Berkeley's City Council voted 7-2 on July 28 to approve a $20 million overhaul of Hopkins Street that will strip out an estimated 145 of the corridor's 274 parking spaces to make room for protected bike lanes, ending nearly a decade of fighting over one of the city's most contested streets. The plan targets a corridor that has recorded 46 pedestrian and bicyclist crashes between 2011 and 2026, according to city crash data, including three fatalities among the incidents tallied along the stretch.
The vote caps a saga stretching back to 2018, when Berkeley first began drafting redesign concepts for Hopkins, only to shelve the project in April 2023 amid management concerns and merchant pushback — a pause that prompted cycling advocates to stage a “die-in” protest along the street, according to Berkeleyside. As The Mercury News reports, the crash tally along the corridor also includes five injuries, five suspected serious injuries, 13 possible injuries and 20 suspected minor injuries, with fatal or severe crash victims having a median age of 67.5 years.
A Death That Wouldn't Let the Issue Rest
The push for safer streets on Hopkins traces back to April 2017, when 69-year-old community activist Seon O'Neill was struck and killed in the crosswalk at Hopkins Street and Monterey Avenue by a driver who failed to yield while turning, according to Berkeleyside's reporting at the time. O'Neill was walking home when she was hit, and her death became a rallying point for the safe-streets advocacy that has shadowed the corridor ever since.
That same intersection remains a focus of the approved plan. Beyond the bike lanes themselves, the project raises the road surface to sidewalk level at Hopkins and Monterey as a traffic-calming measure meant to force turning motorists to slow down, per the Mercury News report. The plan also adds bulb-outs and raised crosswalks at other high-traffic intersections along the route.
What's Actually Getting Built
The approved design covers a 1.2-mile stretch of Hopkins between Gilman Street and Sutter Street. It calls for Class IV protected bike lanes — physically separated from car traffic — on both sides of the street between The Alameda and Peralta Avenue, with Class II painted bike lanes continuing from Sutter Street to The Alameda. City planners have designated Hopkins as a recommended low-stress east-west connector in Berkeley's bike plan, and the bike lane construction itself is estimated to cost between $5 million and $6 million of the project's $20 million total.
Physical repaving and construction of the protected lanes are scheduled for fiscal year 2027-28, according to The Berkeley Scanner, leaving more than a year for design refinement and public outreach before any pavement is torn up. All of the parking loss will be concentrated on the 0.4-mile stretch between Monterey Avenue and Peralta Avenue, where every on-street space will be eliminated — though city officials have discussed installing parking meters on surrounding blocks to encourage turnover and ease the crunch, Berkeleyside reports.
Council Split Along District Lines
The 7-2 vote broke down along geographic lines. District 5 Councilmember Shoshana O'Keefe, whose district contains most of the Hopkins Street commercial strip, voted against the final plan alongside District 6 Councilmember Brent Blackaby after an alternative proposal they backed failed to gain support, according to the Berkeley Scanner. O'Keefe warned against forcing a disruptive plan onto District 5 businesses without more accommodation for the merchants who depend on street parking.
Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani, who supported the plan, said the project's funding does not touch Berkeley's general fund and called action on Hopkins Street necessary and overdue. She also described the scale of the street's reallocated right-of-way as without precedent in Berkeley. Notably, city officials chose not to direct revenue from Measure FF — the 2024 ballot measure Berkeley voters passed to fund citywide paving and street safety work — toward the Hopkins project, per Berkeleyside, relying instead on separate funding sources.
Merchants, Advocacy Groups and a Fire Chief Weigh In
Opposition organized under the name Save Hopkins, a group formed by residents concerned about the redesign. The group raised worries about parking spillover into nearby neighborhoods and about first-responder access along the narrowed corridor. Save Hopkins, operating under the banner Friends of Hopkins in some of its materials, has also argued that the Class IV lane design will cross more than 90 private driveways and side streets, creating what the group calls new sightline hazards between turning vehicles and cyclists, according to the group's own Save Hopkins materials.
Berkeley Fire Chief Dave Sprague had raised safety concerns in 2023 about fire-engine clearance space and evacuation bottlenecks on the narrowed street. Sprague has since approved the current concept designs as providing a workable framework, though subject to ongoing review as the project moves toward construction. Many disabled and elderly Berkeley residents have said eliminating parking would make their daily lives more inconvenient, and some have also complained about teenagers riding speedy electric bikes along the corridor.
Not everyone in the neighborhood opposes the changes. Resident Margaret Torn voiced support for infrastructure that enhances safety for bicyclists, pedestrians and motorists alike while improving accessibility for all users. Max Lynn, who has lived in Berkeley for 23 years, said Hopkins Street is a good candidate for biking specifically because it is wide and visible.
A Documented High-Injury Corridor
City officials have long classified Hopkins Street as a documented high-injury corridor, a designation tied to Berkeley's Vision Zero Action Plan, which sets a goal of eliminating all traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 2028. City data cited in support of that plan shows transportation accounts for 56% of Berkeley's greenhouse gas emissions, part of the rationale city policy uses for prioritizing active-transportation infrastructure over vehicle travel.
The safety argument for physical separation is bolstered by statewide data. Research from UC Berkeley's Safe Transportation Research and Education Center has found that improper turning is the single leading factor in severe bicycle collisions across California, causing nearly 18% of such crashes statewide — a pattern Hoodline has previously reported in the context of other California bike-safety cases.
The Hopkins Street overhaul lands as Berkeley grapples with a $30 million structural budget deficit and prepares a separate $300 million general infrastructure bond measure for the November ballot. Whether that broader fiscal picture will affect the pace of design work or construction on Hopkins remains to be seen, but for now the corridor's fate is set: fewer parking spots, protected lanes, and a construction clock that starts ticking in fiscal year 2027-28.
