Transcripts For SFGTV MTA Board Of Directors 20240712

Before we do, we should see if there are minutes of the public who wish to address the board. My mistake. Open up for Public Comment on this item. To the amended minutes that were recirculated from may 19. Members of the public who are watching this meeting via sfg tv who wish to address the board call 8888086929 and press 9961164. All right. We will wait a moment to see if there are members of the public who wish to address the board with respect to the amended minutes of may 19. Director borden, put yourself on mute. All right. Moderator is telling us there are no callers. Seeing of no callers s the floor closed officially . Yes, madam chair t moderator will close Public Comment for the minutes. And there is still a roll call vote on the minutes . A yes, madam chair. Director borden. Aye. Director brinkman . Dr. Brinkman, unmute. Aye. Dr. Eaken . Aye. Heminger. And that is approved by unanimous approval. Item 5, communication. Before i get into the extensive directions here, i just wanted to say a few words because we are coming together in a tumultuous time in our city, our state, our country. And we are seeing ravage of a legacy of systemic racism that has been ignored and been overlooked for long period of time. And with that, there is so much rage with so many people and rightfully so and so much that is unjust and for whatever reason it seems in our society that for whatever reason without bloodshed, we dont move forward. We are meeting on blackout tuesday. The meeting was planned in advance. Obviously as a Public Transit agency, our top imperative is Economic Opportunity for all. Public transit is the engine for people to get to jobs and have opportunity. And for too long systemically the system has been designed to not go to place where is people of color live or displace people from the places where Public Transit is, and so i just want you all to know as we stand here today, we stand in solidarity with everyone who is standing up against racial injustice. We are as an Agency Working on those issues. I want to thank our director and all the work that hes done with the staff internally to work on the issues that we as an agency need to improve on, to grow for our tremendous staff and the people that work for us. And for the public that we serve. I know t is been a difficult time for our drivers and all of our teams who are out there in a difficult place where they are struggling and suffering but still continuing to work, and at time where is we are still all under sheltering in place for a disease that is also ravaging the same communities that are being killed on the street. I just wanted to acknowledge that and say that and say that dedicate this meeting and our efforts to be a more just agency and a more just society. And i just want people to know that without the work throughout the work we will be looking through the equity lens and as a society ewith must do better. The system was set up to oppress people and way to create a new system is to tear down the one we have and make it better. So that has to happen. We have to pull apart assumptions that we have about how things should work and look at who created those systems and why they put them in place to make sure that were doing the work we need to do. I just wanted to say that. Its a difficult time for many of us. And i think we all just want to figure out a way to see a path forward where were making meaningful strides to make our Community Better and stronger and make everyone that is participating. So with that, i will turn to our actual way that people can participate in the meeting. And based upon our rules. So due to the covid19 Health Emergency this, meeting is being held virtually and all members and staff participating via web conference. To ensure the safety or the board of director, staff, and members of the public. In our published notice and we ask the public to participate by leaving voicemail messages and we have received and appreciated the comments prior to meeting. Thank you for honoring our request. We continue to urge the public to write to the board, call us at 4156464470 and that is not the number for this meeting so that is in advance. While this Technology Allows us to hold meetings via tele conference, there may be gaps and silence as the staff is transitions between the technology and speakers. Please know we are doing the best that we can to ask for your understanding and patience. If you have not already done so, please put yourself on mute. Lastly, i want to thank all the people who have been working hard to make this meeting possible and put a lot of Work Together and the board very much appreciates that. So with that, the Commission Secretary will give her report and a special accommodation request for a Public Comment. So this meeting is being televised by sfg tv. For those of you watching the live stream, please be aware there is a time lag between the actual meeting and what members of the public are seeing on sfg tv. If you are watching via sfg tv and wish to comment on a particular item, please call the phone line when the item is being called. For members of the public who wish to make Public Comment not on the agenda, the phone number is 8888086929. The access code is 9961164. Please make sure that you are in a quiet location. Turn off any tvs or raid owes. And if you are Live Streaming the meeting via sfgtv, please mute the sound. That will reduce any reverberations so the board can hear you. At the appropriate time, the chair will ask for the phone lines to be opened. If you wish to comment on the particular item, youre on the phone line and you will be prompted to press 1, 0. I will add you to the speaker line. And the auto prompt will say the callers are entering the question and answer time. But this is the Public Comment period. You will be queued up in the orreder in which you pressed 1, 0. And there will be an automated voice that will tell you when it is your turn to speak. When your phone has been unmuted by the system, you will hear us ask you to state your name and to make your comments. I will start your two minutes when you begin talking. I will give you a 30 second warning when you have 30 seconds remaining, and when your time is up, i will say thank you, next caller please. And at that point the moderator will automatically put the speaker back on mute. I will repeat these instructions for how to make Public Comment as i am aware some members of the public may join the meeting after i said this and may not have heard this information. So madam chair, you asked the phone line to be opened up as there was a request yesterday from a member of the public who wished an accommodation. Yes, please. All right. If the moderator can unmute the phone line for the member of the public. Do we have our commenter online . Hold on a moment. The moderator will let us know. All right. So madam chair, just for the members of the public, this is an opportunity for the one member of the public who requested an accommodation and this is not for general Public Comment on matters not on the agenda. So first caller please. Caller, give us your name and we will start your two minutes. All right. Speaker, if you could please give us your name and we will start your two minutes. Hi. I am zachary carnasis and i have a coup of notes to say about the way meetings are being conducted. I appreciate sfmta board granting me to leave Public Comment now. It is my understanding that Public Comment cans be made anonymously and that is not been made clear to in the process of these meetings or in the introductions to the meetings. I ams a highly disturbed that there is pressure being put on the public to submit questions and comments ahead of the meetings assuming that they will be even read or listened to at all as that often times is not the case. And also, one of the reasons that its beneficial to have Public Meetings is so the public can engage with the public and we can be assured you are hearing what we say and speaking is also different than a typed email. Also, there is different accessibility needs for different people. So i really just want to strongly encourage that the board and the local government encourages Public Participation as close to the way it was done before covid19 pandemic. Additionally, i want to point out that the 88 grievance procedure is really broken for people with disabilities. We are bullied and harassed in these proceedings and they do not focus on 88 issues as a whole but focus only on driver discipline, individual driver discipline. They dont look at systemic problems with the sfmta stability structure. 30 seconds. I ask that you penalize the drivers and which solves nothing and that sfmta focus on driver education and driving trainings and they are supposed to be giving to drivers already and have not been doing. Again, punishing drivers and harming people and individual basis is not how you solve accessibility problems with transportation, and i have been begging the board to fix their a. D. A. Procedure for a long time now. I havent spoke to the board since october. Time. Thank you, mr. Speaker. Thank you. All right. So other callers, madam chair, we can close the phone line. Public comment is closed. We will have the regular Public Comment in a bit. That was a special accommodation. Thank you. Number six is introduction of new or Unfinished Business by Board Members. A directors, do we have any new or Unfinished Business . No, appearing to be none. There a citizens we can move to item 7. An item 7, directors report. Sorry. Item 7 is the directors report. Great. Director tumlin. I dont think we should be in question and answer mode. We are this directors report right now. We should close i dont know if a question i dont know if that matters anyway. Okay. Okay. So as all of you know, this has been an intense couple of weeks, so i apologize in advance at my directors report will run long. Theres been a lot going on. This should not need saying that public streets and Public Transit are for everyone equally. But for ages, transportation has been designed to exclude and oppress. Sidewalks and travel lanes added only through the nonwhite neighborhoods starting in the 1930s and throughout the 1950s the freeways were cut through the area where they were. And because transportation projects got extra federal support for removing blight. Blight means, of course, being defined officially as nonwhite ownership. In the purpose and needs statement for the mcgeary expressway where we demolished a pedestrian bridge, the document stated that project was necessary and the removal of black businesses and japaneseowned homes was necessary to, in order to, and i quote, halt negro advancement. Even today the legacy of our industry continues and today residents of historically black neighborhoods in San Francisco and oakland have 10 to 15 years knocked off their life span as a result of particulate emissions as a result of streets designed to prioritize the speed of commute traffic rather than the need for residents. And the fact that our transportation land use patterns and services deny folks living in the neighborhoods access to employment, to services, to education. We in the Transportation Industry have far long time been complicit in stripping away opportunity from people of color. We celebrate the legacy of rosa parks, mary ellen pleasant, and Charlotte Brown here in San Francisco, but neglect our continued priorization of the convenience and privilege over the needs of everyone else, particularly the most vulnerable members of society. Like any decent human, i am heart broken and outraged by the murder of george floyd. His murder was so calm and methodical. Simply going about the business of government. Weve seen the video. We have seen the videos of so many africanamericans killed by agents of government for simple infractions or no reason at all, no reason certainly that i as a welldressed white person would even be arrested for let alone executed. George floyds murder is acutely dehumanizing. We at the sfmta firmly support the sacred right of public protest on our public rights of land in any democracy, and unlike other transit agencies, we have continued Many Services and service all through the night of each protest, rerouting around the protest areas in order make sure that our passengers who are essential workers as well as people attending the protest are kept safe along with our operators. Two days ago i learned from social media that our buss are being used to transport Police Officers. This is apparently something that the agency has been doing for many years. I quickly confirmed that our buses were not being used to transport detainees. And this created obviously a conundrum for us and so i reached out for advice. I talked to people of color throughout the agency, on our board, with our labor union leadership, and asked questions about can an agency committed to social justice also provide mobility for Police Officers during National Protest against police abuse of power. Their advice like my own thinking was also deeply conflicted, but also in the end, fairly clear. Over the last two months our Bus Operators have experienced a pretty significant increase in assaults and why they are all horrified about the abuse of police nationally, they are independent on local Police Officers to protect their safety. We are dependent on the officers of the San Francisco Police Department for protection just as all people should be. So as i work to try to reform the horrific history of my own industry, i need to honor sfpd bill scotts leadership towards necessary structural change within his. We are a City Department just like sfpd and sfpd officers are our colleagues. We collaborate with them every day on Traffic Safety and operator safety. But at the same time we also have to acknowledge and own the emotional impact of our riders seeing such visible partnership between the police and Public Transit. Police for many people being a symbol of ongoing oppression and Public Transit which is a place where Everyone Needs to feel safe and protected and comfortable. So i am antiPolice Brutality and also at the same time not against the officers of the police who do seek to protect the vulnerable and regress Police Racism and cruelty. So this is one of the many challenges i get to face as a bureaucrat, and the only way i can do it is with stability, continuing to seek advice throughout the agency and the public about how to proceed, how to thread this needle, and how to at the same time keep trying to bend my own agency toward justice and while righting past harms. So that is a lot to say. I also need to cover the more cotillian work of our agency. I am continuing to do the hard work of internal change around ensuring that people of color within the agency are respected and heard, and that means continuing to advance all the social equity work that we have been doing in our external work but particularly leading toward the Racial Equity action plan that is due to the city administrator and Mayors Office that is here to require ongoing trainings that we continue to do and even despite the covid process. I also need to talk about safety. So we had another fatality in this last week. A cyclist was riding on frederick street. A motorist opened a car door. The cyclist as a result of that ended up being pushed into the street and was run over and killed by a second motorist. Dooring is a not unheard of form of violence and death against people on bicycles in San Francisco, and so, of course, the Team Immediately went out within 24 hours to do a Quick Response and come up with recommendations about quick changes we can make to frederick street, but also more importantly stepping up the Citywide Campaign against dooring and training tourists to look over their Left Shoulder before opening the door. We will be providing more detail on that in the coming weeks, and well be speaking to that as we talk about our Recovery Plan as well. Some other work we are doing, we are, as owe know, most of the construction was shut down during the shelter in place order and we are starting work again on transit on 4th street and stepping up on work that we have cancelled during the covid work and completing the protected bike ways on seventh street and also struggtology deal with how readdress our own tenants that is a financial crisis of the fallout of the covid crisis. There was a chronicle headline that was incorrect about our rent and immediately after the shelter in place orred we are a threemonth rent fore bear rans for all of the tenants. We are now working on an extension to that and also a forgiveness plan because it is essential for us to maintain the viability of our tenants. It is not in our economic interest as a landlord to have a retail space that is vacant and is certainly not in our interest as an entity that is dependent upon San Francisco tax dollars for financial survival and we need to do everything we can to support our Small Businesses. Finally, i want to point out it is june 2, the second day of pride month. Unfortunately this year the 50th anniversary of the pride parade will be cancelled in the physical form but moving online. We are working in many ways to continue to celebrate pride both as a city wide event and also for our own lgbtq employees. And finally, i would like to point out that pride, that pride is a celebration of deep cultural change. Cultural change that happened historically as a result of the cafeteria riots in 1966, and the stonewall riots of 1969. Two events in which transgender people fought back against Police Brutality and ended up creating what would be a long process, but process that is necessary and arises out of violent protest. The San Francisco streetcar operator strike of 1907 is one of the pivotal events and one. More volatile events in labor history and resulted in the vote to create the first mus any mali owned and operated and the event that we should be very proud of and also understand the very difficult history that positive Democratic Change toward justice arises from. With that i will turn it back over to the chair. Thank you, director. I know there are some questions. Director heminger . Thank you, madam chair. I wanted to commend mr. Tumlin on the introductory marks. Jeff, i think you are striking the right tone t right balance, the right level of empathy. And i will just say we made a good hire. Thank you. Any other commissioners have questions for the director . Director eaken . Thank you so much. Just building on chair bordens meeting at the top, and i was going to ask and it seems like you anticipated the request. I was going to ask for an update at a future meeting on the new office of race equity and inclusion and what is the organization and the update on the Racial Equity action plan. It sounds like that is on your mind, but i wanted to explicitly express that. We would be happy to bring dante king who leads the work to present to you all. U an any other directors have additional comments . I will say you mention we lost another life on our streets and i just think the reason that we lose cyclists and Police Officers and is not racially motivated and there is an indifference to something that is not your circumstance that you dont seem to