Berkeley Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)

City Council Bullied By Mis-informed Opponents into Killing Dedicated Lanes and BRT in Berkeley

Despite endorsements from the Sierra Club, TransForm, the Building Trades Council, UNITE-HERE Local 2850, Livable Berkeley, and others to study a Full-Build BRT alternative, Councilmembers Jesse Arreguin, Gordon Wozniak, Susan Wengraff, and Kris Worthington would only vote to study an alternative that had not yet been considered. The alternative that was approved would be like existing 1R service service, but with bulb-outs, proof-of-payment systems, and traffic signal priority but no dedicated lanes as the build alternative.

A genuine interest on the part of Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmembers Linda Maio, Laurie Capitelli and Daryl Moore to study dedicated lanes as part of a "Full-Build" alternative could not win a fifth vote.

Councilmember Max Anderson was away on a pre-planned vacation.

This is an unfortunate turn of events for "progressive" Berkeley, which seems to have been supportive of the project up until now. The approved alternative is not expected to deliver the same amount of reliability that dedicated lanes would give, and to run BRT outside of dedicated lanes for long stretches could cause a delay in the overall system, reducing the overall capacity for higher frequencies.

It's not clear if this alernative would even be worthwhile for AC Transit to pursue, as oppossed to simply leaving Berkeley out of the future project altogether. If Oakland, upon study of the impacts of a full-build BRT system in an Final Environmental Impact Report, decides to move forward with a full-build BRT system, AC Transit could decide to have BRT "turn around" before going to Berkeley (i.e. at Broadway, the Uptown Transit Center, Macarthur BART, or at Alcatraz Ave.). 

Please check back here again soon for more updates, once we learn of what this means for the overall East Bay BRT project.