Berkeley, a Look Back: One-way ferry ride across the Bay proposed for 25 cents in 1925

State hearings on rail and ferry transit serving the East Bay produced various stimulating statistics a century ago For it was estimated that East Bay streetcar and interurban rail lines would provide particular tourist trips while cross-bay ferries would provide visitor trips Motor coach buses had carried about client trips in the Fiscal Year The Southern Pacific Railway which like the Key System ran a streetcar system was proposing a fare of cents for a one-way ferry ride across the Bay or cents for a round trip plus cents for a trip on the streetcars The statistics were provided at a Sept hearing of the State Railroad Commission in Oakland Testimony also disclosed that a large slice of the profit made by the Key System was from restaurant institution on the ferry boats Bay Bridge On Sept a proposal for a bridge across San Francisco Bay was presented to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors The structure was intended to connect to San Francisco at Hunter s Point cross the Bay to Alameda and extend onwards to Oakland at Seventh and Peralta The bridge would be nearly feet wide with six lanes for traffic and three train tracks Why so far south To avoid interfering with harbor and port rise and operations in both San Francisco and Oakland and to comply with Army Corps of Engineers regulations which strictly controlled structures across waterways where military vessels needed to pass Zoning dispute Marshall Steel a prominent cleaner and dyer in Berkeley lost his bid to rebuild or expand his plant at Dwight and Grove in current times s Martin Luther King Jr Way Sept The long-running dispute had been between the businessman who demanded to enlarge his prosperous business at its current location and neighbors who were opposed to enlarging it in their rapidly growing residential district That part of Berkeley was seeing considerable subdivision and construction of new houses in the early th century transitioning from farmlands that had previously covered the area between Downtown Berkeley and the industrial residential group of West Berkeley The City Council s decision in the zoning dispute reclassified the site for retail That meant Steel could continue operating his cleaning business but not enlarge it or sell it for another light industrial use At the council meeting an attorney for nearby residents revealed neighbors preferred the street be developed as a high class apartment house district rather than continue as light industrial or transition to retail Covenant plan On Sept several of the neighbors met to celebrate their domination and also hear a assessment on the Covenant Plan This was a racist effort then popular in Berkeley to persuade homeowners to sign voluntary covenants saying they would not sell or rent residential property in a particular area to non-white renters or buyers Flyers return On Sept thousands of spectators jammed the Greek Theatre on the UC Berkeley campus to welcome back the naval airmen who had tried a non-stop flight from the Bay Area to Hawaii The flyers arrived in Berkeley on a Key System train disembarked at Ward and Shattuck then were taken on an automobile parade through Downtown past cheering crowds of locals Population On the basis of school attendance the population of Berkeley was estimated to be as of mid- the Gazette shared Sept The number was based on federal statistics on the average size of families with school age children and did not take into account students attending private schools in Berkeley Bay Area native and Berkeley area historian Steven Finacom holds this column s copyright