An chair peskin good morning and welcome to the transportation meeting for december 5, 2017. Our clerk is alberto quintanilla. If you could please call the roll. roll call we have a quorum. Chair peskin after we hear from the cac and pass the Consent Agenda i would like to take item 13, the report for the vanness bus Rapid Transit out of order to accommodate the schedule of mr. Ris ken who is here with us this morning. If you could call the next item. Clerk information item number two. Chair peskin mr. Larson. Good morning. I am john larson representing district 7. I will present the cac report today. Item 67 on the again item 7up date on the San FranciscoManagement Study brought concerns about the use of the hov lanes. They questioned the issuians of the clean air stickers on the use of the lanes giving increasing popularity of the vehicles in the bay area. There was concern that private shuttle buses would reduce the lanes effectiveness. This concern was more voiced during the Public Comment when private commuters buses were held up for the transportation not open to everyone. Starting with number 8. The cac recommended approval for the prop operation of the prop k funds. Item 9 approval of the local programming, Partnership Program or lpp Formula Program funds for street resurfacing and exchange of lpp funds with prop k funds for the managed lanes. Expressing the appreciation the funds could be used right away for street improvements. Item 11, the 2017 San FranciscoManagement Program raised questions about reporting the findings given the measures of the transit and auto speeds that had not improved. It was to break it down to show the improvements ordeggations on the individual routes. The concern that the Transportation Network companies on congestion was not adequately captured. The cac felt there should be more emphasis on development of subway and bus Rapid Transit. Tieing other studies together in a more holistic plan as opposed to the separate plans addressing more narrow issues. Represents from the west side expressed desire to address not the most congested core but transit need this is the rest of the city feeding into the core. The cac approved the item with the statement urging the Transportation Authority to accelerate planning for rightsofway investment such as subways and bus Rapid Transit with special consideration for the west side of the city. That concludes my report. Thank you. Chair peskin any questions for the cac . Is there any Public Comment on item number two . Seeing none Public Comment is closed. Thank you for your work and your report, mr. Clerk, please read the Consent Agenda. Clerk four and five were approved at the november 14th Board Meeting are considered for final approval. Remaining are routine. Staff will present if desired. If a member objects they will be removed and considered separately. Chair peskin any Public Comments on the minutes for november 14th . Seeing none it is closed. Movement to move the Consent Agenda . Roll call please. roll call chair peskin those items are finally approved. Colleagues if there is no objection as i previously mentioned, i would like to call item 13 out of order. Seeing no objection, mr. Clerk could you please call item 13. Clerk Progress Report for the vanness bus Rapid Transit an information item. Thank you for joining us and your staff miss mccarthy for being here. Good morning. Ed riskin director of transportation. Thank you for the schedule just meant. I want to come to give you an update on the vanness project. When it was here last, a month or so ago, there were a number of concerns raised by commissioner also. I want to try to address those concerns. I am joined by our project manager as well as other agency staff who are working together on this project. In terms of the project, i know you all know people call it vanness brt. It is much more comprehensive. It is a complete streets project with significant safety and state of good repair elements as well as the core bus Rapid Transit that we are all excited about and as you have asked us to do when we do these major projects, we are getting the complete scope done to minimize disruption and not come back later to tear up the streets again. It is a very exciting project for a very important street in our city, and it is one because of the complexity and size of the street and duration that we are doing in phases. We initially came in and removed most of the median for the length of the project. We are now in the phase of where we have shipped the traffic on to where the median used to be so we are working in blue areas in the slide, the utility work. This is the big phase of the project. In the end we will see surface improvements. The biggest chunk of time is utility work happening underground. Once that work is done, we will be able to shift traffic back to the sides, build the brt lanes in the center, then finally add the power that will power the electric buses. That gives us a big picture overview of the schedule. This is where we are currently versus what the baseline schedule is, and you will note, as i think saw last time projected for mid 2020 revenue start day, which is about nine months later than our current baseline schedule, apthat is based on the issues you heard previously and something that i think you heard previously we are working with the contractor and city agencies to recover. We now have received a Recovery Plan from the contract tour contractor Walsh Construction with different elements in terms of recovering the schedule. What it provides for is up to about four months of recovery of the nine months we are behind to get us half of the way back. There are things, options that