Section 4

Future Challenges for Our Infrastructure

As we look to replace or upgrade our current infrastructure, we must address many challenges, such as decreasing fossil fuels, increases in population, drought, wildfires and flooding, and information privacy and security threats, while also taking advantage of various opportunities, such as local energy generation, electrification, micro-grids, access to real-time information, and the re-design of our public commons. Following are summaries of those challenges.

Demographic Trends in Berkeley

The Vision 2050 initiative, which covers 2018 through 2050, focuses on how to provide what infrastructure to best serve the current and future population of Berkeley. Plan Bay Area (PBA) projects regional changes in employment, population, numbers of households, and housing units for the years 2010 through 2040. We’ve taken the 2040 projections and extrapolated them to 2050 for Berkeley. The PBA considered 3 different scenarios for projecting changes in employment and population, and chose the “modest growth” scenario, which follows national trends. The region’s number of jobs and population surged from 2010 to 2015.

More People are Projected

Figure __ summarizes the expected changes in population, jobs, households, and housing units from 2010 through 2040 for the Bay region. Both population and jobs experienced rapid growth from 2010 to 2015. One-fourth of the projected population growth and half of the job growth occurred in that 5-year period and the growth of both are expected to slow significantly from 2015 through 2040. The number of households increased by only 13% of that 5-year period and numbers of housing units by only 8%.

More Diverse, but Lower Percentage of Working-Age Adults We assume that demographic changes in Berkeley in the coming 35 years will be like that of Alameda County and the region. • Racial and ethnic balance will become less white and more Latino and Asian. • Household incomes at the moderate and above-moderate levels will decrease somewhat and those at the low and very low levels will increase a little bit. • Like the rest of the country the number of working age adults will decrease from 3.5 per retirement age adult to 2.5 per retirement age person. • The number of people over 65 will double, from 12% to 22% of the population. Applying regional percentages to estimate 2015 and 2050 levels for the City of Berkeley: • Berkeley’s growth in households, housing units, jobs and population are slightly below that expected for the County of Alameda and the region. • Between 2015 and 2050 the population, the number of households and the number of housing units in Berkeley are estimated to increase about 26-27%. Growth in jobs for that time is expected to increase by only 20%. As in the rest of the region, a great deal of job growth has already occurred, and the numbers of people, households, and housing units will catch up.

For planning future infrastructure, about 2/3 of the increase in households is expected to occur along the major transit corridors.

Quality of Life Challenges

The quality-of-life challenges fall into two categories – impacts resulting from infrastructure decisions and the need to improve quality of life by prioritizing some infrastructure expenditures over others. To date, most Berkeley plans fall into the first category and the current decision-making process makes it difficult to address challenges in the second category.

Current Long-term Planning

Long-term plans in Berkeley historically have focused on:

• Geographic location (i.e., Downtown Area Plan, West Berkeley Plan) that address land use issues, including limited infrastructure goals
• Type of infrastructure (i.e., Parks Plan, Marina Plan, Bicycle Plan); they address improvements to existing infrastructure, but are bound by the size and location of existing infrastructure
• Meeting statewide mandates (i.e., the Climate Action Plan, the Resilience Plan) to reduce the city-wide impacts of climate warming and to ensure a fast and efficient recovery from major disasters

Many of these plans seek to minimize infrastructure impacts on quality of life (add example) or to improve quality of life (by improving parks, pathways, etc.), either directly or indirectly. The third category of plans take a new approach – to preserve city-wide quality of life through more far reaching plans and interdepartmental coordination.

Why are there Challenges?

With such good plans, why do we face “quality of life” challenges? First, how well these long-term plans protect or enhance quality of life depends entirely on how they are implemented and monitored. The current process assigns departments to implement each plan, or a portion of a plan, as the City Council makes funds available. As would be expected, the Council prioritizes capital funding to mitigate current crises and current needs, which tend to be near-term not long-term.

Second, the departmental decision-making process includes little involvement from other departments, no feedback loop, and no way to measure impacts on quality of life or evaluate how to plan better the next time. Even though many of these plans mention ways to mitigate or enhance quality of life, without a feedback loop or performance measures, we don’t know if these are just words intended to “sell” the plans.

