Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20240714

We have a quorum. Thank you. I will proceed with the chairs reports. Colleagues, i would like to begin this meeting with offering our collective deepest condolences to the families of Michael Evans and Benjamin Dean who were hit and killed in horrific crashes on our streets last week, as well as kelly dean who is critically injured and in the hospital. As was noted at the rally on the steps of city hall this morning, commissioner haney organized it, and motorists must slow down. The tenderloin, which is an area that commissioner haney and i share, his not a traffic sewer, it is a neighborhood, and i did not have a chance to say this morning at the rally, but when you drive through there, if you are watching my face, when you drive through there, you drive through there at 25 miles an hour or less. Speed kills. I am going to depart from my remarks and say the following thing, which is we are joined by we were joined by senator weiner this morning who lamented the fact that Law Enforcement statewide has killed San Franciscos repeated attempts to get automated Speed Enforcement. If you are looking at me, i would like the Police Officers association of San Francisco to get an expressed carveout, so only this city and county can have automated Speed Enforcement i will leave the other 57 counties and their state delegates to their own means, but i am calling on the p. O. A. To petition the state legislature to get us automated Speed Enforcement. Finally, what were talking about Law Enforcement, to every cop who isnt who is in a radio car, to every cop who was on a bike, i want it to be abundantly clear that when you drive in San Francisco over the speed limit, you are going to get busted. I am not known for generally wanting to increase San Franciscos police force, but i will give anything to get cops to start issuing tickets for speeding in this town. That and a whole host of Pedestrian Safety improvements that are timeconsuming and costly are going to start saving lives in the city and county of San Francisco. [applause] weve got a bunch of stuff on our agenda today that relates to Pedestrian Safety, we have approval of our vision zero ramp study, and a key set of safety scramble projects in my district at kearney and columbus, as well as an update on programs to protect kids through safe routes to school, which i have to shout out, as i always do, our former colleague, katie tang, and we have 18 c. Tax on the ballot, or hopefully we will this afternoon we have atn see tax on the ballot. Theres a hell of a lot more to do. I want to think commissioner yee who has steadfastly stewarded our vision zero efforts. I would like to ask our t. A. Staff to work closely with all of us, and particularly commissioner yee, the m. T. A. , and let me just underscore the sfpd as it relates to our vision zero commitments. With that, i will conclude the chairs remarks and mr. Clerk, please read the next item. Commissioner ronen . Commissioner ronen . Thank you. I have never commented on the chairs remarks before, but i just have to back you up 100 , chair peskin. I am angry, we are angry, every member of this board is devastated by the amount of pedestrian and traffic deaths that are happening on our streets on a monthly basis. How are kids, our seniors, our families, we should be able to walk around the street and not have that and our life. The fact that we are not doing everything in our power collectively as leaders of this city to end this senseless killing of people on our streets on a monthly basis is outrageous we have all got into our wits end on this topic. It is unacceptable that this is happening every single day and we have two institute, immediately in a crisis manner, every single Pedestrian Safety option that is out there. I just had to respond to supervisor peskins remarks because i am at my wits end. I, too, am angry. This bloodshed has got to stop. Thank you. Commissioner haney . Thank you. I dont want to take us too far off topic, but i did want to thank you for your remarks and to my colleagues for joining us this morning. We stood right before this meeting and called for a state of emergency around Traffic Safety in San Francisco, and im going to be introducing a resolution later today at our board of supervisors meeting that i hope you all will join me in. We have a situation that is, as you have said, a crisis. It is out of control, and we need much more sweeping and urgent action. I think that if we dont do something different, in a much bigger way than what were doing now, were going to continue to see far too many people hurt or killed on our streets. Thank you for that call around enforcement and state action, and im going to put forward a resolution today, and hopefully we will be joined by you all to call for a state of emergency that can hopefully bring about some of these changes sooner. Thank you. Commissioner fewer . I just wanted to add that as someone whos district has suffered two fatalities, both of them seniors, both of them chinese, older women, i dont think enough attention has been put on about the importance of also abiding by spee laws my speed laws and we also need more enforcement. I hope also want to thank my partner here, supervisor mandelman. We have worked to actually get more motorcycle cops on the streets, and i think that we really, really need to speed up enforcement. We have to ramp it up. Because, actually, it is the only thing i think that is a real deterrent. Once you get a ticket, you are more cautious as a driver. I am just going to ask the Police Department to beef up their citations and also, especially around hi and record doors, and also, i am going to ask m. T. A. To be looking at ways that we can keep pedestrians safer, such as extending crossing times at crosswalks, repainting the crosswalks that are fated already, and what other kind of improvements we can do around these busy intersections, including