all by errand bike outfitted with nothing more than a pair of large waterproof saddlebags (Ortlieb brand world tour panniers from Berkeley’s MISSING LINK bicycle shop; I never wear a backpack, due to a spinal injury.) Hargrove library on UCB campus Wurster Hall Upper Sproul Plaza Meridith Morgan eye clinic Lower Sproul Plaza Zee Zee Copy, Durant Walk Starbucks Oxford Cartridge World Gaia Building Rex Lock and Key Kragen Auto Berkeley’s Office of Planning and Building Berkeley City Hall Provo Park Radstons Mac Store Alko Supply Mac Store Again Missing Link Mikes Bikes shop Then home - six hours of Shopping Berkeley by Bike, a water driven fuel cell vehicle. Office of Planning and Building’s water fountain kindly allowed me to Tank Up at midday. Water plus courtesy, Caution, Civility, Care and Community is all I need to run my errands and SHOP BERKELEY!!