UC Berkeley Planning

Unofficial Portal for Land Use, Environmental and Transportation Planning

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Berkeley DAP passes after seven years setting building guidelines and sustainability thresholds.

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"when i was a student... i used my pass ALL the time.."

Comment about the ClassPass from UC Berkeley Alum on Facebook

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The Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund recently funded artistic treatments 'on 7 of utility  boxes on the campus edge that reflect UC Berkeley’s actions and visions of sustainability.'  The project is a partnership with the Earth Island Institute to make 60 utility boxes in downtown Berkeley works of art.  UC Berkeley faculty, staff, students and alumni are invited to submit design concepts for the 7 boxes on the campus edge by November 1.  See the artist call at link provided for more details.

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Interesting Discussion on Campus-Related Parking

We recently noticed a thought-provoking discourse on campus parking infrastructure stemming from reports, that an east-coast professor had quit his academic job over a lack of parking.    

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/08/30/dalhousie-professor-quits-after-missing-out-on-parking-pass/

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1047101--halifax-professor-quits

While the article provides limited insights into the actual policy issue, explaining how a Dalhousie University professor quit his job over a "ridiculous" lack of parking cuasing "30 years of frustration", intriguing points can be found in the discussion following it.  The comments include ideas for better managing parking supply and methods that universities are using to offer alternatives to driving thereby freeing up parking spaces for those who need to drive.  Some of the most proactive comments are included below -- many of which are consistent with the policy suggestions of our recent Parking and TDM Master Plan.

"Why don't they raise the price to the market-clearing price? They could use the revenue to fund the bike racks, bus passes, and garage construction."

"We are trying to promote more active transportation, which leaves more parking spaces for those who drive: www.unomaha.edu/bikeshare"  

"Our big  landlocked university is engaged in a little social engineering to deal with the parking problem.  We added about 10,000 dorm beds and require first year students to live in dorms. The school has also attracted a lot of private student housing within easy walking or biking distance from campus.

 "We run free circulator buses a couple of miles in all directions from campus. We provide provide low cost public transportation passes (bus, metro) to any students, faculty, or staff who want them. We teach classes from 7 in the morning until 10 at night. We give our parking staff excelent training in customer relations. And we jacked up campus parking fees from dirt cheap to the PAC 12 standard. Most campus parking is now in three or four floor parking structures. There are some relatively inexpensive perimeter parking lots ($300 a year) served by shuttle buses. There is no free parking for anyone, except emeritus faculty (the only perk for retirees).  And all of this together works quite well. There is always some space available at any time of day in an on-campus structure. Traffic around campus is modest most of the time."

"Keep in mind that this is in one of those big sprawling western cities with a "car culture." Some administrator at the university recognized that parking is a systemic and a cultural problem. You can never build enough parking places. You have to approach the problem from many directions and provide incentives that change behavior and culture.  And, no, I do not work for the parking office."

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Call for UCB Artists for a beautiful, sustainable campus and city edge

The Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund has provided funding to place artistic treatments on 7 utility boxes on the campus edge that reflect UC Berkeley’s actions and visions of sustainability.  Design concepts and portfolio samples are due November 1.  Please see the artist call at

http://sustainability.berkeley.edu/os/pages/projects/streets_alive.shtml

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Issues addressed in the Recirculated Subsequent Environmental Impact Report for the California Memorial Stadium Seismic Corrections and West Program Improvements project include the potential impacts of a new NCAA agreement that would require one regular season football game be scheduled for a Friday night, once a season, two years in a four year cycle, at the California Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley; and the potential impacts of permanent improvements and related use of Witter Field, east of the Stadium.

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How can we beautify/revitalize the areas around Telegraph Ave and Durant?

City Sandbox

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Where on the UC Berkeley campus can you find these lanterns?

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One way the campus is supporting sustainable food practices and urban agriculture in practice -- nourishing urbanism through productive landscaping.

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Panoramic photo of the renovation project from the construction observation deck at California Memorial Stadium.

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Out with the old in with the new... consistent with the new signage for Berkeley Law (replacing the Boalt School of Law brand) the Law School South Addition was up and running yesterday with a beautiful cafe and lots of nice open air seating.  More pictures to come!

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Update 6.23.2011: In answer to numerous questions, the law building was designed by Ratcliff Architecture who also worked renovations to the Bancroft Library and VLSB.

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Cal Dining Gets Marine Stewardship Council Certification

Announced this week by the Marine Stewardship Council, "Five years after becoming the first university dining program in the country to achieve organic certification, Cal Dining at the University of California, Berkeley, has ... is the first public university in the nation to be awarded  Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for its commitment to seafood sustainability..."  This is an awesome step for UC in endorsing sustainable fishing practices around the globe.  Go bears!

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VTPI Dialogue on Social Justice and Transportation Planning

Been reading the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute's recently published 'discussion draft' of a proposal for more emphasis on social equity and environmental justice in transport policy and planning.  This is an interesting dialogue that rarely comes to the surface when discussing the impacts of transportation projects.  Many times planners and engineers are more focused on the mobility implications of projects (traffic impacts, lost parking, etc.) than on the accessibility benefits of non-auto-related transportation projects.  As the document indicates this is inequitable in a few specific ways:

Non-drivers as a group receive less than their fair share of transport funding which is unfair (horizontally inequitable). For example, in a typical urban area, 10-20% of trips are made by nonmotorized modes yet only 2-5% of total government transportation budgets are devoted to nonmotorized facilities, and an even small portion including private expenditures on parking facilities mandated in local zoning laws.

Wider roads and higher motor vehicle traffic volumes and speeds impose delay, risk, discomfort and pollution on other road users, particularly pedestrians and cyclists.

Since physically, economically and socially disadvantaged people tend to rely heavily on walking, cycling and public transit (or described differently, people who drive less than average tend to be disadvantaged compared with high-annual-mileage motorists), these impacts tend to be regressive (vertically inequitable).

These policies tend to cause automobile-dependency: transport systems and land use patterns which favor automobile access. This provides inferior access for non-drivers, and transport costs on lower-income households (Agrawal 2011).

These are very interesting points and could be used to justify greater emphasis on mass transit sustainable transportation initiatives (e.g. bus, BRT, rail) vs. individualized solutions (e.g.  biofuels, EV’s, paving technology).    Regardless, they provide an interesting platform to build future win-win transport solutions among the many diverse interest groups in our nation.

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Screenshot from our forthcoming enterprise GIS.

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We're excited that the campus will be hiring a transportation demand management coordinator to help with campus transportation planning and analysis and "minimize the number of vehicles coming to campus by maximizing all facets of our alternative transportation program, and other innovative means to alleviate the daily demand for parking on and around campus."  Getting people from home to work / sustainable in the most efficient, effective and sustainable manner is an important piece of our commitment to reduced greenhouse gas emissions.