Third, despite everyone’s best intentions, the current process of implementing and funding infrastructure makes it almost impossible for the City of Berkeley to use quality of life as a decision-making tool. For example, important tradeoffs cannot be considered. Should neighborhoods with a high percentage of seniors have priority in sidewalk repairs over other neighborhoods? Should repairing sidewalks near senior facilities be a higher priority than repairing streets used primarily by non-seniors? Should small neighborhood parks take priority over wetland rehabilitation needed to mitigate impacts of rising sea level? The piecemeal process for making infrastructure decisions in Berkeley removes any opportunity to improve quality of life by coordinating infrastructure development more broadly and over a longer time horizon.

Responding to Future Challenges

In the coming 30 years, physical environmental crisis that we face will become more frequent, making it even more important that we coordinate planning and funding procedures for developing infrastructure, over a longer time horizon. Increased heat will have a disproportionate impact on the health and comfort of seniors and young children, especially those unable to afford air conditioning. And demographic projections indicate that the percentage of seniors will continue to increase! Wildland fires will increase making evacuation for disabled individuals more critical. Air quality will decrease due to increased smoke from nearby fires and changes in wind direction due to warmer land. Homes in lower-income neighborhoods are most vulnerable to flooding related to sea level rise and the least able financially to bear the burden.

To meet these challenges, we need a new decision-making process that includes social equity as a key decision-making criterion, as well as a measure of impacts. [more to come . . . ]

Environmental Challenges

In the past 50 years, we’ve planned for “suitability” by trying to match land uses to the capacity of a site. We’ve also planned for “sustainability” by trying to minimize our impacts on the environment, while supporting biodiversity and other ecosystem services. And we’ve planned for “resilience” by seeking to increase our capacity to recover quickly from events like earthquakes, fires and temporary flooding. But this new era of infrastructure planning will have to contend with changes in the environments that have seemed relatively stable in the past.

Our City has declared a Climate Emergency. According to the 4th California Climate Assessment, new climate conditions will lead to more frequent major fires and intense precipitation events, reduce our air quality and regional biodiversity, and gradually flood the coastal highways, parks and neighborhoods of cities around the Bay Area. With all the things we’ve planned in the past – road systems, sewer systems, new towns, new airports, etc. – we haven’t planned for an environment that is changing so much that it will require us to adapt.

The big changes that will affect Berkeley are increasing heat, rainfall extremes and rising sea levels. These will affect many other critical trends, like maintenance costs and health. The City needs a vision that reflects how these trends are connected. Our shared public investments and policies need to help us mitigate fossil fuel emissions and adapt to long-term changes like rising seas, as well as build our resilience to short-term events, such as a heat wave or an extreme rainstorm.

Increasing Heat

Hotter air leads to more intense rainfall, drier vegetation, and air quality problems that impact people’s health. Research shows the links between increased air temperature and people’s health, the health of urban trees that could cool our homes, and the maintenance costs for our infrastructure. More heat means higher maintenance costs and lower performance for conventional “gray” infrastructure. California’s 4th Climate Assessment is the best science-based prediction of our future local climate. It says Berkeley can expect an increase in air temperature, along with boom-and-bust rainfall years.

Observations since 1950 show a decrease in the number of foggy days. In dry years, we’ll have less fog and less humidity. That could cause an increase in the mortality of park and street trees, as well as on private property. If we water more, we’ll increase water demand and would need to be ready for that. If the trees die, they can’t provide shade, leading to even higher air temperatures and energy demand in buildings. Dead and dry vegetation is more dangerous as a fuel for fire in the hills of Berkeley. Increased air temperatures can lead to asthma attacks and other respiratory problems – particularly if the air doesn’t cool off quickly at night, and trees aren’t around to filter the air. More frequent fires will lead to losses of property, reduce air quality, and potentially risk people’s lives. There is evidence that hotter streets need more frequent maintenance, and that hotter streets are associated with breaks in underground water pipes. That’s a lot to plan for, and it means we need to know how these things are connected when we plan.

Significant Changes in Precipitation

California’s 4th Climate Assessment projects that the Bay Area will experience more “boom and bust” years — both very wet and very dry conditions — in the coming decades. Our largest winter storms, called “atmospheric rivers,” will likely become more intense, bringing challenges to Berkeley’s stormwater system, making potholes more ubiquitous and deeper, and flooding key facilities. At the same time, longer and deeper droughts — like the 2012-16 drought which led to the most severe moisture deficits in the last 1,200 years — will parch our precious parks and open spaces. Even if rainfall totals don’t increase, higher temperatures and longer heatwaves will dry out vegetation significantly, increasing fire danger and degrading streetscapes and green areas.

