When Cal grad Mingwei Samuel installed a self-built wooden bench at a downtown Berkeley bus stop in December, the city sprung to 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 8 benches at other stops around Berkeley, and seven in Oakland. An additional eight benches have been built but not yet installed.
The benches in Oakland have yet to prompt a response from the city similar to what’s happening in Berkeley. However, many bus stops in Oakland are similar to those in Berkeley in that they offer little in the way of shade and no comfortable places to sit while waiting for a ride.
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 staff in Berkeley’s 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.”
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 necessarily be that cheap.
Berkeley’s Parks, Recreation & Waterfront department installed eight memorial benches in Berkeley’s parks in 2023. Each cost $3,400 to purchase, assemble and install, and were paid for with donations, according to public records. Unlike typical benches, those come with a small plaque etched with the deceased person’s name.
City spokesperson Matthai Chakko has previously said the city doesn’t endorse Samuel and Owens’ project, as it could “present unforeseen risks.” Instead, people should send in their requests for public benches via 311, he 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. “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 the 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, 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.