care about. I think we have to get beyond that. It cant be, well, it wasnt me, not my family, not my race, not my people. We are all everyones people and we should be alarmed at the loss of any life at all times. It never should be okay and we shouldnt always ask for bicycle improvements and that is thelessson to learn about all this. And all in our space and its not my issue and not my problem and things will get better. And with that, are there any Public Commenters on the directors report . If the moderator could open the phone line for Public Comment. Your concerns is now in question and answer mode. And this is for those members watching via sfg tv and twoish address on comments on topics discussed by the director to address the board on this topic at 8888086 929 9961164 finally 1,0. The moderator will let us know when there are members of the public on who wish to address. All right. We have five callers. All right. So first caller, please give us your name. All right. We have more. The first speaker. Please give us your name or if you wish to remain anonymous, please start speaking and we will start the clock when you start speaking. First caller. Can you hear me now . Yes. Can you hear me now . Yes. It is david pillpal in reference to comment from director tumlin and i was out the other night before the curfew was announced or took effect and there was an instruction to operators on the streets to pull in from the inner terminal which caused me and other people to be just left stranded downtown. There have also been reroutes the last few nights that i am aware of related to incidents on the street. I was just asking in anticipation of other issues Going Forward that somebody be at the Transportation Management center overnight so that when we reroutes are necessary, that theyre able to put out via whatever communication including the next meeting signs at shelters and information for passengers. I am sure there were passengers who were stranded on Market Street for hours with no Service Available and no information about where to go and where coaches were stopping. Ill leave it at that on the directors report. Thanks. I have been paying careful attention to what the director is saying. The director may think he knows or the a ph. D. On transportation issues, but the objective opinion is that the director and the director that we have. And the audacity, one of your commissioners and i think i know him, but butting in and saying that we made a good decision with the hire. That is for the people to say, not for you to say. As far as we from observation things are going downhill. He has been around and i have been around, and he said some statements and is not that they are just making some general statements, but muny is failing us each and every day. And its more because of the pandemic, but i take Public Transportation so i know what i am talking about. So stop backing up behind when you are given an opportunity to speak and do your job. Do your job. If you find it is too hot in the kitchen, then maybe you should step out. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker please. The next speaker. Give us your name or when you start speaking, we will start your timer. Two minutes. Hi. I am zach carnasis and i appreciate director tumlins report and the words that he shared. They all sound very nice, and i know he is new to the this position and i hope there can be some action behind those words because sfmta has been a leader in discrimination against those with disabilities and theres an issue where they are deleting public video records in 72 hours, especially when they seem to happen to contain access violations. And if you are trying to protect drivers from attacks, you need to stop deleting public video records and public surveillance records. That is one of the first thins you can do and actually just maybe hold on to public video records a little longer than 72 hours because that is crazy. Also, sfmta has a long im sorry, the police riding the bus has been a longstanding thing. I am really concerned to hear that the director is just finding that out now and thats been happening for many, many years. I want to encourage everyone on the board as soon as the pan dem sick a cleared away to as soon as the pandemic is cleared away. I know a lot of communication and people making six figure salaries do not ride the bus because they dont feel they have to and that puts you out of touch with what the public experiences in the daytoday. I want to encourage that. There is a longstanding problem of disproportionately targeting communities of color. The fair Vision Police and the regular sfpd are routinely stationed on buss that go to neighborhoods 30 seconds. Such as the 24 liner to 14 line. And that is racism, folk. That is clearcut racism. It happens all the time from sfmta. And i hope this director can put actions behind the words and really stop that kind of thing from happening. And i just want to encourage people to also put some of those financial points where your concerns are and help out drivers who are only making 26 an hour instead of paying six figure salaries. Time. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Next speaker, if you could just give us your name or Start Talking and your two minutes will start. Good afternoon, director tumlin and sfmta directors. First off, i want to thank you for your leadership to continue to keep our city moving safely during this very challenging time. Black lives matter. Brown lives matter. And design matters. Our family lives our muni bus drivers and the San Francisco bus drivers who were risking their lives before covid19. And we stand with the bus drivers in peace and solidarity and send our compassion, lover, and light to them on their journey. I am a member of the sf bay area family for safe streets and it was founded four years ago and of families of loved ones who have been cleared or severely injured by preventible crashes on the streets of San Francisco. I am a 15year district five San Francisco San Francisco resident a female, athlete, artist, community gardener, dance e and San Francisco United Public School mom. And a heart of gold and a trusting, adventurous soul. I am a survivor of San Francisco traffic violence. I am calling to ask sfmta to act urgently to prevent a surge in severe and fatal traffic crashes. I report walk sfs recommendation to make everyone safer on our streets now. These are fast, affordable, and proven ways to reduce the traffic crashes at intersections and to start to address the dangerous speeds. We cannot allow the cities to be an average of 30 people are killed and nearly 600 people severely injured in traffic crashes each year. Each year, year over year. There is no time to waste for ample, feasible, easy to implement and jody of sf walk is a brilliant leader. Time. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Just for members of the public who are on here who want to talk about safety on the streets, that is actually item 11. Speaker hi, thank you. Go ahead. Sure. Thank you. I am cliff barger and first, i want to thank you, all, for all of your hard work during the difficult time, particularly director tumlin and all the staff members. I was going to call and bring up the difficulties in keeping the bike lanes clear on the western side of the city from cars, but after this weekend, it feels like as important as that is, its just pales in comparison to what is going on across the country. I can aappreciate that director tumlin and muni workers who rely on services provieded by sf tv, but i think its tough for a lot of people to see muni transporting Police Officers to break up peaceful protests and i hope that director tumlin can continue to seek a better balance in how muni facilitates sfpd activities. I want to thank you for continuing to run service during the curfew and i know none of you control this, but i am wondering why despite muni continuing to run bus service, san trans has the decided they dont need to serve bus drivers. I dont know if that is something that m. T. A. Can communicate with san trans about, but i was disapointed they dont follow your good example. 30 second. An i think that is all ive got right now. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Next speaker, please. Give us your name and we will start your tame. Good afternoon. This is barry, toronto. I appreciate jeffrey tumlins kind words and expressing his dilemma he had regarding transporting detainees or transporting Police Officers regarding Police Brutality. I saw an item online that said a bus driver refused to actually transport these people. I suggest that you have a meeting with the police brass and express your dilemma and also bring with you the head of the muni drivers union. The next issue is i worked both saturday and sunday as a taxi driver. It was very stressful. More so on sunday than saturday because they also needed cabs at the airport and i ended up serving people who got stranded because the buses had stopped running in certain areas. And also uber and lyft have stopped running as well. So i think i probably got a few extra customers. A lot of drivers are refraining from being out there for health and safety reasons 30 second. So i want to say regarding the bicyclist, i am horrified to hear this happens and i learned to always look before opening the door all the way. The drivers side door. However, theres a problem with a lot of bicyclists ignoring Traffic Signals and stop signs and thinking they are without impunity. So i am really concerned that the safety issue fall on the bicyclists as well. Thank you very much. Next speaker please. You have 5 questions remaining. Speaker e give us your name and we will start your time. I do not own a car and the primary means of transportation is my bike and my dogs primary mode of transportation is via bike. Before pandemic i commuted by bicycle to selma and ever day i had at least two close calls on the commute. I fear in the covid19 world with more folk taking transit and cars and the street wills become less safe. I would like to thank your leadership for keeping the streets moving safely and the safe Streets Initiative in particular is a resident and i hope that the program is made more permanent. And to ask urgently to prevent that surge and fatal traffic and support walk sf to make everyones streets safer now. The recommendations and implement the changes by the end of the year. For the record for members of the public, safer streets and the transportation Recovery Plan is an item on the agenda, item 11, and so people who wish to address the board on the safe Streets Program or making changes in the future should address the board on item 11. Next speaker if you are unmuted. Give us your name and we will start your two minutes. This is martin. Thank you. Go ahead. And thank you. And i was calling originally to support the safe streets network seeing rolled out during the covid19 pandemic and the states protected and that we can do that today. And we should do that today because too many have died on our streets and that is unacceptable and will neat to stop now and the safe ip infrastructure in a quick and swift manner. But given the events of the last couple of days, i also wanted to call in to condemn the use of muni by Police Officers for the transportation and Police Officers that are controlling our right to protest. And no way am i saying that i dont believe that cops should be able to use the bus as private citizens but black and brown communities are terrorized enough by the cops. We dont need them to be using the Public Infrastructure to terrorize them more during the time when we are protesting police violence. Cops very will a bloated budget and their own vehicles. We absolutely do not need them to be using our buses. If anything, it is a symbol that sfmta muni is not taking the plight of black and brown americans seriously at this time. So please use the public vehicles to suppress freedom of speech and right to protest 30 second. And make black and brown people afraid to use muni. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Next speaker. I am calling in today to talk about the use of buses to transport police. I strongly oppose this. The police have no reason to take that away to take resources from what could be essential workers and who need to voice frustrations with the government and giving them to the exact problem they are protesting against. So it needs to end and we cant keep transporting police on the Public Transportation system and also right now is the perfect time and many said and. And why are we building more protected bike lanes and those areas and have an opportunity. Thank you. Next speaker. Give us your name, sir. On friday at the Blue Ribbon Panel for transit recovery, the director made a comment about wanting state legislation to streamline the creation and i understand we will hear more about that in item 11 and look forward to more elab racings on that because transited a voe t kas around the bay area are eager to support such an effort. Thank you. To advocate around the bay area. You have three questions remaining. So before the next speaker, member who is wish to address on topics that were addressed by director tumlin, please call 8888086929. The code and my name is marilyn and i am an 82yearold who walks to the ocean and walk to my doctors report and walking is a major part of my life. And recently it has become the most frightening part of my life. Now that vehicle traffic is so much more since people are no longer using Public Transportation, more people are walking and walking and walk San Francisco has provided direction to you and the directors that i hope you Pay Attention to. And the last years of my life, i hope to feel i can still walk this beloved city. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Go ahead when you are ready. Please give us your name and go ahead. Good afternoon. I am a member of walk San Francisco and calling to talk about the issue of safe street which is many people have addressed. I would like to thank the director for his comments on the other issues that are really in the forefront of our consciousness now, but safe streets effect everybody regardless of race. As you have all heard and know, theres been a lot of traffic, pedestrian collisions and in San Francisco and some improvements have been made but i am very krnt about what will happen as the city begins to open up again and more and more people are coming back to work and people are not ready to get back to Public Transportation. I am not ready to get back on Public Transportation. I hope that you will do everything that you can following the recommendation by walk San Francisco to help keep our city and our treats safe for people of any race walking in any age and 30 seconds. San francisco is a beautiful city. Comments about slow streets and Transportation Plan is item number 11 on the agenda. And it would be appropriate for members of the public to wait to address the board when we get to that item. Thank you for the reminder. Next speaker please. Give us your name and we will start your time when you begin talking. Thank you for your input. A next speaker please. Good afternoon. Can you hear me . Yes. I circulated a couple of images to the board yesterday and i know the public cant see this, but the first image that i circulated and am referring to the air pollution map and with the dense test Residential Districts and the tenderloin and the northern part of the mission and the Residential District and soma, and these are extremely dense areas with over 20 to 30,000 persons per square mile. Theyre also the model of intensity. In other words, mixed use with local services and shops that people can walk and bicycle to. Despite that, if you look at this map, they are disproportionately exposed to particulate matter, traffic noise and all myriad of the private automobiles and the private entities. Yes . You have 20 seconds left to address the board. Oi kay. So i wanted to bring this social equity to what we are thinking about how to move forward of the impacts of the private automobility. Thank you for your conversation. You have zero questions remaining. With no one left on the line, we will move on from the makers report and there is no citizens advisory count today. Item nine is general Public Comment to address within the jurisdiction of the sfmta members and not on todays agenda. If the moderator can open the phone line. The transportation Recovery Plan is item 1 1 and we will have have a full presentation and opportunity to ask questions at that time on that item and from the questions and issues that you have. Madam chair f i can the transportation Recovery Plan does include Transit Service, street Recovery Planning, support for neighborhood commercial districts, bike lanes, managing land for travel. So this is only for matters that are not on todays agenda. If the moderator could let us know. And members of the public who are watching the meeting by sfgtv if you wish to address the board on matters within the jurisdiction of the board but not on todays calendar, 8888086929 and then 9961164, and finally, 1, 0. We hear that are there callers on the line . We can take the first caller, please. We will set your time at two minutes when you Start Talking. Please give us your name. You have nine questions remaining. Go ahead. First speaker please. Hello. Hello. This is Hayden Miller calling in. I just wanted to talk about recently some operators have taken it upon themselves to block off the front of the coach which is a move in other agencies like a. C. Transit and san trans have taken and they have been vizable in protecting the health and safety i will blocking off the front of the coach to passengers. Many of the passengers are ill and not wearing a mask. And there is little enforcement to protect the operator and other essential worker passenger safety. So we should not be disciplining the operators who are protecting their safety. It is important that we do serve our patrons with disabilities, but that should not have to comprise our operator safety. We can still let the passengers with disabilities on through the front of the bus, but that doesnt mean that everybody should sit up there and stand next to the operators and pay the cash fare. This needs to top and put the operators first and take care of the operators and the families and the essential workers who are riding the buses. Thank you. That a keep point of center by sfmta where were dealing with the important issues at hand of the unfortunate, very unfortunate pandemic and the racial cause and effect of Police Brutality and other points dont takeaway from the importance of Transportation Safety in the streets of San Francisco as a survivor, i ask you to focus on this right now. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, well start your time when give us your name and you Start Talking. Next speaker. Speakers are told when their microphone is unmuted. Please, begin talking. Thank you all for directors for hearing us and leaving us to these challenging times. My name is alley geller. The advocates and today already and each of these people have been impacted by traffic violence, either with victims themselves or the parent or child who is lost a loved one and they have a career and i am come and everyone has losses is preventable. These crashes were due to speed and reckless distracted driving behavior and we see it everyday and increasingly on our streets. And they had zero pedestrian last year. There is no reason why San Francisco, with our tremendous resources cannot be among these Success Stories and every reason why we must. I support San Franciscos recommendations for affordable crashes and intersections and address dangerous speeds. Thank you so much. Thank you. Intention speaker. Give us your name and well start your time when you Start Talking. If people are on the line you have nine questions remaining. People on the line at the request of Bike Coalition or walk sf, this is not the time to address the board. The time to address the board would be under item 11 not on general Public Comment. Next speaker, please give us your name and well start your time. Can you hear me now . Yes. Its david fillpaw. So, not regarding the recovery but regarding Current Operations and the budget, i continue to be concerned about the stops on Market Street for the l, the n and the t, which during the day, only stop at the former metro stations and not the other stops on market and during the l period stop at all the stops on Market Street. Its confusing and although staff has attempted to provide signage and provide some communications with the operators, its very confusing to the public, particularly during the overlap period about 10 00 when there are both daytime buses out and owl buses and it forces people, in fact, to take a local 9 san bruno from a stop at say first street to Second Street to then get off and get on again to catch an l an n or a t. The t is partially substituting for the f line and yet serves no stops between van he is and church and church and castro. I encourage staff to stop all the buses on Market Street at all of the regular islands all daylong. Its a lot simpler, period. Regarding the budget, it would be helpful to brief the board and to update the public on the status of the budget and particularly to the exten the ee assumptions that underline the budget approval may or may not still be in effect. So i would hope you would have a budget update as soon as possible at a future meeting, thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. You have eight questions remaining. Next speak remover please. Hi, my name is adam and im a residents of district 6 at the palms off of fourth and bryant. I specifically wanted to ask you to have the discussion about calender items, 10. 3 and expanding the design and budget for the subway project. The reason being is when we get to that item, the consent calender, please address the board when that item is open for public public. Ive taken note you wish to sever it. This is general Public Comment on a matter not on the agenda. Just wanted to make sure it was severed before we hop into that. Thank you so much. Our next speaker, please. The next speaker can give us your name and well start your time. Next speaker, please. You have seven questions remaining. Next speaker, please go ahead. This is roger. Roger. This is local 258. It is designated under article 6 section 6. 3 where it states a minimum of eight hours annually professional Customer Service training shall be provided to all operators so that person is right in terms of Customer Service training, we are definitely working with mta in terms of providing the training so that operators can get a better understanding of how to deal with passengers whether theyre challenged passengers, mentally disabled at risk or whatever the case may be so were working with the agents in terms of that and in in terms of deleting after 62 hours its interesting because we need to make sure the videos are not being deleted after 72 hours. Its a issue of mine in regards fact first policy and program and id like everybody to know that mayor is asking for budget cuts, et cetera, and cuts are always at the bottom and i would like everybody to know make it public and public declaration that i would be cutting my salary by 10 if people in the agency would take a personal 10 pay cut reduction in order to help continue to fund the back First Program so that is still out there on the table for the agents to consider. Thank you. Time. Thank you, for your leadership. I have six questions remaining. Next speaker, give us your name or Start Talking and well start your two minutes. Hello, i wanted to comment on the plan for a street published lately many of theres a survey online that is very summary and it asks whether you like the plan or not. I mostly approve the changes in this plan, certainly the Pedestrian Safety changes and its always nice to see a new bike lane proposed. Its not that nice to see a door zone bike lane proposed for alamaney its a burden bike lane but does not have protection even though theres parking on the street and i have not seen the plans so i dont know how much is available but i would strongly urge smfta to build a parking bike lanes where possible and avoid building doors on bike lanes unless theres no other options. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Go ahead. Give us your name and start speaking and well start your time. Are there other speakers on the line. Are there any additional speakers on the line . Hold on madam, chair. Im checking with the moderator. No problem. We seem to have a technical difficulty at the moment. If we can just try to work that out. You have five questions remaining. So next speaker, give us your name. Hello, my name is Richard Rossman and i live in the Outer Richmond off full ton street and i saw on our next neighbor a lady with her baby almost got hit by a car. Its the International Speed way and with more cars driving there needs to be immediate plans to slow cars down. I know Sarah Jones Group is coming up with a plan but that is taken so long. We need to maybe under the declare emergency we can reduce the traffic to 25 Miles Per Hour or put something or speed bumps. You need to slow the traffic down. A couple of years ago, i asked the staff to put up those orange construction signs that says slow down or construction ahead or lane closed. And they wouldnt do it and the reason why they said, oh, we dont have the money. If i was that persons boss he would be looking for another job. Theres been other accidents on fulton street. It took 10 years to fix one accident and it needs to be done right away while cars are coming on the street. The police wont give tickets anymore. My name is herbert winier and i want to raise concerns about the nine san bruno. About a week and a half ago, i attempted to take a nine to costco. It was packed. It was crowded. Its in violation of the pandemic regulations. Basically, more service is needed on that line. Theres no service to the Marina District and all lines have been eliminated and mta sounds for equity. It should. Its service for everyone and that includes black and brown people as well and it includes everybody. If the police and fire operators are favoring one group over another, probably half the city would burn down. And there would be more crime in the city and that should be the mission of mta and the mission. Thank you. So, next speaker. You have four questions remaining. All right, please give us your name or Start Talking. They are taking risk by doing it and a bicyclist and a car running the lights. It does not come out to a very happy situation. Its really disgusting. Regarding i want to say whoever sent out an email sunday afternoon, informing the taxi industry that we are an essential service and that the curfew does not apply to us and it was an important aspect. There was a heavy demand on saturday night and particularly on sunday for taxi service. And so, it was and i had to deal with the fact that i had several non pays. So, because we have to pick up it was a productive night. Regarding slow streets. We have a problem with not identifying the slow streets that the taxi drivers maybe someone in the Taxi Division so we dont have to come upon them and figure something out out. And last, i want to mention that without fill owe crean a there theres a problem of leadership at the Taxi Division. I sent an email and i c ced jeff tumlin because theyre not addressing it. Theyre expecting us to have our own printers and scanners regarding documents we need regarding our permits and other forms we have to fill out. I want to let you know, we have problems with this staff at the you have three questions remaining. So next speaker go ahead, sir. Good afternoon, my name is jason henderson. I want to talk about the market noctavia plan and the hub. Jeffrey tomlin that when you worked with Nelson Nygard you conducted the traffic stops. One of the problem is its a good plan. The Planning Department and sfmta didnt seem to coordinate and you know, for example, it took us 10 years to finally get the sfmta to address page street and theres a number of other issues within that plan that have yet to be adequately addresses and theres t and c and ecommerce delivery. Now we have the hub coming at us. The Planning Commission approved the hub but there was no discussion about what the situation is with trans capacity or what the reality is on the ground and this was approved last week. This plan has approved thousands of sparking spaces. These havent been built yet but theyve been approved and there are 500 more coming, just in that tight geography. The hub also has a significant loading deficit that tnc and ecommerce are going to overwhelm and sat right the streets in the hub district. And it feels the sfmta is this bystander to something going on. What i would request is the sfmta talk to the board of supervisors now, this summer, because this has to go to the board of supervisors sometime this summer and we need to have some real clarity and also i want to suggest that you look at a bicycle district to address that the reality is that theres a transit capacity issue because we cannot and we really need to recalibrate and mta and should be at the center of that. You have two questions remaining. Good afternoon, my name is jody ma der as and im the executive director of walk San Francisco. I want to thank you for the work youve been doing creating work and people work space and prioritizing clean transit. I am sad by the current state of our country and and we heard from another resident and members to take time out of the day to ask the sfmta to not lose sight of vision zero. It advises employers to encourage employees to take vehicles and we as a city are trying to encourage more people to see and we reel feel we need to do everything we can to protect the most vulnerable through low cost tools, smart policies and technologies that we have at our disposal. For example, we have programs that are currently over 500 red light runners monthly at only 13 intersections. Were ready to the next batch of 10. Are they on the High Injury Network . The cameras are in the sfmta budget. Walk San Francisco is asking the plan and implemented this year because we want to save lives. Im here today with my members to ask the sfmta board to continue to ask director tumlin for updates on the progress and they need to put engineering tools in place, gathering the data we need and prioritize the technology so Traffic Enforcement but theyll Work Together to reach those goals. Thank you so much. Thank you, next speaker, please. You have two questions remaining. Next speaker, give us your name or Start Talking and your time will start. Hi, my name is steven bingeham im a member of walk sf and also the chapter families for safe streets. My daughter was killed in street violence 10 years ago biking to her new killed in exactly the same way as emily, killed biking to work by a box truck in San Francisco whose driver right hooked her at fulsome and 6th seven years ago. Im also a retired lawyer who worked 23 years in the San Francisco office of bay area legal aid. I want to apologize for speaking on item 11 but i looked at the transportation Recovery Plan and it doesnt address any of the issues which others and jody have just mentioned. The issues that walk sf is concerned with are not specific recovery issues and they were longstanding measures that urgently need to be addressed. Another speaker mentioned earlier, every two weeks someone is killed in San Francisco. 10 people are injured every week in traffic crashes and it goes on year after year and now with open streets, theres an increase in speeding so theres even more of i need for noturnonred policies, leftturn calming devices, daylighting and more to address these longstanding issues. Thank you. Our next speaker, please. You have two questions remaining. If you can give us your name or Start Talking well talk your two minutes. Hi, thank you. Good afternoon sfmta directors and director tumlin. Thank you for allowing this opportunity for us to speak. My name is eric roseel and im a tenderloin resident and i work with the Tenderloin Community benefit district. I want to thank you for keeping our city streets safe during this challenging time. I am a survivor of a bicycle collision and someone that spends 10 hours a week walking the streets of the tenderloin so i witnessed the dangers of our streets at firsthand. I ask the sfmta act urgely to end fatal traffic crashes here and throughout the city. I strongly suggest putting walk sfs recommendation changes into place now and additionally, i strongly encourage you to inapproximate to reviews deeks and at the last meeting there was discussion on creating a workshop to expedite the quick build or the street changes here in the tenderloin and i would like to get some followup as to what is being done to ensure that the efforts to improve in the tenderloin are being. Thank you, im finished. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have two questions remaining. Next speaker, give us your name or Start Talking and well start your time. Go ahead. Hello, good afternoon. My name is ion jackson and im a transit operator for sfmta. Ive been driving for five years in San Francisco and i am very safety focused when im driving the transit and the vehicle through the cities and i firsthand get to witness a lot of things happening out on the streets. So from the perspective of me, myself, a transit operator, i would love to share some of my ideas that i have to improve safety for pedestrians and for drivers and for San Francisco and i would like to leave my email address and on my days off or before work, i would love to volunteer my time to share some of the ideas to improve safety. My email address is sftranc sftranceitsprofessional and i care about the safety of pedestrians and drivers and my other coworkers as well. Were all in this together and i just wanted to say thank you for your time and i hope someone can reach out to me so we can get off of this call i can discussion and share some of my ideas to improve safety. Thank you. Thank you so much for reaching out and we will be in touch. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. You have one question remaining. Speaker, give us your name or Start Talking. Im so grateful for your leadership and sfmta directors, i am Nancy Harrison and i live in the mission and i am a senior. I walk everywhere and i dont have a car. I was hit by a car in a sidewalk at 18th last year and the year before that my neighbor who is also a senior, was injured in a car crash at the same crosswalk. It was a car turning left on to 18th. I support walk San Franciscos recommendations to stop speeding and to address dangerous left and right turns. I thank you for the work that you have done to decrease fatalities and injuries and i want to emphasize black and brown people essential workers, unhoused folks and seniors rely on your services and actions to help us survive traffic. As you know covid19, there are lines of people daily at food banks needing to transport large bags of food walking on the streets and people need to get to work and your immediate action is needed now more than ever. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any additional Public Commenters for general Public Comment . You have zero questions remaining. Seeing none, Public Comment will be closed. Moderator, please, close the lines. All right. Madam chair, unless theres anything from the board, i will move on to the consent calender. Please. Were going to be is everything 10. 3. Yes, madam chair. So consent calender, item 10. 1 resolves various claims against the sfmta including 10. 2, amend the transportation code to establish sf Police Department vehicle only parking restrictions in front of the Police Department specializations center and approving a sparking restriction that will enact that and that is the remainder of your consent calender. If youd like to open Public Comment for any member of the public who may wish to sever or discuss any of the items. Well open for Public Comment on items 10. 1 or 10. 2. By opening opening the comment, if you would like us to offer it from this agenda but this is the time to comment. Madam chair, if you would like the caller to address item 10. 3 at this time, that would also be an appropriate thing. Ok. And i guess if the caller wants to address this item 10. 3, i guess we wouldnt be called into the record at this moment but does that matter . I can call it into the record and right now and then take Public Comment on any item right at this moment. Ok. Thats fine. 10. 3 a proves amendment 6 contract c f1 52 and architect actual Engineering Services for the final design and essential subway design group through completion of the project increasing the contract amount by making Environmental Review findings. So this is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board on any consent calender item. The moderator will open the phone lines and will let us know if there are people online. Your conference is now in question and answer mode. To summon each question, press one then zero. Members of the public who wish to address the board please dial the number now. You have three questions remaining. Great. First speaker, please. Can you hear me now . Yes. Go ahead. Its david again. Regarding item 10. 3 on the central subway i reviewed the staff report, which indicates that substantial completion of the construction element to the project is expected by the end of calender year 2020. Whats not clear in the staff report is how long testing and training is anticipated to take and when the current initial operating date is so, im hoping that one of you can ask the director that question or that i can get a followup answer from staff. I would like to know what the current projected scheduling opening date of the central subway project is. Thank you, very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Please give us your name and or Start Talking. Hi. My name is adam at the palms on 555 4th street. The reason i wanted to speak on this is because our building is uniquely impacted by the central subway project yet all the of the design and environmental approvals to date have ignored the impact on the buildings and our front door goes up to it and we are on the block between bryant and brennan and the impact also effects the blocks out to the street which the city currently has zoned at designated as three lanes, two lanes of traffic and one lane of parking and its only wide enough for two lanes. If this amendment is going to pass i would ask the board to please ensure that any design supports for the sun way, any Environmental Review and anything included in this does take into account these traffic impact of pushing traffic off of brian street and off of Fourth Street on to zoe, which is not designed to handle the traffic. Zoe is large enough for a five truck to approach our building, which houses, 300 residential units and two retail units. Were excited to see the subway project move forward but we have cars driving up on the sidewalks outside our house because these streets are not wide enough to handle the traffic. We previously lost the only handicap parking because the board did not take into account the impacts on our building. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have one question remaining. In regards to items 10. 3, this is Hayden Miller, i just wanted to say that it seems confusing we keep dumping more and more money into this central subway project and i understand that its going to be great when it opens but we dont know when it will open. I couldnt tell you what the opening day is projected to be. Weve missed so many dead lines it seems like why are we dumping so much money into this thing and we still dont know when it will open. It was supposed to open in 2019 and now were in 2020. I think it was 2018 this was supposed to open so there needs to be more accountability and ive asked for the return of videos showing progress, anything thats going to help show the progress and when it really will open. Thank you. Thank you. Does that conclude our Public Commenter. Let us know. Madam chair. Are there any other speakers . You have zero questions remaining. That concludes Public Comment on all of your consent calender and you are free to take amount on all of it. Lets have the director address some of the items related to the consent calender the central subway project. As you see, the substantial completion date is the end of this calender year and were expecting service to be operational in late 2021 and the actual date varies depending on the final details of when were going to Start Testing and it might be possible before substantial completion. Where can people find updates for the project . That was one of the questions . If its for the project its the project website. Its on the project website theres a section and were behind because of covid19 so the last formal updates is from february but you can see the details updates in this Community Advisory group and theres a place to go on the website to get regular email updates. Are there any other questions or comments about item number 3 or desire to officer the other item at this point . Seeing none. I will entertain a motion for the consent calender. Motion to approve. Is there a second. All in favor. [roll call] thank you. That passes. Moving on to your regular calender. Madam chair, before i read the items just for members of the public who may be watching this meeting by sfgtv, please, if you wish to address the board call 8888086929 and 9961164 and 10 when the phone line is open so you will be in line and ready to go when the chair calls for Public Comment. Madam chair directors, presentation and discussion regarding the transportation and Recovery Plan including Transit Service and street Recovery Planning commercial districts and managing demand for travel. Thank you, take it away. We can go into our presentation mode. Go to the first slide. So, at our last board meeting, we presented the knowledge that while evaporated during shelter in place it was rapidly coming back and you asked us for some recommendations about bold actions in order to keep the economy open and moving and address the changes that are upon us over the next couple of months. So, unsurprisingly, last tuesday, marked the return of reoccurring congestion and this is 19th avenue and this looks familiar but this is the first time weve seen congestion since shelter in place started. And this is happening not just in San Francisco but all over the region this is google traffic map of 5 00 p. M. On tuesday. Showing healing from the regional Transportation System the orange lanes are where Traffic Volumes have equaled the roroy capacity. The red and dark colors are where Traffic Volume has exceeded the capacity of the roadway. These are all the nodes where theres capacity constraint in the regional roadway system basically this is where congestion starts and then it spreads to clog up the entire system. This map has since gotten worse. It was worse on wednesday and worse on thursday with every single major regional highway congested because the economy is about 10 open. As we look at one of the most important capacity constraint points for San Francisco, its the bay bridge in the eastbound and westbound direction and this is volumes at the toll plaza. You can see theyre right in late march, where the shelter in place order occurred in the orange lines and a significant but not huge drop off in Traffic Volumes and this is important to understand. Because many people dont really quite understand the geometry of Traffic Congestion. Traffic congestion exists on a 10 margin. A roadway that is flowing freely and need only add about 10 more Traffic Volume in order to reach severe congestion. You can see the drop off in traffic was a 30 drop in traffic, not a 80 drop in traffic, yet for femal people fr riding the bus the difference was stark. We since have seen this steady uptick and what you are seeing in the orange line is that 10 difference between traffic moving and is the peak of the peak versus the usual complete gridlock on the bridge that we saw back in february. Next slide, please. And so, were very concerned that as people understandably retreat from Public Transit to their private cars out of a sense of security or safety. Perfectly understandable move. The problem is the roy system cannot accommodate anymore vehicle traffic than it did last week. This is true at the regional level and this is true on the soma grid, which saw significant congestion, enough to delay our critical muni bus lines starting last week and continuing into this week. Without mobility, there can be no recovery. Right now the economy is 10 open and we maxed out the ability of the roadway system to move people. In order to allow the economy to continue to open, we have to find a way for the most spacey efficient modes of transportation, walking, biking, wheelchairing, scooterring, all the forms of micro mobility and Public Transit in order to work and not be stuck in Traffic Congestion. Thats what were here today to discuss. Weve known about this. Weve known about this problem for quite some time. We knew about this from the beginning and i had been projecting august as the return of severe congestion, people didnt believe me and it turns out i was wrong. Because its june. Its the return of severe congestion and not august. The traffic analysis and vulnerabilities analysis that have been done, across the nation, including by Work Research group is already pointed out just how vulnerable the San Francisco bay area is because of its previous high use of Public Transit and also the automobile dependen see of and were going to have to find a very different way of doing things and or well be stuck strangled in Traffic Congestion without business allowed to return. Next slide. So, this presentation is about our transportation Recovery Plan which really covers all of our lines of business and our planned leader, dan howard, will present that whole plan to you. And it focuses on a whole bunch of different objectives all at the same time. The most important set of objectives are about protecting the health and safety of our workforce and the public and that is paramount and covid19 creates some interesting challenges for us to make the Mobility System work and protecting the health of the problem anpublic and our operat. At the same time, weve got to fulfill the Transportation Systems primary function of supporting the economy and that is the job we do. We make it possible for people to get to work and school and get access to essential services to support Small Businesses. If were already capped out, if there are limits in place on our ability to do that on Public Transit, we need to invest very boldly and make some really tough decisions that will entail really difficult trade offs. So, lets go onto the next slide. Were not alone. Were watching cities all over the world confronting the same phenomenon. Were inspired by our neighbors over in oakland, around their slow Streets Program. Weve been inspired by pretty much all the global capitals. Weve been particularly inspired by the work the east asian communities have done in finding ways of mitigating the spread of the virus that dont rely on social distance and Public Transit but instead rely on other techniques and well talk to you about that later. Were knowing that in addition to dealing with the economy and covid19 in this time, we also have to be reminded of our key values of equity, of prioritizing the most Vulnerable People and people with the fewest choices, our priorities around safety, and our priorities around decarbonization. In addition to dealing with the immediate crisis, this is also an opportunity for us to deliver the city that we actually want in the constitute. Next slide. So, you asked us to be bold. And while the plan that we have is bold, theres not a lot that is new in our plan. We have done a lot here in San Francisco. Weve made some really hard trade offs in the past. This is powell street which used to have cars and cable cars. Its now pedestrian and transit only. This required hard choices. We eliminated a lot of parking on this block in order to make it work like this and were trying to learn from our successes and our failures and to speed up our delivery of the hard work necessary to try to accomplish a lot of change within the next two months before school starts, in order for us to avoid a traffic calamity. One of the things we have to understand is that the over all Transportation System is limited by fixed geometry. The car is convenient for many of us. It allows us to store our stuff, we feel safe and protected and it allows us to go doortodoor. It also consumes an enormous amount of roadway space compared to any mode of transportation. It takes up and these graphics are underestimating the amount of space that the car takes up. This is just how much space each mode of transportation takes up when its not moving. When they are moving its even greater. Moving a fern in person in a cs up 10 times as much roadway space than any other mode of transportation. And so, we have to focus our limited street rights of way on maximizing the movement of people and paying attention to who those people are and prioritizing people with the fewest choices and not emphasizing the convenience of those with the most choices. Next slide. Lets just focus on downtown. All of those little blue boxes are one person in one car. Thats how much space they take up. In this diagram, 45 people traveling in cars are taking up 89 of the space on the streets and while 100 people who are walking, biking and riding the bus take up about 11 of the streets. So these are 150 people on the streets and its important to remember the following slides each show the same number of people. So, with the capacity restrictions on our buses due to covid19, we can now only carry about 25 people on average. So if those 50 people who had been riding the bus drive because theres no capacity on money they take over all the space on the slide. Theres no more roadway capacity downtown to accommodate and these extra vehicles if everyone comes bac back to work and evenf 10 people switched to driving. Next slide. So providing a dedicated lane would takeaway some space for cars but that space can be used to move more people and in this case, the savings allowed it allows for another busload of people and even that space isnt enough and promoting tele commute can go prevent our roadways from becoming even more over loaded. We cant just rely on teleworking because thats what were relying and were already starting to see congestion returning. Next slide. If more people are able to feel like they can walk or bike safely, they can accommodate everyone while people are limited and this is one of the core reasons why we started the program and now wants to talk with you about advancing it rapidly again. So, its one thing to figure out how on earth do we move people during this time of covid19, its also important to set ourselves up for the future. So following recovery when more people are able to back on to muni we move more people than weve been able to move before as a city and this is critical in order to accommodate future and economic population growth in the city which we know is coming. So this is one example of how the Recovery Plan both addresses our immediate needs while setting us up for future success. Next slide, please. In order to prevent gridlock, we have to encourage more people to use the most efficient modes of transportation. People will not want to bike or walk or use their wheelchairs or scooters unless we provide a complete network of streets. Where all san franc san franciso feel safe. As well as neighborhoods and neighborhoods. Meanwhile, mack highing a transit frequently and its i am per passengers and staff through dis hurting all San Francisco. In order for the people who need to drive to be able to continue doing so, or to make it safer, and more convenient for other folks who dont need to drive in order to do so. We must act now to prevent a congestion crisis that will further hind economic recovery. Id like to reintroduce to you dan howard, our Technology Systems manager for the Transit Division and he has been spearheading our department of operations. He can tell you more about the transportation Recovery Plan and sour session today. Next slide, please. The transportation Recovery Plan is a comprehensive plan bringing the sfmta back to the return of a new normal and it contemplates different level of Agency Support triggered by publicHealth Orders and the city and state economic recovery and new developments. Were in the purple level that you see on char chart where thee increased Economic Activities which started may fourth. These activities include things like outdoor recreations, delivery and pick up for restaurants and retail and starting yesterday Childcare Services for all san franciscans. The next level is in george which provides for increased support for travel to and from neighborhood commissioner corridors. Last week we anticipated entering the orange level. This will coincide with a muni service increase and the launch of the shard Spaces Program and changes to the street environment necessary to support the increase demand. Following orange we anticipating entering the yellow level. To support travel with schools we are preparing to resume mini rail service and resume Parking Enforcement activities and implement some streets and improvements. For the yellow and orange we have contemplated the implementation of the support required for these levels will be phased overtime and this is to allow for some flexibility as the city proceeds so the mayor has a target date for phase 2c for the city as being in midjuly and so it would be a lighter orange yellow and we might modify a things in bit in response to changing conditions. The green level is not tied to any phase of economic recovery and its triggered with health and safety that allow people to return to transit in the numbers they did before the crisis. This is the recognition that our Transportation System depends on the efficiencies which transit provides. When were able to take advantage of protocols that weve seen in other cities that have been successful across the world, items like 100 math compliance or other safe guards, well restore routes and begin the transition from our Recovery Plan into a post crisis world. Which anticipate this level would coincide with the state of emergency and the rescinding of all the covid19 related Health Orders and restrictions. This plan is still being written so what you see on the screen is a framework and my team is working to flush out the many details which make these levels possible. The key aspect of the transportation Recovery Plan is the on going monitoring and evaluation of the elements the component of the plan ensures the Transportation Network evolves to meet the changing mobility needs of the bay area progresses from a shelter in place through Different Levels of Economic Activities. Our evaluations efforts include on going monitoring and regular reporting using our data. These data could include specifics about Traffic Congestion that jeff showed you as well as transit running times and input from the public in surveys. Next slide, please. So that our development of the plan and its elements continue to align with San Franciscos values longterm it involves the board of supervisors as well as Community Members and stakeholder groups in the development our evaluation tools and well confirm of the Recovery Plan as theyre implemented and well notify the public of opportunities that we have for their engagement and we will listen through out the plan for District Community feedback and respond to the demands as they emerge with the plan, our recover row plan is perhaps different than many plans presented to this board. As its born in the midst of this crisis its a living document and its being revised in response to what we see and hear. Next slide, please. Today well exam four tock et cetera. Were talk about our transit challenges in this environment as well as Short Term Solutions for action as long as some of the trade offs and well talk about the expansion of our bike share stations and third well go over some sfmta programs that support our neighborhood commercial district as well as the new shares for each of these topics well discuss the related challenges and the solutions and trade off and then well allow space for a brief board discussion julie will walk us through the challenges which the Recovery Plan seeks to address. Good afternoon, everyone. Its julie and weve been at this now for almost three months and there hasnt been one decision around transit that weve made that has been easy. As just said, we are doing our very best to let our agencies values of equity and safety really guide our work what that meant initially was stripping the service down to really its barest of bones with just 17 routes that we were barely able to keep up with the growing but in doing that we were able to safety features for both our operators and our public and in additional routes based on Community Feedback to close gaps in the network. That included a Community Shuttle route on pacific avenue in china town thats helping seniors and to groceries and as well as a Community Shuttle line along the m line that is connectioning that community with with a stones town as well as merchants. As were able to have service as we increase our capacity to do cleaning as we see our Staffing Levels stabilize, weve been very fortunate to be able to add back service. And