Members of the Berkeley Unified School District, or BUSD, Transportation Department spoke with community members at a forum Monday about possible solutions to the closure of school bus stops along Grizzly Peak Boulevard in July.
According to BUSD Transportation Department operations supervisor Amanda Espino, school bus service along Grizzly Peak Boulevard was discontinued after multiple school bus accidents in the area last school year spurred an investigation into the stops’ compliance with legal standards.
Following consistent calls this fall from residents of the Berkeley Hills to address the school bus stop closures during school board meetings, Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthelappeared alongside representatives from the city of Berkeley and AC Transit to field questions. Among the attendees was Berkeley City Councilmember Brent Blackaby, who sat with audience members to listen in.
According to Ford Morthel, the aim was to help the community understand the “constraints” the district is working under and share potential solutions.
These constraints include Cal Code Regulations for the placement of school bus stops. Most relevant to the Berkeley Hills stops is a regulation that requires California Highway Patrol, or CHP, approval when there is not a clear view of the stop from 200 feet in each direction for neighborhoods with a 25 mph speed limit.
Investigations found that of the three school bus stops along Grizzly Peak Boulevard — at Shasta Road, Latham Lane and Forest Lane — none met CHP standards requiring 200 feet of visibility.
Other issues include the narrowness of roads in the Berkeley Hills, many of which lack curbs or sidewalks and have minimal space for buses to maneuver.
“There are a lot of legacy systems that keep functioning in the hillside, which is very challenging terrain. We all made the decision to live up here knowing what it entails,” said Berkeley city deputy director of public works Wahid Amiri during the forum. “Even if it’s a legacy system that has been functioning for 30 years, we have to look at it to see that it does comply with current codes and regulations.”
Ford Morthel proposed a number of potential solutions to the transportation issues in the Berkeley Hills, among them being to request approval from CHP to secure extra signage to secure stops lacking visibility, as well as to develop bus stop waivers so students could request to be assigned to a specific bus stop.
The waivers, according to Ford Morthel, are pending final approval from the district’s legal team and may be ready by the start of 2026.
One Berkeley Hills resident at the forum emphasized that they, too, want to be able to “utilize the city services,” arguing that those living in the Berkeley Hills are “still community members.”
Early May 2025, the district proposed the idea of a $1 or $2 daily fee to use BUSD transportation. These “modest fees” were mentioned as another one of the district’s “budget-balancing solutions” in the same July newsletter that announced the Grizzly Peak stop closures.
The district also proposed the location of Grizzly Peak and Euclid Avenue as a potential new bus stop, pending city approval.
At the end of the night, Ford Morthel assured parents that this would not be the last time busing issues in the Berkeley Hills would be discussed.
“The team of people in front of you is committed to working for your babies,” Ford Morthel said. “There are folks really working hard around the clock.”