Transcripts For SFGTV MTA Board Of Directors 20240712

The minutes should so reflect, thank you. Great. Should we include that amendment on the minutes . Directors, are there any additional callers at this time . Operator you have two questions remaining. So for members of the public on the line, this is an opportunity to comment on approval of the minutes from the june 16th regular meeting. If you would like to comment on the minutes, please state your name and we will start your two minutes. Hello . Operator sorry, hit the wrong button. Operator you have zero questions remaining. With that, well close Public Comment and directors, do i have a motion for the approval of the minutes from the 16th. Motion to approve. Second. All in favour. Do we have to do role call . Yes, madam chair. role call . The minutes are approved in a 40 vote. Item 5. As some of may know, we lost a member, art curtis, who passed away with a long battle with brain cancer. In his early union, he fulfilled his dream with sfmta driving trolley buses and conductor on the cable cars. He worked his way up the ranks through a Transit Service inspector and chief transit control inspector and retired in 1999 after 37 years of service. The management position he loved the most, chief transit director of muni, staff and assistant chief and transit inspectors for over 20 years. He was also muni special Events Coordinator to major and minor events in the city. A thirdgeneration person in San Francisco, a longtime member of the bay area Railroad Association and Founding Member of the western railway museum. He was also a me member of the board and Market Street railway. Curtis will be dearly missed. Its fitting that we will close our meeting today in his honor, but today, we also honored the top 20 of 2020, so we honor thed Service Members with the Longest Service and one of the operators today, dwayne allen, retire as of today after 41 years of service. So, it is very fitting that we close our meeting in honor of art curtis with the many people we were talking about honoring today. Secretary, i have to read the covid stuff. [ laughter ] still getting used to this covid announcement. So due to covid19, health emergency, this meeting is held virtually and all members of staff and all members and staff participating today are via teleconference. This will ensure the safety of the sfmta directors and public. In our published for this meeting, we asked the public to participate remotely. I do want to thank all people who have sent comments in advance. They were received and we do actually read and listen to them. We continue to urge the public to write the board at mtaboard sfmta. Com or call 415 6464470 in advance. While this Technology Allows us to hold these meetings via teleconference, it may not be as seamless as we would like it to be. There may be gaps and silence as staff is transitioning in the technology between different speakers. Please know were doing the best we can and ask four your understanding and patience if we lose the phone connection, well pause until the connection is reestablished and that did happen in the last meeting and if you do wait, we will come back. Lastly, i would thank all people and there are many people involved to make this meeting run smoothly and so i want to thank the dedicated staff at sfmta to make it possible. With that, ill turn it over to the board secretary to continue making announcements. [ laughter ] thank you, madam chair. So for members of the public, neating is being televised by sfgtv and for those watching the livestream, please be aware that there is a time lag between the actual meeting and what members are saying on sfgtv. If you are watching via sfgtv and wish to comment on an item, please call the telephone line when the call when i am calling the item. If you wish to make Public Comment on items on the agenda, the phone number to use is 888 8086929. The access code is 9961164. This information is published on our agenda and also on our web page. Please make sure that you are in a quiet location, that you turn off any tvs or radios, you turn down the sound on sfgtv and mute that sound and this will reduce any reverbation so the board can hear you. At the appropriate time, the chair will ask for the phone lines to be opened. At that time, if you wish to comment, you will be prompted to press 10. This will add you to the speaker line. The automatic prompt will say that callers are entering the question and answer time, but this is the Public Comment period. You will be queued up in the order in which you pressed 10 and there will be an automated voice that will tell you when it is your turn to speak. At that time, your microphone will be unmuted and you will hear us ask you to state your name or to begin talking and i will start your two minutes when you Start Talking. I will give you a 30second warning when you have 30 seconds remaining. When your time is up, you will be thanked and the chair will ask for the next caller. At that point, the moderator will put the speaker back on mute. I will repeat the instructions how to make Public Comment again as i am aware some members may join late and may not have heard this information. Madam chair, item 6, introduction of new or Unfinished Business by board member. Director brickman, i think you may have new or Unfinished Business. Thank you. I just wanted to bring up a couple of things i have heard the public talking about. The first one is what we are able to do and what we are going to continue to do in district 6 in terms of of either adding low streets or making more space for people to safely gather without being so close to one another. Specifically wonder why the smta doesnt weigh in publically. I saw from the last update, we are watching that one and my understanding is usually with these type of legislative things, the city sort of weighs in as a whole, so maybe you could just address how that works so people understand why we, the sfmta board is not putting forward an opinion. Thank you. Thank you, director eakin. Thank you so much. I just wanted to more specifically ask, i recall the slow street to rule out we got a fair number of comments why we didnt see more amenities in the tenderloin executiv and i recale was a larger tenderloin assessment ongoing and we wanted to be a part of that process. So i was just wondering if we could hear an update from staff on that larger process and when we might be able to address the desire tor more safe streets and open streets in the tenderloin. So director hemminger, do you have any Unfinished Business items . I had a couple of questions for jeff on his report. So ill wait until that. With that, madam chair, that section will get to item 7, the directors report. Director tumlin. Thank you. Can you all hear me . Yes. Good afternoon. As im sure you all know, our entire staff has been working hard for the last months and a lot of our work is now focused on the transportation recovery plan. In order to move forward really quickly on our transportation recovery plan, Building Trust with the public is important. Expand so i asked the data teamo push out in realtime the key dataanalytics for what munii linelines to bring back given te limited resources and managing our budget, which is the focus of most of todays meeting. If you could google covid19data analytics dashboard, the dashboard will come up and theyre updated at least every week. As soon as i get the data, were pushing the data to the public and i think this is really going to be a useful tool moving forward and well add additional dashboards as new data becomes available. And weve also been working really hard on slow streets. As most of o you know, weve installed 20 slow streets on 14 corridors covering all of the city at this point. Were on track to install two more corridors in the coming week on 20 proceeding avenue and ortega adding another 5. 5 miles to the network. Weve been learning a lot as we go along and sent out some criteria about what seems to make for a successful slow street and what doesnt. The characteristics of a successful slow street, first of all, Residential Land use. Typically no more than two lanes and best, one lane in each direction with so stopsign controls. The real drivers of slow street success are kids and heavily used by kids, including children learning to bike and skateboard and use scooters for the first time and relatively subtle differences attend to attract more people and when we have more people, more children, they get more heavily utilized and thats been one of the Critical Issues that weve been trying to face in some neighborhoods, trying to find streets level enough that will work. Other critical criteria, Emergency Response. Fire is a part of San Franciscos memory and we take Emergency Response seriously as an agency. And we dont want to slow down fire tracks. And finally Community Support, slow streets work best when well stewarted by the neighborhood. So Community Support is a key driver. A couple of updates, weve removed the slow streets. As we promised, these are experiments and meant to try them out and deciding, ok, that wasnt working and that included stockton street on the north slope of Telegraph Hill. It was too steep and not being utilized. So were now in our phase three planning, figuring out a new array of corridors, what might actually work and ill give you a heads up that were planning to come back to the sfmta board on july 21st for on update on the question of particularly given the corridors that are wildly successful. Is it possible to pull these slow streets together into a network and pull them together into a network that includes, for example, our protected bikeway networks and other key corridors like carfree Market Street, in order to give people in San Francisco in a covid era the opportunity to walk, bike or skateboard for essential trips or to get to work, particularly as muni will struggle for the next two years. Were looking forward to giving you strong updates there. And finally, i would add to the questions that were posed, were working very closely for weeks with the Health Public weeks street in the tenderloin. As ive repeatedly stated, the tendetenderloin is our highest concentration of vulnerable populations and violence in all of San Francisco. Its our first priority. But we are in support of the healthy streets Operation Center who has been dealing with a whole array of complex social issues in the tenderloin, which theyve made substantial progress on in the last week, helping to move people who had been sleeping on the sidewalks into Healthy Sleep sites and into hotels and that is giving us the ability to get in and do some additional work around creating Additional Space on some key sidewalks in the tenderloin, again, in close coordination with the San Francisco Fire Department who needs to be able to reach every single building with ladder trucks. Given the height of buildings in the tenderloin and overhead wires and the fact it is also the greatest concentration of Emergency Response calls in all of San Francisco, Emergency Services has been a Critical Design partner in the tenderloin and it is and one of the things that makes the neighborhood more complex to deal with. So im, fingers crossed, hopeful that in this week and early next week, we will be able to make substantial progress and we can come back at the next Board Meeting to give you a more thorough report. Couple other items, the essential Ride Home Program sponsored by the department of environmental, were partnering with them, has also been extremely useful for people in San Francisco who have been left behind by the severe muni service cuts we made in april. The Program Provides a deep discount for essential workers, covering up to ten taxi rides a month, up to 70 per ride. Weve received almost 400 applications and have been investing heavily in that program to make sure that our essential workers can get to work and get their essential trips done. Other big news items is as probably all of you know, we started issuing actual citations after two weeks of warnings for street sweeping because the streets were filthy and theyre finally getting clean again now that people in San Francisco are moving their car in order to allow the street sweepers to get to the curb. Evacuee also seen a substantial increase in commercial activity now that businesses have been allowed to open and were on a pause right now, but even as of last week, where we reverted back to, there is still substantial activity, given the success that weve had with the shared Spaces Program. And so were going to need to start enforcing meters. The rates will be substantially lower than they were in puerto pre covid area. Were trying to ensure on one or two spaces are available in every lot and every parking garage. Were expected to make rate changes july 6th and warnings on july 13th. We want to give folks warnings. There will be a lot of communication and that. Findly, i should update you on shared spaces which have been getting a lot of attention in the press. Weve been working very, very quickly to get those applications processed. As of last thursday, we have received 388 applications and managed to approve 217 of those. This is very rapid turnaround for government, particularly given the com complexity dealing with all of the grade and restaurants to set up in the parking lane. Were very happy with this program because its allowing us to get activity off of the sidewalk and into the parking lane so we dont have to choose between pedestrian accessibility and comfort versus the survival of San Francisco Small Businesses. And that is all i have for these two weeks. Happy to take any questions. Great. Directors, any questions for director tumlin . I know dr. Hemminger, i know earlier you said you did. I have two, jeff. The first is, weve had some correspondence whether we have an ada issue of jay church not running through the tunnel and i had a report yesterday and got me thinking its a broader problem. The stockton garage is felty any and i wonder if we have a cleaning system going from disuse to use . So the transit team is working hard on the jay church terminus issue. Were expecting just like whats portal to do very quick and significant resign in order to ensure that the surface stops at church and market are fully accessible and provide good connectivity to the elevator. We have a similar situation at west portal avenue and west portal. We will not start up service if that rail service is not accessible. Were uncertain yet when well be able to extend to debosa and church. That is a part of our goal and right now, were dealing with so many constraints and trying to throw every single Available Service hour that we have in order to restore as much of the network as we possibly can. Were not going to be able to serve every corridor. As you know and as youll hear at length in the conversation later today. And tommcguire, can you speak to the garage problem . Tom, you are muted. So subtler stockton garage is one garage remaining open 24 7 within allowing for daily parking. We did use the pause in parking demand in the closure of many garages to give them a thorough cleaning and i know sutte stockton is one that have moved back. To director brinkman about senate bill 288, for those of you listening, senate bill 288 is a measure that is moving forward in the state legislature that would reduce the California Environmental equality act on transportation projects built in the public rightofway and that do not increase the vehicle miles traveled. This could potentially remove a significant and pointless and local burden that the sfmta faces on its projects and could save us as much as two years in delay. And so from a staff perspective, we can certainly speak to the benefits and the potential unintended negative consequences and have been doing so together with other city departments in order to make sure that there is a coordinated San Francisco response to that measure from that would help us to move more licklquickly and efficiently wiu and the public over the next two years. So first, im heartened to hear that you say youll be looking at by the 21st, some sort of network of the slow streets potentially and just one, one potential gap in that network ive been