we have already accepted. There are others we are reviewing. There are also other options we are exploring in terms of trying to accelerate the schedule so that we can move it back into as close to if not back at the original baseline december 2019 revenue start date. To remind you the main reasons that we got offtrack at this point in the project. One, last years storms. We lost a lot of time up front in terms of rain delay days, and then, second, procurement for utilities, which is the work starting now. As i mentioned, the longest part of the schedule was very challenging due to the costs that we got for the utility packages relative to the amount we budgeted and agreed upon with the contractor. It took a lot more time than provided for to get the utility contractor on board. They are now on period and the work has started. So as i said, they are on board. That contract was signed. We have created these two construction zones. You will notice between the last meeting and this one in november we did a couple of lane shifts. In the southbound direction from suster down sutter to north of city hall now traffic is in the center lane. On the sides of the streets we can begin utility work and in the northbound direction from Jackson North we shifted traffic to where the median used to be to work on the utilities there. Those traffic changes happened and the utility work is underway, which is an important milestone for the project. One other issue that may have been mentioned at the last meeting, generally holiday moratorium is in effect from thanksgiving to new years on streets with commercial businesses. There is a process through with the unanimous support they can waive that moratorium. We are successful with waivers for most of the project limits to allow the work to continue during the holidays. That will be helpful to our schedule as well. Right now, we are just starting that utility work. There is Monitoring Systems that we have to put in place for the awff. We are doing some potholing to confirm utility locations. We have found utilities that did not come from our initial notices of inintent from our underground service alerts, from the drawings from the utilities. There are steps to try to understand what is underground and where, and despite that we do and will on occasion identify things that we didnt expect to be there, but we continue to work with the utilities to address those issues adjust the design or move utilities so we can get underway. That work is happening now. Really, the main bulk of the work that we are starting is the utility work. Currently there is a sewer down the center. This puts new sewers, one in each direction north and southbound. That work is starting as is the replacement of the water maybe and parts of the awff system. Three different utilities work is what we are starting now. We continue a very robust outreach process which is really serving as the model for construction outreach for the rest of our rightofway projects in the city. This slide gives you some of the highlights of that. We are working to communicate well and early and frequently and at the risk of over communicating so folks know the impact to get in put from the Business Advisory committee about Different Things such as the acceleration options to make sure we are doing this in a way to work for the businesses and residents, in particular, who live and work along van ness avenue as well as other institutions. That is it in a nutshell that we are on a good track now with the utility contracts underway. We will continue to look for ways beyond the four months we have been presented to bring the schedule back as close to if not at the end of 2019 for Revenue Service date and we will be happy to provide updates as frequently as the commission would like. I would be happy to answer any questions. Chair peskin thank you. We appreciate you taking this seriously. Many of us, particularly those in the districts on the vanness corridor have heard from our constituents. We appreciate you are getting this back on schedule. We have had a robust conversation about this before as has the cac. We have some questions or comments from commissioners. Thank you for the presentation, it was very clear. I appreciate that giving that level of thought. It was a little confusing last time. I think this time we have more clear information. One of the things i want you to spend time giving us more detail on was you said you did the time recovery. That was pretty clear. We did the Holiday Schedule except for the one block. That will buy you time. The one we had a lot of questions about was the contractor and pricing in on the pc and sewer lines. Can you speak a little more about that. I know that was a big concern in terms how much above the bid and what that process was and how you ended upcoming to resolution. If you can speak more in detail on that. Certainly. This is, as i think you heard last time, a guaranteed maximum price contract, and in establishing that guaranteed maximum price we established the costs that we were agreeing to upfront for the different elements of work. For the utilities work, we agreed upon a price of 18 million based on estimates we had done, the contractor had done and independenthird tarty estimates. That triangulation gave us confidence that was a reasonable number. The first bids came in double that. 39 million give or take. That was something that the contractor wasnt comfortable with, that we and the puc were not comfortable with so from that point forward we worked with the contractor to repack age age and repackage and rebid. They ended up being able to get a price of about 29 million. Significantly more than what we all