Campus and city officials are implementing measures in anticipation of the increased traffic expected to result from Friday night’s Cal football game.
The influx of congestion will affect residents, businesses and Berkeley commuters. As such, officials have organized free bus shuttles to the game and are preparing to close streets to alleviate the traffic to be caused by the first weeknight football game in campus history.
“By offering these additional opportunities for Friday, our goal is to minimize the impact in and around campus as much as possible and to make it easier for fans to attend the game,” said Herb Benenson, assistant athletic director of campus athletic communications, in an email.
The game was scheduled for Friday night because of a media agreement among the teams in the Pac-12 Conference, ESPN and Fox Media sports groups.
Benenson said weeknight games will now be required about every two years, with the next weekday game estimated to be in 2014 or 2015.
In order to decrease congestion — which should begin at 3 p.m. — the city will be opening up more parking garages for flat-rate pricing and closing down certain streets. Street-parking violators will be fined double on Friday, starting at $72.
“We encourage folks to use public transportation as much as possible,” said City Manager Christine Daniel in a press release. “And if you’re going to the game, please take one of the free shuttles.”
The campus is also taking various measures to decrease traffic, including free shuttle services from the Downtown Berkeley BART Station, the Berkeley Marina and the Berkeley Amtrak Station. There will also be 1,000 first-come, first-served free parking spaces available at Golden Gate Fields, where a shuttle service will be provided to and from Memorial Stadium.
“It’s a regular school day, and we want to treat that as such,” Benenson said. “Certainly there’s going to be an impact, and we’re trying to get the word out as best as we can so we can make alternative plans.”
UC Berkeley junior Lisa Begin has a daily 40-minute commute from Walnut Creek and said she will have to commute during rush hour.
“They ought to consider that there are a lot of commuter students, and while I’m a huge supporter of the athletic program, the primary concern to me for the school is education,” Begin said. “I don’t live on campus, and for me it’s going to be difficult.”
Contact Gladys Rosario at [email protected].
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There are JV and Varsity football games at Berkeley High on Friday night as well. It is a very important game for BHS – this game determines the league championship. There will be a lot of people downtown – for the Cal game – and also for Berkeley High.
A big batch of butt holes are descending on Berkeley to watch the Bears LOSE again!
Berkeley residents, consider getting OUT of TOWN on Friday…and Stay away from all Berkeley businesses….
Personally, I am going to scatter roofing nails on the streets on my way out.w
EARTHQUAKE! EARTHQUAKE! EARTHQUAKE! EARTHQUAKE! EARTHQUAKE! EARTHQUAKE! EARTHQUAKE!
After seeing the 1st two thirds of the season, not sure why anyone wants to watch a Cal football game this year.
It just might help to mention what time the game stars, a link to get more information about the shuttle service, and most of all, who Cal is playing. Yeah, Cal football sucks, but no need to get disrespectful.
Cal Sucks, as you concede, therefore, there is NO need to be respectful!
I live on Durant between College and Piedmont, and local police have refused to let me drive to my house a few times already this semester. It was particularly annoying during the game when there were few, if any people around.
Well, you see, that’s because your right to be in your home is not as important as the right of people attending the game to wander around the middle of the street. Get your priorities straight. GO BURRZ!
Yeah. It’s not like you knew there was a campus or a football stadium near your house when you bought it.
You know, I lived in Ann Arbor for 6 years, and in that city crowds of people come to the stadium for football games as well. They manage to put these events on without closing down a single street, much less an entire neighborhood. Even more strikingly, the pedestrians coming to the game manage to enter and exit the stadium without completely blocking Main Street and Stadium Boulevard.
Gee, I wonder how they manage it.
It would have been nice if the city of Berkeley could have ignored the 2 hour limits to park on streets Friday instead of doubling the fine. Then fans could park in residential areas, since the lots will be full of university workers.
The problem there is that residents have to pay for their area permits, which they do with the reasonable expectation that street parking will be available in their neighborhoods. It’s not really fair to screw them out of being able to park on their street when they come home from work on a Friday.
I understand your point. However, I don’t think a $30 a year fee really provides a situation where you can’t suffer a little finding parking once every few years instead of having parking right in front of your nice west Berkeley house every night.
The university could just close all campus offices at 2pm so workers could leave the parking lots (permits for which cost about $100/month) available to football fans…
I like that idea even more.
“Lisa Begin said she will have to commute during rush hour”
What the hell is this supposed to mean?
It’s a fact that most people commute during rush hour.
Lol.
Herb Benenson makes 82 thousand dollars a year at UC to prattle on about ‘offering additional transportation opportunities’.
Wow, what a waste of oxygen – oh, and a waste of tuition dollars, don’t forget that.
Except that he, like everybody else in the athletic department, isn’t paid by tuition dollars. Oh, well, just another bias being shown up by inconvenient facts….
No, athletics IS still subsidized by the Cal general fund (i.e. primarily tuition), despite calls to stop these subsidies: http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/UC-Berkeley-urged-to-slash-athletics-subsidy-3181887.php