we will continue to do that moving forward throughout the phases that dan identified because the people that were moving rely on muni more than ever to make connections to essential trips to get to hospitals, to get to jobs and as the economy starts to open to also support that Critical Role in connecting people and communities to goods and services. Next slide, please. What its intended to say actually is that we believe that by the end of the calender year, we will be able toll restore about 70 of our Service Hours wore currently at 43 to 45 of the service we were delivering prior to january. The reason we dont think we can get back up to 100 has to do with both the challenges that covid19 presents as well as the fiscal crisis it creates. I know you all as Board Members are familiar going into the covid19 crisis we were missing 3 to 5 of our service and we were relying on operator overtime, people coming in on their days off to fill another 4 to 5 . We have stopped using unscheduled overtime as a way to really stretch our resources and protect jobs we have also not been regularly training. We had anticipated a surge in training to troy to address the hiring gaps that we were seeing. Instead we have stopped training except for the final class in training and its not driving buses theyre filling Critical Roles in our warehouse to help make sure other operators have access to protective equipment as well as cleaning materials. We also know that our Staffing Levels dont take us as far as they did pre covid19. We have a number of our staff that is vulnerable whether because of preexisting conditions or age and our recommended not to work right now for their own safety. So that accumulation is what is letting us to believe that through the end of the year, and possibly into the 4021 we will grow back service and were excited to bring back trail but we dont think well get back our Service Levels and that would be about 70 . Next slide. Achieving that 740 is the only way that we can really do that is if we are able to really prioritize transit in our city streets. Weve had a incredible empirical demonstration of what protecting buses from congestion can do on our city streets and sean is going to talk you through that in a few moments but i do want to just emphasis as we go into his presentation that the service were delivering right now were able to deliver because our streets are clear of congestion. If the buses become stopped in traffic, we are going to have to spend more resources just to deliver the same amount of Service Levels. Theres added complexity that the capacity that we had pre covid is almost three times what were seeing today. We are not putting more than 20 people in a 40foot bus and more than 30 people in a 60foot bus. We are tracking loads from our Transportation Management center and as well as from operator feedback and in some cases, customers may see a dropoff only sign but were doing that for their safety and the safety of the people on board. There will be a bus coming shortly after to pick you up. What this means in terms of service is that right now, with 10 of the economy open, there are corridors where we are providing more Service Hours than we did pre covid but carrying fewer people, making fewer connections than we did in the past. As i started this presentation, we did not have easy choices and we did very much use equity in determining where to add service. We also looked at the travel patterns we were seeing and the connections that people needed to make, particularly the hospitals and to Major Grocery stores. One of the things we looked at was whether or not the routes pre covid were carrying high numbers of people of color and people from low income households. Over 70 of our Service Hours right now are on routes title 6 routes and 90 are routes we track in our equity strategy so were investing resources to the communities that rely on them and were also going to be surveying customers today because we do know is people who have access to vehicles or people who have the ability to tele commute are not currently riding transit so even more than every before, we believe transit is providing a Vital Service for communities of color and communities that are low income. This will continue to guide our work as we rebuild the system. The other thing that will guide our work is trying to look at how we rebuild in a way that addresses challenges we had going into covid. In future meetings, well talk, for example, about how were going to be rebuilding the subway and looking for opportunities to run fewer trains and longer trains and with less congestion and more reliability. Weve been using this time as much as possible to prepare our infrastructure. Campaigning the subway itself and well continue to keep the board uptodate on that work. With that overview where we are with the service and the urgency of really stretching our services as much as we can, id like to go to the next slide and hand things over to sean, who is going to talk about what our recommendations are in terms of protect transit from the on coming traffic. Thank you, julie. Good afternoon, directors. So, this map actually go to the next slide. This map identifies differences in pre covid transit travel times versus post covid transit travel times and really reflects where we were seeing impacts due to congestion on transit travel speeds and transit performance. These are really unprecedented savings as you take this map in, i will tell you that a systemwide level we were saving 15 in travel time. As we look at these individual corridors, obviously you can see some of our major segments and parts of corridors that are saving much more time. Up to 35, 40, 50 on segments along 19th avenue and 30 and 30 along outer geary so its very important and if you have a choice you are not taking transit or riding muni. Aside from estate routes 19th avenue and lombard street theyre equity strategy lines that serve those neighborhoods. Maintaining this ties together an important link and connection for those neighborhoods with job openings and job location to essential Services Like hospital visits and grocery stores. The second reason we want to maintain these savings is to support citys economic recovery. We had obviously a pending budget crisis but maintaining these travel times savings will allow us to offset the transit travel time costs and provide budget resiliency, at the same time, giving savings back to riders through better, more reliable trips. These are the very savings and the riders where workers are opening the city as we open back up and as we move out of this covid19 period. The third reason is assisting of course with the on going publicHealth Orders. The time savings that we will be able to get with these improvements, will allow our capacity increases along these corridors to support social distancing and as a whole, as a unit, all these savings add up to a 10 increase in capacity across the city as julies slide showed earlier. Next slide, please. This shows the transit only lane which is composed of 45 miles of transitonly lanes and i want to point out theres no overlap between the previous map you saw and this map. We knew the muni ford program was successful pre covid. We were seeing ridership gains, double digit gains on the lines where we did foreign projects and implemented muni forward components and along a back drop of a nation wide transit wider ship trend of decreasing riders so we knew that we had hit a cord and making Great Strides in improving a service but we have now been able to verify, through these travel times savings, that where we made projects and put them in place, we have seen very little inform no travel time savings along those corridors so we know that Muni Forward Program also has been protecting transit from congestion impacts. We really have a playbook on how to protect transit and how to protect these trips for essential workers Going Forward. Its a network and about 10 of all trips included at least one transfer so expanding the muni networks, the money Forward Network from what you see on this map here really provides and most vulnerable and people with the greatest Transportation Needs and choices. So next slide, please. From an implementation standpoint were working with our board of supervisors partners and organization and other stakeholders to avoid unintended and we need to move fast and time it sticking and we will be coming back to you in june with some specific items to take action on and that will help maintain these travel time savings and protect our essential network from trips so this slide just kind of walks us through the next several years, really, as we work to make these improvements last. Next slide, please. So, that said, obviously there are some trade offs. In order to give the city of San Francisco the Transportation System it deserves, there are obviously i want to point out before we talk specifically about trade offs is congestion is a constant its going to be corridors are going to be congested if transit is protected or not. We really we realize and admit and understand that congestion will be a concern and obviously if you take some space, for transit that means theres less space for general auto traffic and as jeffs slide show earlier, did a great job of pointing out how much space those automobile traffic cars take up. There will be parking impacts. In the near term, we are planning to implement much of this program through the Emergency Declaration so it will not be as a robust outreach effort at the national stages that the city is used to. That said, we are working on developing a full Public Outreach and engagement plan with our Communications Team and make sure the community is informed about the temporary emergency majors as well as involved directly involved with the evaluation of how those are working and then moving those forward into potentially permanent legislation and really try to make sure that whatever comes out of this is aligned with San Francisco system values for the system for the city. Including notices at bus stops and presence on social media and tweeting and blog posts and well have a phone number and email for project feedback and of course a perception and intercept surveys as weve done on all projects. Thats laying out the broad vision and with that i will turn it over to jamie parks who will talk through the streets side. Jamie, if you could introduce yourself so staff knows and the public knows the subject matter expertise. So your title helps. Sure. Jamie sparks and over the sfmta so the programs generally for the city. So, next slide. Next slide. To fall on discussed for the transit side of things and i will talk a little bit about how were approaching streets and making sure our streets and are accessible for people walking and biking out the Recovery Plans. So one thing that we are really focusing on. Chair boarden, do you want to just pause to have staff have the opportunity to comment on the transit Public Transit aspect of the presentation before we move onto the next section . Directors, do you have a preference . I should add that the transit section is part one of a fourpart series of presentations. The most complex. Part two is bike ways and part two is curb management and part four is Transportation Demand management. So we can pause between each or you can hear them all and we ask discuss them. Hi, its drink or brinkman many of i think the transit part of is so port ar important take it away. I think sean kennedy did not fully introduce themselves so sean is our management of transit and planning. Great. Good presentation, sean. This is such a challenging and important time and what we saw was proof of what we all know, which is there is no physical and engineering reasons why we cant move our buses through the city very efficiently, very Cost Effectively, and to the benefit of our customers. The next thing we always say is its not physical its not an engineering thing, its political, can we get the will to do this and so, that is the part that i want to take step back. Making changes are difficult even in normal pre covid times. I dont want the public to feel were taking advantage of an emergency situation. I feel its super important to keep these buses moving and to keep our system working but how do we get to that point of agreement with the board of supervisors who are going to hear the feedback from people when we start making some much needed changes to the bus routes how do we make sure the board of supervisors is going to agree on the uninintended and negative consequence and im in support of making sure that we can keep the buses moving. Let me take the initial answer and ill hand it over to the transit team. This is a very big concern of ours as well. We have this challenging tension between the need to move extremely rapidly and to get ahead of a wave of congestion and were talking about doing 100 projects in two months. So the scale is unprecedented. So were being creative about how we do engagement. So, part of what were doing is directly engaging all of the members of the board of supervisors and talking with them about the trade offs and soliciting their help and finding way of reaching out to communities even though were in a time that doesnt allow for essential physical proximity. Were also planning to do something, which was also rather unprecedented which is to take these larger policy questions directly to the San Francisco board of supervisors in the form of the Transportation Authority board. We think this is important and it is a role of the legislative branch of San Francisco government. We as the sfmta said in between the executive and legislative branches so we want to engage in that way. The other thing that is very different about this approach is that everything were doing is quick and dirty and easily changeable and easily reversible. So just as weve done with the struggles we had at the beginning, getting a lot of it wrong, we have been correcting things on a weekbyweek basis. We have reversed slow streets, we moved them, weve taken a huge amount of Community Input and how to get that right. And what was rocky at the beginning is seen as a big success so part of the engagement strategy is engagement through doing. So, we want to put up changeable Message Signs and signage about where to contact us for feedback, so that we can make adjustment this is real time and not make this permanent until we get it right. I am certain that well get some stuff wrong. And this is something that is not expected of government. We are expecting to get everything right from the getgo and were not allowed to take risks. This period of time requires risk taking at a level that government does not usually do but i think we have shown the capacity to demonstrate that government can get stuff done if were clear about our mission and if we make adjustments as we move along and learn from experience. So, that was probably too much rambling and do you want to provide more technical answers . That was perfect. Thank you, that was a good answer and i absolutely agree with you and i firmly believe that people are going to see the benefit and theyre going to realize, oh my gosh, this is the bus system that we could have, a bus system that as former chair heinicke used to say, behaves just like the underground system where it only stops to pick up and drop off passengers so the people on the buses get the same experience as the people on the underground. Thank you. All the directors. No. I will say, you guys are doing a fantastic job on the level of service. I am so impressed. I live on Mission Street and the volume of service that weve seen and the frequency in which i see people on the buses is notable and i know its making a difference. I know people are using it whether its to pick up food or go to work. I just want to commend you on really there arent big gaps of service and its commendable. I think we do have to be bold. Public transit is the key to Economic Opportunity for many. And when we were cutting back service it was our Service Sector and our lower wage workers we were hearing from that were struggling because they needed to go to work and we were making it harder to do so. Its really going to be critical that we clear our streets so that our transit can get to where it needs to go. By and large, a lot of the other people who are driving and do have the luxury to work from home. The people who are taking Public Transit dont have the luxuries, they cant afford it and they dont want to do it and its important that we make sure thats our First Priority. Were talking about equity and were talking about the challenges of this country and too many of our communities of color live far from where they work even when theyre within the city. The current routes are pretty slow. The more weve shown making rapid Service Available on these lines, were achieving great frequency. The buses are a lot safer than underground trains for people because of the people getting on and off and the windows being open and the access to air makes it a preferred source of both and it would be ideal if they run more shuttles going up and down streets where people can hop on and off under a degree of certainty of intervals of timing so we have to be bold. This is the most important part of the work that we do when we talk about really being a Transit Agency for everybody. I think we just have to make sure we do the work with the community and their needs and getting them to places this were willing to g. The few thoughts here as we look at that and savings during the time. Im curious if we thought about bus lanes if theres a natural sort of prioritization or phasing that you would see across all the lines that julie put on the screen. Many of them are equity routes and thats encouraging to see. Just as we think about sort of how we tackle so many challenges at the same time, are there a handful of the routes you would say lets not delay and make sure its served by bus lanes and if those are successful, those routes, et cetera, et cetera, i do think that the idea of a quick build or piloting approach just reassuring people were trying this, and just that continue the improvement the last thing want to z. Ive known as a transit rider that its extremely frustrating when the cousin cant move and its on the bus and we shouldnt be waiting here and thank you for helping us understand it costs our agency money when the bus is sitting stuck in traffic so theres actually a financial imperative there as well as a publichealth imperative to get the bus out of trafficment. We obviously have real capacity of implementation and were going to it try to take more than weve taken on and were going to push that beyond their limits. So, weve been thinking about this question of phasing. And there is fortunately theres things to be a natural alignment where the corridors that are going to get congested first are also corridors where there seems to be the Broadest Community support in terms of making these changes. So our hope is to be able to start in the core of the city, places like the south market grid, where the residents in soma and the tenderloin bear the brunt of the negative impact of that traffic gridlock and rely on transit than other parts of the city. We can start