Safe Transportation Research & Education Center

The City of Berkeley has had a Bike Plan since 1971, one of the first city bike plans in the US. The plan was comprehensively updated and expanded in the 1990's, resulting in a new Berkeley Bicycle Plan which was adopted by the Berkeley City Council in 2000. The new plan laid out Berkeley's Bicycle Boulevards which were based in part on the foundational bikeway network identified in the 1971 Plan. In Spring of 2014 the City of Berkeley will kick off the first comprehensive update of the Plan since 2000. This presentation will discuss the historical evolution of the Berkeley Bike Plan from its origins in 1971 through its role as a next-generation implementation tool of Complete Streets; trace the development of Bicycle Boulevards as the backbone of Berkeley's Bikeway Network and their success or failure as measured by bicycle counts and historical collision analysis; and conclude with a discussion of what might be next for Berkeley's bikeways and bikeway network. Design details of some current and upcoming projects will be covered, illustrating how Berkeley projects have already begun to integrate the most recent guidance from updated state and federal design guidance and other documents such as NACTO.