Warmer temperatures are also predicted to make a substantial change in the Sierra snowpack, source of the vast proportion of EBMUD’s water supply. Under a high emissions scenario in California’s 4th Climate Assessment, the average Sierra snowpack will decline by 20% in the next few decades, 30%-60% in mid-century, and over 80% in the late 21st century. Consecutive years of low or no snowpack are especially worrisome. In addition, warmer temperatures are producing a shift to earlier snowmelt in the Sierra, posing storage and supply problems for high water demand periods that occur in hot summers and falls.

Fire Risk

2017 was the hottest year on record, following 5 years of drought that killed 129 million trees in California. Five of the most destructive wildfires in the state’s history burned between October and December 2017. There were 7,117 wildfires that year, compared to the historic average of 4,835. The carnage continued in 2018 with 5,847 fires before the traditional “fire season” even began, destroying over 1 million acres, thousands of homes, and taking dozens of lives. The entire town of Paradise burned to the ground in less than two hours, taking close to 90 lives with it.

Climate change has increased temperatures and drought, which will inevitably lead to even more severe fires. Diablo wind-driven fires are impossible to stop while these strong winds are blowing. But taking steps to reverse climate change can minimize the severity of wildfires. This can be done by utilizing more solar and wind-generated power instead of burning coal and natural gas, better insulating homes and businesses to conserve energy, shutting down utilities in high wind conditions, providing more public transportation, planting more climate-moderating trees, creating viable escape routes in high hazard fire areas, improving emergency warning systems and taking other significant steps needed to lower emissions and stabilize climate.

Many large wildland/urban interface fires duplicate the destruction similar fires caused years before. The Tubbs Fire that burned through Santa Rosa followed the same path as a 1964 fire. Our local 1991 Tunnel Fire followed the same path as the 1970 one. As of yet, no fire has followed the path of Berkeley’s 1923 one. But one inevitably will. Each fire destroyed way more homes and took more lives than the earlier fires, due to the increase in population density. Despite that, Berkeley is encouraging even denser housing by facilitating ADUs (accessory dwelling units), even in the dangerous hills high fire hazard zone. This is a recipe for disaster, especially considering the narrow winding streets that must serve as evacuation routes. Many streets in the hills, hardly any of which lead directly downhill, don’t come anywhere close to meeting current State standards for street width. The majority of these streets cause traffic backups even under normal conditions. And a significant percentage of Berkeley’s population lives in the hills. And those who don’t live there are not out of danger considering the destruction of the Coffey Park flatlands of Santa Rosa that burned to the ground during the Tubbs Fire.

Fires will burn following an earthquake that could destroy much of the city and its infrastructure within the next 20 years. Some predictions include destruction of hundreds of buildings, loss of power for weeks and destruction of 5,000 water lines, most of which will not be repaired for months. Multiple fires will burn out of control as well. Thousands of people will either move out of town or need to live in shelters post-earthquake. School will close. Businesses will fail. Plans must be developed and action taken soon to make the city as resilient as possible in the face of these threats.

Both the City and its residents must take immediate action to strengthen and improve the fire resistance of our homes and businesses in the face of catastrophic climate change and the inevitable fires, floods, droughts and landslides it will cause. This can include undergrounding utilities along the main evacuation routes, requiring Class A fire-resistant roofing and double pane windows, removal of flammable trees and hedges, ensuring that home fire alarms are functioning, expanding fire safety inspection capabilities, imposing reasonable limits on street parking on excessively narrow hill streets, construction of turnouts to take parked cars off streets, increasing public education programs about fire safety, installing redundant emergency warning systems, encouraging more citizens to take CERT classes, and more.

Native plants have adapted to the fire ecology of our state, and re-sprout from the roots or from dormant seeds after fires. Unfortunately, this isn’t possible for homes or people. We need an effective plan of action to minimize the impacts of future disasters. Then we need to implement it.

