Kenya Wheeler, a North Oakland resident, doesn’t own a car and relies on public transit to travel around the Bay Area. To get to downtown Oakland from his home, which is just east of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Wheeler often takes the Line 51 bus, one of AC Transit’s most widely used bus routes. In recent months, he has noticed confusion and frustration from his fellow commuters on the southbound 51A Line, which goes from Rockridge BART on College Avenue to Broadway and then south to Alameda. That’s because the City of Oakland, heeding the demands of an area bank, forced AC Transit to remove a key bus stop at Broadway and 30th Street — one that, according to Wheeler, many elderly residents and people going to appointments at the adjacent medical center had frequently used.

“This is a large senior population … and people are having to walk farther,” said Wheeler, who is also a transportation planner for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and a member of the advocacy group Transport Oakland. “When winter hits, it’s going to be a lot more inconvenient.”

While the elimination of a single bus stop may seem relatively inconsequential, the process that led to the removal of the stop sheds light on the ways in which the City of Oakland at times fails to prioritize public transit and neglects its own pro-transit planning policies, according to advocates. In this case, top city officials ignored the requests of AC Transit and the needs of Line 51 riders and instead caved to the demands of Summit Bank, which did not want a bus stop in front of its business because bank officials expressed fears about having bus riders stand next to the bank’s entrance, according to interviews and email records. The loss of the stop was frustrating enough to AC Transit that the agency’s general manager sent a letter to city officials expressing dismay about Oakland’s decision-making process for bus stop locations.

“This case is just so egregious,” said Greg Harper, a longtime AC Transit board member whose district includes the Broadway and 30th stop, in an interview. “Summit Bank prefers that the bus stop not be located in front of the bank. But by all measures of safety and convenience, that’s exactly where it belongs. … This shouldn’t stand. A lot of people are going to suffer.”

Records show that city officials and AC Transit initially agreed to move an existing southbound Line 51A stop from the north side of Broadway and 30th to the south side as part of a major retail development proposal anchored by a new Sprouts Farmers Market grocery store at 3001–3039 Broadway. The Oakland Planning Commission approved that relocation of the stop as part of the project’s environmental impact report, which was finalized in 2013. AC Transit also supported the move, because it’s generally more efficient and safer to have bus stops located on the “far side” of intersections after a traffic light.

But after a lengthy public review process for the Sprouts project and final city approvals for the bus relocation, representatives of Summit Bank, which is located at 2969 Broadway, right next to the planned new bus stop, began to flood the city with complaints. In April, John Flores, then-Oakland’s interim city administrator, wrote in a letter to AC transit that the proposed relocation in front of Summit Bank “received extremely strong objections from the bank’s representatives.” At that point, however, the developer of the Sprouts project had already begun construction and designed its project with an outdoor seating area and main entrance that could not accommodate a bus stop, Flores wrote.

As a result, city officials proposed to move the stop one block to Broadway and 29th Street — a relocation that AC Transit said was not viable, given that it would be only 500 feet away from the next stop at Broadway and 28th Street. Regarding that proposed alternative, Kathleen Kelly, AC Transit’s then-interim general manager, wrote to Flores and other city officials in June, “From the perspective of the bus rider that is already on the bus, stopping twice in a 500-foot span is frustrating, especially if there is nothing that specifically generates ridership at 29th Street.” Because of the city’s refusal to put a stop in front of the bank, AC Transit had no option but to remove it altogether, Kelly wrote, adding, “I would be remiss not to express AC Transit’s disappointment in the process and outcome. … AC Transit is left not only without an improved bus stop but also without our existing stop which has served the surrounding community for many years.”

Emails show that high-ranking city officials were insistent that AC Transit accommodate the bank’s demands. In one email to multiple AC Transit representatives, Rachel Flynn, the city’s director of city planning, wrote: “Summit Bank will fight a bus stop no matter what you offer.” Shirley Nelson, the bank’s founder, had contacted the city council and Mayor Libby Schaaf and had “brought her entire Board into stopping the bus stop at the bank,” Flynn wrote. In that same email, Flynn urged AC Transit to endorse an alternative option.

Critics of the city’s actions pointed out that Summit Bank is politically connected. Campaign finance records show that the bank’s top executives donated a total of $4,600 to Schaaf’s mayoral campaign in 2014. Nelson personally donated $700 to Schaaf, which is the maximum allowed by law.

“This is pure politics,” said Harper. “The bank was saying they thought it would be dangerous to have a bus stop there for people using the bank. … It takes a strong city staff to say that’s just not right.”