there and work our way out. Minimizing risk and maximizing our opportunity for engagement and in particular, we have a deep concern about limited engagement in neighborhoods that have suffered from well intentioned downtown people doing something to their neighborhood so we want to make sure that were prior tieing the neighborhoods where our industry has created the greatest harm and fostered the least amount of trust. We have a lot of restorative work to do to rebuild trust in a lot of San Francisco neighborhoods and i dont want to exacerbate that problem, forecastly now. Were looking for your advice and the advice of the board of supervisors to demonstrate success and how to engage in this charging time. Did you want to add anything . It was well said. I do not. Thank you, i am going to have a lot more to say later on. Let me just be quick here. Jeff, the idea of signal premption to make these corridors work better i dont know if its at odds with your attempt to do this fast. Do you see a role for that in trying to make these transit lanes work . So, yes. Were also thinking about that in terms of savings. So we experience three most common types of delay. So theres boarding delay where you know, people are trying to file to the door, signal delay and reoccurring congestion delay. Transit only lanes address one part of the delay, the congestion delay. They dont address signal delay. Signal delay will take a kilometre to deal with but its something that we want to do. Its also something we have full authority to do already. We dont need to ask you to make the Traffic Signals work better. It will take us time to do that. The big question now and where all of the huge trade offs are, because its a zerosum game. Weve got this much street space. In order to create transit only lanes, we need to takeaway space for car storage, or space for car movement. In order to prioritize the movement of people. Thats a tough trade off. People most dont even notice it. Anything else before we go to the next section of the presentation. I just have one more thought that was provoked by something you said, yeah. This goes back to the beginning of the meeting how sort of unless it feels like it immediately affects people, its hard to get them to care about things. I wonder if we heard from commenters calling in saying they used to ride transit but they dont feel comfortable riding transit now. I wonder if you can reflect as we contemplate engaging in a transit only lane work there may be people who dont immediately see a selfbenefit in that and theyre currently non feeling safe riding transit and i just wonder how we manage that and how people help invite people to see how this could be a benefit even if they cant envision using transit in the immediate future. This is a question everyone is facing around the world. As i said before, weve not inspired by the great work happening in soil and taipei and risk transmission as well as looking atal interpretive ways of mitigating that and looking at risk factors and taking a Harm Reduction strategy. Its risk times divided by value. Most of these are coming to the conclusion that social distancing shouldnt be the primary strategy for reducing virus transmission rates on Public Transit. Otherwise the math does not work and our economies will never recover. Queer also looking at the western european capitols as well and collaborating there week with the department of publichealth to figure out how to adapt that Health Science work to San Franciscos culture and that will be challenging. The other issue is one of messaging so the Health Departments have spent a vast sum of money saying theres something magic about six feet and everyone has to say six feet and well be ok if that happens. Thats a simple message to deliver and we need to deliver more refined messages so ive been in contact with the general managers here in the region and mtc about starting to develop a more refined message. This is similar that retailers and particularly restaurants also have to start delivering now. Thats another larger topic which im sure well come back to you later. For more details about guidance about where to strike the right balance in an era of risk and Harm Reduction. Thank you, dr. Brinkman. Any final comments on this section before we move on to our other few sections. Great. Team, move on, please. Good afternoon, directors, again, this is jamie overseeing the Streets Division for sfmta and i wanted to talk about how were considering the Bicycle Network as part of the Recovery Plan. To start, as we just heard about through the transit section theres a lot we have to do as part of this Recovery Plan and our First Priority on the street side is to make sure we dont lose focus on the core priorities, the core commitments that weve already had prior to the pandemic. And higher priorities and in the recovery and when people safely for walking and biking through our network. Its in a few ways and im going to talk about quite a bit so ill so we are working in support of the mayors tenderloin neighborhood safety plan to advance safety improvements to adapt the tenderloin streets to the Current Crisis and we have recently proposed a protected bike lane to address overcrowding or not the panhandle and it has emerged during this crisis so were adjusting our work plans. I want to focus specifically on infrastructure for this presentation and we expect biking more generally has a significant role to play in our recovery and it has full muni service and it takes times to recover, even as we need to reduce the number of people in cars that bikes and scooters will provide a critical option for many san franciscans. I have a series of maps here and so the the thin lines are standard bike lanes and routes and theres a wide va retee of quality in these and some are shared lanes on arterials that are only comfortable for the most seasoned and fear less riders and others are shared lanes on low develop residential streets that might be comfortable and they are protected week lives and we have worked really hard in the past few years to increase the number of protected lanes in San Francisco and im doubling our output of protective lanes and you can see them show up on the map but you can see there are a lot of gaps in the network still. In addition to what we already have in the existing network we have a lot of projects that have already been approved and those are shown here in the lighter blue. Those are moving into implementation as we speak and well continue to make these a priority for advancing the bike network. As he mentioned in his report, sfmta crews have been out in the female for the last week installing the last section of the seventh street protected bicycle lane project. Next slide, please. So the as the board knows we have worked hard over the past year to create a new Quick Build Program for sfmta and a pipeline of projects in fact, it was jund approved the Quick Build Program and adopted a list of projects and we came back to you in march so this shows quick build and other projects where sfmta is designing expansions and enhancements to the bike network. You can see this represents a significant increase in face of improving the bike network and also still the number of critical gaps and there are still gaps here and as we think about creating a City Wide Network as part of a recovery, it really allows san franciscans who have not ridden the bicycle in the past, to try it out and hopefully have a positive experience and we need to work on filling those gaps. Increasing the pace of our quick build projects is challenging and design even of quick build is complex and theyre much cheaper than our larger Capital Projects they still cost a Million Dollars per mile on average, some less and some more since its all protected bike lanes or our busier streets. Were looking at ways where we can increase the scale of the Bicycle Networks quickly. We are excited about the program because of the low cost and widespread app lick ability and how do we maintain and were still figuring that out. The last map shows the network and in addition to the bike network and the pipeline of the bicycle project ive showed. In the past five weeks, sfmta has 18 lane miles of closed street. All of the streets in green are expected to be installed within the next two weeks. Thats an order of magnitude faster than were able to move on some of our more traditional bicycle projects because the design is simple and the pace is quick. For a lot of outer neighborhoods where the opportunities for protected bike lanes, may be few just because of the geometry of the streets and the streets provide a great opportunity for a City Wide Network that serves all neighborhoods. One thing i want to raise for discussions is how we will continue to adapt and expand the closed Streets Programs throughout the recovery period. Weve seen its had a positive reception and and we are interested in continuing to work to make sure that it expands and serves our needs. At the same time, while we have had some robust engagement on the program, the interest to date and what weve seen have not reflected the diversity of San Francisco and as we continue to condition the flow street and also recognizing the need for us to Center Equity in our work, well need to figure out ways to engage all San Francisco neighborhoods and figure out how close they can meet the needs and adapt the programs to meet the needs because were not there yet so we have some work to do. Im interested in getting ideas and discussions going about the future. I have a couple more slides and well open for discussion. The next slide, please. In addition, we are also working to continue to expand the bike shaver system. They have about 230 stations installed right now and weve signed a fouryear contract with a list in january of this year to provide up to 4,000e bikes that can have dock less. In february of this year were up to around 17,000 daily trips in the system. And we see that as part of the recovery. That means we need to keep invest north the system. Finishing the 320 stations promised in the contract and new bike racks per month which was our commitment to the program and to expand the app lick ability of the site and make sure they have place to park and not block the accessibility of our sidewalks and deploying the 4,000ebikes throughout the city as a demand increases. Right now we have around 1200 to 1500ebikes from place. Demand is about 75 less than it was three months ago. As that demand rises and the need for the bike increases, we do want to work to get those full 4,000 bikes out as quickly as possible. We talk about 85 new stations, i just wanted to highlight briefly the focus of those are really in two places. One increasing the capacity of the system in the Downtown Core by adding new and larger station and we want to add stations in outer neighborhoods including sunset, areas, surrounding sf state. So my summary is we want to maintain our commitment to vision zero and delivering safety projects even as we add new programs and new projects. Second, we have been excited about the initial roll out of closed streets but we need to adapt it and figure out how to engage all the neighborhoods all the neighborhoods and including disadvantaged communities and figuring out the future of that program. With bike share we want to expand bike share and recognizing that bike share infrastructure needs to be paired with increased outreach and engagemental and programs to incentivize the use of bikes which well continue to partner on. That is my summary of bike ways and im happy to pause for discussion. Great. I know that some people have some comments here. Who would like to lead off . I guess someone have a comment . Ill go ahead and lead off. Thank you, jamie. A really good presentation. I know ive been loving the slow streets i travel on a regular basis, which are the great highway and i guess that is technically a slow street under our jurisdiction right now. Sanchez and do we have ideas or do we have the right people that we can reach out to in the communities that arent embracing those slow streets. We dont know what we dont know and to go back to what chair worden said, unless it concerns us we dont care so i love the slow streets in our neighborhood but how are we going to reach out to communities that might not see the benefit of them right now and how are we going to have that discussion in a tactful way. I do worry about creating another situation in a street where the community might feel like oh, this is just another opportunity for people to tell us what to do and then b to police us when we dont do it or dont do it correctly or do Something Different on that street than what were doing on page street. Im concerned about that because i feel like if we can roll this out in other neighborhoods, i really think people will see the benefit of it and well see how well it works for their community. How do we have that discussion in a tactful and sensitive way . I think its a really great question that we are grappling with. I think that two things this work in favor of the program are one, the implementation itself is extremely flexible. Theyre just signs that immediately a parent to the eyes that we can change them and we have changed them based on feedback. Second, the signs and barricades have been working but weve not been carrying with those enforcement in terms of checking whether or not someone is through traffic or not through traffic and so we have not been we have not been tearing it with any Traffic Enforcement. That said, in terms of reaching neighborhood groups, we have been working with supervisor offices, Community Based organizations and i think we also recognizing that different communities are facing the pandemic and the Current Crisis differently and so they may not have times to engage right now. We need to be able to be patient so we have contacts but we cant expect them to necessarily respond within 48 hours on everything and so continuing to be patient and work on whether zoom calls or maybe we can can do social distance walks with three or four Community Leaders and well just continue to try things and see what works and not give up. Its important to release all these programs simultaneously because we are engaging with all the members of the board of supervisors including their town hall forums that theyre continuing to operate and were engaging with many organizations. Theyre telling us about their needs. So for example, in bayview and hunters point, the priority has been improved Transit Service and not in slow streets. In part because so Many Services are not in those neighborhoods that having three blocks of a slow street doesnt get them access to the services that they need and its one of the reasons why we have prioritized so we reduced muni service the least in district 10 and district 10 was the first to get the most Service Restored because thats what we were hearing from those communities. From other communities, weve been hearing as you will see in the next part of this presentation, that is not our focus. Our focus is in helping our Small Businesses to survive the economic changes and so we dont want slow streets. Connecting the city. Other directors . Yeah, madam chair, i probably have a bit of a good copbad cop act on this subject area first of all, i want to commend whoever thought of this slow streets idea, its a prototype of a new way of doing transportation improv improveme. It combines speed, the shall its a form of public engagement. I think the projects themselves are a way tone gage the public. Too often we have these abstract debates about what something is going to be like. And theres nothing like showing someone, giving them a warning but showing someone what you are talking about and letting them kick the tires. I know when a projec a project s you are going to stub your toe and we did with the board of supervisors and you are going to make some mistakes and learn some things and i think trying to incul kate that in our stakeholders in the public is that is how we want to do business. We want to take risks, we want to experiment and give you warning but we also want to be able to do this with a whole range of of improvements and at least what ive seen in the park and on lake street, which are the two that ive used the most, the neighbors are taking i think what weve got in this program is a really good, new model for how to deal with neighborhoods scale improvement. The bad cop has to do with the exchange of correspondents ive seen between walk sf and our staff. As i sort of read our staffs response, it sort of sounded a bit like were doing as much as we can. And even if thats true, i really would ask the staff to reconsider and see whether there are some things on their agenda that maybe fit within slow streets or maybe fit within some other initiative. I am very leary and jeff, i see you shaking your head i would encourage you to work with them as much as possible given your constraints. Great. Thank you. Any comments . Thank you so much for the presentation. Were still not there. I wanted to ask a question of you, learn around the world looking at paris and on encouraging to walk and can you help us understand what does this map need to look like in order for people to really feel safe biking around the city. Say would love to hear best practices and how safely i want to differentiate between a bike lane and a route and when it comes to actually assuring you will feel safe and comfortable i have a couple more questions. I think you are seeing it already. This map says, like imagine if the u. S. Interstate highway system was highways that randomly turned into a gravel country road. Thats what weve got so we have this fragmented system and pieces of which are delightful and when things got hard or difficult, the infrastructure is just abandoned and people are thrown no a traffic master. Forward for this to work, each corridor is only as good as its worst segment so one of the first steps we need to do to take advantage of the massive investment weve made, is to make the connections so we will look at how we identify the gaps here and what is necessary in order to fill the gaps. If it werent hard it would have been done. It requires taking something away. The next step is given the complex topography of San Francisco. E bikes makes San Francisco flat but how do we find the route that connect key destinations and the crazy topography of this city and whats the right infrastructure. More over, how do we deal with the tension between transit and biking. Ultimately the entire San Francisco Transit Network most of the San Francisco and because bikes and street cars require so we end up with a tension between how do w allocate space in order to minimize delay for transit versus how do we allocate to ensure adequate safety and comfort for people on bikes, scooters and wheelchairs. Market street has done both in a successful way. Is that a model for us to consider . So keeping in mind that Market Street was 20 years of agonizing and completely engagement. And then finally, we, like basically just went out and did it with signs and it was successful beyond not anyones but most peoples wildest dreams. And so that is an example of how just finally testing it and seeing how it