I was heartened to see this article in today’s Berkeleyside:
Wealthy neighborhoods need to take on more housing, West Berkeley council reps say
Sometimes, cities do things without thinking through the consequences of those actions. In this case, the City of Berkeley is facing down its history of racist zoning in a couple particular council districts that have yet to formally acknowledge this reality with actual change.
And acts by former city leaders in other districts are coming back to bite it in the ass.
Specifically:
That’s because the Alameda County Transportation Commission decided against building transit lanes through Berkeley and Albany, citing “significant concerns” heard during the project’s public outreach about taking a lane away from cars and reducing parking along the avenue.
I was present during the public meetings where these “significant concerns” were expressed, and honestly, the way Berkeley drivers voiced those concerns permanently radicalized me: In front of Alameda County Transit Staff, Berkeley elected officials, and all the assembled neighbors, a handful of Berkeley drivers said they would run down any bicyclists who dared to use a dedicated lane, or who otherwise took away from car parking, on San Pablo Avenue.
And, due to the person who was the council rep for that district at the time, those violent threats were enough to kill the optimal road re-design for several years.
The council has changed since then, but the consequences have not. In light of the ongoing conditions on San Pablo, I sent the following e-mail to the City of Berkeley back in July.
If you don’t address cars one way, you’re gonna have to address them another way. We’re in the “truth” stage of the consequences of our actions and there’s no running away from reality anymore.
July 12, 2022
I am writing with my comments on the city’s Draft Sites Inventory for the 6th Cycle Berkeley Housing Element, presented to the Planning Commission on May 4, 2022. I appreciate the amount of time and effort that went into completing the inventory, and so it is with great disappointment that I must register my strong objections to what is clearly an illegal and, therefore, non-certifiable housing element.
Many other Berkeley residents have commented on the questionable nature of some sites, and on the city’s failure to locate zoning-compliant sites in Berkeley’s historically exclusionary neighborhoods, which is itself a disqualifying factor for certification under AFFH. I will limit my comments to the sites the city has focused on for the majority of new housing, including very-low, low- and moderate-income units, which are primarily along the high-traffic corridors of San Pablo Avenue, University Avenue, and Shattuck Avenue.
In recent years, the city has had the opportunity to improve street safety and reduce pollution from traffic on two of these three major thoroughfares (Telegraph and San Pablo). Options included dedicated bus lanes, protected bike lanes, traffic calming and road diet interventions, bulb-outs and other pedestrian safety features, raised crosswalks, lower speed limits (made possible by recent state legislation), and more frequently signalized intersections. But rather than follow current best practices in street design, safety improvements, and pollution reduction, the city made political decisions to maintain current levels of car speed, traffic, and pollution.
These decisions are material to the city’s sites inventory. Concentrating most new housing – particularly low-income and other subsidized housing – on high-speed traffic corridors presents numerous health and safety risks that the city is choosing to exacerbate with its current plan. In essence, in exchange for locating virtually no new housing in wealthier, lower-density neighborhoods, the city is choosing to subject most of its future residents, particularly but not exclusively lower-income residents along San Pablo and University Avenues, to dangerous levels of air pollution and significant personal risk of traffic violence on the streets where their homes will be located.
The evidence about the detrimental human health effects of locating dense housing on busy traffic thoroughfares is robust. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency:
Air pollutants from cars, trucks and other motor vehicles are found in higher concentrations near major roads. People who live, work or attend school near major roads appear to have an increased incidence and severity of health problems associated with air pollution exposures related to roadway traffic including higher rates of asthma onset and aggravation, cardiovascular disease, impaired lung development in children, pre-term and low-birthweight infants, childhood leukemia, and premature death.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has published technical guidance for cities pursuing infill development on high-traffic corridors (such as San Pablo, University, and Telegraph):
The foremost strategy for reducing pollution exposure near high-volume roadways is to minimize traffic pollution in the first place. A key mechanism for this is the reduction of vehicle miles traveled (VMT). State legislation including Senate Bills 375 and 743, are specifically designed to facilitate VMT reductions from passenger cars by encouraging and facilitating the replacement of vehicle trips with walk, bike, and transit trips.
CARB’s 2005 Land Use Handbook also recommended that residential uses (which is covered by “sensitive uses”) not be physically located such that residents would be exposed to harmful pollutants:
The 2005 Land Use Handbook recommends that health protective distances (500 feet at minimum, if there is no site-specifc information available) be implemented to separate sensitive uses from freeways, urban roads with 100,000 vehicles/day, or rural roads with 50,000 vehicles/ day.
San Pablo Avenue carries more than 100,000 vehicles per day, and so, under best practices to protect human health, should not have any new homes located within 500 feet without substantial mitigation measures to prioritize transit-only lanes, reduce dangerous vehicle speeds, enhance the safety of pedestrian and bicycle facilities, and reduce air pollution. Alameda County has determined that San Pablo Avenue is a deadly/dangerous corridor for people who travel by mode other than personal vehicle, and is in the process of designing safety enhancements for the cities that share a border with Berkeley:
Bicyclist- and pedestrian-involved collisions are overrepresented in the collision records along San Pablo Avenue relative to existing volumes (Figure 3). Most collisions along San Pablo Avenue occur in or near intersections (within 100 feet) (see High Injury Network shown in Figure 7 on pg. 5). Unsafe speed is a common collision factor between modes. This indicates a need for safety improvements focusing on intersections and intersection approaches to protect pedestrians and bicyclists as well as projects that reduce auto speeds.
But the City of Berkeley opted out of these enhancements and so will not be applying them to the section of San Pablo within its borders in the near future; while the city’s political stance on San Pablo has changed, the timing of the improvements are not likely to coincide with the need for housing during the 6th RHNA cycle.
Based on the city’s deliberate blockage of safety and transit interventions on San Pablo; its failure to implement any form of street safety or traffic reductions on University and Shattuck; and its blockage of street safety and transit interventions on Telegraph, it is entirely likely that the future residents along these high-traffic corridors will be exposed to even greater pollution and traffic hazards, which is the current policy of the City of Berkeley.
Knowingly exposing future residents to these unsafe and unhealthy conditions is counter to both the spirit and the letter of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing. In essence, the City of Berkeley is concentrating most of its proposed new housing sites in the 6th RHNA cycle along physically dangerous and highly polluted traffic corridors. The city’s political failure to act to mitigate traffic hazards and air pollution should disqualify most of these sites from consideration, given the high health impacts – including permanent lung and developmental damage, severe injury, and death – that are the result of current traffic engineering standards and related management practices on these streets.
As mitigation and to correct these profound errors in its housing element, the city should consider either a) letting go of its oppositional stance on safe streets, transit, and clean air, and follow CARB best practices along these corridors to reduce air pollution and traffic hazards, or b) reducing its reliance on these corridors during the 6th cycle, and follow CARB technical guidance to locate most of its denser, lower and moderate-income housing in neighborhoods located at least 500 feet away from these high-hazard areas, so as to protect the health and safety of its residents.