experiencing, i think we know the slow street is incredibly popular. As a connection to golden state park, which is an important amenity for everyone in the city right now. If you think about a connection between the Mission Areas and the park, but theres a key gap along sanchez street and steiner street and people could use the connect and people just riding around a little built bit, it ss that wiggle weve designated as a prior grade for cyclists would so naturally lend itself to the slow street network. So that session from 17th to protected bike lane from church to sanchez, so from 17th up to Market Street, that would be a wonderful connection and a relatively short number of blocks but a key connection for people to access a popular amenity. E road aland i have shotwel. Certainly one thing were finding on several of the streets, i think 20th is a good example as is lane in the bayview is a need for more robust that materials that are less easily driven over or moved out of the way. Or blown over by the wind right away. Honestly, ive experienced that, as well. Second, on the shared spaces, you mentioned we received almost 400 applications and 200 approved and just curious, do you anticipate that there are any that will not be approved . Is it just a matter of sort of time and consideration . Is there anything that would make an application not successful . Were trying to prioritize immediate approval spaces that are obviously winners. Were having some challenges on street grade and cross slope, which will require additional scrutiny, as well as potentially design assistance that will likely take more time and tom mcguire, you may have more things to say. I think that was a good summary, jeff. The only other point i would add is that this has been an opportunity for the mta to flex its muscle in terms of its rather than trying to drag every applicant through any policy consideration. Consideration we could all dream of. An important thing well see now that we pushed through what jeff describes requests for repurposing of the curb lane, there are some districts and restaurants and merchants who want to do something more dramatic and impactful like taking over some or all of the street and that does require yaryardcoordination with the emy services. Our priority is just that has been to say yes to as many things as possible and only when theres an obvious physical or operational barrier to operation. And then my last question, the nature of the slow streets, everything is changing so quickly now. It seems at some point we talked about the slow streets as really really, theyre a substitute of transit lines eliminate as a rail transportation connection. I think, dr. Tumlin, from your report, these are used for Recreational Purposes close to home and thats an important amenity were providing, too. I remember asking about soma, thinking it a parkpoor part of the city and we had not eliminated any transit lines and we hadnt thought about transit. Are we thinking about expanding the slow streets for the multiple uses for which theyre being enjoyed to other parts of the city, as well . Yes. Were trying to coordinate programs across every mode of transportation. So we started with slow streets in the sunset, because the sunset lost the most muni service and we expanded that work from that. Weve heard from different districts, a very strong opinion and different priorities about what are the services that they most wanted. In district ten, weve heard repeatedly, their highest priority is maintaining and improving Transit Service access because of how people get to their essential work but because of the dirth. Similarly, in district 3, we heard many, many, many voices saying our priority is being able to reopen our Small Businesses, particularly the restaurants and to reopen those into the parking lane. We received applications in north beach and Fishermans Wharf and weve been making sure that in those neighborhoods, were delivering what the community most wants and also responsive to the peculiarities of the geography and trying to find a residential street in district 3 is challenging, particularly one where there is neighborhood consensus on that. Soma is another complicated neighborhood and we found that slow streets work best at a certain narrow dimension and over several continuous blocks. South of market, there are two kinds of streets, really wide and really narrow alleys run for a couple of blocks before theyre interrupted. And so, in the south of market, we have more focused on really three things. One is the protected bikeway network. And weve been expansion on townsend and seventh. If youve not been out to watch the progress, the crews are out there. I just came from there. So soma, we provide protective space for people on bikes. As i mentioned, were not only retaining the Transit Service but proposing in the next agenda item transitonly lanes to protect transit from congestion in the south of market and then the third thing that were doing in partnership with communitybased organizations is where its hard to do a sort of 24 7 for months at a time slow street and south of market, its a great location along with the tenderloin for heavily programmed play streets. So this is something that, i think, were finding is the right street approach, is providing for managed programmed events where we can make sure that we welcome the most vulnerable residents, also make them feel safe and provide a safe space for children. Both neighborhoods have extraordinarily high concentration of kids and simply throwing barricades out and calling it a day would be insufficient for most of the streets in the tenderloin or soma. So were trying to again incorporate all of our programs to basically layer them on top of each other citywide and direct the resources as theyre most desired by each neighborhood and somehow pull it all together into a system while making it up as we go along. Presumably faster. [ laughter ] much faster. Making it up as we go along is the only way to adapt to the changes as quickly as we need to adapt to them. Great. Directors, any other additional questions before i open it up to Public Comment . Seeingnone, moderator, can we open up the line comment on the directors report . Thank you, for members watching this meeting via sfgtv who wish to address the board on matters discussed by director tumlin, call 888 8086929 and the access code is 996116 996. This is only formatters that director tumlin just discussed. Operator your question is now in question and answer mode. To summon each question, presence 10. You have four questions remaining. First caller, if you would state your name or Start Talking. Question this is Hayden Miller and i just wanted to call in to say that im looking forward to see more slow streets, but we should work to make the ones that we already have more successful by putting more barriers, especially at key intersections that will be busier. Some intersections that are lacking signage right now that i think could be useful to address is 20th street and mission, they dont have barriers, page and divisdero, lake and 20t 20th avenue. Just looking at key spaces where there is an arterial street crossing. We dont want cars turning on to our slow streets, especially with children on those streets where it creates a safety hazard. But im looking forward to seeing them rolled out and improved. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have eight questions remaining. Again, for members, this is only for topics discussed by director tumlin. Speaker, give us your name and well start your time. Question can you hear me now . We can. Question i wanted to go back to the earlier comment about art curtis. I saw that in the sunday paper and i was terribly moved by it. Art was a wonderful city employee, muni employee and a wonderful human being. He regularly used the motto and put it on memos, think service, its our only business. He knew virtually every inch of the system and every nook and cranie. Cranny. Im not sure in two minutes i can could justice to his memory. I think it would be nice to here ihearfrom staff who can remembe. We do a lot to put up plaques and name things after people. Im not sure if thats appropriate here. Perhaps just a poster with a smiling art curtis, reminding us of the importance of transit, transportation, and Public Service would be most useful and, you know, i just cant say enough good things about him. Despite all the many problems that were going through right now in the city and in society, i think he of all people would have relished the opportunity to solve some of these with the creativity and dedication to Public Service. Whether it was signing inspectors or determining reroutes or figuring out how to deal with bell ringing . Time, thank you. Thank you, david. That was wonderful. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 11 questions remaining. Question i appreciate director tumlins comments on slow street, protected bike lane, carfree network becoming a reality, as well as soma bike lanes and play streets. Im heartened about terro direcr eakins comments. Regarding the stockton slow street cancellation, as a San Francisco middle school teacher, i might consider a slow street as well as Telegraph Hill boulevard. However, as director tumlin noted, given the steep grades on Telegraph Hills and side streets like green street, carfree columnuous, with the Outdoor Dining seems like the only policy intervention that will really bend the curve in district 3. However, adding parking protected bike lanes on north point would be appreciated, as well. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 11 questions remaining. Question my name is eric roselle. Im a resident in the tenderloin and i wanted to thank director tumlin and the board of directors for paying particular interest in the tenderloin. I know it is a difficult neighborhood to work with in a lot of ways, but i am extremely grateful and i know other Community Members are, that the mta is putting a special attention to the changes here in the tenderloin. And particular, some of the changes that are looking to happen here on jones street and turk, as well, and some of the programmed events that could possible happen on play streets. I know those are in discussion, as well. I just wanted to say thank you. Please continue to put attention on the tenderloin and also say that the safe streets is a great idea. As an avid cyclist for over 26 years in the tenderloin and probably ridden well over 7,000 miles in the city, im extremely excited a the possibility of having a safestreet network that could connect throughout the city. I think this is an awesome opportunity and i hope that moves forward. Again, thank you for all of the the work that youre doing and continue to do so. Thank you so much. Goodbye. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have ten questions remaining. The person who has been unmuted. Moderator, could you move to the next person . Operator you have nine questions remaining. Question yes, good afternoon, this is barry toronto. I appreciate director tumlin talking about the trip card program and the essential worker ridehome program. I have worked on the weekends and i havent seen many of those. I think theyre used mainly during the day. However, i do give rise to a number of essential workers. I wanted to say that a lot of the essential workers live and work in the tenderloin and i think my concern is if you start blocking streets there, we will have very little access to picking up or dropping off these employees. , these workers who, a lot of them work at night. And then it could be an issue with access. And also, regarding 20t 20th street and lane, i have noticed at times to avoid not going through those blocks because of needing to have access to getting to pick up the passengers or to be able to have an efficient way. Im still waiting for that official list from the mt amount of slow streets. I was actually given a link to it, but its not in a form that i could actually help distribute to fellow cab drivers and the taxi industry. And in closing with that, it would be great if you had signage a block away at major arterials saying that this particular street is closed to through traffic. If were there and have to other place to go, thats a problem. Thank you, mr. Toronto. Our next speaker, please. Operator you have seven questions remaining. You have six questions remaining. Question hi. I just wanted to call and talk about director tumlins announcement regarding the j line and l line at west Portal Church and market, respectively. I support those change, but i do strongly suggest that we figure out how to make the transfers how safe, especially for folks with disabilities or people with mobility impairment. As somebody ablebodied, transferring from church in that crazy intersection from the j streetcar to the subway is difficult, so i can only imagine what its like for someone who is in a wheelchair or who has mobility issues. So i would like for those issues to be ironed out before that change is opportunity. Done because those transfers right now are very dangerous. I would suggest a lane diet on church approaching market, for example, to make that crossing safer for folks. Furthermore, i would love to thank director testimon tumlin e board for the slow street. I think its a slowing success. In regards to the soma, i dont want to speak for supervisor hainey, he seems open to closing for pedestrians only. I would say to the mta, dont be shy. Dont even make them shared streets, just pedestrianonly and at this point, the tenderloin, one of the neighborhoods that deserve walking infrastructure for the amount of kids that live in the tenderloin and i think we forget that kids do live in the tenderloin and look at the west side and think, oh, thats where the kids live and thats not true. I support the slow streets and the mobility access. And slow streets is mobility and disability action. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, please. Operator you have five questions remaining. Question hi, my name is cliff barter. I live in petrilla hill. The slow street is a half a block from me that went in a couple weeks ago and im happy to see when the barriers have been moved out of the way and mta was quick to come and fix it. And so, im pretty happy with that. So far, the compliance isnt as strong as i would hope. Theres still people driving through like its any other street but its a big improvement. Im also really happy to see the shared Spaces Program and i actually wrote an oped in the examiner in early may calling for parklets and i want to call specifically on program to focus on repurposing the parking lane and sidewalks in my neighborhood on 18th street. Theres an even mix of Parking Spaces being repurposed and its important for restaurants to have access to this space. We cant effectively social distance walking down the sidewalk and someone who is ablebodied, it makes me wonder how someone in a wheelchair with other mobility challenges would be able to navigate many of the sidewalks and also some have been blocking off the bike parking. And so i think the default for shared spaces should be changing the parking lane and there should really only be a closure of the sidewalk when else when the parking lane is available. Question the intersection of church is in a low point and there is an incline up towards the station and we have to ensure that the elevators that go into the Church Street underground station are kept up and i mean kept up where were really on top of that. And signage is essential. In ensuring options, whether to the underground station at changeup and market or to the ramps that are on the end line at church and debose. I pulled up the satellite image and saw them. So its important to have good input. But we wanted to ensure seamless connects, especially people with disabilities at church and market and then go underground to ensure there are spaces on the trains for persons with disabilities, especially going toward the embarcadaro. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have three questions remaining. Question im sarah ogleby and i live in district 9. I wanted to support the comments made regarding barriers on the slow streets. My husband and i were walking in the commission and 20th area and as we were enjoying our walk, which was enhance bid slow streets, getting some exercise, we noticed cars were pushing through barriers. This is an area thats traffic prone. And also, i wanted to say that i support the shared spaces in the parking area and Parking Spaces. I think thats important, as well as when were enjoying our walks and getting some exercise, im concerned about social distancing on the sidewalks and i dont think that its sufficient. And its already, you know were anxious enough with covid19. Its growing cases are growing. Paiplease stand by . I was walking down california street this weekend. There was a restaurant thats near on california near fillmore with tableses on side in two places, to the point where there wasnt there wasnt a 5foot path to travel for a person with a wheelchair to get down there. Theres no way of not come to an unmasked person talking and eating. Thats not very safe from an infection standpoint, and im wearing a mask to protect others. So my only option is to walk into the parking lane, which was reserved for pickup and dropoff. Because, of course, the restaurant is also doing a lot of pickup business. And so i had to walk into california street, which is a fourlane, two lanes each way, hightraffic street. That wasnt exactly a great experience. So i have to either do that or walk across the street, to keep myself safe. Thats i think not a good way to run things. I would prefer that clerk 30 seconds. Tables be in the parking lane as much as possible and the sidewalk be kept clear for moving people safely and at a distance. Thank you. Operator you have two questions remaining. Our next speaker, please. Hi, my name is sam deutsche. I live in the mission. And im just calling for express both my support for the shared Spaces Program, but also to kind of implore the sfmta to kind of think a little bigger on this, because theres been lots of criticisms about space, taking up sidewalks, et cetera. I think looking at other cities that successfully have done things like this, like paris, taking more space away from cars, especially parked cars just sitting there and not providing any sort of economic output or purpose, on replacing those with tables, while maintaining safe spaces for people to walk on the sidewalks and maintaining bike lanes and other forms of transit would be a good adivision addition to the Program Beyond what currently exists. Thank you. Operator you have two questions remaining. All right. Our next speaker, please. Next speaker, go ahead. Hello . Yes. Hi. Yes. Im call being the emergency transit line. Is this the appropriate time to call in . No, sir. That will be a few items later on the agenda. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Sure. No worries. Operator you have one question remain. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is mike chad. Im a member of the mcac. And number one, im really heartened by the progress that the city is making around shared spaces and slow streets. I want to echo the comments about the wiggle room and throw out there okay, we do the streets, topography is different, we may consider possibly a slow wiggle or a slow crookedness, which still allows people the chance to kind of trigger the city, and doesnt require like a linear line. My second point is that id like the staff and directors to consider is that, you know, director tumlin director tumlin . The head of m. T. A. Tumlin said that we have these constraints in district 6 specifically, tenderloin and the street plan. I would like staff and director to consider changing the street plan, so we do have neighborhood scaled streets in soma. Its not inevitability that the streets are really wide and are really not conducive for people to come really walk through. And i think now is a great time to kind of think about the streets do serve the people who live nearby and not just three ways for people to pass through from the freeway to downtown. Or what have you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Operator you have one question remaining. Okay, caller. Hi. I am sloan kelly and awork the coalition on homelessness. Director tumlin mentioned that vehicles are now being cited for parking restriction violations for street cleaning. All of you have received a letter from glide foundation, coalition on homelessness, the Lawyers Committee for civil rights and many other organizations and individuals. We request in that letter, and im requesting right now, that you do not tow nor cite vehicular dwellings. Towing and citing of these vehicles typically has a traumatic effect on their owners, who often lose their home and end up living on the streets, because the cost of retrieving their homes is way over their personal budget. Please do not cite nor tow vehicular dwellings for parking restrictions. If this needs to be an agenda item for the next Board Meeting, please put it on the agenda. Thank you. Thank you. We did get your letter. Any additional other Public Comment . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Great. With that we will close Public Comment. Director tumlin, maybe you could just clarify i know that we werent towing unless it was an emergency safety issue, is that still true . Thats right. So all of the tow the tow policy that we talked about back in, it must have been february, where w collaborated for the people experiencing homelessness and People Living in their Motor Vehicles, were wanting to both minimize towing citywide, because we lose so much money on towing cars. We want to make sure were particularly sensitive to towing vehicles that are the last resort Housing Solution for people who are otherwise unhoused. So those programs that we talked about back in february are continuing to move forward. That remains unchanged in the conversation that well be having with the budget in the next agenda item. In terms of towing, though, right now, because i know with ticketing we were ticketing when we did start return to ticketing, we were focusing on people blocking fire lanes and that kind of stuff. I guess in terms of towing, previous tow policy that wed tow vehicles for piling up tickets back in place or no . No. No. The only thing were towing for are specific safetyrelated issues, where we are not able to contact the Motor Vehicle owner. Okay. Great. Thank you. And director franklin, did you have a question. I know in my tame on the m. T. A. Board, one of the things that i see that the public doesnt realize, how much contact m. T. A. Staff has with other cities, transportation departments and transportation staff and since the pandemic started, thats expanded not just into the u. S. , but nationwide. I had not really honestly thought about the emergency access vehicle questions before when it came to seeing the pictures of cities that have closed spire streets to allow restaurants to put tables out. I just wanted to get some sense of how our city is handling that and is that something that all of the transportation departments are discussing and all of the Fire Departments are kind of weighing in together on . How would you then get Emergency Vehicle access down a street . So this is this is an important topic with our peers all over the world. And different cities and Different Countries take rather different approaches to Emergency Response access, as well as risk management. You know, in, for example, i think japan is probably the best example. East asian countries. Because of the very different nature of the geography of japanese cities, the japanese are famous for sizing their fire trucks as well as staffing their fire stations, in order to minimize the size needed, in order to be able to respond on all varieties of very skinny streets. They have just a completely different approach than we have in the United States. And other cities take a very different approach to risk, where they tolerate longer Emergency Response times or freighter challenge greater challenges for fire trucks to set up, put down the stabilizers and put out the fire. As i said before in my opening remarks, fire is a part of San Franciscos ancestral memory. Theres a reason why the phoenix is on our flag. And why San Francisco has more firehouses per capita than most other places in the country. We take Emergency Response access very seriously. The Fire Department must approve all of our street changes. And thats because were San Francisco. Our buildings are made out of wood. We are a city prone to natural disasters. Its something that San Francisco takes more seriously than other cities. So sometimes this results in slowing down the pace of our ability to deliver work. Sometimes makes it very difficult, particularly in neighborhoods that require a great deal of Emergency Response access. And where the buildings are old, theyre not sprinklered, the emergency egress is through the windows and down fire escapes, that actually impacts what it is possible to design in the street. So that requires the sfmta and the San Francisco Fire Department to collaborate closely and take different approaches to design, than happens in other cities. Its part of the nature of being in San Francisco. Great. Thank you. Any additional predominants opredominant comments on the s report, before we move on to the regular agenda . Seeing none, well close this item and move on to our regular calendar. Madam clerk, item 8. Sorry, my bad. There is no report today. So before we move into the regular calendar, i would just like to restate for members of the public that when i call the next item and call the items, if you are listening by sfgovtv. Org, please cal 888 8. Make sure youre in a quiet location and you turn off any radios,s. If youre Live Streaming via sfgovtv. Org, please mute the sound at the appropriate time. The chair will ask the phone lines to be opened and if you wish to comment, you will be prompted to press 1, 0. You will be added and hear that you are entering the questionandanswer time. But this is the Public Comment period. Youll be queued up in the order which you pressed one and zero and there will be an automated voice. When you hear the automated voice, please begin talking. Wed appreciate it if it would state your name. And then i will start the two minutes. I will let you know when theres 30 seconds remaining and when your time is up, the moderator will put the speaker back on mute. Item 8, the regular agenda. Item 9, approving the fiskar year 2021 and 2022 revised operating budget in a littles of 1. 251 million for operating expenditures, 248 million and 111 million respectively for Capital Expenditure. For a new board operating reserve, certifying that the two budgets are adequate to make substantial progress toward meeting performance standards, authorizing changes to various fires and rates. And let me move down. Im not going to read all of it temperature approving the sfmta title vi fair equity analysis. Amending division to rates, fares and signs. Approving a waiver of fares for new years eve 2021 and 2022. Authorizing the director to implement shortterm experimental fares, retroactively waiving, concurring with the controls certification that some services can be practically performed by private contractors at a lesser cost than to provide the same services with city employees. And authorizing the directer to make necessary corrections to the revised operating budget. At some point youll have to explain to me why certain things get called out. With that ill turn over to staff and have leah and jonathan present. Thank you very much. Im leo leavenson, the chief Financial Officer for the San Francisco m. T. A. And i want to really thank you for this time now. For this update on the budget, which was so recently approved in april, but because of the circumstances that were all aware of, we need to come back to you with this proposed update. Next slide, phillies. Please. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. So this update has five parts to it. Were going to start with the baseline budget that was approved on april 21st, so we can explain the changes that have happened since then. And we are going to be providing the Data Insights that my terrific budget staff, led by jonathan righters, has been putting together to really inform our look forward into this really unprecedented period. Well be providing a fiscal update with the revenue trends that weve seen since april 21st. And what that means for the budget in terms of the reduced sources that we have available for it. Well be providing summarizing the recommended budget update and talking about what this means in terms of service. And different scenarios that were looking at in the future, both related to service and the fiscal implications with the agency. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. Its jonathan, its on slide 3. I guess my view is delayed. So just a brief summary of the main takeaways, and i turn it over to jonathan. This budget that were bringing back to you has 30 the change from april 30th approved budget is 30 million reduction in fiscal year 21, for our budget scenario. And the savings, the reduction in expenditures is primarily on the [indiscernible]. This means that we have to hold additional positions vacant, in order to balance this scenario. This reflects two major things. And one is the continuing in our revenue outlook, compared to what we were looking at. Were seeing the implications of the shelterinplace. And the economic downturn. Proposed extension of fare increases that were originally anticipated in the april 21st budget. There is, of course, great uncertainty. We cant emphasize enough that we have to, as a Public Agency develop a budget. And we do it with the best information we have available and the best thinking about the future. But this is an unprecedented time. So were very well aware that we have to watch closely, so see what happens, particularly in ridership demand, as we enter the new economic period. Woe dont know exactly how its going to look. The other major [indiscernible] affects our revenues is what will be the Public Health requirements for people riding transit. It has a big difference on the capacity of our systems, given the number of Service Hours weve reduced. How many people can we move in our system and how much revenue do we have to support that service. The budget that were proposing to you still retains a 10 contingency reserve. So given the uncertainty, we are keeping this inreserve to deal with potentially even worse news than in this budget scenario. We are going to be monitoring our revenues and expenditures very closely, as we move along. Well be reporting back to you at least quarterly or more often if necessary. And we will be telling you what our options are, if our revenues do come in even lower than this reduced scenario that were bringing forward with you today. We take very, very seriously our responsibility to be transparent, to be watching and to be knowledgeable about where we are with our resources and what we can do with those resources. And finally not a bullet point on this slide, but one thing that well really be emphasize, this twoyear budget can only be balanced, we can only continue to provide even the level of service were envisioning here with a number of onetime sources. Very largely this is thanks to the federal government, cares act. Thank you particularly to nancy pelosi in being a strong advocate for Public Transit. That is really what is helping us cover a portion of our fare loss. We dont believe anything like that will continue. Were using that to help to continue provide service in the twoyoure budget period. And were drawing upon other revenues that we have been very fortunate to receive during ten years of economic expansion in San Francisco. And fortunately we didnt spend every year we got during the ten years of expansion, which allowed us to have a surplus. [indiscernible] im sorry to interrupt. Excuse me. Excuse me. Yeah. Leo, excuse me. Youre breaking up and were not able to hear you. Okay. Well, if i talk slowly, can you hear me now . Ill just id like to turn this over to jonathan righters, our senior budget manager he and his team have done tremendous work to support the rest of this preparation. Thank you, leo. Good afternoon, directors. Senior budget manager with the agency. Just to quickly update you. Im going to name the slide. In case people are following at home and we can be on the same place. Im on slide 4. Just as a reminder, our budget has been based on values since the very beginning. That the transportation should be safe, that we want to integrate equity into everything we do at the m. T. A. We are constantly working towards decarbon nation of the Transportation System and providing Excellent Customer Service to anybody who uses any mode within San Francisco. One thing that we had added, and that we did make sure to integrate into this update to the budget, is that we have the services and were spending the money in areas that will support a strong economic recovery for San Francisco. So there are new programs related to covid19. Some of which you discussed today and the directors report. But that is another key value that we have integrated into the budget and it will be important as we move forward over the next two years. Just as background on the budget overall, in april on april 21st, m. T. A. Board did approve the budget, consistent with the charter. We did make clear at that time this would be a baseline to which we would work from as we get more information on the state of the economy, on the state of service and the state of the Public Health emergency here in San Francisco. That budget was 1. 