Overview
- The City Council voted 7-2 to approve one-way protected bike lanes on both sides of Hopkins Street between Peralta Avenue and The Alameda.
- The vote came after a six-hour meeting that began Tuesday evening and ran into early Wednesday, with more than 150 people speaking and city officials receiving roughly 1,100 emails on the project.
- City staff must now produce detailed plans and cost estimates for construction and protections such as posts, concrete barriers, or parked-car buffers, with an April estimate putting the price at about $3 million to $4 million.
- The design is expected to remove about 145 on-street parking spaces, a loss opponents say will hurt nearby businesses, elderly residents and people who rely on cars for access.
- Supporters cite a 2017 pedestrian fatality and repeated crashes on Hopkins to argue the lanes will calm traffic and improve safety, and the approval caps an eight-year, heated local debate over how the city balances walking, biking and driving.