City Council and staff met in a Work Session on December 15, 2025, to discuss the next phase of a comprehensive parking/sign project started in 2020.

In 2020, the City Council approved Phase 1 of this project, allowing Public Safety, Public Works, and our former engineering firm to begin inventorying and updating all parking/no-parking signs on residential streets across the City. Many of these regulatory signs needed to be replaced to bring them into compliance with today’s standards for clarity, visibility, and uniformity. As the second phase of the project was approved by City Council and began in 2021, clear, objective standards for parking on all streets across the City were developed for the first time. 

Like many communities in our area, and as evidenced by hundreds of outdated and conflicting Traffic Control Orders over the years, previous decisions about which streets were classified as fire lanes or no parking zones were reactive and subjective. A key goal of the first two phases of the sign project was to develop the following standards based only on safety and objective information to ensure consistent fire lane access and emergency response clearance across the City:

• Clear roadway width less than 20 feet: No parking allowed on either side of the road except for boulevards. 

• Clear roadway width of 20 feet to 25 feet: No parking allowed on the fire hydrant side. 

• Clear roadway width greater than 25 feet: No parking restrictions. 

• Roadway adjacent to schools: No parking zones established by Public Safety to improve traffic safety and circulation around school sites.

These objective standards, and any necessary exemptions, are the shared responsibility of our Public Safety and Public Works departments and are not based on a vote of City Council. All regulatory signs are considered Traffic Control Orders (TCOs), which are governed by the Uniform Traffic Code that is adopted by City Council as part of our City Code. The Uniform Traffic Code appoints the chief of police/director of Public Safety as the authority to make the final decision about any TCOs based on standard and accepted engineering practices. 

Public Safety, Public Works, and the City’s engineering firm (when necessary) work closely together to make final decisions around any of our TCOs, and Public Safety constantly monitors our streets for any necessary exemptions from the established standard. In the time since this project began, the City has contracted a different engineering firm, who have also reviewed the plans and standards and agree with the previous recommendations. 

The sign project was paused in 2024. At that time, 90% of the initial recommendations were completed, and the remaining 10% will now be completed in Spring 2026. Information and updates about on-street parking will be shared early and often on this page, via social media and email, and by mail for those on streets that will see changes. Please reach out to info@berkleypublicsafety.net if you have questions about these updates.