A notoriously steep Bay Area street is back in the spotlight after jogger’s death

The death of a jogger last week who was hit by a car in the Berkeley hills is casting a harsh glare on one of the Bay Area’s steepest streets, highlighting what neighbors say is a desperate need for traffic-calming measures.

Julia Elkin, 37, a program manager at the Sonoma Land Trust, died Feb. 25 after being struck around midday on Feb. 12 while crossing a hilly portion of Marin Avenue at Oxford Street in North Berkeley. Police say the driver was heading downhill and stopped at the stop sign but proceeded and hit Elkin on the other side of the intersection. The collision is still under investigation.

Transportation advocates, the local council member, and residents of the area — many of whom came out to assist Elkin after she was hit — say that the street hasn’t been given enough attention by the city planning department, despite being the site of a long list of crashes.

“This young woman could have been any of us,” wrote a group of more than 60 neighbors in a letter sent to the City Council on Thursday. “Julia’s death was a tragedy that was preventable. We are asking that you do everything in your power to ensure that we do not lose another neighbor on our streets to traffic violence.”

Commenters in a lengthy thread on the social media site Nextdoor expressed anger and frustration at Elkin’s death, saying concerns about pedestrian safety on Marin Avenue had been brushed aside for too long. Some called for Marin to be made into a one-way street going uphill to slow down the cars.

Marin Avenue was highlighted as a high-injury street on Berkeley’s 2019 Vision Zero plan — a roadmap for reducing traffic fatalities — and occupies a particular place in the mind of local residents. With a grade of 25% at some points, the street was reportedly designed for a cable car that was never built, and older cars often struggle chugging up it.

“There’s lots of bad driver behavior on Marin,” said Ana Vasudeo, an urban planner, who was one of the neighbors who came to Elkin’s aid after the crash.

Data demonstrates a disproportionate share of deaths and injuries on the street.

Five people died in crashes on a roughly 1.3-mile long stretch of the street during 2012-22, according to the most recent data from UC Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System — a remarkable 23% of traffic deaths on Berkeley city roads. Another six people were seriously injured, around 2% of the city’s total on its roads.

“I was shocked looking at the data,” said Warren Wells, a transportation planner and Berkeley resident who first cited the numbers on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I’ve never seen a single, non-arterial street make up a quarter of a city’s fatalities. Marin really stands out, as it is not a four-lane arterial like Martin Luther King Jr. Way, but just a leafy, tree-lined street.”

Marin Avenue has been a subject of concern after previous incidents. Older residents of Berkeley remember the 1957 crash that destroyed the ornate fountain in the traffic circle at the bottom of the hill, after a roofing truck lost its brakes on the hill and careened into it. The fountain was rebuilt in the mid-1990s.

Council Member Sophie Hahn, who represents the area, said she remembers the death of two teenagers she knew whose car lost control while heading down the street sometime in the late 1970s. Safety issues on Marin were the subject of the first public meeting she organized after being elected in 2016, although she was told by Public Works officials that no major changes were needed on the boulevard at the time, she said.

“I have been involved in repeated attempts to improve safety on the street,” she said. “Many improvements have been made and I believe more can be made. I am extremely frustrated that previous public works officials did not take more of the suggestions that I and the community have made over the years.”

Marin Avenue was spotlighted as a high-injury street on the Vision Zero plan, but Measure L, placed on the ballot by Berkeley’s City Council, did not pass with a large enough majority in 2022 to fully fund the plan, Hahn said.

In 2021, a crash killed a driver and passenger on the street at Santa Barbara Road, just two blocks up from the location of Elkin’s death. Hahn and another council member, Susan Wengraf, were able to secure about $150,000 from the city for safety improvements, and Hahn said the city used the funds to make some changes to the street, including adding signage, new paint, removing parking and improving crosswalks. But it was not enough to transform Marin Avenue.

Later that year, Jacque Ensign, the founder of Berkeley Path Wanderers Association, was struck and injured by a car on the street at its intersection with Shattuck Avenue.

Hahn said she plans to meet with the city’s deputy manager and its new head of public works next week. The avenue’s grade is a limiting factor, but still Hahn and other transportation advocates point to other ideas about improving the street.

These include: requiring residents to cut back bushes that obscure crosswalks and corners; painting a center line or median to narrow the lanes; adding flashing beacons at crosswalks, rumble strips or radar speed signs; or making more intersections all-way stops. Marin at Oxford, for example, lacks a stop sign for those coming up the hill, and some residents said they felt that fact often confused motorists heading down the street.

Matthai Chakko, a spokesperson for the city, said that officials were examining the role that the design of the street played in the crash.

“We will be continuing to look at this particular incident and see what if any improvements can be made,” he said in a statement to the Chronicle. “Despite the progress we continue to make citywide, this incident and other fatal or serious injury collisions remind us of the need to maintain the urgency and care with which we approach this work.”

Ben Gerhardstein, a member of Walk Bike Berkeley, said he’d like to see Public Works employees more closely involved in the initial investigation of crashes.

“Every few years, we’ve seen a pattern — there’s a tragic collision and the city does a few things (to the street), with paint mainly,” said. “We’d like to see the city come forward with a proposal that would end the carnage on Marin.”

Reach Eli Rosenberg: eli.rosenberg@sfchronicle.com