those crosswalks where everyone walks crosses the street diagonally anyway, thank you for your remarks, chair, and we agree. Commissioner you . I will join everyone else and saying thank you, chair peskin for your remarks and also commissioner haney for organizing todays rally, i dont know if you want to call it a rally, but still, it was to point out that we havent done enough. We have done some things. My office is currently working on legislation similar to what it did with daylighting the corners in regards to finding a way to roll out, in a faster, more efficient way, the concept of the scrambles and intersections, and what i want to do is to make it a goal to reach so many of these intersections, that they be put into have this element, and we really need to get the state to Pass Assembly on Speed Enforcement. Thank you. Commissioner brown . Thank you, chair peskin, for your remarks. I think that this city and most cities in the country were built around cars. We have to change in reverse that mentality of the way we design streets in the way streets are run and it has to be pedestrians and bicycles first and cars second or third. We need to take a look at no turns and get the help or no turns on a red light, and then also, because i have been on to visit darrow a lot lately, what i have been seeing with four lane streets or boulevards is that when someone is turning left, they actually gun it because of two lanes of cars coming and they gun it into a crosswalk. I have had five fatalities in a year, and two of them were people turning left and actually gunning it to get through. So i think that we really need to look at all these measures as we go forward of keeping our streets safe. Thank you. Commissioner walton . Thank you, chair peskin. I just want to echo the sentiments of all of my colleagues. I have had a few fatalities in my district, as well. There are so many things that we can do to mitigate the impacts and make sure that we have less accidents. There were a lot of suggestions made today. We are going to be working hard as a body to focus so we can keep people safe. This cant keep happening. Not only is it happening, but it is happening in a volume of numbers that we know we can avoid. I just want to thank all of you for being dedicated to making the changes that we need. I was just receiving a text from a constituent because we removed an island on a street, and now she immediately is asking for speed bumps to mitigate some of the speed impacts that are happening on her street. I have a resident in my district to is, right now, in the hospital. He had to get his leg amputated because he was hit by someone who was on a cell phone while they were driving. There are so many things that we have to work on to make changes to keep people safe. Yes, he is still alive, but he has lost a limb because of things that we can do to make sure that drivers do a better job. Thank you, all for your dedication and commitment to making change. Thank you, commissioners. We are of one mind. Madam executive director, the floor is yours. Thank you. Our heartfelt condolences to the families of those lost. I wanted to start on a safety update. We were pleased to join commissioner mar at the safe streets townhall this month out in the sunset district. That was attended by sfmta and walk San Francisco, by coalition transit riders and senior disability action, communitywide conversation is really important to discuss projects such as the 19th avenue and 20th avenue neighbour way projects and upcoming improvement studies for mobility and safety. I understand commissioner fewer also hosted a shared mobility meeting in her district. I wasnt able to attend, but i appreciate the conversation there to ensure that shared Mobility Services and companies are also part of this communitywide effort to fix our streets and ensure safe operations of their Safety Improvement project in district one. It is also wrapping up. That is due to a lot of hard work sfmta and Community Members to develop the bicycle facility there and a whole bunch of crosswalk enhancements and striping and pedestrian improvements to go with the buffered bike lanes. Quick updates there. Turning to the regional level, the caltrain Business Plan is making great progress. This week they conducted a two hour online town hall meeting on youtube. I encourage anyone who is interested in caltrain in the business effort, it is really a once in generation look to see what it is take to realize our vision for highquality, highfrequency Caltrain Service up and down the peninsula. That is available. The Service Vision that they are looking at involves up to potentially 12 trains per hour, and that would be eight caltrain his and eight highspeed rail trains. Theyre looking at more likely the middle ground scenario, but taking input from the public. It would increase ridership from 65,000 brides a day to 180,000 estimated in 2040. It is not inexpensive. It would take about 25 billion and whole host of investments and tracks and grade separations , maintenance facilities, and the like, as well as our downtown real extension and other complementary investments. Caltrain is also looking at organizational changes that would need to happen to realize such a vision in terms of service delivery, internal organization and governance et cetera. We do appreciate supervisor walton serving on that board and looking at all of these issues together with our other representatives from San Francisco and up and down the peninsula. We will continue to track the next stages and offer comments in coordination with the city and county of San Francisco. Turning to a related issue over here at the salesforce transit center, we are happy to announce the center has been reopened as of july first and we welcome visitors. There is a plan to have a full bus service in august as the a. C. Transit folks are conducted training, but munimobile are already operating there, as well as golden gate. A. C. Transit