Earthquakes and Landslides

Berkeley’s Local Hazard Mitigation Plan identifies earthquake and rainfall triggered landslides as likely hazards with catastrophic severity of impact. Most of our thinking about acute land changes centers on building structures but the impacts to our infrastructure range from rupture and blockage of water, sewer and gas pipelines to toppling of power and communication poles and overhead structures. Streets and sidewalk buckling and failure will impede emergency responders and evacuation routes. Any failures in these critical infrastructure systems will disrupt service. (LHMP 2019 B-13)

Sea Level Rise

Both California’s 4th Climate Assessment and the State of California’s recent guidance to public agencies on sea level rise tell us that Berkeley can expect to see significant sea level rise over the next 20-80 years, and long after that. Although no one knows exactly how much the Bay will rise and by when, the State has provided a range of estimates to show the low risk, medium-high risk, and extreme risk scenarios.

For 2050, the State has identified a range of likely sea level rises of between 1.1 to 2.7 feet. By 2100 the projections indicate increases from 3.5 to over 10 feet above today’s sea level. As scientists have learned more about the dynamics of ice sheet melting, they have developed scenarios for even greater sea level rise. Many scientists now believe that the amount of carbon and methane in the atmosphere today has committed us to an eventual rise in sea level of about 10 feet. No matter what the sea level is in 2100, it will continue to rise until some equilibrium is reached between the elevated levels of CO2 present and the amount of heat already trapped in the ocean. Figure __ shows the estimated range of sea level rise in the Berkeley area.

California’s science-based guidance to public agencies recommends that local jurisdictions consider “medium-high risk” predictions when planning long-term facilities (i.e., facilities meant to last 20-50 years). For investments meant to last beyond 50 years, the State recommends that we consider the potential for an extreme sea level rise scenario.

No matter what the sea level actually is in 2050, it will be much higher in 2100 and beyond. That’s how accelerating trends work, they change faster over time. But there’s no point in building things for a sea level rise that won’t see long term use. We need to consider the expected lifetime of the things we build, as well as the rate of sea level change. Many scientists think that we’ll know a lot more about which sea level trend is actually occurring in the next decade or two. If so, there may be reasonable moral arguments that current generations should do and pay for more adaptation, since we are causing the change. However we decide to respond to that challenge, it’s as critical not to waste money preparing infrastructure investments for sea level rise if those structures are not intended to last more than a few decades as it will be to ensure longer lived assets are prepared to withstand potential extreme sea level rise.

Coastal parks and bike trails will be affected – both by sea level rise directly, and by increased erosion from wave action that reaches higher areas of the land. This will push us to decide where public access (and private facilities that pay fees to the City) will continue, and where these will be lost or reconfigured. Intertidal wetlands will be lost unless investments are made to raise the surface elevation of the wetlands, or they are allowed to migrate inland onto lands that are now roads, parking, or other uses.

Combined Effects

Sea level rise is a trend that is very likely to produce unexpected effects through networks of causes and effects. The US Geological Survey has shown that rising sea levels will cause groundwater – the water that rises and falls in the soil as rain and tides influence it - to also rise within a few miles of the shoreline. This could flood sewer pipes and basements. It could also move soil pollution around, creating serious health threats. It can cause corrosion of pipes and problems with underground electrical utilities. Street pavement is more prone to cracking in a high-groundwater environment. High groundwater can increase the risk of extreme shaking in an earthquake, risking damage to property and loss of life. We can adapt to this challenge, but we need to see the cause-and-effect network connections in order to choose the right investment and design strategies. Loss of marshes will devastate biodiversity historically hosted in vegetated bayshores. While other lower lying communities around the Bay will experience serious impacts from sea level rise before Berkeley, we will all be impacted within the life span of many of our infrastructure investments. Our regional wastewater, transportation, refineries and pipelines, will require significant adaptation investment. Many regional facilities will need to be relocated. Our bay shoreline, roadways and western neighborhoods already suffer flooding impacts of rising sea and groundwater levels when combined with severe storms and king tides. Long term infrastructure investments should be evaluated frequently against evolving sea level rise data and projections.

There is not one answer for Berkeley

Our city grew in the 19th century along the shipping corridors on the bay with the pier and the railroads moving goods and people north and south from the farms and factories. With the establishment of the University, the center of town shifted east from old Oceanview and Berkeley spread developing our 20th century grid of water, sewer, and gas underground and telephone and power overhead along the street right of ways from bay to the hills.

Our infrastructure corridors connect us, providing transportation, water, waste, power and communication networks. But from an infrastructure and climate point of view, Berkeley has three different “zones” with different challenges.

The hills have the highest risk of fires, seismic shaking and landslides. Steep slopes and narrow, winding roads make evacuation difficult. Adaptation will require careful management of vegetation, and finding opportunities to shelter in place when evacuation is impractical. Water pressure needs to be high for fire-fighting, and electric utilities should probably be placed underground.