works. Suddenly change the outlook of the vast majority of the people who were resistant to the project to begin with. And i do not want to take advantage of the covid Health Crisis and the emergency directives. I want this to be in direct response to help and fiscal emergency that the health issue is putting upon us. And to not do anything permanent but to take some risks now because we have no other choice. To that point, to build upon directors point, these are largely popular and supported and transforming how we think about the streets and ive been impressed hu staff uses data and in order to make youre next move. So i wonder, as we think about these different topology for streets for biking, a slow street, bike lane, protected bike lane, a bike route, do we have an understanding of the nuance of the inaudible uses opportunities for biking. Its my hype oth sis that the broadest section of san franciscans would be on a bike route where you are told good luck. Good luck battling that car that is honking at to you get out of the way. That has to be fun. Can we use data as we think about this next build out to build the system that welcomes the most people and do we have that Data Available . So we have the couple of weeks where were a little behind in collecting data and in addition to counting numbers, i also want to count demographics so what degree are the users reflective of the neighborhood that is being served. This is super important and its fascinating when i looked at the slow streets is they appear to be the most representative transportation facility and we have invested and and particularly age. I had no idea that there were this many children in San Francisco and when i go out and speak to the parents who are using this slow streets, and just the relief that they have particularly just before nap time of having some place for kids to burn oven gear and learn safe riding skills. I was just out on sanchez and i captured the moment with my camera. Im going to tear up. The moment when the dad let go of his kid, who, you know, wobbled a bit and road o rode os own. That couldnt have happened otherwise. Im seeing that particularly on great highway which is just packed seven days a week with families because it is safe. That is i also want to be clear that excelcier street is not treated the same. The lane street is not being treated the same way in the bayview district. Its not necessarily the optimal approach for every neighborhood. It is for much of San Francisco, the approach that is being most used and lowest cost. However, those streets work best on low Traffic Volume, residential streets, where there is less concern about taking a traffic problem on one street and doubling it on the adjacent street. Its not necessarily the universal tool, but its in the right context it certainly seems to be a very, very net positive tool. Great. Did you want to add anything more . You covered it well. I would add that i think the point you mentioned about doubling traffic is critical as traffic concerns and welcome the slow streets and the neighbors and the adjacent are going to have concerns and its something we have to figure out as the Traffic Volumes return to their levels. As we continue this conversation it would be great to bring back the map of the low traffic and just so we can visualize what that is and have the data in front of us and also, i would at least love to see weve got the latest progression of the map but its still has a lot of gaps in it. I would love to ask staff to bring back a couple of vision and of what a complete network would look like so we can all grapple what it means and i agree with my colleagues the slow streets, youve made the case of some compellingly and theres so much more scalable, even quick build, which we know is a break through, quick build are taking too long and complex and the slow streets provide us a pathway to build that network at scale that we all want to see. Just one more comment. It did occur to me which was out on lake street, i think the slow streets can help reduce car trips because of instead of families piling into their car and driving somewhere, where they feel like its safe to let their children loose on a bike or just to play or to play ball or do something, they just have to go out their door or walk a couple blocks to a slow street so im aware of the idea that yes, were going to force traffic on to other streets by also think were going to see a reduction in car trips by people who are choosing to recreate right in their neighborhood when they have this place to recreate. My final comments, making sure we have good infrastructure for people who dont have bicycles at their homes and making sure that we have more bike share pods around the neighborhood and more education and neighborhoods about the lower income programs available and we should reach out how we reach out to the parent groups because theres tons of families who are taking their kids off the bike rides. I hear from a lot of parents how nice it is to be able to ride their kids and go on streets where their bikes and we can work with the bikes and where you help kids learn how to ride a bike because for a lot of kids, particularly in more just a franchise communities they dont have access to bikes and they dont have a safe place to ride and they dont know how to ride a bike so its basic work. This is a thing ive had for a while its the fact that our buses only take two bikes on the front of them and im noticing on Mission Street, kids bikes on the front of our buses, little kid bikes. And i dont know what is our policy for people having small bikes on the bus and then i know obviously for larger bikes, the front of the bus. What is our policy related to that . Do you want to are you available to take that question . Hi, this is julie. The only buses that are allowed on board are foldable. The only bikes allowed on buses are foldable. We can accommodate both kids and adult bikes in our bike racks. We have test and identified a threebike bike rack that works in our system and as we do our mid life overhaul well be upgrading to three bike racks. On our articulated bikes we have to go bus, we have to go through an additional step just to evaluate the routes because the actual length of the bus, with the threerack requires needing an exemption. Were in that process and over the next several years, well roll out the higher capacity bike racks. Great. Just to close out, if we can work with the schools, parent groups next door around bike access, because i suspect one of the challenge snow squalls acceschallenges is access andkns will be a key thing. I know that there was a program that specializes doing focusing on hospitality workers providing free bikes because a lot of those workers bike to work and so looking how westbound engage those organizations to cover and capture the neighborhoods and maybe slow streets would be better for them if they had access to slower streets and other needs they might need to access that. That is the only thing i would is say. It would be everyones looking to use the street for open space and were lacking it in so many neighborhoods but the ability around cycling is limited by space and socioeconomics so whatever we can do to kind of work with those groups to allow that we have an imperative too. Were looking towards philanthropy and its potentially Cost Effective and beyond the cash constraints but specificminded people may be interested in. Can i followup on your question. It just struck me, if were going to have fewer people on the buses, just in terms of ensuring distancing, doesnt it create room for small bikes to be stowed on there . We we can investigate it. We have a lot of moving parts on the buses in terms of people being able to define their own space and feel safe and sometimes its why arent we blocking out every other seat its because sometimes people travel with their families and sometimes they dont and people are organically finding social distancing options on the buses so that would be my only hesitation. Our social distancing is not in the seats but the aisles. Anything that constraints the use of the aisles makes it harder to maintain social distance. Even i, someone who is a regular commute cyclist understand that we have to prioritize the space on our bus for people. Any final question before we go to the next portion of our presentation. Great. Thank you. This is hank wilson and i head up the Curb Management Team here at the sfmta and i have a couple slides and it will be brief about the work that the mta is doing and will be doing to help out our neighborhood commercial corridors in an extremely difficult time. They are, as we all know, the life blood of San Francisco and makes one of the things it makes San Francisco such a special place to be and theyre really struggling now to go to the the main thing weve been doing over the last couple of months is trying to crank out space for businesses to do curbside pick up and to create social distancing where theres either cues happening outside of doors because people are gathering on the sidewalk to do pick up of food and goods. Since the shelter in place this is the only way that businesses can do business and can make sales and its been really important and weve taken the attack as quickly as possible saying yes to everybody unless and someone is questioning curbside pick up soon and the transit zone and or on a block that doesnt have parking or Something Like that saying yes, as often as we can and done under the emergenc emergency det of our operation center. Theres 250 of them out on the streets right now and we have dozens more coming in everyday. And, as we move towards the next slide, if you can go to the next slide, the shared Spaces Program, which you probably heard about the mayor released a press release about this several days ago and it encompasses both the curbside pick up zones and social distancing zones but also taking ovar over reallocating cb space and the streets based entirely for dining so whether its curbside in a car or the curb or the street for Business Activities and support the local businesses and the Mayors Office is the Economic Recovery Task force are leading the shared Spaces Program and we are folding our temporary loading zone program into that and one of the things the way were supporting the shared Spaces Program is that it looks like the m. T. A. Will be the initial sort of feasibility review and well do the feasibility review for all the requests of whatever type they are to make sure that there arent any major conflicts and someone is not requesting to close a street that has an important muni line and with social distancing zones ton a little more methodical about how we create those and to start to look at places where there may be, if were getting multiple requests, or overlapping requests on one block or in one corridor that we start to create zones that are taking half of one side of a street to serve the businesses on that street so making sure that things are streamlined and speak to go each other in terms having streamline days and hours of prices so its clear for the public and clear for the businesses and clear for our enforcement officers. The other way that supporting the shared space is doing a detailed review, engineering and Design Review with applicants and walk being the corridors it see where there might be conflicts and issues and we can get those resolved and hosting the approval process, the process we have now for neighborhood block parties using something kind of like that where all of the city agencies who need to ensure safety and Successful Operation weigh in and make sure that their voice is heard. And the approval will flow through an mta process and we are working a lot on the back end of trying to get out guidelines and policies for when these are all being done and it really is an emergency for a lot of Small Businesses this is a way we can support them but down the lined when these start to expire, how will they stay for curbside pick up zones and subside dining and then tole these Emergency Response and efforts into larger public spaces for People Programs that are scattered throughout different parts of the agency in the city. So if go to the next slide, parking meetings and parking meter enforcement are one of the main ways the mta has helped Small Businesses and local businesses by creating availability for people who need to drive to get to these Small Businesses and the meeters have been set at their minimum rate of 50 cents an hour since the beginning of the crisis and theres been little enforcement of that parking or any other sort of parking policies out there so wove been thinking about how we can best turn the music on so they can do their jobs and create the availability that businesses need without scaring people away and setting rates too high that might disadvantage who are scared potential customers away and we want to eastbound courage people to come and we dont want to set rates so low so people dont move their cars and dont actually open up spaces for people who want to spend money. The first phase of restarting Parking Enforcement will be street sweeping. We dont have an exact date but when it happens, there will be noticed before enforcement and citation right side written and i want to mention a few trade offs with all of these things and the trade offs here are nothing new. The curb Management Strategy that the board passed back in february sort of was all of our best thinking about how we can use the curbs to better benefit neighborhoods and commercial districts and it was all about acknowledging that theres only a very limited a lot of curb and we cant do anything that Everyone Wants to do. The curbs cant accommodate loading and parking and transit lanes and bike share all at the same time in the same place. So, we have to start to set some curb Management Strategy that sets out well thought out guidelines how we allocate that space and its always going to involve trade offs and involve some judgments about where curb needs to be allocated for different kinds of uses so theres probably always, as with anything curb related and parking related in San Francisco, theres people who feel like their specific needs arent being met by the curb in front of their business and so thats one of the trade offs and considerations. And another big one for the agency is a lot of these, especially these temporary emergency programs are being done without a fee. So, things that normally have fees associated with them like loading zones or like closing down streets for special events and to have to do business in the streets, the proposal is that awful these things might be happening with no feat of the business which makes sense in such a economically challenging time but its not sustainable in the long run. And the other trade off is that a lot because were talking about neighborhood commercial districts a lot of the curb space we are reallocating to Outdoor Dining or gathering or curbside pick up is spaced that is otherwise metered space so those meeters return a lot of revenue to the agency and help us fund muni and all the other great stuff that we do that were taking the meeters off line for some amount of time is a revenue and that will be as the budget approach. The the next slide is a discussion slide. Thank you for taking the time and im happy to answer any questions. Any questions . There doesnt seem to be. I have a question. How is it working because its not clear the Mayors Office has not released more information about the shared spaces other than like sign up for an information to find information. Do we know when official applications are starting . I think its a good question and its moving quickly. Theyd like to have an Application Form that businesses are interested and folks can fill out by the end of this week or this weekend. And so i think thats what is going to form the basis of where these things are going to go. Because, especially for street closures which are the most impactful but also provide the most space for business to be done and provide the most space for social distancing, those are going to need to be suppose ordered by the local supervisor and so theres we want to start hearing from places where theyve been talking and the businesses have been talking tag amongst each other. How quick is the turn around to be expected if the applications around until the end of the week and june 1st was one level for the reopening and june 15 is the next big reopening. So is it really imagined that people would be approved already by june 15th to take advantage of this program . Week working as fast as connect and hopefully well be having people from the mta and the other agencies that have a stake in this out there sort of on the ground reviewing these requests with the applicants to educate folks because i think its one of those things where it seems fairly simple. You can just put barriers at the end of the city and theres fire access issues and frankly, figuring out loading and some of the trade offs that i talked about where some businesses think this is a great idea and other businesses who dont. [please stand by] you know, if we say hey, you should know that four other merchants on your same block also applied for loading zones, then perhaps theres a place that we can put these that make the most sense for everybody so we dont have five different ones scattered in different place do places. For dining, i think we want to put a little more onus on the business to talk to them. Before you come and make a bigger request like that, you need to come to talk to your business and neighborhood association. Thank you for that, and thank you for mentioning putting tables in the parking lanes or the street, because i had concerns from citizens about blocking the walking lanes, and i know we will be 100 clear that we wont be blocking the pathway. Absolutely. Other questions from other directors . Okay. If not, we can move onto the we have one more section, right . Yes. Good afternoon. Sorry. I popped in early. Im john knox white, the planning programs manager at m. T. A. , and my Team Oversees the Transportation Demand. If we could go to the next slide. So looking at as weve been thinking about, and we started here and well end here, thinking about the need to rethink our Transportation System and how its going to change, we started with looking at what the average commute was before the covid crisis began. It was this is not just in San Francisco but coming into San Francisco, as well, at 34 minutes, and no one was saying that was a fabulous commute that we should aim to achieve. So we took this model that was put together by the Vanderbilt University work lab and looked at three different scenarios as to where we could end up and then started thinking about how we can, you know, with those centers, tell us how we can move forward and support all the great work we just heard about. Next slide, please. So with the concerns about social distancing for the foreseeable future, with some National Surveys and polls are finding that 70 of people are saying that they will not be taking transit when we come back, and while its very likely that those numbers will change over time, if we do end up in a world where nobody feels comfortable on