28 billion and 1. 34 billion in fiscal year 22. We showed you losses. Well cover those again. The revenue losses 212 million. And increased retirement costs. The two things i do want you to notice is in that budget, the controls were on expenditures. So the new expenditures and programs, related to the muni working group, managing congestion, a lot of those new programs were approximately 23 million. And had we seen additional revenue losses, as youll see on the right, dealing with those revenue losses, the 21. 5 million, we would have canceled those programs. That was our control in the first round of budget. I will update you on where we stand currently fiscally with regard to our revenue losses. It is more than that. But that was our solution at that time. So now lets move into some of the data and insight. Some of the things that we look togo make decisions about revenue and our operations over the next two fiscal years. So, first, just kind of an overaveraging situation. We do anticipate theres going to be a drop in ridership. We looked at cities across the world. Weve looked at cities such as auckland in new zealand, that is now a covidfree country. And there is about an average 20 loss across a lot of those areas, even in taiwan, were still seeing a drop in ridership in the 15 to 18 level. Were also seeing, and we should note, that postcovid or even in an extended period without any type of vaccine, the workplace is shifting. For youer people will be commuting for regular trips, especially in San Francisco using muni, but they might switch to occasional trips. So we have taken that into account and ill show you what that looks like. We do expect and we have seen in different areas of the country and the world that demand is following service increases. So as we release more service, there will be riders that will go with that service. So in our ridership estimates and revenue estimates, we have accounted for that. And finally ill show you some data that is showing that we arent seeing a split in mode and that there are people who are choosing to drive versus taking Public Transit. So were seeing this divergence from the prior baselines, with regard to mode choice. And we did take that into consideration while projecting both our fare revenues and our parking and traffic revenues. So here are the three sources of data we used. It was an ibm Business Survey that was done looking at 25,000 people. And specifically asked about their transportation preferences. We used google mobility reports, that allowed to us look at data across the world and in the United States, down to the bidding level, that helped us understand trips and the destination choice of various people. And then we looked at apple mobility reports. So this is also realtime data, which gave us a sense on what people are choosing via mode. So as an example, if somebody is using apple maps and they want directions on where theyre going, theyll select a mode by which they want to make that trip. So weve taken a look at that data in making some of our assumptions today. Overall from the ibm Business Survey, so youll see when asked, respondents did say straight out, those who regularly did use subway or trains, that they no longer would. Looking at those who regularly use Public Transit, but would they loose it less often and not as often as today, 28 did say they would use it less often. So we have taken that data into consideration. With regard to other modes, 17 of people did say they would drive more and use their personal vehicle more. So thats another data point for us to consider. With regard to ridesharing and t. M. C. , it was interesting that more than 50 of people said that they would use them less or even stop using them. So something to take into consideration. But fewer people said the same thing. 24 only said that when considering taxis. So this kind of gives you a sense of how people are feeling all across the modes. And what decisions they might make in the future about their transportation choices. Here is an example of what we looked at with regard to the Community Mobility report. So this is San Francisco specifically. Youll see and this again collects the data of where people are going. So the left, the retail, grocery, parks, transit. Places and residential shows what their location is. At any particular time. Transit reflects bus stops, subway stations youll see a peak decline at 74 by early june, we were at 67 . But most important here to observe is that theres a divergence as people are starting to return to their workplaces. As you see in midmay through early june, for the twoweek period, you started seeing a divergence where essentially before people going to their workplaces, were the essential workers who largely were using transit. So wer starting to see a divere where people are going back to the workplace, but transit is not trending in the same direction as it was prior to that. So thats a data point that we took into consideration. Here youll see a comparison to different cities around the world. So this is slide 12. San francisco, new york, los angeles, seattle, london, taiwan and auckland. Youll see that taiwan overall, one of the best examples that weve noted taipei in the world, has about a steady 20 loss on ridership. It has been declining into the upper teens the last i looked at it. It was around 16 . Youll see auckland, which is the light blue line at the bottom. They went through a steep decline. The country now is covidfree supposedly with no cases. And so as they reopen their Transit System, and increase service over a period of time, youll see that stepup, as more service was released, there was more ridership and people choosing that particular service. Here is the apple mobility trends with regards to driving. Youll see different cities again. One thing we wanted to note here, youll see San Francisco in the dark blue line. So returning to our prior levels of driving. And that choice of mode. But when you look at seattle, youll see they have gone beyond the baseline. So theyre past where they were before. They are now heading back to where they were at over 40 on that choice. Youll also see that theres a divergence thats happening as well, that i will talk about on our next slide. Youll see specifically in San Francisco, on slide 14, that prior to the covid emergency, that we, you know, this is pretty standard, the same information that we showed you during the board workshops. Definitely a divergence in mode, but the choices are relatively even. But you will see as were coming back and recovering from covid19 and people are making choices about transportation, and reopening the city, that we are seeing a major divergence. So driving is definitely recovering faster, walking is recovering faster. Transit not as much. So youre not seeing that overall same trend in choices that people were making before. Youre clearly seeing that driving is tending to be a preference in this current environment. Youll see here this trend is pretty consistent across other cities that we looked at. So seattle, los angeles, auckland and new york. So again that divergence, where you see modal choice but was more equalized prior to the covid19 Public Health emergency. Post that youre seeing divergence in transportation choice, something we need to take that account as we plan for Transportation Services into the future. So how did that integrate into our overall fiscal situation and how do we make choices based on that data . So this is what we did. We did relook at all Revenue Sources and we updated them. We are projecting a 19 revenue loss across all sources. So that that does make us one of the worst city departments. Our sources are taking a severe hit. As leo pointed out, the cares grant, and the cares act did provide a onetime source to back fill that. I will show you the impact of that sortly. But what has happened since april 21st is since we were using so much in onetime sources in fiscal year 21 and we dont project that our regular enterprise revenues will recover in time, weve actually been solving for a major deficit in 2022. On april 21st, the losses it were mainly in the first year of the twoyear budget and we corrected for that. We actually extended some of the cares act money into the second year and thought the revenues would have recovered in time. Now we dont think revenues will recover in time. So this has caused a larger deficit. But with that said, theres still tons of unknowns. I will cover those at the very end of the presentation. We were conservative in development of the budget. And we considered many different options, which i will also cover. There are a lot of unknowns for us. We tried to be conservative and ask a lot of resiliency to the budget. As leo has said, the budget is definitely not sustainable, but it is resilient, depending on what turns out to happen in the next 6, 12, 18 months. With that said, our structural deficit is increasing and will increase. So not raising fares absolutely has an increase to our structural deficit. Im sure the board is not prizer surprised by not surprised by that. They were declining before the covid19 emergency. Theyre declining even faster and will recover even slower. So we took all of that into account when developing the updates to the budget for today. Slide 18 shows the update to the economic downturn scenarios over the fiveyear period. We projected total revenue loss from what we had shown you prior of 568 million. Slide 19 is where our revenue baselines were on april 7th. So what this is showing you is what we thought was the bestcase scenario in revenue. This is after the board workshop, we sharpened our pencils, we integrated the new policies we discussed. We considered state policy. What i will say with regard to these next three slides, these are in constant dollars. So they will not add up perfectly to the budget. But theyre meant to give you an applestoapples comparison as to where the revenue was. Prior to the covid19 emergency, they were flat. This is the budget you did approve, where we did start and plugged in a decline to the revenues across all of our sources, with the information that we did have at the time. Slide 21 shows where we think it is now. You will see weve integrated a severe decline across all of the Revenue Sources. Parking and traffic being the biggest dip and based on the data about transportation choicers, mobile choices and destination. Fare revenue continues to decline. And even at the point of recovery, nowhere near match fare revenue levels from prior years. Anything before fiscal year 19. Our state operating grants are always a risk. I believe weve been pretty conservative. And the state will keep our assistance pretty stable from what i understand. It is tied to the state of the economy, so that can change at any moment. This is the impact of the cares grant. So thats slide 22. You will see that those declines in revenues are essentially covered, largely in fiscal year 20. Thats the 197 million that the m. T. A. Has already received. So we will close the year in balance. We will have a little bit of a fund balance at the end of this fiscal year. That was due to our expenditure controls, which i will cover shortly. Youll see the declines, we used the full amount in fiscal year 21, not what we had planned on april 21st. And then operating grants go right back down to 177 million. So again the cares act and our other onetime sources will not hold us long enough, so our regular revenues to recover. So for that reason, we did have to look at expenditure reductions and other options to balance the budget over the next two years. This is where we were again on april 21st. I do want to point out one error. At the april 21st budget, the top right box that says 215. 5 million, that was actually an error. We had not accounted for changes in operating grants when we had given you that number. The bottom number stayed the same. So the 1. 2 , the. 4 , the 21. 5 million. Those were correct. But i did want to make sure that we corrected and have given you the correct numbers. So in the buchanan mall bulbouts tha in the budget that you adopted, we corrected for a loss of 212 million. When plugging in the cares act, left at 21. 5 million, which we did resolve. Youll see the bigger part of that deficit, again within fiscal year 21 at that period, and fiscal year 22, just a half a percent where we had believed that revenues would have recovered in time and this there would have been an economic recovery and we would have gotten to balsam point in the gotten to balance at some point in the future. Youll see total revenue losses in fiscal year 21, revenue ls in fiscal year 226. 5 , for a total revenue loss to the m. T. A. Of 332 million over the two fiscal years. Youll see in the bottom boxes, after we consider not just cares, but other onetime Revenue Sources to close that gap, we still have a reduction we need to deal with. 3. 5 in fiscal year 21. As i said, the difference year, they were greater in the second year of the budget. So again we would have to reduce 4. 4 in expenditures to balance what revenues we would have. So we needed to correct for 104 million. You had already dealt with about 20 million of that. We needed to reduce another 80 million to balance the budget in the next two fiscal years. This is after applying about 21. 4 million in savings. We expect its probably going to be a little bit more, maybe up to 25 million. But we wont know until we close all of the books in the next month. But we are projecting about 21 million in savings from fiscal year 20. What i do want to make very, very, very clear is that the cares grant we got in the first time did not cover all of our revenue losses, which again did exceed 200 million. And did exceed the 197 million we received. However, we did put fiscal controls in place with regard to purchasing and hiring and overtime. So that did result in lowering our total expenditures. So we will take that 21 million into fiscal year 21 to help with the revenue losses in the next two fiscal years. So youll see what our new budget targets were below that. On slide 27, we got a suggestion that we show kind of what happened over time. I want to show you that on the 28th of january, so the blue column, we already have a structural deficit. So the expenditures were going to exceed the 1. 