thought it would be at 18 million but significantly less than what we originally got. That process to rebid and negotiate with really one responsive party is what took the time and accounted for a lot of delays. The fact is that contractually speaking, the 18 million is what they agreed to and they signed on to when they enter interested the contract. Understandably the fact we know that 29 million is how it came in creates a pretty big hole for them, 11 million gap they are seeking to close. They dont have a legal resource to close that, but we want to make sure they are fairly compensated for the cost of the project. They have submitted a claim for the 11 million and that is something that we will process accordingly. How does that workout . You also when we met recently a Construction Management style you are instituting on this project. Can you speak a little bit about that . Through the chair the delivery mechanism that we selected for this project within consultation with public works is general contractor model. It is different where we do the design in house, we put it out to let folks bid on the package and hand the project over to them. Under cfgc you bring in the contractor before the design is 100 complete to advise on construct ability to give feedback. The way we did this is maximum price. We agree on the price and they take packages such as utilities and bit that out bid that out and subsequently bid out the tree and landscape package and paving and electrical package. It is a different way of project delivery. It is the way they deliver the larger building projects. This is the first significant horizontal project using cmgc. It took a lot of Lessons Learned and input on managing a contract in this way that is the contract mechanism we are using, and we will process claims whether related to the sewers or any others we receive and that are par for the course on a large construction project as per the ad min code. How do we resolve the 11 million shortfall . They want to be compensated. They put in the claim. The taxpayers were sold a package at 18 million now it is 29 million. How do we resolve that . I dont want to get into this in public forum. There are mechanisms in the contract for reviewing and possessing the claims. We will review and process this like we will any other. We recognize the actual cost of you willtility work is 29 million not the 18 million we thought. On our side we have the guaranteed maximum price we all agreed to. Thank you, mr. Chair. Commissioner breed. I noticed on van ness avenue there is a lot of change and confusion about which way people are to go when driving up and down the street. I was wondering if you had any plans to add parking control officers to those most challenged intersections during commute hours . Through the chair, we are monitoring the traffic flow carefully that we didden game significantly with our open traffic engineers as well as caltrans in identifying and approving the road configurations and communication plan, signs for them. As needs if we need resources such a pco or Police Officer at any particular location that is something we will moptor and put monitor and put in place. I am not aware of plans to do so. If there are areas that you see are concerning we would welcome that feedback. Would you explain how you monitor and make decisions around those kinds of issues for this particular project . The decisions around those issues we have a group of folks within our Traffic Engineering group that focus exclusively on these changes that relate to construction. They will analyze what the contractor is proposing. They informed development of the specs and they review the Traffic Management plans the contractors submit. There is a lot of it involved because we need to make sure the road will be able to function safely for the folks using it. That is the process through which we establish the kind of changes you are seeing on the streets. In terms of monitoring, we have staff, inspectors and Construction Management staff out there. We monitor feedback that we are getting from the public. I covered some of the outreach we are doing. We use those kinds of mechanisms, 311 calls to make sure the traffic plans are more or less working as intended and there arent any unintended consequences or challenges. Chair peskin any other commissioners with any questions or comments . Seeing none. Any Public Comment on item 13 . Seeing none Public Comment is closed. Mr. Chris ken, ris ken, thank you. We will continue to monitor this and i would like to continue this to the call of the chair and we will be in touch as hopefully this thing gets back on schedule. All right. Is there a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair . Without objection can we return to our regular calendar . Clerk appointment of two members to the citizens Advisory Committee. Chair peskin mr. Pick ford. There is an 11 member Advisory Committee with two year term. Neither of the staff or cic make recommendations on pointments. To qualify for appointment applicants must be San Francisco residents and appear before the board once. There is a list of 44 applicants for the two vacant positions. They are the result of the term expiration of becky hogue and family obligations. Miss hogue is seeking reappoint meant. I hope we have other people to speak to the interest. I will take questions. Chair peskin mr. Questions for mr. Pick ford . If miss hogue is here i was going to let her speak first. Chair chair i dont see her. Chair peskin she has been before the body before. She is not required to testify to be reappointed. I will save my comments until after Public Comment. Chair peskin perspective applicants to testify before the commission . Please come forward. Applicants have two minutes. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I am kian. I am seeking to fill the vacancy to number 9. I was born on california street. As an adult i have lived in this great city for the last 15 years. I lived in the marina and west portal and called the Central Mission my home where i live with my wife. My transportation footprint consists of riding the kl and m trains. With the majority of my transportation on bicycle and walking. In my professional life i work with youth and families. In the free time i am a member of the action team where i volunteer with a group of people to bring bike skills to residents in the mission and southeast neighborhoods. I have a lived experience with the Transportation Network and want to see it become safer and accessible and reduce carbon emissions. That is why i am here today. It would be an honor to serve as a member of is at this time sens Advisory Committee. I promise to work hard to ensure the voice and concerns are heard as well as foster engagement and understanding art the Transportation Authority mission and programs. Thank you for your consideration and time. Chair peskin any other perspective applicants . Please come forward, sir. If there are any additional applicants you can line up to my left, your right. Go ahead. I am bradley tans man. I am here for the citizens Advisory Committee. I moved to San Francisco in 2007. Before that i was in and mateo. I was Vice President of the Neighborhood Watch program for seven years. I ran around San Francisco to make sure the election polling places were ada compliant during the bushgore elections. During San Francisco where my transportation qualifications. In 2012 and 2013 i was one of 700 test drivers for the bmw electric cars now on the market. I also have worked with uber, on both sides of the house. First a driver then employed by uber through sfmta working on solutions for drivers. I worked with uber to help the Technology Platform accommodate drivers, picking up passengers, not getting in the way. That is a big issue in the city with a lot of drivers stops where they want to. I dont work for uber any more. I am back driving and delivering meals with them. That gives me a great perspective. I live on Treasure Island, a big redevelopment there. I am looking at district six. I have gone to a couple different focus groups, helped out with transportation ideas, and i am just looking for your support in becoming one of the newest members here. Thank you. Chair peskin thank you, sir. Any additional speakers . Any individuals who would like to offer Public Comment on this item . Seeing none. Public comment is closed. Commissioner ronen. I want to thank all of the people who applied for the vacant nine seat on the citizens Advisory Committee. I am thankful that we got quite a few excellent applicants. Today i will make a motion to appoint to the district nine seat. I was going to talk about the qualifications but you did a great job at this and i am excited to have you providing input, advice and advocacy for district nine on this body and thank you for everything you do in the community. You know, certainly my district faces complex transportation issues, the tangle of freeway interchanges dividing the district, efforts to improve efficiency of bus service, safeguarding bicyclists, lift, uber and others fit in this mix. It is a lot. I am excited that he brings equity and justice to concerns about transportation. I hope to have your support in this motion. Chair peskin a motion by commissioner ronen. Seconded by commissioner yee. Commissioner kim. I want to move forward becky hogue with recommendation to continue her service on the citizens Advisory Committee. As the chair mentioned she has served on the cac and previously presented to this board. Becky hogue sits on the Pedestrian SafetyAdvisory Committee and served as vice chair and active resident around the vision zero issues. She is one of the residents on Treasure Island within the rich mon neighborhood. She is someone who dedicated her life advocating. Given the work on Treasure Island around mobility management and really trying to pilot new transportation on Treasure Island, her voice is truly needed and is a need for representation. Thank you very much. Chair peskin thank you. There is now a motion by commissioner equipment and seconded by commissioner breed. Can we have them into one and have a roll call on item number 6. roll call we have approval. Chair peskin congratulation. Those items are passed. Good luck on your service on the cac, and with that next item please. Clerk item 7. Update on the San Francisco freeway Corridor Management system study. This is an information item. Chair peskin mr. High hydel. Good morning. We are here to talk about addressing congestion on the San Francisco freeways. As noted this is an information item related to items 8 and 9 on the agenda identifying funding for future phases of this effort. I dont think it is a surprise that traffic in San Francisco is bad and getting worst. There are many empty seats in cars, vans, bus us on the roadways. Our best efforts show that between now and 2040 there could be up to 140,000 additional trips between San Francisco and south bay. They would fill one new peak period bus per minute on the freeways. All of those people will spread across buses, cal tran and cars. We know addressing congestion is important. It is not just the congestion but quality of life and higher rates of health issues. They suffer health concerns. More cars will only exacerbate this problem. We need a plan to address this. Vehicles with many passengers