Flooding risks are most important in the flats, as climate change and development increase runoff from higher elevations. Rising sea levels and groundwater will keep water from seeping into the soil and flowing into the Bay. The flats also have worse air quality, thanks to heavy traffic on Interstate 880, University, Ashby and San Pablo Avenues. Buried infrastructure will need to be waterproof, and the risks of extreme shaking may increase as groundwater rises. The neighborhoods need more trees and less gas-powered traffic to improve air quality.

Downtown Berkeley is particularly vulnerable to heat, as density increases along with traffic. South Berkeley also has high traffic flows and needs safer streets and sidewalks for bikes and pedestrians. These neighborhoods need greener infrastructure (trees and rain gardens) to help manage both storm water and air quality. Since they sit at the base of the hills, storm water and groundwater can emerge as springs and flood basements. Infrastructure and sidewalks need to be enlarged and re-designed to handle growth and development, making the sidewalks into more people-friendly public space. South Berkeley has provided affordable housing and community space for diverse families. Future development should prioritize their housing and public space needs, and not displace people who are part of Berkeley’s community.

These different parts of Berkeley have different needs. Planning needs to recognize historic and present inequalities, and avoid using “equality” (i.e., giving everyone the same thing) as a substitute for “equity” (which is making sure people have access to what they need). Funding for some very local needs should come from the people who benefit the most, and for other issues, funding may come from a broad base.

Technology Pathways

Technology trends are changing the way we use the city’s infrastructure and existing infrastructure does not meet future needs. Furthermore, new technology needs to be energy efficient, electrified, decentralized, low-carbon, integrated with our buildings and public infrastructure, and widely and equitably accessible. We note particularly that the benefits of technology change are not likely to be shared widely without some intervention by the city. And finally, proactive steps are needed to protect quality of life and mediate the potential negative impacts of technology.

But it is impossible to predict exactly what technologies will be available 5 years from now, let alone 30 years from now when we reach 2050. Rather, we seek to define general principles to guide City procurement and plan implementation, and to inform customer-facing policies and practices. Staying in the context of City procurement, and the responsibility for the Public Right of Way, we identified 6 technology pathways - Building, Energy, Transportation, IT, Water and Waste Management - that will impact the services that the City must provide. Each of these technology pathways has seen dramatic changes and many more are expected. Without knowing the specific evolution of each technology pathway, we can set up the general principles that a technology should satisfy (and the levers that the City has to encourage compliance):

1. Energy Efficient (Reach Codes, etc.)
2. Electrified (Fuel switching, rebates, etc.)
3. Decentralized (Resilient and promoting consumer choice)
4. Low Carbon (Increased reliance on solar and wind, walkable City)
5. Integrated (i.e. with City Plans, as in undergrounding and paving; also with private buildings)
6. Equitably distributed (Rebates, Incentives, wide area coverage, geographically distributed, low barriers to entry) So for example, our roads and Public Right of Way should prioritize safe access for pedestrians, bikers, low cost widely available zero carbon public transit fleets, EV charging, and on-demand services for Seniors and Youth.

Technology Services

Services refer to the core functions of the City of Berkeley in 2050. We have listed 7 functions described briefly below:

1. Building Services: Buildings support basic residential services like comfort and shelter, commercial activities, City services, information and communications hubs, and they define the “grid edge” with respect to energy services from PG&E and East Bay Community Energy.
2. Transportation Services: Transportation networks, including roadways, sidewalks, bicycle and pedestrian bike paths, public transit systems, fleets, and shared and private vehicles/private automobiles move people, goods and services around the City.
3. Energy Services: Energy services in the City of Berkeley refers to the production, distribution and consumption of energy used to provide basic residential and commercial needs, including end-use appliances and self-generation.
4. Communications/Information Services: Physical and logical communications infrastructure, and overlapping security and identity infrastructure support the safe and timely flow of information and data between individuals, equipment and infrastructure in the City of Berkeley.
5. Water and Waste-water Services: Refers to complete hydrological cycle: rain and storm water, surface flows and containment, subsurface groundwater flows, clean water and wastewater distribution and treatment, and quality assurance for all end uses.
6. Waste Management Services: Waste management begins with how and what we consume, and then include diversion to re-use, recycling and compost before any solid waste is generated.
7. Emergency Services: Fire, Police, Medical and Mental Health assets must be deployed to resolve inevitable conflicts, disasters and disruptions to City life.

