After a year and a half of planning, Berkeley City Council will soon vote on Hopkins street safety improvements. On May 10, Council will decide whether to approve the staff design recommendations from the traffic and placemaking study for Hopkins Street (Gilman to Sutter). Please use this Action Network campaign to write to Council and let them know you support the designs, and going even further, for a safer Hopkins Street.

There will be a lot of neighbors and motorists upset about these safety improvements because they require some on-street parking removal. So, we need to show strong support!

The Hopkins Street design recommendations will make the street safer and more attractive for walking, biking, and transit by adding

• mostly protected bike lanes through the planning corridor
• pedestrian safety features (e.g., raised crosswalks at two locations, new stop signs at Hopkins & McGee)
• transit improvements (e.g., bus boarding islands)

Check out the designs here.

However, these improvements shouldn't end at Gilman! To further equity, safety, and sustainability, the City must extend the protected bike lanes to San Pablo when the road is repaved in 2023.

In addition, there are several issues with the conceptual designs that Walk Bike Berkeley, Bike East Bay, and North Berkeley Now! requested staff address during the engineering phase. The most important requests include closing the slip lane at Sacramento and Hopkins, adding a raised crosswalk across Hopkins at the Hopkins and Monterey/California intersection, and widening the 8-foot two-way protected bike lanes from Monterey to The Alameda.