When Cal grad Mingwei Samuel installed a self-built wooden bench at a downtown Berkeley bus stop in December, the city sprung into action, swapping it out for one of its own in a matter of days.
A City Council member quickly vowed to work with transit officials to improve what activists say is a dearth of benches at bus stops throughout the city that has forced riders including seniors and people with disabilities to sit on curbs or lean on trees.
But after Councilmember Kate Harrison abruptly resigned in late January, the future of the project became unclear.
Last week, Councilmember Terry Taplin promised to take the lead, but says he is still looking into what the city can afford to do. The delays have prompted Samuel and a collaborator to keep up their guerrilla bench campaign. In addition to the bench the city replaced, they’ve put out 16 benches at stops around the city — nine in Berkeley and seven in Oakland. An additional eight benches have been built but not yet installed.
Taplin, who represents West and Southwest Berkeley, said he’s seen the guerrilla benches along the 51B route and thinks they’re “great,” but would prefer that the city build and maintain its own, as “people are already paying taxes.”
He plans to work with city staff in the public works department to find out how many quick-build bus benches they have capacity for, using funds from a 50-cent-per-trip tax on Uber and Lyft rides passed by Berkeley voters in 2020.
“I would like to see us rolling these out by summer; of course that’s me being very optimistic,” Taplin said. “It’s a small fix that will really improve the transit riding experience for lots of people.”
The city has not purchased or installed any benches since Dec. 28, when it replaced Samuel’s bench with one it had in stock, city spokesperson Matthai Chakko wrote in an email. It has no additional benches in stock.
The city, which told Berkeley residents to send in their requests for benches via the city’s 311 request page, has not yet logged any formal requests for benches from anyone besides Owens.
“We will be looking to collaborate with AC Transit as benches support their core service, and they would better understand the needs for transit riders,” Chakko wrote.
He said that while the city appreciates community support for benches, it does not condone the guerrilla bench project, because “unapproved outdoor furniture can present unforeseen risks to pedestrians, transit riders, cyclists, and motorists.”
Berkeley has been without a public works director since November, when prior director Liam Garland resigned, although deputy city manager LaTanya Bellow is serving in the interim. Taplin said he would take up the issue with a new director once one is hired.
Taplin said he would involve the city’s health, housing and community services department and intends to form a working group with transit advocates and other stakeholders to discuss trade-offs, including whether the city should prioritize building bus shelters, which provide seating and protection from the elements or providing more bus stops with budget-friendly seating, like the Simme-seats Emeryville has deployed at all its bus stops.
A decision to install additional bus stops can be made by city staff without a formal vote of the council, Taplin said.
In the meantime, Samuel and housing and transit activist Darrell Owens have continued to build more wooden benches, which they estimate to cost around $80 each.
City-installed benches won’t be that cheap.
Bus benches built to the city’s standards cost about $2500, excluding maintenance, Chakko said.
AC Transit Director Jean Walsh, who represents parts of Berkeley, Oakland, Emeryville and Piedmont, praised Owens and Samuel’s “thoughtfully designed and installed” benches.
“This action has sparked an important conversation that will hopefully lead to action,” she wrote in an email to Berkeleyside. “I’m looking forward to getting more bus benches throughout the city of Berkeley and beyond.”
There are 422 AC Transit stops in Berkeley. Of those, around 40 have bus shelters, which have attached seating. The agency has not provided a complete list of bus stops with benches in Berkeley.
The list of stops, created by AC Transit to help Berkeley identify which of its bus stops are most in need of improved amenities, ranks each from highest to lowest priority, and factors in the number of people who use the stop, as well as its location. Stops within a quarter mile of social services or located in blocks with more people of color or lower-income individuals get a boost in ranking.
Sixteen guerrilla benches in Berkeley, Oakland
Samuel and Owens spend their weekends sawing wood, treating it with deck stain, assembling the benches, strapping them onto the roof of Owens’ car and bolting the seats onto local sidewalks. To ensure the benches aren’t getting in the way of wheelchair users, they’ve followed AC Transit’s bench placement guidelines for ADA compliance.
These days, they run mostly separate bench-building operations, collaborating to decide where to place them. Owens builds them in his North Berkeley apartment, and Samuel from his family’s Oakland Hills home.
Owens has compiled a database of all the benches he and Samuel have put out, and is working on building a website where people can request a bench and share updates about the status of existing benches.
Samuel, a software engineer by day, said they’ve been “optimizing” the benches as they go, adding features like treated wood legs and changing the shape of the seats. They’re now on version 3.0 of the benches, Samuel said, which are more securely mounted to the sidewalk than the ones before.
Donations have allowed them to continue expanding. So far, Samuel said, they’ve received $2,800, mostly from Bay Area residents who learned of their project on X, formerly Twitter, or read Berkeleyside’s reporting on their seating insurgency.
Samuel, who does most of the shopping, said he has logged somewhere around $1,600 in baseline supplies like wood and bolts, though it’s likely an undercount as he’s lost track of some receipts. Owens said he’s spent around $750 on the project.
Samuel said the two don’t know whether their benches in Berkeley and Oakland have directly inspired others to build their own benches locally.
But there’s certainly interest: The UC Berkeley student group Telegraph for People recently invited Samuel and Owens to give a talk about their project and other acts of “tactical urbanism,” including guerrilla wayfinding signs.
After they presented, Samuel and Owens led a group of 15 students, who marched from UC Berkeley’s Bauer-Wurster Hall to the Line 51B, 36 and 79 stop near UC Berkeley’s Unit 1 dorm, carrying a wooden bench Samuel had built. Together, they bolted the bench down, cheered and posed for group photos before marching to Telegraph Avenue.
This story was updated after publication to include comments and information from the city of Berkeley.
