Spur Alley Bike Path Betrays Emeryville's 'Bike Friendly' Claims

Coddling a Developer on Spur Alley

at the Expense of Bikes

City Refuses to Enforce Public Bike Path Easement

Bike Path Forsaken

News Analysis

There’s a bike path in Emeryville, putatively on private land but officially recognized in the City’s Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan and legally dedicated for public use by means of a City Hall mandated public easement that could nonetheless get you arrested for trespassing were you so bold as to actually ride your bike on it.  Welcome to Emeryville’s Spur Alley bike path…however ‘welcome’ is not really the kind of word that would be used to describe how bicyclists are made to feel on their bike path. 

 Illegal Sign 
The Spur Alley Bike Path can be used  by
the whole public any time without constraint.
It is not "subject to control of the owner".
Emeryville City staff wants this sign to
remain up, giving police the right
to arrest bicyclists using their own bike path.

The ‘preferred use’ north/south bike route running parallel with and a block east of busy Hollis Street was dedicated when the City placed the route in its Bike Plan in the 1990’s.  Conceived as a way to encourage bikers to use the former railroad spur route instead of the dangerous Hollis Street, the City subsequently secured an easement on the private land that guarantees unrestricted public use of the corridor.  The developer owner of the land sees the easement differently however and he’s placed signage there that tells bikers the land is private property and their use of Spur Alley is provisional. 

Public Use?

Bikers would be understandably confused by the plethora of signs informing them Spur Alley is an official City bike route at the same time threatening them with arrest at the behest of a private ‘controlling’ owner.  The Emeryville Police Department is not confused however and they have acknowledged that bicyclists will in fact be arrested if they fail to vacate the bike path if the owner tells them to leave.  It’s a conundrum; the City guarantees the right to pass unconditionally through the same piece of land its own police department says NO to.

This bike route starkly reveals how what the City of Emeryville says about bikes runs into the reality in the field; the deference City Hall pays not to bikes but to developers and the business community.   Citizens attempting to use this City recognized bike route could get a very clear correction for believing in the good faith of Emeryville and its Bike Plan with its oft repeated claims of bike love…as clear as a pair of handcuffs.  

Not A Bike Friendly History
The history of Spur Alley is a Cliff Notes summery of bikes in Emeryville in the aggregate, revealing a city that’s long on talk and short on action.

After the city attorney secured the use of the alley for bikes in a deal with the developer in 1998, the City with help from the Bike Committee, dedicated Spur Alley as a Class 3 bike path in the forlorn Emeryville Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan.  Unsatisfied, the developer wanted to increase the value of the leases to his tenants (among them the popular gymnasium Head Over Heels) who were clamoring for more parking. As a result, the City Council, under pressure from the developer, ultimately voted to allow private parking on the bike path easement.  The bikes, a tolerable nuisance to the developer at the onset, now turned into an unacceptable impingement on his bottom line and he appealed to the City Council, who voted 3 to 2 (Atkin, Fricke dissenting) to allow private parking on the public bike easement.  The public was still to be allowed use of the bike path, the City Council assured the public at their July 17th 2007 meeting, just not in striped bike lanes on the easement as was originally planned. 

This sign is also up at Spur Alley 
sending a conflicted message to bicyclists.  
The oft repeated trope about being a
"bicycle friendly city" is betrayed on Spur Alley.
Emeryville's actual views on bicycling are
more complicated.

Earlier, Councilman John Fricke noticed the staff wasn't taking Spur Alley seriously as a bike route, "second class status" he called it (in the normal parlance unrelated to official bike route class designations).  He noted in November 2006 the developer had closed the alley for construction but hadn't even gotten an encroachment permit as would be required for any public easement as he testified at a  Council meeting (see video below).  The staff responded that they had "forgotten" Spur Alley had a public easement and so that's why the developer shouldn't be taken to task for the illegal closure. 
Mr Fricke's charge that the staff wasn't taking bike use on Spur Alley seriously was further bolstered after they worked with Pixar to eliminate the southern section of the planned bike route.  Pixar, seeking a private campus expansion, twice re-routed the path jogging it over closer to San Pablo Avenue, rendering it useless for bike use.  The southern segment of Spur Alley disconnected as the City and Pixar made it, is now reborn as Joseph Emery Skate Park.

After the Council voted to allow the developer use of the public bike easement for his tenant's exclusive parking use in 2007, the developer, unsatisfied with his victory and wanting more, unilaterally ratcheted back his agreement and without permission from City Hall, put up the signs that deny the public the right to use their path and signal to police their right to arrest the public for so using it.

A City Seized With Inaction

Emeryville Likes These Signs
from the League of American Bicyclists.
They're posted all over town.  The designations
are based on a city's bike plans, not how the
plans are implemented (or not implemented in
the case in Emeryville).

The City has been alerted to the illegal signs for years but they have refused to act to protect the negotiated public easement on the alley.  The latest such attempt came in 2017 when then Mayor Scott Donahue told the staff at City Hall to direct Public Works to remove the signs that claim biker’s rights are constrained by private property on Spur Alley and warn the developer against putting up such signs in the future.  “The staff doesn’t appear to want to take the signs down” the mayor told the Tattler after it became clear there was no interest to do such a thing.  The signs are still up, warning bicyclists against using their own bike path and serving as a testament to who's interests are valued at City Hall.  

As our little city struggles with an image it likes to forward to the world about being a bicycle friendly community versus the actual on the ground conditions as directed by a not-so-friendly-to-bikes business sector the City is in bed with, a bike facility that was supposed to be built long ago serves as emblematic of a dichotomy, vexing an Emeryville that wants its bicycle bonafides but without having to deliver amenities for bicyclists.  
Spur Alley is the bike corridor promised but never delivered, a public right of way for bicyclists secured by City Hall but given over instead to business interests, the signs canceling the public easement serving to mock the City Council who gave away this public asset for nothing and who still refuse to make amends to the bicycle community. 

Video courtesy of the Emeryville Property Owners Association

"Spur Alley is being treated as though it has second class status" said Councilman Fricke in 2006.  "We forgot about Spur Alley" replied the staff, proving the Councilman's point.  Biking on Spur Alley: what was forgetful in 2006 later became something for City Hall to actively limit and constrain.