Representatives of Summit Bank, Schaaf’s spokesperson Erica Terry Derryck, and the mayor’s transportation policy director Matt Nichols did not respond to requests for comment.

In an interview, Flynn said that in addition to expressing concerns about a bus stop posing a safety threat to its customers leaving the business with money, Summit Bank officials also told her that they didn’t want to lose any street parking. “They felt very, very strongly about it,” she said. When I asked Flynn if the city believed the bank’s concerns about safety were legitimate, she responded: “I didn’t understand it. But that was their argument and we had to take them at their word.” The city tried to work out a compromise with Summit Bank, Sprouts, and AC Transit, but the parties could not agree on a location, Flynn said.

Sprouts officials also did not respond to requests for comment.

AC Transit spokesperson Michele Joseph said in an interview that the agency was not pleased with the outcome. “We’re disappointed because we feel like this was really the most advantageous stop for our ridership,” she said, referring to the Broadway and 30th location. Under the new alignment, bus riders must now walk an extra two blocks to get to their medical center-area appointments.

Data from AC Transit, which Transport Oakland obtained and provided to me, shows that prior to the removal of the stop last fall, on an average weekday, 72 people got on and 44 people got off at the 30th Street southbound stop.

Advocates also pointed out that the removal of a bus stop clearly contradicts the goals of the city’s Broadway Valdez District Specific Plan, a detailed blueprint for development in the area that the city council adopted last year. The plan stated that the city should collaborate with AC Transit to improve bus service along Broadway and move bus stops to the far-side corners of intersections. Oakland further has a “transit first” policy and a number of other pro-sustainability policies on the books dedicated to improving access to public transit — not reducing it.

“This area is supposed to have robust transit and it doesn’t,” said Chris Peeples, president of the AC Transit board of directors. Peeples, who had a stroke several years ago and does not walk long distances, noted that his doctor is on 30th Street just off of Broadway and that he now has to walk farther to get to the bus when he’s leaving appointments.

It’s also backward to have a major new retail site lack a bus stop in one direction — especially considering that this intersection is not directly near a BART station, local activists and environmentalists said. “This really lets down the residents who live in the neighborhood,” said Joel Devalcourt, East Bay regional representative of the Greenbelt Alliance, an advocacy group.

Activists said the city’s decision to favor a bank over bus riders further illustrates the urgent need for an Oakland Department of Transportation — a new agency that Schaaf proposed earlier this year, but has not yet launched. Unlike San Francisco and other cities, Oakland doesn’t have a dedicated transit agency — a problem that makes it easier for a single business to pressure the city to make a decision that clearly ignores best practices of transportation planning, said Liz Brisson, co-founder of Transport Oakland. “This process was wrong,” she said. “Oakland must consider transit an integral part of making the city work.”

Girls born to mothers with high levels of BPA in their systems during the first trimester of pregnancy weigh less at birth than babies with lower exposure, according to a new study released last week. The study adds to evidence that fetal exposure to the ubiquitous chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) may contribute to fetal developmental problems. Low birth weights are linked to a host of health problems later in life, such as obesity, diabetes, infertility, and heart disease.

Researchers tested mothers’ blood during their first trimester and at delivery for BPA, and tested umbilical cord blood after delivery. They tested for both BPA and “conjugated BPA,” the form BPA takes after the body processes it. Bottom line: more BPA in women’s blood meant babies weighed less. For every doubling in free, or unconjugated, BPA in the mothers’ first-term blood, babies weighed, on average, 6.5 ounces less. The research was published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Similarly, for every doubling of free-BPA in the woman’s blood at birth, babies weighed on average 3 ounces less. “Having small babies at birth is a risk factor for a whole bunch of different things,” said Laura Vandenberg, assistant professor of environmental health at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst who was not involved in the study.

Another recent study from China found BPA levels in mothers’ urine was linked to low birth weights. That study also found a much stronger association with baby girls.

Unfortunately for pregnant women, BPA — used to make polycarbonate plastic and found in some food cans and paper receipts — is found in most people. Earlier this year, California mandated warning labels for products made with BPA. And in 2011, the state banned BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups, but the chemical is still widely used in food containers. In fact, even the most diligent mothers-to-be may find it challenging to avoid contact with BPA.

The strong link between fetal exposure to BPA during the first trimester and birth weights makes sense, said Vasantha Padmanabhan, senior author of the study and professor of pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, molecular and integrative physiology, and environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan. “When you think about development, early in the pregnancy is a critical time — when fetuses are most sensitive to insults such as stress, environmental chemicals — that’s why we looked at the first trimester,” she said.