transit, even if we lose 5 of jobs over time, were looking at a 55minute commute, something that none of us would be able to see. Later, i know youll be looking at a Budget Discussion that shows transit data that shows 35 of people say that they will not be taking transit in the near future. Even if we look at a 20 work from home and 5 job loss, you know, the best that we can expect in this scenario, and of course, 5 job loss is not the best that we can expect, would be about 24, 25minute commute. It does show that even with a significant shift away from transit in the neartomidterm, something that will support some of our Transit Services or reorganization, we can provide meaningful mean fits within San Francisco with some shifts in the way that we get to work. Next slide, please. Finally, when the jobs return, were full employment, a third of people still arent coming back to transit either because were putting less frequent service out there or because people are still not comfortable with the social distancing on transit, if we can maintain a 15 remote work over what we were doing before the crisis starts, we end up back at where we were to begin with. So begin, this is before we start looking at all the great work that the previous speakers spoke to in terms of increasing our biking infrastructure, rethinking how were doing transit and providing benefits, etc. So if we can move onto next slide, please. Challenges, you know, we had the challenge if ridership is too big, we wont be able to meet it with the service as reflected out there earlier. We have a concern about riders getting on shared vehicles, so i dont think its transit specific, but transit is obviously the big one there. And then, we have the challenge that if we were to go all in and encourage work from home, that is in strong, strong tension with the economic recovery needs of the city and the goals of our Small Businesses Small Businesses and just the general Overall Health Financial Health of the city. Next slide, please. So in thinking about our possible solutions, we need to think about the potential impact of increased driving, and that means in the shortterm we need to be thinking about reducing the number of people coming into the city, and we need to shorten the need for peak travel, so when we think about all the people coming in, we need to encourage them all not to come in between 8 00 and 9 00 at the morning. We can do this by pricing at the regional and local level. This can be discounts for nonpeak travel in certain areas to discourage overloading the system. We need to be working with our current Economic Partners to support telework to reduce the impact but also to help support staggered shifts so were not overloading our sidewalks, were not overloading our transit. We need to have people start thinking about how they can do partial work from home, so beyond the benefit of bringing more people per week individual people per week into the city to support the many support businesses, whether theyre janitorial businesses, secretary, t secretaries, the businesses that serve coffee and lunch, those businesses will help that, as well. We can help through our messaging and work with our City Partners to do to support thinking around that way. Also support kind of the social and Emotional Health of the employees, as well, which i think is going to be very important. And finally, we need to be thinking about mode shift. Once we have all these things in place, we know that traffic downtown during the commute hours is very small. Its only about 20 of people that are driving, so we need to step up our support spaces and walking and bikes to local shops both for the Transportation Impact and the economic booths. Our safe routes to School Program is going to be needing to promote biking and walking to school now more than ever, and well be certainly looking at how the safe streets and other improvements that were mentioned earlier are supporting more opportunities. We need to be supporting ebiking and bike adoption. We have a rebate for ebikes for families who use them to get their kids to school, and we have one of the lowest if not the lowest large Transit Agency in the country with no covid transmission no known covid transition cases due to the hard work of our transit colleagues and the high level of cleaning that were doing. We can help remind people that were providing a safe bus on the bus and masks and straps and bringing your own straps, if you have to hang on, that can also be a Harm Reduction to make the bus a safe space. Final tradeoff is balancing our transportation need, which is reducing congestion and decreasing stress on our transit system, actually reducing the number of people traveling. Its an Economic Development tension because, you know, i think Public Health in a Perfect World [inaudible] we are working with all of our City Partners, private and public, to find that. I think i will stop with that. The successful tradeoff here will not only allow us to run transit and maintain some semblance of, you know, Congestion Relief but also provide flexibility and tradeoff on our streets where we can start to have the ability to put in the shared lanes, the bike lanes, the services that the previous speakers identified. With that, i will go to the next slide to see if there are any questions. Thank you. Clerk directors, are there any questions . I have a question. This is going to be a while. Do you want to go first, amanda . No, go ahead. Well, i think the staff has saved the best for last, so i really did want to dig into this one for a minute or two. First of all, colleagues, if you havent seen it, front page of the new york times, heres the first sentence. As new york city prepares to reopen after enduring one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world, officials are seeking to avert a new disaster the gridlock that could result if many people avoid Public Transportation and turn to cars, instead. So this is a problem landing on our lap as well as m. C. A. East in new york, and i think theres some ways that we can learn from each other. You know, a number of the other strategies that weve talked about today are dealing with the supply side of the question here, and i i think what makes this topic so important in dealing with the demand side of transportation is that they really dont work all that independently of each other. And typically, we have focused on the supply side of this issue, and we need to build more lanes, we need to build more bike share, we need to build more this. And we need some measures that are going to be pushing people to use that supply. I mentioned two particular ideas at our last meeting, and ive been doing some rethinking about both of them. The first was whether we could accelerate the long proposed idea of having some kind of toll or cordon around San Francisco, and i think jeff rightly pointed out that thats going to take time and legislation, so thats not going thats going to be at hand when everybodys going back to school in the fall, lets hope. So the good news is theres three ways out of town in San Francisco, and two of them are bridges that charge tolls. The bay bridge has authority, but its not an unconstrained as the Golden Gate Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge doesnt have as much congestion as it used to because of the median barrier and because of all electronic tolling. The bay bridge still has plenty of congestion left, and as i think you all know, theres been a variable toll on the bay bridge for sometime. The variation between the peak and off peak is only 2, and that means its only having a modest effect on delay. If that differential were to spread to 3 or 4 or more dollars, i think you would see a much more significant effect on delay. Now, again, the bay bridge suffers from some constraints. Theyre in the process actually of raising totals over the next several years. By the time those toll increases are done, the peak toll on the bay bridge under current law could be 9, and so one challenge is could we, under current law, somehow move that increased toll level up in time to happen now when it can do us a lot more good than to happen four or five more years from now. Another strategy could involving lowering the off peak toll, which the m. T. C. , the bay area Toll Authority, has the power to do that now. I think other areas that youre not covering are highways upping up the peninsula, and that will require a change in law. But between the two toll bridges, it seems to me, under current law, we could fashion a strategy that could produce a significant reduction in delay, and we would have a tool in hand to deal with what is going to be a very uncertain situation, which is why jeff is showing us a bunch of scenarios right now because no one knows which one to pick. The second idea i mentioned last at our last meeting was whether or not we could have some kind of Public Policy that would encourage or require employers to offer telework, telecommuting as an option, and i think in that case, chair borden mentioned her concern about how that could lead to damaging effects on Small Businesses in San Francisco. Having rethought that, my assumption is were probably going to get a lot of commute on the natural, so thats probably not the place for a Public Policy intervention. There may be a place, though, in my view, for a strategy that would encourage Flexible Work hours, spreading the period of time over which people do come into work. That, in fact, according to the new york times, is what the m. T. A. Is encouraging the city of new york to do, and it may be something that we want to try here, as well, so if you did have a tolling strategy on the bridges together with a an ordinance or some other kind of policy intervention that would require Flexible Work hours, youve got the policy and that that could Work Together. Jeff, ive even come up with a slogan with you free of charge, which could be dont spread the virus, spread the commute. So i do encourage us, no matter what we do with the other elements of this plan, to include something about the demand matrix strategy. I think. So director, if i may respond, arguably, the most effective thing we can do is to use price to balance supply and demand, and to take the net revenue to invest in better transportation options, especially to people who have the fewest transportation options. So we can do the work to support that. The problems, however, are not technical, but political. So these are opportunities for you as members of our board of directors to revert some leadership. One thing you can do is to partner with supervisor peskin, who is chair of the t. A. Board and has also been one of the leaders of the downtown congesti congestion pricing study that the m. T. A. Is running. Those supervisors as well as the m. T. A. Board can present a resolution supporting us at the regional level as well as you have the opportunity to reach out to other key deciders, including the Metro Transportation Commission Acting as the Toll Authority and the Golden Gate Bridge district board. As you point out, it is the Golden Gate Bridge district that has the ability to act in the quickest and boldest way, but they will need to hear from other policy makers about the necessity of changing policies now. Both to manage crushing congestion as well as to create the necessary revenue to provide better alternatives for people. So whatever direction this board would like to provide us, we are happy to hear. We also encourage you to collaborate at the political level if possible. Thank you. Director eaken . Thank you. If, as ive heard rodney fong say, that theres a new normal thats not everybody going downtown five days a week but sort of two or three days a week, as well as shifting your hours of work, does that shift the model of pricing . May be something that we want to look at when were looking at sort of this not tradition downtown commute. Hearing you loud and clear, director sum lynn. Were seeing 100 of precovid congestion level. Im just wondering if the level of that shifts at all and the level of our response shifts at all. I think the c. T. A. Has done a great job of hearing voices, especially given the Economic Situation that were going to be in for sometime, the need to truly Center Equity in any pricing congestion proposal is now more important than ever and making sure that any kind of congestion pricing policy that we do really has as the chief beneficiaries the lowest travelers in our system, and i just want to make sure we do that, especially now. Travel patterns have changed dramatically. Weve got good data on that, and we expect it to continue to change. Even the precovid patterns i think are especially understood. Only 20 of our trips are journeys to work, and of the drive trips in downtown San Francisco, the vast majority of is not not people coming from outside the it is vast majority of it is not people coming from outside the city, it is trips inside the city. So it is widespread, but we are limited based upon the technology and privacy laws and our lack of ability, for example, to have any Regulatory Authority override hail. So the c. T. A. Is focusing on a cordonned program because thats the current legal window in order to make a difference but also important to draw that cordonned line across all of the streets that are the primary congestion restrain points for the overall Transportation Network and that capture actually a lot of travel that does not have a downtown San Francisco or a regional destination. It requires a change in state law to implement, and thats years way. So were struggling to figure out what can be done in the next couple of months, and as director hemminger points out, the toll bridges, that is what can be done most quickly, including considering ideas like tolling in both directions so that you pay half the cost coming westbound and half the cost going eastbound. One of the problems is that the soma grid is used for queueing to the bay bridge, so that soma grid is not movement. Its not congestion because people are trying to move through the soma grid. Its just people waiting in line to get on a bay bridge thats exceeded its capacity. Any other questions among directors . Yes, thank you. So the idea of tolling both directions of the bay bridge, the authority of that lies with bata, the bay area Toll Authority. And technology wise, could that be a relatively quick fix within a couple of few months or is that all would that also need legislative relief outside of batas authority . [please stand by] its inclusive of the central freeway on ramp which solves the problem of back up. The previous speakers have spoken to. So, sorry, one more question, do we think that the downturn in the economy makes congestion pricing more or less likely . Are people going to feel one way or the other rather it based on the fact the economy is slowing down . This was the concern. We did a congestion Pricing Survey in 2008 and it died in that recession. We have quarrying policymakers as well as well as the public concerning that there will be a downturn now and the attitude is very much different. I mean, partly that attitudes have changed, partly the cta study is focused in a very different way. The previous study simply asks the question, you know, what if we did congested pricing how much money could have raise . This study has a very different focus, which is not just how do we use congest tive pricing as a tool but in order to foster Small Business success and advance equity which is say kind of radical concept. It looks at who is being impacted by congestion and what do we do with the net revenue and who benefits from that . You have a different approach to engagement. Rather than having low income people be spoken for, it is engaging a diverse set of populations and discovering, for example, people with low income often place a very high value on their time. That if you are a shift worker you get fired if you are late for your job. If you are a single parent, you get charged by the minute if you are late to pick up your kid at daycare. Lower income households often times have far more complex travel patterns and burdens on their time than higher income folks. Even, you know, gardeners. Or plumbers. If they have to pay 10 to cross the bridge or the cordon, that is an expense but it may mean they can do a fifth service run in a given day. It may be worth 300. The cta is trying to make a more nuanced approach that can potentially mean its more important to do this work in an economic downturn than ever before. Thank you. And i just want to say thank you, mr. Knoxwhite. Good presentation and also you win the wall of books background challenge, that is fantastic. Thank you. My wife will be happy to hear that. [laughter] thank you. Are there any other additional comments from commissioners at this time . We need to open it up to the public and i know we have several people in the public that are interested. Final chance for directors to speak at this moment before we open it up . Well open it to Public Comment. All right. So members of the public who may be listening to or watching this meeting if you wish to make a comment, please, call 8888086929. The kodak sis code is 9961164 and then dial 10. We will wait for the moderator to open the phone lines and let us know that people are on the line. Were having a technical difficulty. We just need to pause for a moment. Maybe this is a good time for a stretch break. Madam chair, we have callers on the line. Wonderful. Lets have the first caller begin. All right. If we can open the phone line and we will start your two minutes and if you can start with your name, that would be appreciated. Were having another technical hold for a moment. Time for another stretch break. This is when you need some good elevator music. At t will need to be restored so it will take a minute. Can we do a recess while they get that up . Absolutely. Lets just, i mean, because i cant leave without them being in recess. Should we make a recess. Well recess for five minutes. Is that good . I think thats a start and i will keep you posted. Thank you so the public phone lines should be open. We have an at t bridge line and the regular phone line that we are connecting at this point to allow Public Comment. Were just waiting for staff. My name is herbert winier and my concerns are theme you are us. This is coming hard and fast and im having comprehension and its overwhelming and dont want to have the feeling at the end of this project is you are going to get it. I think theres going to be more congestion and theres going to be more trade off and as far as the streets go, on california street, theres greater congestion because the safe streets on lake streets. You can notice it. And muni has a hard time getting through with that. So, this project has to be thought through. There are going to be takeaways and were going to pay the price for it. This is not utopia. Thank you. Next speaker, please. The next speaker, when you Start Talking we will start your two minutes. Good afternoon, board of directors or almost good evening. My name is ron and i saw earlier version than the slide that was going to be presented to you and there was a particular slide that contained specific maps of new bus lanes that the staff was