Berkeleyites are used to the site sight of our police on bicycles, but today at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley BART station, the BART Police are launching their own bike patrol.

The bike patrols will start this summer. BART still needs to purchase the bikes and work with the El Cerrito Police Department to put officers and community service officers through a 24-hour training course. The goal is to have up to 40 BART officers and 24 CSOs on bike patrol. Officers will not take bikes onto trains during peak commute bike-blackout periods.

According to BART board vice-president Bob Franklin, the program “removes up to 30 patrol cars from the road, prevents harmful emissions, reduces BART’s carbon footprint and saves our riders approximately $60,000 per year on fuel and vehicle maintenance costs”.

The bike patrols are being funded by a $92,000 state safety and security grant.

Photo of North Berkeley BART by Hortulus from Flickr

Lance Knobel (Berkeleyside co-founder) has been a journalist for nearly 40 years. Much of his career was in business journalism. He was editor-in-chief of both Management Today, the leading business magazine...