2 billion. We prepared a budget on the 7th, which was not adopted, right. Again our bestcase scenario of bumping up revenues about to 90 million, so that was the policy changes around parking, it was the fare increase proposed, it was shifting more Development Impact fees, kind of a stable 10 million over time. So youll see that 10 million is there, that wasnt there before in Development Impact fees. A little bit of a use of fund balance. So, you know, we built up the revenue the best we could to deal with the new programs that we had laid out in january and february and march. We then reduced revenue on the 21st. So youll see that reduction. This is only the fiscal year 21 amount to give you a sense of scale. Youll see where the revenues went down in various areas. Now youll see the current where we are. So after we considered all of the data, weve considered the state of the economy, weve consulted with the city Controllers Office. Weve looked at Financial Data from transit agencies all over the United States. Weve had meetings with our various rating agencies. This is where we think we can end up. And where we will be comfortable. Heres the same on the expenditure. Youll see where that ended up. So again expenditures exceeded revenues. So there was 66 structural deficit. We balanced the budget on the 6th and the 21st. The difference here, youll see a little bit lower than the prior slide, that is the board reserve, which we are not assuming for expenditures. And ill cover what that is in a slide or two. Which is this one. So just this is complicated. But honestly slide 29 is the easiest way for us to explain how we created stability in the budget, that we would like you to approve today. The top thick bar shows the four largest Revenue Sources that we have at the m. T. A. The general fund, parking and traffic seems to be fine. Operating grants from the federal and State Government and transit fares. The top line shows essentially the proportion of the revenue projection that we currently have. So on the prior slide, you would have noticed in the last year, that revenues are higher than expenditures. And so that top line reflects that revenue amount. The next line down, with the thickcolored bars, reflects how we programmed those revenues for expenditures. So the appropriate expenditure, the expenditure limit. For all of the services that well be providing the public in San Francisco, the staff, procurement, supplies. We only programmed up to those proportioned amounts below, with that kind of hash line in the end with what we call budget plus revenue, meaning theres certain sources that we think could potentially be better and those two are parking and traffic and operating grants. But with the same line, transit fares could actually be worse. So that is not budgeted for an expenditure. But its budgeted for a board reserve. So if we are projecting lets say two quarters from now that those revenues will come in at a level where were at budget plus revenue, we will come back to the m. T. A. Board and well offer some recommendations on how those dollars can be spent. It might go right back into Transit Service, depending on how demand is at the you know, at the end of the calendar year. But those are not budgeted for expenditures. And our service plan is not built on those revenues being available in the budget. Below the thin line was a different scenario and risk that we considered in developing the budget. Now we me state for the record. It looks like the general fund line is equal and stable across those rates. The reason being is we receive our general fund estimates from the Controllers Office. And so theyve given us a fixed amount. Thats the amount we put in the budget. So we dont do an official estimate for the general fund. We just receive our official estimate from the Controllers Office. It is possible that the general fund will come in less than budgeted. And that is taking into consideration in these different scenarios. But we built them largely around our own revenue estimates for our own sources. So the first scenario is where budget plus revenues are realized, meaning parking and traffic come in higher, that could happen if more people shift to driving, more people use the parking garages, rather than take transit. But at the same time transit fare revenue declines. Because we dont see the ridership to be able to collect the fares we need to balance the budget. So parking and traffic and operating grants come in higher, but transit fares come in lower. So in that scenario, the budget is still balanced and all things are equal and even. The second scenario, a little bit worse, is that due to ridership constraints and ill talk about that a little and jeff might want to add to that, based on the number of people that we can physically put on each with us or train, we dont collect enough transit fare. Its impossible to do that. Ill cover this, its dependent on four elements. One of those elements are transit fares. And so in that case, transit fares do not come in high enough, but again parking and traffic comes in even higher than we expect, operating grants come in even. There is a scenario in which this is possible. And the budget is still balanced and in that case, we might not use the budget plus revenues. We might not release the reserves. Weve assumed expenditures at that lower revenue level. The last scenario is the worstcase scenario. So again i said that we wanted to build the budget around resiliency. Whatever happens we have enough cash, enough revenue to essentially provide a stable sense of Transportation Services will be in the city over the next 12 months. Thats important in helping to create a stable baseline for our economic recovery. So in this situation, transit fare collapsed like nowhere near i mean, the best we make 50 million. All of the revenues come in at the lowest levels, essentially what were approving in the budget. In that case, we would come back and we would use the 10 reserves. So this is what were saving the 10 reserve for. If all of our revenues come in at the lowest levels and transit fares collapse, this is when we want to use our 10 reserves. So we are saving that for this level of uncertainty. We budgeted expenditures to a pretty conservative level of revenue, the highest risk is in transit fares. But were being very conservative with parking and traffic revenue, which could actually come in at budget or maybe a little bit higher. So thats the plan. Working around the data. So with that heres the budget where it stands. All of our Revenue Sources are there and in place. Two i specifically want to point out that leo brought up, is that you will see the useoffund balance in fiscal year 22. The Transit Development line [indiscernible] remember i said a stable [audio line for speaker going in and out] jonathan, may i interrupt. Jonathan, your sound quality is diminishing. You may want to turn your video off, so that we can hear you better and focus on the screen. Okay. Is that a little bit better . Sounds like it, yes. Okay. So here again. Transit Development Impact fees. Youll see that were using 45 million in the second year. This is a huge use of onetime resources. This will not come back by fiscal year 23. This only gets us through the fiscal year and again create stability on the expenditure side and stability with regard to service. Here are the expenditure sides of the budget. So salaries, benefits, capital spending, debt service, all of our normal expenditures that youve seen through the budget process. We always do a deposit to our general liability reserve. Youll see there the board operating reserve. So those are the amounts, meaning that there is a scenario in which revenues could come in higher and at those amounts. If again the Controllers Office certifies that that were true, based on our revenue estimates in that situation, the board would then make a decision on how those would be used. The Capital Expenditure is use of onetime spend. The normal shift in proposition b, general fund dollars for Capital Projects and Development Impact fees that we appropriate for capital use through the operating budget. So slide 32 covers our use of onetime fund balance. The plan is generally the same. The only difference and update is youll see the 317 million, which is a bit higher than the 293 million that we had told you about in prior budgets. This again is due to anticipated savings we expect to have from fiscal year 20. That increases our beginning fund balance. The reserve requirements is reduced by 5 million from the prior budget of 125 million. And youll see the layout, Capital Project reserves, because we do expect our c. I. P. Revenues to go down, but we still have Construction Contracts that we need to pay for, the amounts for the operating budget, youll see that 52 million there in the second column. The parking meter replacement project, which is absolutely Critical Infrastructure for us to replace. The back fill of shifting proposition b we need that to close project costs. And then just keeping up our facilities in a reasonable state of good repair, a lot of our facilities, as i have said, are over 100 years old. And this is the minimum requirement, just to keep them running and functional for the service we need to put out on the street. In year two youll see the reserve, that 3 million just means we need to make an additional deposit to the reserve. Thats an additional 3 million. You will see, though, at the very end, we are at zero fund balance. So we will not be able to tap into the source for ongoing expenditures after fiscal year 22. So we will be at zero. On the labor side, as leo noted, one of the key elements of balancing the budget, you had to cut expenditures. So revenues were declining. So we just had to absolutely cut the expenditures of the agency. And we had cut everything back kind of in the first round. So we had to look to labor savings to do that, a critical, critical element of the budget was for us to do Everything Possible to avoid layoffs. And so this takes us to that bare minimum. We needed to realize about 16. 5 million in labor savings. In the prior budget, we showed you an attrition rate, meaning the estimate of the total positions at the m. T. A. , that are always taken, just sort of our average vacancy rate projected over the fiscal year, youll see it wasnt 575, weve increased that to well over 600 for the remaining two fiscal years. So we will hold more positions vacant. As people retire, w we will t back fill the positions. What that does to the bottom line is youll see that there is a bumpup in overall f. T. E. , especially in the second year. The first bumpup in year one is parking control officers, related to the implementation of the parking and traffic changes weve discussed, to manage congestion. So again this is all related to the data i showed you prior about the impact of covid19 and the choices around transportation. We will need more parking control officers. Those are actualized and essentially made fulltime positions. So 18 is a fraction of the total. They become full 1. 0 in the second year in fiscal year 22. In addition, their positions for the startup of the central subway, like we must have we must have station agents. We must have custodians. We must have the maintenance and ways staff to be able to maintain the new rail and overhead. Those were always planned and we have delayed them as far as we could. Again we will manage the attrition. So other positions will go vacant. But net that is an increase in the staffing for the m. T. A. I already covered this. Its in here twice for some reason. Probably because i wanted to focus on this. So youll see here the use of onetime sources to balance the budget. So we are doing everything that we, your finance budget experts told you not to do on january 28th of 2020. We are doing the balanced budget. We are using more Development Impact fees than we should for Ongoing Operations. Onetime purchases, supplies, things that can be onetime in the budget and we are using a lot of fund balance to balance the budget and manage our costs. This is at the same time where transit fares, operating sources and parking fees and fines have been declining and are declining. So this will result in a fiscal year 2023 beginning deficit of 70 million to 100 million. So our structural deficit will increase. As the economy gets better, it will shrink a little. Ill show thaw. But by fiscal year 23, we will have a problem that we cannot overcome without cutting service. It will just come to that. We have done everything to the bare bones. We have developed a service plan to support a robust economic recovery in the city. With as of right now, this is where we stand and this is what it looks like. This was our structural deficit at the beginning of the budget process. So youll remember that 66 and 77 million. This is the result of after the budget. So what i want to show you here is the purple bar reflects the difference between expense, which is the line and the bar which is revenue. The purple bar is onetime revenue that we are using to balance the budget. The orange is the capital revenues ongoing, so those are Development Impact fees, to some extent, and our proposition b, populationbased general fund, which we are switching from capital, meaning creating more repair problems and switching it over to operating. So you will see the scale of that and you will see when that purple bar goes away in fiscal year 23, theres 70 million gap. However, what i want to stress is this is what it was when the planned fare increases were included in the budget. When we did assume the automatic indexing. Without the fare increase, this increases this by 20 million. So our structural deficit now, for fiscal year 23, is projected to be 96 million. So we are at the point where theres very little choice, but to identify some of other sustainable source to cover the Ongoing Operations of the m. T. A. Remember this cost doesnt even reflect the full cost of the m. T. A. We will have a more limited service over the next 6 and 12 months. As the expectation grows, the structural deficit will only increase. 96 million in fy23. You will see we have not solved any of our longterm structural problems. Were right back to where we started. 24 and 25 just reflected fact that hopefully the economy will recover by then. But the ongoing structural deficit still remains. On the state of the repair side, hopefully in july or august, well bring forward the state of good repair report, which essentially gives you all the data on the state of our capital infrastructure. So i know that as weve talked about the budget, the board has shown interest in this data and what it means. The preliminary information out of that report is that our backlog will increase by 110 million over the next year, which means there will be 110 million of infrastructure that should have been repaired, that should have been replaced, that is not going to be repaired or replaced. And to just keep the status quo. And this means to maintain a backlog, a working backlog of 3. 24 billion we need to spend annually on state of good repair. That is not enhancements, thats just to maintain our existing infrastructure. So with that the final budget is proposed at 1. 