and greyhound and other services will also Commence Service as of august. Another piece of good news is the Transbay Joint Powers Authority that the federal Transit Administration has signed off on the Environmental Review documents for the downtown real extension. This is a significant project milestone. We are very pleased and congratulate them on obtaining that approval. It does set the stage for project development activities. On that front, our peer review continues to work hard. They wanted to follow up on Stakeholder Input we heard following the june presentation of their initial recommendations they also wanted to review the caltrain Business Plan, the organizational and governance recommendations to include those for their consideration, as well as for Partner Agencies to have time to develop a potential joint funding item to present to the Transportation Authority in september. The new date for the final peer review final report would be september, potentially together with a funding item to kickstart the activities and project development. I also wanted to mention that earlier this month, many of us appreciated the outgoing transpiration Transportation Agency director on his service in San Francisco. Chair peskin and supervisor fewer and i did attend the sfmta Board Meeting and all of you did recognize him and thank him at your board of supervisors meeting. I just wanted to very much appreciate his partnership and his leadership. Not only in San Francisco, but really across the nation and beyond in leading one in the country where we have transit and shared mobility and all the active modes under one roof. Whether it is vision zero, transit priority and moving forward, whether it is the vanguard of newman nobility policy, i really enjoyed and working closely with director reiskin. We wish him all the best with his new post at the city of oakland, which was just announced. The Performance Working Group will be kicking off soon, as well. With mayor breed, supervisors mandelman and peskin, converting convening a working group to understand the performance needs and requirements for munimobile to have reliable service. That will be a comprehensive look at their operations, about service delivery, about funding, and Capital Improvements to improve munimobile service and performance and reliability. It will be cochaired by Ed Harrington and gwyneth borden, the chair of the sfmta. And there will be participation with a whole host of experts throughout the country, actually we look forward to bringing you updates on that with supervisor mandelman and chair peskin. Our downtown congestion pricing study has kicked off. This was following the boards approval of funding in the m. T. C. Can commission contribution. Were very much appreciate the support and copper up cooperation on that. Not only will it address congestion and quality of life and health, but also safety issues that are worsening throughout the city, and particularly in the core. With that, im happy to take any questions. Any questions for the executive director . Seeing none, is there any Public Comment on the chairs report release active directorys report . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Please read the consent agenda. Items 411 comprises a consent agenda. Items five through ten are now being considered for final approval. Stuff is not planning to present on these items but may do so if the board board would like to consider them. Thank you. Is there any Public Comment on item number 4, the minutes from our july 9th meeting . Seeing none, Public Comment is close. Colleagues, i would like to sever item five. Could you please read item number 5 . Item five is a final approval of Fund Exchange of approximately 3. 31 million bay Area Grant Fund from the john chin safe routes to School Project with an equivalent amount of prop k. Funds from the better Market Street fund and allocate 3. 8 million and prop k. Funds including Exchange Funds of conditions to the project. This is an action item. I understand you have an update relative to this project. I do. Thank you. Im the Deputy Director for policy and programming. At the july 9th Board Meeting, there were some questions asked by Board Members in regards to the construction schedule and also about how s. F. Public works will ensure safe crossings for schoolchildren given that this is a safe routes to School Project and construction will be underway during the school year. I am pleased to note that public works is updating its construction bid document to reflect a dedicated flagger at each inch intersection to assist schoolchildren and pedestrians. It would be during the hours that crossing guards typically work of 8 15 a. M. Until 9 45 a. M. And 3 15 p. M. Until 4 30 p. M. The plan is that construction would begin in march and that the construction would be completed prior to the start of the school year. Thank you. I particularly want to thank commissioner yee for grazing those issues when we heard that at our last meeting on july 9th. Seeing no names on the roster, mr. Clark, please call the roll on the consent agenda. Yes. On the consent agenda. [roll call] we have final approval. All right. Next item, please. Item 12, adopt the crooked street preservation study, final report and authorize the executive director to advance recommendations of the study, including seagoing necessary legislation and funding identification. This is an action item. Any comments . Commissioner stefani . Thank you, chair peskin. I want to begin by thinking the t. A. For this incredible study and for their work. This is something i have been working on since i was a legislative aide with supervisor mark farrell. It has been a pleasure to work with you. I thank you for your commitment because something needs to change in this area and im really excited that we have a study that is telling us exactly how we should be proceeding. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner and commissioner stefani. And ohio, senior planner with the Transportation Authority. Diving in here, lombard crooked street is a familiar, iconic piece of San Francisco. I dont think i need to tell anybody here that, but as commissioner stefani mentioned, a large number of visitors impact the quality of life for neighborhood residents and the experience or visitors that come to see our city. The t. A. Has been tackling this problem for a few years now. The Community Working group was really the kickoff of the latest round of options we are considering that happened way back in 2,000. In 2014, the sfmta let a pilot to lead the crooked streets, but it really squeezes the balloon essentially. Theres a lot of people circling , looking for parking, people setting up picnics on the crooked street itself, which is the only way thinking get to and from their homes. Then commissioner farrell atha Transportation Authority in 2017 to complete a holistic look at those options that had surfaced in the 2,000 study as well as potential new ones and that study reprimanded a four prong strategy. Today i will be presenting the results of the study. We carried forward the goals from the 2017 study to this one. I will not read them all here, but theyre focused on addressing congestion while maintaining access to the street and livability for neighborhood residents as well as maintaining tourism at a sustainable level. We wanted to build our proposal for a reservation and price system around data. Last summer we collected six weeks of traffic data, along with 400 surveys and people who drove on the street. The findings were a little staggering. Cars line up in the neighborhood for about ten hours a day on the busiest day, and it takes about 45 minutes for folks to join the end of that line at lombard and van ness to get to the top of the hill to actually drive down the street itself. It is not just cars, there is a lot of pedestrian crowding around the street itself, which you see in the image here in the background. It actually results in a number of low speeds. They are not safety issues, it does not light up in our high injury network, but a feeling of not being safe at the intersections of the top and the bottom of the streets as cars navigate around the crowds of cadets pedestrians. We asked people how they might react to a system of Something Like this, and more than half of the visitors told us they be willing to pay 5 a card to give up the 45 minute wait and to be able to plan their day better. We asked people if they werent able to get a time or what unwilling to get a reservation time, what would they do . 70 of visitors that they would still visit the street, they would just show up a different way. Take a cable car, take munimobile, walk, bike. So we initially screened a range of alternatives against the goals of using that data. First using price only, but with no cost, a free reservation and a couple combinations of the two the only concept was for them to require a paid reservation to drive down the street. Having advanced the paved reservation concept, we wanted to advance details about how that would work. We identify the potential for fully automated system, sort of like how tools are collected on the Golden Gate Bridge. We also wanted to evaluate using people on the street to enforce the program. If anyone has been here recently , this is how they check their parking reservations that have been enforced for the last two years. It also has the potential to be a faster and simpler way to implement and also be more Visitor Friendly. Based on Community Feedback, the data we collected, we develop two options. One that was automated and enforced 24 7, and another that was only operational during the period that we saw peak demand, which is 9 00 a. M. Until 9 00 p. M. , and enforced with staff onsite. The scenario also differed in the price that we would propose for reservations with a 24hour scenario proposing 5 at all times, and the 12 hour scenario is five 5 during the less busy times and 10 on weekends and holidays. So when we found that both perform substantially the same. Congestion was reduced to less than one block. This is because the actual managing managing mechanism is requiring that reservation itself. Pedestrian crowding increased as we saw that 70 of folks would visit a different way, which means they become pedestrians now. It is important to recognize this. However, the difference in automated and stuff reservations were stark. Automated operations has the potential to be less effective as people word not knowing that they were violating the rules unless Visitor Friendly for the same reason, and more difficult to administer because many visitors could be confused and find themselves wandering the neighborhood, trying to figure out how to do this. We recommended a staff scenario. Here is our summary of the final recommendation. It is scenario two that we mentioned earlier. I want to take a minute to talk about maintaining access to people, as well. It is important to declare that this proposal is only for automobiles driving down the street. It remains free for people walking, taking transit. We did take a special look at two groups of folks, with access for people with formal billet with mobility issues. It is not a. D. A. Accessible. Folks would still pay the reservation costs, but we would ensure that there was availability said of having that cell like it may do in other times. Access for San Francisco residents or access at no cost. The San Francisco Public Library right runs i discover and go prague program which provides free passes to museums and other true that our attractions in the city for other residents. We propose to add the crooked street to this program. Folks with a library card can come check it out and visit it with no cost. So the next steps here, i think this board is aware that state legislation is required to implement this proposal. Supplementing has introduced a be b. 1605 which has it would