A driver struck a woman using the crosswalk at Marin Avenue and The Alameda in the Berkeley hills Monday afternoon, prompting police to shut the street down in both directions and send the victim to Highland Hospital, the region's trauma center. Berkeley police later said she was in stable condition.
The emergency call came in at about 3:27 p.m., and an ambulance was en route to Highland Hospital just after 3:30 p.m., according to The Berkeley Scanner. Police closed Marin Avenue completely in both directions between Fresno and The Alameda as crews worked the scene, and firefighters asked for police help with traffic control, per emergency dispatches reviewed by the outlet. Community members reported seeing five police cruisers and at least one motorcycle officer stationed nearby.
A Stretch of Road With a Troubled History
Monday's crash is the latest in a string of collisions along Marin Avenue that has drawn scrutiny from city officials and traffic safety advocates for years. In 2018, local poet Tom Clark died after being hit by a car at the very same intersection of Marin and The Alameda, the same report notes. In February 2024, 37-year-old Julia Elkin was struck and killed while jogging across Marin Avenue at Oxford Street — a driver hit her in the crosswalk, causing serious head injuries, and she died two weeks later, according to the same account.
That fatality pushed four Berkeley City Council members to ask the city to consider spending up to $200,000 to address what they called urgent safety needs for pedestrians on the corridor. A June 2025 corridor safety presentation later tallied 26 collisions on upper Marin Avenue between 2015 and 2024, including five that left people killed or severely injured; 12 of the 26 involved bicyclists or pedestrians.
Years of Crashes Prompted Street Redesign
City data cited by Berkeleyside shows five people died in crashes on a 1.3-mile portion of Marin Avenue between 2012 and 2022, and the city's Vision Zero Action Plan identifies upper Marin Avenue as one of Berkeley's most injury-prone streets, accounting for roughly a quarter of all traffic injuries and deaths citywide. A separate 2026 report found that the steep section of Marin Avenue northeast of Marin Circle alone had seen dozens of crashes over the previous decade, resulting in three deaths and many more injuries.
In response, Berkeley has installed or planned a range of traffic-calming measures along the corridor, including new high-visibility crosswalks, wider curbs to narrow travel lanes, hardened center-lines, and new four-way stop signs at several intersections. As of the 2025 report, the city expected that safety work, funded by Measure FF, to be completed by early 2026. A corridor presentation from that period also outlined additional treatments under consideration, including all-way stop control, quick-build curb extensions or slow-turn wedges, and mid-block speed infrastructure.
A Road That's Seen This Debate Before
The push and pull over Marin Avenue's safety isn't new. A 2005 road diet on the stretch between Ventura Avenue and Grizzly Peak Boulevard was meant to calm traffic, but Patch later reported that recorded collisions there actually rose, from 25 in the five years before the redesign to 29 in the five years after. The outlet also found injury collisions on Marin Avenue climbed from 58 between 2001 and the completion of that roadwork in fall 2005 to 91 between 2006 and 2010.
More recent years brought further tragedy to the corridor. Berkeleyside reported that two people died in a 2021 crash on Marin Avenue, likely caused by mechanical problems, and that three older Berkeley residents were seriously injured while walking or biking on a short stretch of the street over just 10 days that December.
Details on Monday's crash remained limited as the situation unfolded, and The Berkeley Scanner said its report would be updated as more information became available.
