While San Francisco rushes to redesign intersections and put posts around its bike lanes, Berkeley has taken a different approach to traffic safety: penalties of more than $200 for cyclists who roll through stop signs.

The enforcement campaign, carried out by police officers who patrol the city’s quiet bicycle boulevards on motorcycles, has caused anger to spill from Twitter into City Hall.

Police say they are trying to prevent collisions and fulfill the requirements of a $250,000 state grant to promote good behavior on roadways. But bike advocates and city council members criticized the operation for being ill-timed and off message, saying it’s at odds with new Vision Zero policies to show the streets aren’t just for cars. And the fines are steep, set at $238 in California, but running higher after court costs.

“I was disappointed to hear we were spending these resources ticketing cyclists,” said Mayor Jesse Arreguín, who found out about the crackdown after advocates began tweeting photos of bike riders getting pulled over. One, from Walk Bike Berkeley member Ben Paulos, showed an officer handing a ticket to a cyclist on the Ohlone Greenway, a popular route that runs beneath the elevated BART tracks from downtown Berkeley to El Cerrito. Paulos said he watched the encounter on a recent Thursday while sitting at the Westbrae Biergarten on Gilman Street.

The strategy of ticketing people bicycling on designated bikeways sets Berkeley apart from other cities, said Dave Campbell, advocacy director of Bike East Bay. San Francisco has focused its Vision Zero effort on building protected bike lanes and intersections that separate pedestrians from cars. Oakland has largely de-emphasized enforcement against bicyclists. In a May news release — part of the same state-funded safety program that prompted the citations in Berkeley — Oakland police highlighted bicycle safety “as a top priority” and offered tips for drivers and cyclists to watch for one another.

“While we encourage cities to be innovative and unique and get out in front of each other, (Berkeley’s approach) is not a way to do that,” Campbell said.

Since July, Berkeley police have stopped 55 cyclists or pedestrians for alleged violations, resulting in 36 citations, according to records from the traffic enforcement division. At least two city officials were among the people cited. During the same period, police pulled over 143 motorists, issuing 106 citations from those stops.

Still, the volume of bicycle tickets alarms residents and officials who view cycling as a means to fight climate change and a more affordable alternative to cars. Some also wondered whether police were spending too many resources on a mode of transportation that ultimately isn’t that dangerous.

“When you think of the ramifications of a car running a stop sign vs. a cyclist, there’s a lot more possibility for the car to do harm,” said Joey Chiang, a UC Berkeley graduate student who was stopped at Milvia and Blake streets while riding to class Friday morning.

At the time, Chiang and his companion, who is also a student, didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. They’d paused to check that the intersection was clear before slowly pedaling through, when they heard a siren.

“Then a cop on a motorcycle pulled us over and started writing us a ticket,” Chiang said. “He called for backup, and a police car showed up. We weren’t given any time to discuss this.”

The crackdown has turned tree-lined paths of Milvia and the Ohlone Greenway into contested turf. Planners in Berkeley built a network of bicycle boulevards in the mid-1990s, marking the streets with purple signs and wide stencils to note that bikes own the road. Such street design is part of a long tradition in Berkeley, where drivers who stray off the main roads may find themselves navigating a maze of roundabouts, dead ends and flower beds.

When police officers began targeting cyclists a few weeks ago, they stationed themselves on these bikeways.

Officer Byron White described the ticketing as part of a larger safety effort that also clamps down on distracted and intoxicated drivers, speeders, motorists who run red lights and people who fail to buckle their seat belts. It began in November, when the Police Department received funds from California’s Office of Traffic Safety for a yearlong program to reduce traffic-related deaths and injuries.

The resulting campaign didn’t take aim at any particular group, White said, adding that bicycle safety enforcement was among several boxes the police had to check to meet the terms of the grant. He noted, further, that cyclists pose dangers when they don’t follow the rules of the road: In the first seven months of this year, 64 collisions in Berkeley involved bicycles. In 32 of them the cyclist was deemed at fault.

Beyond Twitter outrage, opinions in Berkeley seem divided.

“I think it’s great that people (on bicycles) are getting out of cars, but they need to be considerate and aware,” said Bruce Reeves, who was walking by Ohlone Park in North Berkeley on Wednesday morning. Bicycles zipped down the surrounding streets of Hearst Avenue and Martin Luther King Junior Way, mostly blowing through stop signs.

Perhaps the threat of a fine would deter such behavior, Reeves and others said. Yet, some cyclists said the extra police presence has had a different effect: It’s steered them off of bike trails and onto busier roads, where they have to jostle among cars and trucks.

“It’s just a very complicated question,” said William Briscoe, a North Berkeley resident and cyclist who said he generally follows rules. He’s frustrated with other cyclists who “bomb down Hearst Avenue at 30 miles an hour,” but said he’s not sure whether ticketing them is the right answer.

Changing perceptions of street safety in Berkeley may require a larger culture shift, said Councilwoman Lori Droste, who sponsored the city’s legislation last year to adopt Vision Zero and commit to ending traffic deaths.

“I’ll hear people describe cyclists as menaces, or say they’re dangerous,” she said, arguing that society is often kinder to drivers: a car crash is still an “accident.”

That mentality — sometimes called the “windshield perspective” — is so well entrenched that some City Council members are calling for new laws and policies that would “decriminalize” Berkeley’s growing community of bicycle commuters, casual riders and parents who tow their children to school in bike trailers.

The California Vehicle Code subjects them to the same road rules as two-ton SUVs, but Berkeley has some discretion in how to enforce it, Arreguín said. Some cities and states have adopted what is known as the “Idaho stop,” which allows cyclists to roll through intersections with stop signs if traffic is clear.

Arreguín expects a proposal to come before the City Council in the next few weeks, which would make cyclists who fail to halt at stop signs a low priority for police.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan