New ‘vision plan’ imagines 3-mile greenway from downtown Berkeley to Bay Bridge

Under a new proposal, the center of Shattuck Avenue would become a linear park. Photo: Matthew Taecker

Imagine a bike and pedestrian path stretching from Downtown Berkeley BART to Emeryville, lined with sheltering trees, parks, playgrounds, farmers’ markets and places to sit and eat.

That’s the vision of a new proposal for three miles of Shattuck Avenue, Adeline Street and Stanford Avenue. One day, the greenway proposal, which also calls for natural cache basins and engineered wetlands to mitigate flooding and filter out pollutants from runoff, potentially could connect to the Bay Trail, creating a bike and pedestrian pathway from Richmond to Hayward.

“This is an exciting project to really think about how we can re-envision our streets as open space, pedestrian space and an opportunity for increased bicycle infrastructure,” Mayor Jesse Arreguín said at the annual meeting of the Downtown Berkeley Association on April 16.

The concept is detailed in an 80-page report titled the “Shattuck-Adeline-Stanford Greenway Vision Plan: From Auto Arterial to Community Corridor,” which was released in late March. Matt Taecker of Taecker Planning and Design, a former Berkeley city planner and principal author of the city’s Downtown Area Plan, developed the plan for Bike East Bay, an East Bay bicyclist advocacy group.