authorize the board of supervisors to designate an Operational Agency to implement this program through a local ordinance. After that operational is designated, it would need to adopt a final operational rule and agreement and make sure that all the funding is in place to implement this program. I will close with a brief timeline of the most aggressive stance we could take in implementing Something Like this by spring of next year. With that, i can take any questions. Any questions . Commissioner stefani, any questions from you . Know, okay. Is there any Public Comment on item number 12 . If there are any other individuals who like to testify on this item, please line up. Chair pause skin, thank you. Good morning. This is very important. I think it is reasonable. I did ride in a car down lombard street in 1982. I would like to go back to lombard street sometime, and i am concerned about congestion because of the collateral spillover effect that can effect me and my transportation. I do think that in the future, as we get into congestion pricing models, we will have to look at some kind of automated enforcement, and i think a time the time of use pricing is reasonable. That being said, i appreciate you looking at the concerns of people with disabilities. Consider this, that there has to be a way to accommodate people who often dont live here, people with disabilities who have come here, desiring to ride down lombard street, and they hire a car to do so. There needs to be a way to ensure that this customers with disabilities can access a path to travel down lombard street, instead of paying tolls. We dont want to have an attitude of no, so i think we have some good work, but its very important that we refine this to ensure that both our visitors and residents with disabilities can access this feature in a timely manner. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. My name is stephen taber, i am the transportation chair of the russian hill neighbours. It is one of the largest neighborhood associations in the city and represents the interests of the residents of russian hill. What were dealing with now is a very serious issue for our neighborhood, and it may not be quite as apparent on paper as it is in reality. Lombard street is literally the only street that has access, reasonable access to our neighborhood from the northwest when you are coming over the Golden Gate Bridge and coming into our neighborhood. You go down lombard street, you get towards van ness, and you find that cars are lined up on the other side of van ness waiting to go up the hill and over down long bird street. If we cant get into the neighborhood that way, it is very difficult because venice avenue now has no left turn all the wait up to broadway. It is a very big problem for our residents. It obviously is a big problem for tourists, waiting 45 minutes to take a one minute ride down the street. We support the paid reservation system. We also support staff to model version, the automated model, it is good having boots on the ground here to not only keep things in line on the standpoint of cars, but also, as is noted, we will have more pedestrians. We need to make sure that there is somebody there, representing the city who can keep an eye on the situation. Implementation of this is key, however. We need robust signage, robust Public Relations so that people coming to visit the city know about this program well in advance and have an opportunity to take advantage of it. In that way, it is advantageous for the tourists, and also for the residents. We very much support that measure and urge you to adopt it and implement it. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no other members of the public for this item, Public Comment is closed. Do we have a motion to adopt the final study and report . Made by commissioner stefani, seconded by dont all raise your hands at once mar. We have the same house, same call. It is adopted on first read. Next item, please. Item 13, update on the california highspeed rail authority. This is an information item. All right. Mr. Lipkin . Commissioners, i am pulling up my slides here. They will hopefully work for me. And i will be able to get those going. Before i dive into the presentation, i want to give a twominute view of highspeed rail in general, what is happening with the program. We have been in the news quite a bit over the last number of months so it is worthwhile to take a moment you mean since a governor took office . Yes, since the governor took office. I think, just to clarify things and reiterate what his vision has been for the program, is the governor his supportive of the statewide highspeed rail system connecting San Francisco to the central valley, to los angeles. What he was saying is immediate actions that he wants our agency to take in order to deliver that statewide program. What he said was we are under construction right now, we have 119 miles being built in the central valley. He wants to build everything we can, which is 171 miles connecting them and look together at a service on an interim basis as we continued to develop the valley to valley line which would connect Silicon Valley and San Francisco and down to bakersfield. In northern and southern california, he wants us to maintain our commitments to bookend projects. And then finally, in our and another northern and southern regions of the states, continue to do all the project Development Work and advance a program, get through environmental clearings, get shallow ready and get it built. What i am going to talk about today is our next step in that effort and the actions that our board will be taking in september, and the staff recommendations on the preferred alternatives in the Northern California region. I will cover all the way from San Francisco through the pass, to the central valley. I will go relatively quickly. We have a lot more behind it that i would be happy to share, and i think your staff has available, as