Berkeley Southside Complete Streets
Berkeley, CA
Project Summary
The City of Berkeley’s Southside neighborhood, located just south of the University of California-Berkeley campus, has one of the highest bicycle, pedestrian, and transit ridership volumes in the East Bay. Toole Design served as lead consultant to help the City improve multimodal safety and transit reliability.
From early planning to overseeing construction, we led the conceptual design, alternatives analysis, public engagement, and final PS&E on a compressed, grant-driven schedule, including environmental review and Caltrans E-76 coordination. The Southside Complete Streets project reimagines three corridors, including two bike and transit priority corridors: Bancroft Way and Dana Street.
Bringing Community Vision to Life
Our team worked closely with the City, UC Berkeley, business owners, and local residents to shape a shared vision for the corridor. Through public engagement and transparent evaluation of design alternatives, we built consensus around a final concept that prioritizes people walking, biking, and taking transit while improving accessibility for everyone.
Building on that concept, we developed detailed designs that reimagined the corridor within the existing curb-to-curb width. The design introduced a new two-way bicycle facility and reconfigured 17 intersections — 10 of them signalized — with new bike signal infrastructure, updated signal phasing, and modifications to existing signal equipment. These changes aimed to enhance safety and ensure smooth operations for all modes of travel. Other key improvements along the corridor included:
- Repurposing roadway space from vehicle storage to dedicated bicycle lanes
- Raised intersections to prioritize people crossing the corridor
- Integrating green infrastructure to beautify streetscapes and serve as protective spaces at pedestrian refuges and bikeway buffers
- Deliberate, robust coordination around UC Berkeley Campus, AC Transit, BART, and the subsurface historic rail bed
Guiding the Project to Completion
Toole Design provided support services through construction. We closely coordinated with the City’s traffic signal implementation team and provided updates to timing databases for the corridor’s 10 signalized intersections, ensuring that the new infrastructure operated safely and efficiently. The project construction was ultimately delivered on time and on-budget.
In October 2025, the City of Berkeley celebrated the project’s completion with a ribbon cutting. The redesigned corridors now provide 1.5 miles of safer, more vibrant connections for everyone traveling through downtown Berkeley.