About 8 percent of babies born in the United States suffer from low birth weights, considered less than 5.5 pounds, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other possible contributors to low birth weights include smoking or drinking alcohol during pregnancy, mothers’ lack of weight gain, mothers’ age, and stress.

The University of Michigan study doesn’t prove BPA caused low birth weights. But it could play a role, as the chemical mimics hormones and can disrupt endocrine systems. Even though BPA clears from the body quickly, scientists suspect it could bind to receptors or could be stored in fat for release later. Proper functioning of these receptors is critical to organ development and function.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, said the study provides “no meaningful information on the safety of BPA.” The council has defended BPA as safe as used in food packaging. Steve Hentges, a representative of the council, called into question using blood to measure BPA exposure. He also suggested that BPA from another source contaminated the blood samples.

Padmanabhan said the study and BPA measurements “represent a true life scenario,” because blood was drawn with a researcher present to ensure no plastic contact.

The researchers did not find a link between BPA levels and baby boys’ weights. It’s not clear why the exposure was only linked to lower birth weights in girls, but the work suggests that females might be more susceptible to BPA exposure before birth.

In the recent Chinese study, which ran from 2012 to 2014, researchers selected 452 mother-infant pairs from Wuhan, the most populous city in Central China. They collected urine samples from the mothers at delivery and measured for BPA. Using birth weight data obtained from medical records, the researchers then evaluated the relationship between urinary BPA levels and low birth weight.

They found that mothers of newborns with lower birth weights had significantly higher BPA levels in their urine than the control mothers, according to the study published in Environment International. They also found that the association between low birth weight and higher BPA levels was more pronounced among baby girls, which also suggested that female babies might be more susceptible to BPA than males.

The Chinese study also didn’t prove BPA caused the low birth weights. But in 2013, findings from a Dutch study suggested that BPA exposure at levels commonly found in people may slow fetal growth. In addition, a 2014 study linked high BPA levels in the placenta to lower birth weights.

On a recent Sunday morning in Oakland’s Pill Hill neighborhood, the sound of voices raised in song spilled out onto Fairmount Avenue from the open doorway of the Oakland Peace Center. Inside the hall, some fifty people stood in front of their folding chairs, swaying and singing along with the lyrics displayed on a large projection screen at the front of the room. It was a church-service scene typical of any Sunday morning.

But then it sank in: The song into which the congregation was pouring its collective soul was not a church hymn. It was Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family.”

We – are – family!/ I got all my sisters with me!

We – are – family!/Get up ev’rybody and sing!

Founded in 2013 by two London comedians disenchanted with organized religion, the secular Sunday Assembly has been called an “atheist church,” but that description doesn’t quite harness the mix of characters — agnostics, atheists, Unitarians, secular Jews, and non-religious and formerly religious individuals of all stripes — who attend on the last Sunday of every month.

Oakland’s assembly, known as Sunday Assembly East Bay, draws some fifty to seventy attendees each month and is one of nearly seventy assemblies that currently exist around the world.

The “church” part of “atheist church” is accurate in that assembly members congregate in a hall for a formal hour-long program that involves singing (often something by the Beatles or Bill Withers), readings, listening to a speaker, and passing a donation basket, followed by an informal potluck. But beyond that, it’s all up to each attendee’s discretion. Sing, or don’t sing. Agree with the speaker, or don’t. Believe in whatever spirituality, or lack thereof, you’d like to. The only thing that’s asked of attendees is that they keep the gathering friendly, apolitical, and non-religious.

“I think what was really exciting to me about Sunday Assembly was that it’s new,” said Dan Lawlor, a regular attendee, in an interview, comparing Sunday Assembly to other congregations one might attend. “For better or for worse, it doesn’t have five hundred years of baggage. You can create it.”

Fellow attendee Debra Wong, who identifies as atheist, said simply, “This feels like a space where I can be my whole self.”

Sunday Assembly has a motto — “Live better, help often, wonder more” — that could best be described as humanist, more indicative of a celebration of life than a call for anti-theism. Organizers strive to keep their assemblies “radically inclusive,” just as welcoming of a regular attendee’s visiting Protestant grandma as of a die-hard Richard Dawkins devotee.

“We’ve got the best parts of a church,” Oakland’s assembly advertises on its Meetup group page, “without any of the religious dogma.”

British comedians Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones first hit upon the idea of “atheist church” while driving together to a stand-up gig in Bath, Great Britain, two years ago. Riffing about church in the car, they began reflecting on the real joy people seemed to derive from their sense of religious and spiritual community. (Evans had grown up Christian; Jones didn’t identify as religious but quite enjoyed Christmas concerts.) What about a church for non-believers? they wondered out loud.