27 billion for fy21. Thats essentially pretty flat. Its flat. The fiscal year controls will remain in place from fy20, including overtime management, management of our procurement and managing our respiratory. And a hiring it freeze. Only the most critical positions will be reviewed and released to move forward largely with the transportation recovery plan. And to prepare us for the future that we think might show up in the next 12 months to the best of our ability. We did assume budget plus in the form of additional revenues that are possible. Those again are parking revenues and operating grants. But there are no planned expenditures against those revenues. They are budgeted strictly as reserves. In case of absolute collapse of our Revenue Sources, we still have 125 million available to cover us in fy21 and hopefully in fy22, if it becomes necessary. Again were leaving the 10 reserve for the worstcase scenario. So with regards to that, you know, what kind of service can we expect . Like what are we buying . The next two years and what are we planning for, based on the data that i showed you. First, i think we made this year clear. The Transit System will be different. We have noted changes to bus service, rail, making those improvements, transitonly lanes to maximize the efficiencies that we can realize across the city. We are continuing to work on the number of people that can safely move on our buses and trains. So were looking at making the Ambassador Program perfect, how we can get people what they need to get to where they need to get to for both essential and other trips. The safety is definitely our highest priority in doing that. We continue to expand walking and cycling through the slow Streets Program, which we discussed today. So we will continue to do that an provide people with the maximum amount of choices to get to where they need to. And again consistent with that value, of supporting a robust recovery in San Francisco, were funding the shared Spaces Program and the time to be able to support going shopping and commercial corridors over the next year. And probably beyond. Here are just some actions to date. So the Ambassador Program, the enhanced cleaning, were moving forward with getting additional car cleaners in place. [ please stand by ] so thats what the ridership looks like in that scenario. The orange bar is the 20 loss and shifting in trips. People are using muni on the weekend to go grocery shopping, to get to a park and fresh air and when they can and when they can stay safe and the orange bar is a little bit more realistic level of ridership, the purple prairie reflects what the ridership is with the essentially getting to that 70 of service but the restrictions we would have if we have to maintain social distancing on the buses. You just physically cannot carry enough people it. It is impossible. So those four legs are, the operators, and the number of fte to drive the buses. The number of revenue hours. The amount of service that 70 goal that weve discussed by the end of the calender year. The number of riders. How many people will follow that demand and that service and how much demand that will the fare revenue and all they have to commonsense to some equilibrium. The black line is kind of what we think could cap. What that reflects is the step up of service, which we discussed, opening, reopening rail in august and preparing for the school year to start. Iin august or september. It follows the increases in Service Hours. You are bell oat original. You are starting more a lot the purple. Theres a dipdown in december that has to do with the holidays. Its corrected for seasonality. We hit our 70 service goal meaning 70 of scheduled hours in that january and february period that weve discussed and you will see theres a bit of a fluctuation so we never it is less than that. This is definitely an optimistic scenario and again theres the lots of factors we need to take into consideration when considering what ridership must look like but we needed to run a mold to get a scenes of how people might behave. The step up is consistent with the following demand is consist with a lot of other cities were seeing and theyre taking into considerations the choices here in San Francisco. Its just the basics of the budget. Again, a lot leaner but still focusing on the post covid world building reliability in the service of people can expect and supporting the restoration and hopefully Economic Growth here in San Francisco. Equity of course is a key element of our values and so the office of equity and inclusion is still included in the budget to a little itsed extent. Exten. Additional ppos to manage plan congestion and Traffic Management is also in the budget. The muni transit assistance position for that expanded embassador program is assumed in the budget and moving forward with some type of more to consume and subway start up and we still plan for our central subway towards the end of calender year 2021. So the positions related successfully are slow streets and shared Spaces Programs are assumed in the budget and then lastly, waving all taxi fees and continuing the essential trips program. Lastly, is just the unknown. There are a lot of things we still know. We did not plan for a full virus resurgence and were seeing more cases across the nation and in california. So we didnt assume a complete second shut down. What if the fines dont increase and hit the baseline. We didnt assume for that. We are lower than prior budgets but what if theyre lower than that. Supply team issues and our ability to provide that service and social distancing and supplies all the these operational issues we cant predict a budget to those different scenarios i shared with you earlier. Those are the things in the budget im going to stop sharing. I do want to end and thank my team because we built in a period where we sent sex to seven months and we were doing this for six to seven weeks and they worked a ton of hours and im just a talking head. They all do the work and they really should get all the credit. Our objective was stability, sticking with our values and supporting economic recovery in the city and trying to avoid layoffs and trying to create some resiliency so hopefully we made the case to you that we did that. I want to thank you so much for your extensive presentation. I think its a lot to absorb. Thank you and leo and your whole team for hard work. You really have done an extraordinary job putting together all of the scenarios with all the data and im so impressed with that. Obviously its very depressing news. Im going to open up for Public Comment. Before i do that, i wanted to have directors ask any clarifying specific questions. If there are no questions ill move to Public Comment. Any questions . Great. With that lets move to Public Comment and can you open up the call lines. Your conference is in question and answer mode. To summon each question, press one then zero. You have six questions remaining. If you are on sfgtv dial the phone number and the access code and 10. Go ahead, first caller. I just wanted to speak. My name is milo and i wanted to speak in support of the busonly pilot program. Thats the next item, sir. That is the next calender item. Were on number nine. Yes. Sounds good. You have eight questions remaining. Next speaker, please. You have eight questions remaining. We are talking about our amazing budget. [laughter] its david fillpaw. I appreciate johnathans comprehensive presentation. I dont believe this revised version of the budget was presented to the cac nor was there an online budget webinar, i think, it would be helpful to do both of those things to explain what is proposed in the works. And to take questions and have dialogue limit today two minutes. Theres a lot of important fiscal and policy stuff buried in here. And reports and discussion you should have more on the budget and policy forums Going Forward if were going to continue like this for an unknown period of time. I support actually a lot of what is in here, this actually makes a lot of sense to me. Having follow the agency for oh, i dont know, the last 40 years or so. I am concerned about it, at least one item in here. Thats actually the appropriated board reserve. I would not appropriate those funds. I would leave them in reserve and have staff come back to the board and the board of supervisors to appropriate those funds should the need arise. Its important to maintain fiscal controls and transparency at this point and im also very concerned that by spending down the reserves in this way, it trades off the Current System for the future. It puts us in a terrible place two years from now and really degrades the state of good repair and im concerned about the Transportation System Going Forward. You have 12 questions remaining. I appreciate stuff and the presentation on the fiscal situation and my number one priority is making sure we dont layoff our worldclass workforce and its not laying people off and im not a fan of attrition Union Members and because we manage both streets and transit is that we have the ability to put our thumb on the scale and allow drivers to subsidize riders. Parking fees and fines already do this but a crisis like this is the right time to increase revenues from driving related sources. We should increase parking rater mats and moving driving infrastructure and parking and to give up their cars and switch to sustainability transportation. If we build the infrastructure, cars will fill it we will see more transit and bike ridership. Congestion has a role and it gets back to us by 2023. A quarter billion pounds a year from the congestion charge and we must move it to implement congestion pricing. The tools are costly, yes but they are necessary make sure we have them intect in t. A. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have 12 questions remaining. Next rider. Yes, roger, we can hear you. Hi, this question is it directed for johnathan. Johnathan i really like the way you present everything as Crystal Clear and lucid. I want you to know a couple weeks ago i made a public electric larration to volume tive and pay cut to pay reduction and johnathan, my question to you is this, for the next sfmta Board Meeting can you put together a budget that shows how many city leaders make what i do and or above and how much where what that look like in terms of for the next 12 months we can ensure and essential Services Like the back force program dont git canceled so johnathan, are you able to put that budget together in terms of voluntarily and reduction for the people the city leaders that make what i make and above. Can you put that together for the sfmta Board Meeting . Im sure you know this, were not allowed to do question and answers because of the Public Disclosure and all those rules. Johnathan will get back to you on that. I know there are limitations. Thank you, very much. Next speaker, please. You have 13 questions remaining. Thank you, chair, board and members. She and her. Theres good work here. Thank you for not raising the fears fo fares for the next two years were getting it in writing. This promise you are making to the people in the bay area keep fares stable. I believe that things will change and transit is going to recover because people are seeing how expensive cars are and its going to take some time. Clipper start is going to be turned on on july 15th so theres opportunities that we can get to bring more customers into the system with reduced fares and get them clipper cards, which is very efficient, cost efficient method of collecting fares so we need to promote programs such as that and allow our assumptions to include that. Reduce fare customers are essential to the system and we have to remember the similarities in those groups to ensure that our fare schedule are equal, senior k, disabled ad lifeline are very dis similar. Thank you for not reducing redu. Reduced fares must mean reduced service. Thank you for not increasing fares and keeping them stable. Appreciate it. Thank you. You have 12 questions remaining. Hell oh can you hear me. Its how i wanted to point out something if figured out and several times throughout this presentation which is that mta is about to spend this onetime money and its not sustainable longterm and more, so, i got distracted there. More revenue and new Revenue Sources are going to be needed so i know theres this minutes and i woulboard andit charges de fee proposal from back in 2014 and ready to be revised and does not require legislation on congestion pricing does. I would also like to urge you to charge more for parking and charge drivers more. Its not equitable to raise fares on transit riders, which you are not doing, while not raising fares or charges of equivalent on drivers. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, please. You have 12 questions remaining. Next speaker. Unmute if you would like to speak. Give us your name, please. Madam mot rat moderator woulu move to the next speaker. You have 11 questions remaining. Next speaker. Caller hello, this is Hayden Miller. Just wanted to say budget looks good. I am slightly disappointed to see that the free muni for all youth was cut. Im also interested to hear why there was over 40 million allocated to yo purchasing 40ft buses when seems like just like four or five years ago, we already got over 200 new 40footer buses so, that does seem a little confusing and then also i look into others have said, raising parking and driving fees as well as cutting executive and salaries to help mta continue to provide great Transit Service. Thank you. You have 11 questions remaining. Good afternoon, sheriff borden. This is zack membership and cam train excited to weigh in on the emergency transit only lanes. I wanted to write a few comments on the budget. We really appreciate all the hard work staff has put into develop this budget and redoing it. Again, this is a question trade off and values and we were start to go see the fare increase and obviously this has dramatically changed and the rider fees. Were also very for our Youth Programs and low income and marginalized youth from our cost of administering the program. We need to remove as many scenarios as possible tone courage ridership, especially young youth. We also look forward to working sources for muni. As they mentioned, we need more additional and progressive local sources of funding as we are deal with this crisis. We went to advocate for funding and transit and at the local level. Thank you. Thank you. You have nine questions remaining. Caller hi, good evening, members of the board and urban habitat and were also a member of the Regional Council and work had done on the budget and very difficult conditions as we all know so we appreciate the work and the general responding to the crisis. I would echo the comment the sources of funding turning that mta has to burn through its onetime funding reserves and from here and potentially through shifting some of the state funding around highways and some of the longer term Capital Projects to get some more money back down to you all at the state and able to shift some of those funds within mtas budget and i think it also brings out the need to think about the future and while were struggling in the present and thinking about a potential ballot measure down the line even if its 2024 well dig out of this crisis and go beyond it so i think its not too soon to think about that and finally i know every dollar counts and cutting back for youth, i think at this time when the residents and the most reliable muni riders are the residents who not not leave the city theres long time people board and raised in San Francisco and the folkser not going to do it 30 seconds and the changes and so i can hope we can blunt impact of those cuts on transit dependent communities and disabilities and take the account and think about dialing up some of the cause folks can afford more including looking at mtas own internal budget and salaries, thank you. Next speaker, please. You have eight questions remaining. Good afternoon, this is barrie toronto again. I first want to thank from the bottom of my heart from the taxi induce reand to cab drivers for this proposal and i hope you will prove today that the waving the taxi fees for the next retroactively fort last few months. Considering the lack of income and also we dont want to lose cab drivers because if its between paying 125 card fee and trying to find a different job or keeping themselves in the loop, so that is a be able to drive again when this will picks up and they feel their health isen johisnot jeopardized. The other couple of things, it would be great if the Taxi Services got the word out that you made this action today and to do the Drug Screening and renew their cards. I think the importance of having parking control officers during the peak time hours but also in the evening and on the weekends, where the staffing is low at this point, because your revenue is coming more from doing better parking and Traffic Enforcement and that would generate income there. Ive been saying it for years and you ought to look at more cars on the road and people not having easily finding parking that you step up this enforcement in order to keep traffic flowing and buses flowing especially. The legal use of the transit lanes and you are going to need more personnel for that and i think you will get your investments back many fold times and to help fund the bus lines. Thank you, very much. Thank you. You have seven questions remaining. Thank you for listening to the ground swell of support to reinstate back first wellness in the divisions, youve heard from Bus Operators, mechanics and many other frontline workers all asking for back first Wellness Services. Roger, president of the local 258 calls this a health and safety issue. Thats true. You received emails, phone calls and a petition from divisions with hundreds of signatures. Signatures. They have all told personal stories. Workers changed their lives with the guidance of that first wellness professional. Youve heard from ucf doctors who support back first and how back first Wellness Services are delivered. Meeting workers where they are in their divisions. They are medical experts in diabetes and chronic disease, all very real concerns here. Youve heard from a lot of people. And the message is the same. This is not the time to cancel this Wellness Program for Bus Operators. Modify it, sure. Reduce cost and scope, yes. But dont cancel the Wellness Program that has served sfmta workers for 19 years. Its needed now more than ever. We know now that workers and especially people of color, are most at risk in covid19 if they have high bmi, diabetes or high blood pressure. These issues are common and they address these Health Conditions everyday. By providing easy access and Important Health information. Its addressing the inequities in healthcare that black and brown work verse faced for generations, its important our National Conversation about race moves from talk into action. Supporting back first in the division is a very real way to do that. Since the sfmta is into creating greater equity. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. You have six questions remaining. Next speaker, please. Caller hi, this is sam deutsche calling on the budget issues. I just want to echo what other people have been saying about finding new and creative ways to raise revenue from automobile owners in San Francisco and i used to be a car owner myself and i was honestly stunned at how cheap parking permits were and how cheap meeters were in some areas and some areas didnt have any meeters and furthermore, just the general idea of a congestion charge especially in this soma or financial district areas. Or other creative ways to raise revenue. I think all good ideas and given this unique crisis, nothing should be off the table and finding ways ways to shift the chair and transit especially in the broader context of you current climate emergency. You have six questions remaining. This is martin calling from d5. I want to thank the sfmta board for taking the time to look through the budget and make sure we dont do really Massive Service cuts or massive im calling in regards to congestion pricing. I believe that s from 2023 on wards and we need to the worse ever and so question, just finish up my Public Comment. The issues and we know increased revenue for transit and for transit reliant folks that dont have cars like myself and also its safer streets for people in the Century Center so consider implementing condition pricing to close the budget gap in 2023 and sorry for reply sloppily Public Comment. Thank you for commenting. Next speaker, please. You have five questions remaining. Caller my name is herbert winier and i have some questions 20 add the reason why theres less usage of Public Transit transportation is a service and i believe it will be even worse reducing it. The friend crowding on the buses is in violation and the saturday system of transportation should be one thing im wondering about also is there are projects that are being contemplated and thats an overhead expense. This is a transit first city. Expenses like fold outs, modifications should be kept on hold and perhaps a little and this is a transit first city. Also another source of revenue is for their license and should be paying for parking and they are not a Privilege Group they should not be. They and they have a responsibility to this city and especially in a pandemic. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have five questions remaining. Hi, im the party Patrol Officer chapter president. And as far as parking and traffic in order for us to go ahead and make sure that we fulfill those obligations in the budget we need the support when it comes to our enforcement in the form of safe spaces, safe facilities and being proactive and efforts to keep these deals safe which we have the calling on four years now and the exhortation of moving a the they traffic leads to anxiety and we want to go ahead and give them the means to be trained and the areas of the dealing with those type of dealings and also, like said, continue with a call for safer working conditions as far as our facility, our driving vehicles and just doing the job so i hope these things are considered in an effort for what is support that is needed and to build that objective thaw guys have in your budget. Thank you for hearing me and have a good day. You have four questions remaining. Thank you. Sew fee alvarez and i wanted to thank johnathan for a clear budget description. I really appreciate that. And because were in the budget crisis, i urge the sfmta board and districted to address the systematic racism that has been a hiss tickal issu historical i, i would like to understand the operators part in control operators and officers custodians, car cleaners and Front Line Service staff are largely composed of people of color. People of color suffer the underlying Health Conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity which make them more prone to catching the virus. Now the virus is another up swing and along with the stressful and dangerous work conditions, we need that more than ever. To survive this pandemic. And support from the tine i have i can and medical community proving their wellness is invaluable and effective and to take a knee for george floyd is a great symbolic action which is greatly appreciated by everyone. However, the proof of San Francisco mta board of districtors and director tom lynn, commitment to stop the systemic racism of denying much needed wellness and Health Education to our sfmta employees is to adequately budget the Bachelor Program without service cuts or layoffs. Stop the systemic racism, restore the back First Program and without any type of layoff. Thank you for your consideration. Cutting management salaries would be a good start. Thank you. Thank you. You have four questions remaining. Next speaker, go ahead. My, m hi, my name is robert i live in district five. I wanted to stress my support for closed streets and taking cars off the road and i think that the parking situation and the city benefits drivers so im happy that sunday metering is going to be part of the budget, unfortunately under the circumstances, i support that we value sparking space because its so rare by pricing it at a level that the market will actually respond to and increase of the prices of parking or using cars in San Francisco where space is so limited. Thank you. You have five questions remaining. Next speaker, please. This is Michael Leary director of the back first Wellness Program. As chair and board noted in celebration honoring the 2020 top 20 veteran muni operators was held this morning and it was inspired and organized by local 250 and director tumlin, and chair board and president who provided welcome and heartfelt comments for these who contributed to the backbone for decades. It was a beautiful, beautiful event and acknowledgment. Both the mta and the board have received letters of support from operators, mechanics, supervisors and distinguishes physicians who specialize in diabetes, hypertension and bmi. Id like to point out that prior to the previous four rfps and contracts for the mta on site Wellness Program they undertook a review to evaluate the fiscal turn on investment each time the return on investment from the back First Program was greater than 31. Since this is an internal study utilizing data within the mta and i cant confirm it and that was held. But i can assure you that the back Roads Program does improve the health and wellbeing of the muni worker. And finally, i do believe the director com pin just recognize and service and i hope we dont miss this opportunity and thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, please. You have five questions remaining. Next speaker, give us your name and well start your two minutes. This is glen a and Customer Service and i would like to urge you to concede to give back first and i want to say amen to the first speakers as its very beneficial to every employees of sfmta through health and wellness. Which offer awareness to what we eat and how it can affect our body. Im one of the proof of that. I used to weigh 200 pounds and now im down to 170 and being healthy, and being aware that supervisor is very important in our lives and the way we put food in our mouth and with this back first, they offer exercises of how we can do it in a correct way and also through yoga, zumba and also they offer also with different speakers doctors that have been coming to sfmta and with the knowledge on what we need to do in order to be healthy and be alert employees of sfmta and because of that, i have not been calling in sick and im very healthy and ready to work and i would like to thank them for all the knowledge they have in part with me. Thank you. You have four questions remaining. Good afternoon. My name is anthony baluster i am a 9160 transit operator and chairperson for transfer Workers Union local 258. I understand that the final proposed budget for fiscal years 20202021, 2122 has been submitted. With that being said i and other hundreds of operators look forward to the back First Program visiting our division. It educates us for a Healthy Lifestyle with exercise and diet, it also took a blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol levels. They need back first to stay fit in mind and body to do our jobs safely and i ask they give careful considerations in making room to keep back first going and especially for San Franciscos hardworking muni operators. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have three questions remaining. This is matt from people protected. Like many of the other speakers today id like to push you to look for new sources of revenue for the department and the place to look for that is in car drivers. Parking meeters are opposed to residents are the place where we can actually do this and the places of highest demand for car drivers right now and into the future are parks. If i look at doll or as park by my house or golden gate park, its flood on all sides by parking where people dont have to move their cars for seven days. As we remove cars from our parks and create more carfree spaces, we need to repurpose the space adjacent to the parks for car storage for visitors and making that parking accessible to people will allow people from all across the region to park near our parks and enjoy them. I would like to encourage you to pilot this on fulton and lincoln between tray der up there. And where we currently have the carfree section of golden gate or jfk drive and it will allow more people too access the park, thank you, very much. Thank you, next speaker. Please. You have two questions remaining. Hi. My name is january from back first. Can you hear me . Yes, we can, thank you. Oh, good. Ive been with back first position wellness coordinators. I was in the position handling the wellness for many, many of my friends. I was there for 14 years and before that i was in wellness director in the corporate world and then in the county. I thought i knew what was wellness director was all about. I had a office, a team and i had provided seminars and lunch and learn. Boy, did i have a lot of learn. When i came to muni 14 years a. I didnt realize the friends i would make. I didnt realize the trust and the relationships that i was going to form. I was so lucky. I was in their homes and away from their homes. I learned that they needed the immediately to make some Health Decisions and solutions and i also knew i had to schedule things on a regular basis because i saw them davely. Its so wonderful to hear from anthony so thank you for calling and having worked with all of them and including roberta boomer and theyre all my friends and so im glad because some of them are reaching out to me virtually to say how successful theyve been. I would like to say three things ive learned and it has to be oneonone on the division because thats where they are. You cant be in an office and do it online. The professionals that are provided the services have to be passionate about exercise, nutrition, strength, bmi, blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol and its easy when you know someone and you are trying to help them solve their problems and we need to be proactive on the job stretch and nutrition as well as the division and speakers. Thank you, i hope you will reinstate this program. Thank you, very much. Next speaker, please. You have ser open questions remaining. Thank you, well close Public Comments and im going to turn it back over to directors who im sure have some questions. I do think i want to ask the directors and i know back first has come up a lot and this budget doesnt cut out back first but its not included we still have an opportunity after voting on this budget to make a decision to that program, correct . Thats right. Theres nothing in this budget that comes straight out of our operating budget. Its clearly and i fully agree a very Popular Program one that is loved by our workforce. Its one many painful cuts we have to make to our operating budget to deal with a 200 milliondollar structural deficit. Were cutting 30 of muni Service Hours and there are 40 bus lines. We have no path to restore service to in this budget absent, new, outside Revenue Sources. The cuts were making are terribly painful and were starting to think about so for example, if politics shift in november and the balance of power in the senate changes, there is the possibility of new money within this budget cycle and there is no possibility of new money coming from congestion pricing in this budget cycle so were starting to think about our priorities would be if we do better. This isnt an object ta miss tick budget and it drains our reserves. There is a likelihood we will not reach a 70 ridership level and in this case our choices back even more grim than presented to you here today. Im going to let the director lead us off with questions and im sure we all have a lot of questions. Thank you, madam chair. This budget has gone through some Stormy Weather even before it took effect. And they say that every storm cloud has a Silver Lining and for me at least, the fact is that if we hold the line on fares it means the clipper discount will live to fight another day. Maybe it will live for two years to find another day. If celebration of that, i have some brand merchandise im going to wear for the rest the item. I did some some questions for and you it probably would be easier we can ask a few. There we go. If you can start on slide 27. What struck me about this slide is that compared to our april budget, the general fund transfers, the operating grants and the parking fees all went up and that would suggest your Economic Outlook brightened a bit and i wonder what caused it to brighten. Thats a fantastic question. Im going to turn off my camera so you can hear me. On april 21th, the Controllers Office and the mayors Budget Office were still working off scenarios on what the general fund would look like. So we went on the 21st with their absolute worse scenario. Which was the 347 because we didnt want to take a chance it would be lower than that after you approved the budget in april. Think did did a revise of the where they landed and so had it been better so were using what they put in the Budget System and what their official revenue estimate was for us on operating grants, its been fluctuating a lot. We went with a really bad estimate of what we would get and we didnt have the governors revise yet and that was a little bit of a right sizing when we got into a sense of what sta would look like and sta is the state transit assistance from the state. When we got a sense of that, it changed. Also the cares act and the second two third traunch within the region has been going back and fourth as to how much that might have been as we got more information, we adjusted the amount so for those to amount those were the reasons for the change. Let me move on to transit fares. Could you go to slide 30 . What struck me