well. What were doing is we have released the staff recommendations for the preferred alternatives in our Northern California sections. All the alternatives we have will be analysed fully in the drafts environmental documents. What were doing right now is having released the staff recommendations, is gathering feedback from across the region so when we go to our board of directors in september, we can give them the Technical Analysis view as well as the Community Feedback that we gather. Finally, just a note identifying the alternatives is not a final decision, it is a last input into the draft environmental document. It is a step in that process. I thank you have probably seen this graphic before. This is just to say that theres lots going on with rail in general. I think the director provided a few different updates that are in this chart, as well. Our process is that the purple line in the middle of it, it is one component of the whole. I will not get into everything that is on this slide. It is only to note that we have been at this for a while. We have been looking at alternatives and studying how highspeed rail comes to california since 2005. One were key thing i want to note is the 2012 agreements that we reached with caltrain, as well as the rest of the region that allowed for the blended system that is now helping to electrify caltrain. That is what we are coming here today with. As i mentioned, i will cover the entire region that goes from fourth and king, all the way through the central valley, why we go into the central valley. I will note that the Salesforce Transit Centre was just approved from the federal government. It is already environmentally cleared and we are ready to use that. In San Francisco, to san jose, it is this project section. We have two alternatives. Their key features are in the location of a light maintenance facility. Alternative a. Is on the east side of the tracks. Theres no passing track in the middle of the course door. Alternative b. Is heading as hard. That is the range of alternatives. Just dooming in a little bit more, this is the brisbane bay land site. Between the differentiating features which we will focus in on, theres also a number of common features on the alternatives that include the location of the highspeed rail station. We have the fourth and king station. We are going to be updating the final corridor. We are studying the four highspeed train levels that have been approved to date. And then we also have a number of Safety Improvements across the corridor that the various caltrain stations fencing the corridor corridor, and running in. The last thing it will mentioned in terms of common features as were looking to modernize. We want to ensure that cars and pedestrians cant get onto the corridors. One thing i noticed we have a number of facts that get into a lot more detail on the Technical Analysis. I believe we have sure those with your staff. If you like more information, it is available to you and we are happy to share that, as well. In San Francisco, san jose, the staff recommendation is alternative a, which includes the East Brisbane at the no passing track in the middle of the corridor. How we got to that is looking to balanced tradeoffs between system performance characteristics, environmental factors, and community factors. What we saw in the analysis is gave up a couple minutes of travel time for highspeed rail in exchange for reducing the impact and effect on communities along the route, and that the East Brisbane light rail facility was more compatible with the Development Plans that they have. This is the summary that we have fewer displacements of your impacts on natural resources, lower capital costs and lower travel time. And san jose, we are recommending more alternatives and in that project section. They have a lot more variation. The staff recommendation is for alternative four, which extends the blended systems, that showed electrified corridor from san jose down to gilroy for both us and caltrain and then continues through the pass in a tunnel and other features spanning through the central valley. The analysis in this system was more intensive and it had a lot more variation between alternatives. A similar set of factors, but more of them played a role in staff recommendation. When we rolled it all up, the main focus was on minimizing the displacement, preserving natural resources, wetlands, and even though we have a marginal increase in travel time by having a blended corridor, and a little bit more noise, those were tradeoffs that seem worth it, especially when we consider it allows for extension of that Caltrain Services. Next steps, right now this is the timeline for San Francisco san jose where we are hosting our Community Work Group Meetings. They met last night and we got good feedback from them. Will be hosting open houses in august followed by the september Board Meeting where the board will identify the save alternatives to give us directions for the draft environmental documents. That process is scheduled to take us into march of next year for the environmental documents at the adoption of e. I. R. In march of 2021. I mentioned the working Group Meeting that we are our our open house to be at m. T. C. At august 12. As well as other locations around the corridor. And then in terms of providing feedback, were looking to get input for the staff report by august 22nd. What we get back we will share with our board of directors beyond that, but it will not be you can email us or send comments to our office and san jose, and finally, the Board Meetings for this will be in san jose on september 17th for direction from the board. With that, i will stop here for any questions. Thank you, chair peskin. I want to appreciate director looking for coming in and presenting on the e. I. R. For highspeed rail. Is a big project milestone. We understand the project is shaped the way it is for now and that they will continue to partner to evolve and