Technology Trends

Buildings

By 2050, buildings in Berkeley will be significantly more energy and water efficient, electrified, and connected. They will also host increasing capacity for local energy generation and storage. They will be increasingly efficient in water use and waste water treatment. To accommodate these changes, buildings will need efficiency improvements, electrical service upgrades, IT infrastructure improvements, and water use improvements. Berkeley has direct control over municipal buildings and infrastructure, and can use City Ordinances and financial incentive programs to effect change in the private building stock.

Transportation

Certainly the City will have to grapple with the electrification of transportation, including private Electric Vehicles (EVs), and our Public Right of Way must make some accommodations to EV charging for light, medium and heavy duty transport. There may also be an increase in autonomous vehicle traffic, but that remains to be seen. The more important trend will be move people out of private vehicles entirely onto streets that are bicycle and pedestrian friendly, public transit oriented, environmentally durable, and more accessible for public utility upgrades.

Energy

By 2050, Berkeley seeks an energy system that delivers carbon free electricity across a highly distributed system, capable of providing reliability and resilience while serving the needs of fully electrified building and transportation sectors. California has established a policy framework that will achieve a carbon free grid within that time frame, but Berkeley has the ability to accelerate the progress towards that goal within the City limits.1 In any case, Berkeley has significant control and influence over local energy infrastructure and technology choices, particularly for public and city assets. Multiple and multifaceted changes to that infrastructure and its uses will be required to achieve the Vision 2050 carbon goals, as well as other values prioritized in the plan. In general, these changes can be summarized as: 1) maximize energy efficiency, 2) electrify everything possible, 3) decarbonize and clean up the grid, and 4) squeeze fossil fuels out. Other changes, like undergrounding of utilities, while not strictly required for decarbonization, may be necessary to achieve resilience, reliability, access and equity (democratic). Incentives for home electrification, including heat pump technology and induction cooking are an important tool for the City, particularly targeted at low income households.

Information

By 2050, information flows in Berkeley will change fundamentally, in quantity, in quality, and in granularity. Common objects will communicate with each other. Data will be stored and retrieved at molecular and atomic level. In short, where electrons flow, there will be information exchange. All electrical and electronic devices– automobiles, trucks, appliances, communication devices, entertainment devices, information infrastructure components, lighting devices–will be able to communicate. Major infrastructure components–road surfaces, beams and column elements of buildings, load-bearing components of bridges and towers, all piping and pumping infrastructure for water, wastewater, airflow and air conditioning, all cabling and energy transport infrastructure–will gradually incorporate sensing and communication of real-time state information. The City must make plans to manage this flow of information, as well as to address any issues that arise from the inevitable risk to privacy. Communications protocols are not the domain of the City, but rather must be thought of as a compliance objective. Particular care must be taken to ensure that Emergency Services has full access to the flow of information.

Water

With climate change, increasing variations in water supply, and extremes in drought conditions and periods of intense rainfall, Berkeley’s infrastructure must be prepared for these conditions and work closely with EBMUD and regional agencies. Storm water capture, ground water recharge, grey water treatment, reclamation and reuse all have technological innovations we need to incorporate in our local infrastructure.

Waste

By 2050, Berkeley will have made significant reductions in disposal of single-use products, and also expanded the range of materials that can be reused, recycled, or composted. To accommodate these changes, new businesses or government services will need to exist, and changes will need to be made at the Transfer Station and other facilities.

Our Opportunities

Economic Growth and Job Creation

Investments in our infrastructure have historically created economic opportunities, and it can now, too. Investments made through the WPA transformed Berkeley, creating jobs and significant community resources such as our beloved Rose Garden. Investments made in undergrounding BART through our city enabled us to have a vibrant downtown that is not under the shadow of or divided by BART tracks, as well as the Ohlone Greenway. We have an opportunity as we replace our end-of-life infrastructure to create significant economic opportunity.

