Section 1
The Vision 2050 Initiative
Vision 2050 is a citizen-led planning effort, convened by Mayor Jesse Arreguin, to develop a Berkeley vision to guide physical infrastructure planning for energy, water, housing, food, transportation, communications, and all the other vital services and institutions that make Berkeley living and vibrant.
We focus on City of Berkeley investment, but the City is responsible for only a small part of the overall infrastructure investment in what we need to live here.
Tens of billions of dollars of past infrastructure investment allow us to live in Berkeley today. Tens of billions more will be needed over the next thirty years.
We examine what will be needed, how we might pay for it, and how we can work together at all levels in Berkeley to do what is needed.
So, we examine the overall direction of our city, and the role the City government can play in shaping the next thirty years of infrastructure investment. As a rough estimate, the City of Berkeley will invest over one billion dollars over the next thirty years in streets, sewers, communications, parks, waste and storm water systems. UC Berkeley, LBNL, EBMUD, PG&E, and Berkeley residents will invest far more.
The vision extends over 30 years to encourage long-term planning that will begin to meet the serious challenges of the 21st century— including climate change, inequality, population changes and aging infrastructure— and improve the quality of life for the next generation of Berkeley residents. Vision 2050 proposes to move beyond business-as-usual to accelerate the building of climate-smart, technologically advanced, integrated, and efficient infrastructure.
What is Infrastructure?
The structures, facilities, services and institutions that each of us needs to live, to work, to have healthy families and a healthy environment.
In 2019, The American Society of Civil Engineers [ASCE] listed 17 categories of structures and facilities that provide essential services to residents, and graded the condition of each category for the US and for California. In 2019, the ASCE Report Card gave California’s infrastructure a C- overall. Roads: D; schools: C; energy: D-; transit:C-; drinking water: C; waste water: C+; storm water: D+; solid waste: C-.
A C grade means “mediocre, general deterioration, increased vulnerability to risk”. A D grade means strong risk of immediate failure.
For drinking water alone, ASCE estimates California needs immediate investment of $51 billion dollars to decrease risk of severe health risks.
What are Berkeley’s grades? And what will it cost to bring Berkeley’s infrastructure to a level we want for our children?
What is Berkeley’s Infrastructure?
Miles of infrastructure work to keep our city functioning beneath our feet, under our tires, and all around us as we go from home to school and work, shop and eat in town, or just enjoy the company of neighbors. Some parts of this critical infrastructure are controlled by the City of Berkeley while other important components are controlled by our partners—EBMUD, PG&E, AC Transit, BART and others.
Figure 1 shows the components above the ground, on the street surface and below ground. We call this the public commons.
Infrastructure on the surface is the most familiar feature—streets, sidewalks and bikeways that support cars, trucks, bikes and feet. On this streetscape, power and streetlight poles support electric and communications hardware, while trees and plants invite us to slow down and enjoy life, providing habitat for our wild neighbors, and improving the air we breathe.
Beneath our feet is another extensive world of cables, pipes, tunnels and vaults that we rarely think about until something breaks. This infrastructure delivers water to our homes and businesses, brings natural gas for heating and cooking, and takes away our sewage. It is also part of the electric and communications grids and home to Berkeley’s underground BART system.
This table has been vastly expanded, with LBNL and UCB 2019 reports linked to table elements. Building data sources for every number in this table
Example: LBNL 2019 electricity use
Table 1 shows the magnitude of Berkeley’s infrastructure systems.
| Berkeley Infrastructure Systems | ||
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure System | Controlled by City | Controlled by Others |
Streets, Sidewalks, Paths, Bikeways, and Tunnels |
216 miles of streets 300 miles of sidewalks 50 miles of paths and bikeways |
AC Transit buses BART system Lyft and Uber ZipCar, Gig, etc. |
| Power and Communication Systems | 7,000 street lights | PG&E electricity and natural gas delivery systems Private telecommunications and Internet services |
| Parks and Street Trees and public plantings | 38,000 street trees 52 parks |
|
| Water Supply System |
|
EBMUD potable and recycled Water |
| Sewers |
|
EBMUD sewage treatment |
| Storm Water System | 220 miles of storm drains 6,000 storm drain facilities |
|
| Solid Waste Management | 7 acre transfer and recycling station Curbside collection services for over 23,000 homes and businesses Commercial food waste collection |
Alameda County landfill Alameda County household hazardous waste services Alameda County construction & demolition debris services |
What is the Problem?
Berkeley, along with much of the United States, is faced with infrastructure that was built 80+ years ago.
Years of overlays, retrenching, and repairs: asphalt life span: 20 years
Many facilities in Berkeley were built as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the late 1930’s. Those projects included Aquatic Park, the Berkeley yacht harbor, Rose Garden, Civic Center, the Community Theater on the Berkeley High campus, and many other facilities. The City’s streets, storm drains, sewers, and EBMUD’s water lines are also of similar age, if not older. The problem with aging infrastructure is that they are susceptible to unplanned failure, cause service interruptions, cost more to maintain and don’t meet current requirements.
Our infrastructure systems are old, 
Beneath the massive clean water piping system lies the equally massive sewer pipe system
much of it is at the end of its useful life. How we got to this situation is also a problem. We have not planned for all of the needed repairs and provided the necessary funding to keep the systems in good working condition. We do not have a life cycle approach to managing our infrastructure. 
Hundreds of miles of high-voltage AC lines criss-cross the city
As we rebuild, the infrastructure must change in response to population changes, environmental demands and technology innovations.
To meet these complex challenges, we need to transform our infrastructure management to include:
- A longer term view
- New technologies and solutions to develop intelligent adaptable infrastructure
- Inter-department and inter-disciplinary planning
-
Additional funding
How Was This Report Developed?
Mayor Arreguin announced in his 2017 State of the City address his intention to develop Vision 2050 – a long–term infrastructure plan to create a City that is resilient and sustainable for future generations. The initiative began in April 2018 and concluded in November 2019. A task force was formed that included over 40 people from across our community. The work was organized into four work groups – quality of life, environment, technology, and finance/management. Involving the community was very important in the process and that involvement included a series of information sessions in Fall 2018 and community workshops in Summer 2019. Our community voiced their support for this Plan with the passage of Measure R in the November 2018 election, which asked our Berkeley voters the following:
Shall the measure, advising the Mayor to engage citizens and experts in the development of Vision 2050, a 30-year plan to identify and guide implementation of climate-smart, technologically-advanced, integrated and efficient infrastructure to support a safe, vibrant and resilient future for Berkeley, be adopted?
Our community’s overwhelming response was “yes.”