are with one driver. We need a plan to move them efficiently. Widening the freeways would harm the community. It increases Greenhouse Gases and impacts on neighborhood and financial costs too high. San francisco has a commitment to not widen the freeways in the general plan. We are committed to evaluating solutions that create benefit with the freeways that we have using the existing lanes and shoulders more efficiently. As we consider solutions we keep the studys goal in mind. These were adopts in phase one in 2015. We think reflect San Franciscos values and focus on increasing vehicle occupancy and using the existing resources more efficiently. Part of the study looked at alternatives we could use to address this situation. If we want to prove more people we need to give carpoolers a time advantage. We are exploring options of dedicating one lane to carpools and transit only. Carpool lanes may be new to San Francisco. They existed on interstate 280 in the 1980s. They were removed after the 1989 earthquake. The lanes we are considering under this study could be restricted with two or more passengers or three or more passengers. Another option is express lanes. If necessary price management in the form of express lanes could be used with either configuration. Other drivers could also pay to use them. In San Francisco it would be reserved for carpools, buses or those who pay a fee on demand. It could give them a faster travel time without adding significant delays to the general purpose lanes. Express lanes give people a choice with the price to enter noncarpools based on demand. Carpools and buses would access the lane at no cost. We let demand determine the price to keep traffic moving efficiently. We found in a Traffic Engineering detail. The highway moves the most vehicle at 45 miles per hour. The distances between the vehicles shrink and the land is more productive. They set it at 45 miles per hour. If it is crowded to slow down the price goes up and fewer vehicles enter. If there is not enough people or it is not moving enough people the price goes down. If physical signs call people how much the toll would cast. Carpooling and transit are always free to use the lanes. It is part of a regional effort to establish carpool lanes. They have been around over 40 years. Express lanes are not new. First lanes opened in 2010 with other lanes opening since then including california 237, i580 and i680. This is the first step for San Francisco in joining that regional conversation. This is part of a larger collection of studies on the 101 corridor identified in the recent funding bill as one of the high priority corridors in california. This shows other efforts. Blue identifies the carpool lane in existence in santa clara that runs from san jose to San Francisco. And mateo is exploring an express lane frommed wood city north. This would contribute to a reliable travel expense. The corridor we know that has the worst congestion but many residents in jobs. Getting to more specifics in San Francisco. The study explored existing conditions documenting bottlenecks and delays and causes in San Francisco. We conducted the analysis with the eye towards implementing something to benefit users in San Francisco. One of the interesting findings is the bay bridge is the contributing bottleneck for west of 101, 101 north of 280 and the central freeway. Mtc is leading a effort to address problems with the bay bridge. We are excited to participate in that. Given those reasons, we developed the alternative you see here on your screen. This utilize ms. 101 and 280 to get vehicles in and out of downtown. The existing configuration allows continuous lane by restriping. It would move to five miles to the county line. Northbound because it ex its from the right side it would be a gap with no line on the 280 for four miles. Then another opportunity to begin a lane touching down at sip and king helping people bypass the traffic backed up from the traffic signal there. Obviously, outreach is important. Our next step is to meet with stakeholders to share the concepts and share feedback. Some of the important questions how can we move more people with less traffic without creating a burden for low income communities. Equitable access is important to San Francisco. How can we coordinate with other jurisdictions . This is part of a larger regional effort. Looking forward, this is an information item. We hope to have the full results nor early 2018. We will continue to meet with Community Groups for feedback. We anticipate the next phase is cal tran document which would take course over 2018. Items 8 and 9 are related to those two phases. That concludes my presentation. Thank you. Chair peskin any questions or comments from commissioners . Commissioner safai. I see a desire to meet a regional need that seems laudable, but when i see the rest of the bay area focus on 101 and then 280 it doesnt make a lot of sense to me. I see a four mile gap that is a significant gap in the overall plan. I heard the desire to get to downtown. 280 does not go downtown. It is not meeting the overall objective. It is predisposed ather than having a robust conversation to determine whether or not this is necessary or the one other thing that i saw in the presentation and at least in the proposal is most of those areas dont have alternative freeways running through their cores. San francisco has two freeways. 280 and 101. 