Re-thinking the Public Commons

As we dig up our streets to upgrade the infrastructure, as well as consider how transportation changes will be incorporated, we have an opportunity to re-consider and re-prioritize how we use our publicly-owned land, designing them to balance the needs of all those using the spaces. Berkeley’s streets cover more than 12% of the entire city, a total of about 800 acres. We generally see the streets as a means for transportation – walking, cycling and driving, although they are also a place for community gathering and transaction—meeting neighbors on the sidewalk to chat, having lunch at a sidewalk café, window shopping, or just enjoying a stroll. They are spaces that we spend a significant amount of our time, whether sitting in a car or on a bus, walking to the office or school, or meeting a friend for lunch.

Since Roman times, cities have used the public rights-of-way to convey people and goods on the ground plane, and water, wastewater and stormwater below the ground plane. In the last 100 years, natural gas has been added to the below ground utilities and some neighborhoods have underground power and telecommunications systems. Most neighborhoods, however, obtain these “wired” services from above ground utilities. All of these conveyances – transportation, water, wastewater, power, communications – use the right-of-way.

Unfortunately, while there is a single city-owned right-of-way, we’ve designed, financed and maintained these infrastructure systems separately and created separate City department, regional agencies, and private entities to build and maintain them. This is understandable, as power and gas is provided by a regulated private corporate monopoly, potable water is provided by a public regional utility, telecommunications is provided by multiple competing privately owned systems while the city is responsible for stormwater and wastewater conveyance.

Our opportunities to improve our city in the public right-of-way include:

• Financial Responsibility – Non-city owned entities are responsible for maintaining their assets in the public right-of-way. They are also responsible for repairing damage to the surface when they access their underground assets.

• Coordination – The city is responsible for coordinating right-of-way access by all users – including drivers, pedestrians and utilities – but that coordination is often lacking, resulting in uncoordinated street projects and increased expenses for all utility and right-of-way providers.

• Right of Way Beneficiaries – A city’s public right-of-way provides significant, even essential benefits to the owners of the adjacent property. Without street access – for transportation or utilities – property would have little value. Accordingly, property owners should be expected to provide some level of support for maintenance of the public right-of-way. The actual users of the right-of-way – motorists, utility users, etc. – should also pay for a share of the right-of-way.

• Rigid Definitions of Enterprise Funds – A key aspect in the lack of coordination is overly rigid and legalistic allocation of enterprise funds. Staff often balk at coordination efforts because the funding source is, for example, sewers, and a more coordinated effort could result in some sewer funds being used for paving or green infrastructure. While well intentioned, this results in overall sub-optimal outcomes for the city’s overall infrastructure. All users – the ultimate funders of these enterprise funds – benefit from comprehensive first-class infrastructure and the current rigid definitions should be relaxed to achieve the overall goal.

• Street Maintenance, Funding and Trends - Berkeley underspends on its street paving by about \$10 million annually. Funding for the street rehabilitation program is from many sources, but the on-going program is funded from revenues generated by motor vehicle fuel taxes (about \$2.5 million annually) and recently the county transportation sales tax has also funded about \$2.5 million. The on-going program funding is about \$7 million annually, well below the required spending levels to ensure high-quality street pavement.

Even this funding level is likely to diminish in future years. While the State Legislature passed a 12-cent fuel tax increase (which was upheld by the voters in November 2018) and indexed the tax to inflation, motor vehicle fuel taxes are a diminishing resource. As transportation electrification accelerates, fuel tax revenue will decrease. As vehicle autonomy is perfected, shared-ride costs could drop significantly, access to services could increase dramatically and more shared-ride trips could occur, and curb management will become paramount.

• Quality of Life - Viewing our public commons as exactly that–the “commons” where we meet, transact and facilitate transportation. The coming changes provide an opportunity to make the time we spend in these spaces more enjoyable and more conducive to community strength and resilience by strengthening our physical health and social connections.

Ecosystem Preservation and Restoration

More sustainable infill growth will concentrate people in urban environments where green space is a critical component to quality of life. Protecting existing canopy while reducing fire risk and finding adequate space for new trees in densely engineered developments is a challenge, as is achieving a more equitable distribution of tree canopy across the socio-economic landscape.

Healthy urban forests can produce ecosystem functions, goods and services that benefit humans and the environment. Ecosystem services include energy conservation, air quality improvement, carbon storage, storm water runoff reduction and wildlife and pollinator habitat. Wildland-urban interface zone fire landscaping and dense development on private property underscores the need to ensure tree canopy in the public right of way.

With marshland being the current most effective living carbon capture system, our infrastructure investment for carbon sequestration should include marsh restoration and development in addition to conventional grey infrastructure hardening along our shoreline.