That January, Evans and Jones staged the first Sunday Assembly service in London. It wasn’t a tongue-in-cheek shtick. They were serious about the space they were offering, just as they were about offering it in a way that turned religion on its head. More than two hundred people showed up to the first event. At the next event, there were three hundred, prompting Evans and Jones to begin holding two services a day. Then people started contacting them from all over the globe, asking them how to start their own.

So that November, Evans and Jones set out on a Sunday Assembly “world tour” to bring their secular service to audiences in Europe, North America, and Australia. The comedians connected with organizers interested in helping to set up Sunday Assembly events in their own cities. The local organizers were responsible for setting up logistics and finding speakers. Evans and Jones would show up to support the event.

Enter Oakland resident Daniel McCoy. McCoy, who had left Pentecostalism as a teenager and now identifies as atheist, had read about London’s first successful Sunday Assembly in The Guardian. When he heard that the founders were bringing the assembly stateside, he was interested in getting involved. An acquaintance of McCoy’s, who happened to be organizing a Sunday Assembly tour stop in San Jose, persuaded McCoy to serve as the assembly’s main speaker there.

McCoy has a long resume of public speaking engagements thanks to his job as an “illumination materialist” at Pixar, so he gamely agreed to speak. In preparation, he wrote a talk about one of his greatest personal inspirations, Carl Sagan. In particular, McCoy drew from a Sagan lecture called “Pale Blue Dot” — a reference to Earth as seen from beyond the rings of Saturn — in which Sagan, as McCoy described it, “talks about how everything human, everything that’s ever happened, every person that ever lived, happened on this pale blue pixel” called Earth. It’s a perspective encompassing both smallness and interconnectedness, and McCoy finds it so moving that he watches the lecture online every year on Sagan’s birthday.

McCoy’s Pale Blue Dot talk at the Sunday Assembly in San Jose went swimmingly. He could tell, because, in the middle of it, Sunday Assembly co-founder Sanderson Jones, who was in the audience, bounded up excitedly to find the Sagan video on a laptop.

“We all watched the Pale Blue Dot together, just spur of the moment,” McCoy said, recalling Jones’ rangy excitement, the ensuing silence in the room, and the sense of collective wonder as, onscreen, a tiny blue planet became dwarfed by Saturn’s immensity. “I said to myself, ‘I want to go to a church that finds this sacred.'”

The next day, at Jones’ urging, McCoy gave the same talk at a Sunday Assembly tour stop in San Francisco. Then McCoy became a founding organizer of the Oakland-based Sunday Assembly, which held its first assembly at Humanist Hall in January 2014.

McCoy had found a new spiritual gathering: one that would celebrate the wonder of the Pale Blue Dot.

Godless congregations are not a new idea, in and of themselves. Oakland’s Manifesto Bicycles hosted an irregular Sunday morning social event called Bike Church (now defunct) for years, and back in 2004, another British comedian started a cult called Join Me whose mission to “be nice” attracted thousands of followers — er, “joinees” — around the world.

What seems to set Sunday Assembly apart is its organizers’ earnest attempt to build real-life, everyday community. Outside of the monthly meetings, local Sunday Assemblies across the world also host “smoups” (short for “small groups”) to help facilitate the regular social interactions integral to building community. Oakland’s various assembly members host monthly smoups for hiking, discussing philosophy, reading out loud, and, of course, singing.

The global Sunday Assembly movement is also rapidly expanding and formalizing. Sanderson Jones now works on Sunday Assembly full-time, helping to launch new assemblies and ensuring that existing assemblies adhere to a formal accreditation process — a necessary bit of bureaucracy, because, as he and Evans wrote on Sunday Assembly’s website, “It only takes one newspaper headline of ‘CHILD SACRIFICED AT SUNDAY ASSEMBLY’ to pee in the pool for everyone.”

Oakland’s Sunday Assembly is also formalizing. In March, the assembly elected its first seven board members, including McCoy, Lawlor, and Wong. Its core members now face the same challenges that Sunday Assemblies across the world are answering in different ways: How does a congregation form a coherent group identity without the guidance of dogma, history, or a god? Can such a community truly be inclusive of everyone without losing its own identity?

Lawlor said those questions — of group identity, of community, of what it means to “do good” without politics or dogma — are reflective of the possibilities that lie ahead.

“Any place where people gather and do good is something that we need, and all people deserve that, not just people who have a traditional understanding of religion,” Lawlor said.