design the configuration with caltrain, particularly at the 16th street grade separation where we do require and absolutely have that great and our pennsylvania alignment which allows the checks to be underground. Understanding that in the interim, there may need to be the use of fourth and king, the new station there, but we hope and expect that all the trains will make their way to transbay. There are issues there, as well. Theres more work to do, and i want to thank you very much for this partnership. Thank you. [indiscernible] good morning, supervisors. My remarks will be extremely brief. They will essentially echo everything that the sfmta director just said. Before i go there, if you remember that slide that showed what happened in gilroy, it is very strange that having gone all the way down to gilroy, we saw someone make a uturn heading north. And the fact is that it is the wrong alignment. It does not require any turning. Is a tad bit shorter. And the reason they know that alignment you are not going to believe this, because they wanted to go from sacramento, to San Francisco via merced and gilroy. Obviously the southern alignment was 30 to 40 miles longer. Now hang on a minute. This is really what i want to track your attention to. The alignment length, 42. 9 miles , this alternative does not come. It actually terminates four and a half miles north. Then the travel times, 47 minutes, it is a specific code. It says maximum 30 minutes. That pretty much lets see, yes, the grade separation. Okay. The important thing is that the entire thing is 110 miles an hour. That means they do not have exclusive rights to the design and developmental development. Entire area could be clear. Thank you very much. [indiscernible] chair peskin, members, so we have a good reports, a reasonable idea in front of us. This Community Needs to have substantial rail. Consider new york city about ten times our population. I was examining the schedules of metronorth, and about one train per minute goes into Grand Central terminal on a typical weekday morning, the same in leaving in peak afternoon. A four track mainline under park avenue was built to accommodate that. If you stand on park avenue you wouldnt even know it was there. The 110 mileperhour is better than what we have in many other places, which are limited to 79 or even less. I grew up on the railroads of new york. If you have not ever been to new york, i would encourage you to go to new york city and ride trains. We have to build something to go to the transbay terminal, and i dont know if we will ever have a highSpeed Railroad coming in from the south, but whether we build a highSpeed Railroad, we still need to build this higher Speed Railroad from the peninsula to come into the salesforce trend center. In the style of Grand Central terminal in new york, so that way we can reduce congestion, get cars off the road, and give people a great train experience. Thank you. See no additional Public Comment, Public Comment was closed. Seeing no names on the roster, thank you, mr. Lipkin, for that information item. We will continue to monitor the situation. Mr. Clerk, please read the next item. I can item 14 as Construction Mitigation Program update. This is an information item. I want to thank commissioner mar for asking that this be put on the calendar. I would have come to us in september, but i know all 11 members of this body are quite concerned about impacts caused to local Small Businesses as a result of megaprojects, whether they are on gary or van ness, or the central subway, you name it. So i want to thank all of the members of the board who worked with the sfmta and the Mayors Office to allocate 5 million of funding to a fund and i want to thank the sfmta for rolling up their sleeves and coming up with a suggested course of action. Before i turn it over to the sfmta, i would like to call on commissioner mar. Thank you, chair peskin. I just wanted to briefly thank you and director chan for allowing us to have this update presentation on the Construction Mitigation Program Business Impact fund at the m. T. A. Meeting today. This really came about with my interest having this update today i wanted to ensure that we can tap into the Business Impact fund, the 5 million that we had set aside from funds to provide economic support to our neighborhood businesses during the construction phase. And i did want to say that, you know, as we are declaring a state of emergency in the safety on our streets, and all of us at the board and at city, ramping up our efforts to enhance safety in our 50 streets for pedestrians and cyclists, it means moving forward, and projects like the improvement project, more quickly to make our streets safe. We also have it responsibility a responsibility to ensure that the construction of these projects will last up to three years and extend from the great highway to west portal, that we do everything we can to mitigate the impacts of the construction phase particularly on our neighborhood businesses and in our residents. That is why this presentation, and the Business Impact fund that we had created is critically important. Thank you to the m. T. A. And oewd staff for your work on this. Thank you, commissioner mar. Thank you. Chair peskin, commissioners, i am with m. T. A. I would like to echo all of these things. We did a lot of work with you and your staff in developing this proposal today, and i appreciate the time that you all put into this. Just quickly, in november 2017, with a significant amount of public construction and private construction going on here in San Francisco, the city and the construction departments created a Construction Mitigation Program, essentially outreach and work with local businesses as construction as it is occurring on the streets of San Francisco. In this program, we recognize that construction does have impact on businesses while this construction is happening. Public improvements are great for San Francisco, and in