280 in the inception is designed to be a relief point for 101. That is how it works right now. I dont really see a purpose in some of this, and it seems to me it needs a better focus. That would be my initial comments. I would offer that downtown is moving towards 280 at a rapid clip. Would you like to respond . Thank you for the comment. We understand your concerns about utilizing 280 and changing the use from relief valve from 101 to something to attract more traffic. We focused on 280 because of the existing challenges with traffic on 101 getting tangled up on the bay bridge. We will work todres those concerns you put forward. Chair peskin commissioner. The floor is yours. I dont have anything else to say. Chair peskin commissioner sheehy. On the other side of 101, if that starts to clog, it recreates the monterey onramp, theala main neramp, the traffic on both of those streets, ocean, i think, for supervisor saw fahey is a disaster. Hov lanes that dont allow the traffic to move. Having experienced a shut down on 101 a few months ago, and nothing moved out of glen park. Literally going all the way to the surface street. When 101 and 280 exchange got clogged. Its impact was felt at diamond. I think, you know, you start making it harder for traffic to move through that 101280 exchange. You affect people and neighborhoods. Before we get to the hov lane, that one section where you just do the last part looked a little nutty to me. Before we put our money into that, i really wish we would look at the problems. I have asked sfmta to get Traffic Control at monterey boulevard because we have traffic at rush hour on to the highway that is not safe. Of course, they are indifferent to the request. You know, i will wait until there is a 50 car pileup at 6 00 at night before they do anything. I think there should be a more holistic approach at looking at the impact on traffic. It goes to district 8 and 11 that are impacted with 280. The traffic is bad and it spills back to to neighborhoods. Chair peskin any response to staff . We did consider some of the impacts of traffic west of 280. We will have more details in early 2018. I can comment directly on the challenges. You are referring to headed northbound out of district 8, is that correct . Yes, it runs east and west for me, but i guess. Northbound, and with what is going on in mission bay and you throw in the warriors and the giants. I used to work at mission bay the traffic over the last couple years before i came here. You are backing up on kings street, sixth street. I just, hov lanes. Maybe if you do congestion pricing you might have impact on that. That whole 101280 exchange is crazy whichever direction you are going. That is a known challenge. If cal tran were to build that today it wouldnt look like that. As you are aware 280 splits into three different roadways, some south, some north and some east. It makes it difficult to get relief because it is hard to put a tia continuous lane. The congest june is back up from the bay bridge coming all the way back through the interchange to 280, particularly in the evening. That gets to i think i mentioned in the presentation tha that isa regional problem and we need to work to address what happens in the bay bridges before we can untangle that specific spot right there. This seems like an incomplete solution. The traffic is worse and worse and hov lanes. I mean, too many cars. Unless you can figure out a way to reduce demand more holistic leo 101 and 280, it is problematic. The executive director wants to jump in. For these comments one way to take a more holistic view of the system and how to manage it including preventing it to the local streets is through the protect us in the update plan. We are looking at one of the most difficult errors that commissioner ronen is asking for it it is looking at the maze and hairball and the parallel routes which are an opportunity to manage along 280 freeway in the stretch you are talking about. Right now we are not utilizing all of that capacity as well as we can to promote the hov use. There is probably a smarter way to manage the main line rather to the arterialials. We are looking at the whole picture, not just this corridor to extend to the county wide plan which will look at all of the major freeways that we have. For 280 it is the bayshore for 101. It needs to be done in concert with caltrans which owns the system. Nbc bat take is the operator. We will look at priority treatments and pricing and incentives and the ways to manage the traffic. One way or the other we have to address it. We know it is coming. We need to prepare for it. To look at the whole system using the tools that we have. Chair peskin thank you. Commissioner kim. I want to say a few things. One, and perhaps this is for staff. Through the revenue generated through the express lane where would that go and who would administrator that . We are not sure yet. That is under study. Other implementations in the bay area and california. Those have been restricted in the corridor on alternative transportation. They could be used for bus lanes and bike lanes. The administration is up in the air. Npc right now has the authority to operate the lanes in San Francisco. We are by no means obligated that work ex motionerring the options on the table. You know, an express lane is not going to solve the issues today. We do need to find ways to fund desirable and attractive alternatives to driving, faster Public Transit from the neighborhoods. One of the things i hope you look at in the study is to study the possible alternatives that an express lane could help fund. I do think that it is also important to see if there are ways to make sure those attractive alternatives come into place at the same time as the hov express lane. That is consultant because the revenue is not there yet. It is anticipated. If there was a way to offer those immediately and collect the revenue in the future. And i see the director nodding