the long term, they will be better or the city. During the period of construction, we know there is lack of access to businesses, there is difficulty navigating to them, people do lose customers and there are fewer pedestrians in front of different businesses in San Francisco. We do absolutely acknowledge the fact that there is impact to businesses as we construct these projects across San Francisco. Today we are talking about the highest level of impact projects we will see the lesson 12 month duration and 12 months plus. All of these types of improvements and mitigation measures are now built in sioux City Projects as we design them and move them forward, typically around the 60 5 design level. We are discussing ways that we can start that even earlier and we were attempting to do that. Were talking about highimpact projects or anticipate construction being greater than 24 months and where we implement those tools where we see direct business supports. Here are some projects that we have implemented. You will see these in some areas and the suite of construction mitigation measures that we implemented. Twin peaks with the project in which we implemented a lot of the things are integrated in the program, central subway and both van ness are catching up. We did not have this program in place when we started these projects, but we have worked continuously to implement the tools that we are talking about with regard to those construction projects. At our last meeting, when we presented this item, we talked about lessons learned. We have implemented these to date, so trying to work a little bit earlier and trying to start conversations with businesses in advance, i think the suggestion was that we go here and talk to the businesses before we are available to do a construction contract. And working to educate businesses on the various programs that the office of economic and Workforce Development provides to businesses in San Francisco before construction occurs. We dont want to wait for one we know the impact will exist, we want to repair businesses for the time that construction will begin, and again, always having staff onsite, having project delivery and engineering staff focused on delivering the project as quickly as possible, but having oewd resources and Public Information staff within the department being that contact and that supportive person for local businesses as issues come up. Since our last meeting, and we havent done things in the past 90 days, were working to set up the administration for this overall program, specifically business supports. When the process of hiring staff to work on these administrations we have formalized our agreements with the office of economic and Workforce Development on specific projects and upcoming projects, it is commissioner martin noted, when the process of doing that planning for the taradale project and working with merchants, and we will have a number of Community Meetings that will be upcoming with the goal merchants and reparation for the beginning of that project. Lastly, on the 5 million, we took your comments very seriously. We have had meetings with you and staff. You will know it is consistent across the Transportation Authority that we use these funds for directed business support, not augmenting other elements of the program. We are committed to doing that. Our recommendation is a chunk of these funds be directed to upcoming sfmta projects that with terra vale being an example of that. Critical highlevel projects that we know will be coming up and starting construction shortly. In considering the longterm sustainability of the program, we are also recommending moving forward with a Revolving Loan program, so we can work with our partner departments on different corridors throughout the city, not necessarily sfmta specific projects, but projects in which they are a partner, and support those businesses along the corridors. This also allows funds to be available for future plan projects that we know will be coming up ears later. We plan to take this overall proposal to the sfmta board september to formalize it and get it moving. But in the meantime, we have been setting up the administration to move it forward. I know a lot of you are interested in the specific criteria. This is a question that we got up. I think we will probably more flexible on the Revolving Loan program. We are going to use, generally in this period of time, and it can still be considered a pilot, some can certainly come back and see how this is working, the focus on storefronts. Those businesses that are directly or indirectly impacted. Sometimes you do have staging areas in and other areas for providing a direct impact to business. We also have indirect impacts that occur in a 12 month or longer period. For the central subway project and program, for the 400,000, roughly the grants were between five to 10,000. Those were typically attached to the impact that those businesses saw. The eligible element included rent, utilities, and wages, as an example of the central subway loans. A lot of those grants that were a part of the data. We want to continue to work on a Revolving Loan program, and the proposal of that we had zero interest. Again, his projects impact businesses, what we want to help them do is meet their cash flow during the course of that project, knowing that they would fully recover, and as they pay back those loans, we would go for future businesses that would face that situation in the future. That is my presentation. Thank you. Thank you. I know this issue is of great concern to virtually every member of this body, and i appreciate that the m. T. A. Is taking this seriously. I do have to put it in a little bit of context, and im not pointing fingers or crying about spilled milk, but it is rather astounding that we are playing such a game of catch up. I am not pointing at you, it is better late than never, but whether it is the central subway , which is far behind schedule