here on the transit fair island for fy22 youve got an estimate of almost 190 million and in fy19, pre covid, the number was 197 so you are in the second year of this budget, you are getting awfully close to a pre covid fare revenue number. Again, i guess i would question whether we ought to be that optimistic. We should not be that optimistic. The 197 was actually less than budgeted so we have always done worse than a fare revenue and the past couple budget cycle. You are correct at that 188 is appoint of risk and this is one of those things we just dont know. It is less than what we thee reddick low shoultheetheoreticai am not super confident about the 188. It is not impossible that 188 is a theoretical situation that could occur depending on the recovery, if theres a vaccine at some point and those are all unknown factors that we did our best to assume. The 188 heads the service stable and it assumes changes in trips still and you are correct, that is definitely optimistic which is why weve left the 10 reserve unused. Well, maybe just to explore this question a bit further. You if you can go to slide 44. Thats the last one i wanted to look at. You are right, this is a awfully busy chart. I think in fact in your presentation, you characterized that black line as an optimistic line. And again, just so i understand this, the red bars at the bottom that are flat are basically the 6 physical distance right. Yeah, so based on and regard to that is what it would look like. The black line is above that and the challenge we share trying to get our head around when we can had a vaccine. Until we do, crowds of being on transit people is an uphill battle this assumes that falls by the this is and what were trying to do and best practices and were relying on social distancing and every other realized that other techniques are for more effective atri ducing virus transmission and including masks and everything that were already doing around cleaning. Were assuming that the 6 goal will be relaxed in the United States and global signs and were also needing to point out and it is not we have no viable financial path forward. That is correct. Muni has a diversified revenue base and your general Fund Contribution will be whatever it is and whatever the economy permits. It wont be based upon how many passengers you have. That is partially true but i mentioned the fourlegged stool. So these are Great Questions and they have come up in the past couple of weeks. The one the mta the Transit Agency and department of transportation so absolutely correct and we have parking and traffic revenue in a significant part of our general sunday set aside for the cost of Transit Service. Muni runs in all forms of muni across the m. T. A. And its 850 to 900 million. If we consider just the muni function of the mta but like other transit agencies the general fund is capped. Theres a maximum were going to get for the cost of transit and parking and traffic, yes, we are looking to increase revenues in this area but we are now enforcing on every day including sunday and theres not an eighth day of the week. We have put the pedal to the medal on all the other revenue revenue so its a preportion of the cost of each trip and at some point we do not collect enough to cover the cost of that have trip which is where jeff is saying its not viable. I understand that and i think jeff is making a rationale argument. People will make a decision on riding muni that wont think rationally and they will be fairful and the question im raising is not that your line wont go up, will it we may not so awful these questions are by way of an introduction to a suggestion that id like to make on how we go forward over the next year at least and i think your presentation that suggests some kind of quarterly briefing for the board on the budget and i frankly dont think thats frequently enough. I would like to suggest that we have a monthly report on budget versus Actual Expenditures and we track it that closely. What i would suggest we do in particular madam chair, i dont want to get too much in the weeds but just in terms of managing the information. If we can put that on our consent calender once a month, so at every other meeting, that way the public could track what were seeing as well and then if any of us want to take it off consent and talk about tay little bit more, including the staff, we can do so and if were not seeing a lot of change from the prior months, we just say homum and its there in writing for us in the public. I just think given how unprecedented this situation is, and likely how volatile some of these Revenue Sources are going to be, as jeff mentioned, what if its President Biden and a democratic senate, that could be a nice outcome for transportation. Thats my suggestion, madam chair is we find a way to keep tabs on this every month and track it as closely as we can. Im glad to direct to do that. I am already demanding monthly updates on the status of expenditures as well as revenue. Its easy enough to provide that to all of you and its in the interest of the agency to be very transparent with the public about the actual state of our budget and the requirement that which get revenue going off the fiscal cliff. We are training our reserves and living on credit cards in order to be able to maintain some service to the public and to avoid la layoffs. I want a rapid recovery rather than going through the problems we have gone through in previous recessions where it took us a decade to recover because we lost too many score staff people and it took us years to bring back that intellectual. I love this analytics dashboard you put together and maybe we could have one that does the budget, right. Translating with this 7 1 of boardings means against our anticipate the numbers to be and that would be something simple as well and they can say oh, were 92 down in our transit revenue and that means were far from making our targets and its easier than when we start to have to make decisions about trade offs and if people want to talk about that in the budget. Do you have anymore questions before i move on to the other directors . No, madam chair. Thank you. Director brinkman. Thank you. Thank you, director for starting us off on that and i am absolutely agree with you and im sure with johnathan as well that were going to have to look at this monthly, Monthly Financial statements will make a lot of sense. It will change so quickly. We dont even know what it is going to look like next month to your point, if we have a second lockdown of any sort that will blow this all up and well have to rejig it. The Monthly Financial statements were a policy we had where we shared those with the fta and rating agencies so i would hate us to get on the wrong side of that policy and what weve been doing. Thank you, again, johnathan, leo and team for all this work and we know were going to be super busy and were going to be looking at this on an ongoing basis none of this can be considered set in stone at all. So us having partners around the world to look at about how you brick bring People Safety back to transit, who is it that will set that distancing dictate for public trance . Is it a state of california policy right now that were making transit safe by using physical distance or is it a city policy and how do we go about countering that and allowing us to maybe increase the capacity on our buses and trains when we get them back . Everything were doing is subject to approval of San Francisco publichealth. They work closely with the National Centers for Disease Control in washington. The american Public Transit association has been partnering with the centers for Disease Control to try to get more useful and more uptodate based upon the science, National Guidance for Public Transit and learning from the Great Success in the east asian cities. Compared to the east asian democracy where of course wearing a mask is just a decent human thing to do in order to protect the health of other people, here in the United States, wearing a mask is somehow questioning my fragile masculinity. So we have a set of issues not faced by southern European Countries where public mistrust of government is arguably equally high we have a unique lack of productive leadership so were a risk in this budget is that the guidance from the centers for Disease Control and the San Francisco department of publichealth will say the European Data showing Wearing Masks and not talking loudly and protect the operators and the whole long list of things all of which the sft and that European Experience is not and that creates a problem for us and we dont have a means of enforcing those rules. Were not going to bring in the San Francisco Police Department to drag passengers off of muni buses and drag essential workers off of money muni buses. Its a conundrum and something weve having regular talks about with the San Francisco publichealth. I just want to johnathan and leo, thank you for your team and also just call out the hard work that had been done in past years by past boards and past cfos by the Board Members that i served with so that we have this reason day fund that we can look back on so remember the actions we take with future boards and cfos will hopefully look back and thank us for the hard decisions and the tough calls that we made. Thank you again. I won be able to do my job. Its raining and were using our rabies day fund and i want to make sure that i leave it in better and that is a basic, fundamental response ability of Public Sector leaders. Director eaken. Thank you so much. I have many questions and ill try to get through them. The first thing is just seeing the structural deficit of 96 million and fy23. Johnathan, you spoke about, i just cant help but remember that back in our january workshop, i believe you or leo give an estimate that congestion prices would generate 100 million a year for the agency and that was like one scenario. There are many scenarios. I would love staff to come to this board and have this conversation because your presentation underscores me we need to take seriously this idea of this new potential sustainable Revenue Source and just as you mentioned. We will be in need of and were talking about 2023 so we have some time to your point, but it does seem that this shifts from an idea that beef known for a long time as a best practice in planning to a financial imperative to seriously explore. So id like this board to continue to have conversations about making that less of an idea and potential low more of a reality and i want to observe the 20 milliondollar cut is something were feeling and many are delighted to see fares not rising and the problem with this proposal is people could easily afford to pay the increases if fares we were talking about that around able to do so and we havent made transit affordable for those who cant pay and in this city, they are many people who can afford to pay for those fare increases and now were not seeing that revenue. Thats a really missed opportunity that is really unfort a lot and we have to think about how we find more cushions to back fill that 20 million. Its just another problem that we have that is really unfortunate. Im also said to see the free muni for youths which was not a subjects of your presentation. I felt very proud of the staff and the board for the decisions to do what we all know is the right thing to make muni free for youths and i didnt think it would be one or two Million Dollars and i know were taking cuts but i want to emphasize a decision so in line with our values and because so many of our youth took the time to send us emails, i would love to ask the question about the Fare Enforcement question and how much were spending on enforcing the fears of those youth that are required to pay as opposed to making muni free for youth and then alleviating ourselves with a need to pay for that Fare Enforcement. Go ahead. Before johnathan answers the question, i just want to make it clear to the public because i think there was some misunderstanding among our callers that muni continues to provide free service to all low and moderate income youth in San Francisco. This is been a longstanding program which we will continue. What were not able inform afford to do is extend that program to upper income youth. Something that we did want to do but in light of the cut of service that were needing to do and the cutting of very valuable programs, we felt like there is no way that we can do this and were already taking far too much risk and relying on optimistic assumptions about fare revenue in order to avoid far more catastrophic cuts. With that. I want today do that reminder that free muni for moderate and low and moderate income youth will be maintained and is assumed in the budget. You are correct that the cost of upper income youth that do not qualify for the free muni program is about 2 million in fare revenue and we couldnt afford to lose because we balanced it. The cost is between six and a half to 7 million a year between the staff, equipment, hours and administration of the over all program. Do we have a sense of how much we would have saved by doing Fare Enforcement with you . As different question and we were planning it to discuss fare evasion. Like our current rates and how its changed since our last major report in 2013. There was a plan to talk about that and at the beginning of the new year were just evaluating the data now. The data will be completely different situation and that was our initial plan and well have to reevaluate it now. W. Well, i would say in this time, as you mentioned, of heartbreaking cuts across the board, i certainly would be in favor of considering whether we need to spend that money on Fare Enforcement or if thats something that gets suspended during this time i think well have a hard enough time with transit ridership and is it time to crackdown on people who cant afford to pay . This is a great challenge in irony. Running a Transit Agency that has still very depend around on user fares. We dont do Fare Enforcement in order to make money off of citations its something i want to avoid. The only reason we do Fare Enforcement is to get not 100 but an optimal level of fare compliance so everyone who is paying their fare feels like theyre treated fairly and also one of the reasons why we provide such deep and it could save us a couple Million Dollars and it would cost us fare more and these programs have to go to death. We need some level of Fare Enforcement and and in order to not further gut our service. The last is global and built off director hemingers comments. I think its just quite understandable that people are going to be concerned and in riding transit because theyve been socialized so well over the last few months and conversely, so that as you mentioned is going to be challenging and i just think conversely the trend is going the opposite direction is that many people are getting off the bicycle in their base basement and enjoying riding for the first time. I think theres a larger narrative here which unfortunately and the trend of biking and the trends of walking and driving and biking and i just think that this could be a real opportunity as we face these very, very challenging financial waters because theres no on operating costs and we look at these cuts of generally supportive of keeping the positions open and i think its a strategy that make sense but i really want to make sure that if were going to look at biking as a way to possibly take some of the support from people who are not comfortable making transit trips, are we staffing to build out that safe biking and Walking Network that i think we need. Just a walking data that suggests more people are comfortable returning to that than transit. I didnt see biking data but as we keep those positions open, were doing that very strategically with an it shows the experiencing and making all Historic Records in terms of bike ridership and were seeing similar patterns in our broken fragmented bike network and we do believe theres the opportunity for a significant shift in San Francisco from other modes to walking to biking to skate boarding and scooterring. While staff will not be able to keep up the base theyve been working over the last three months, the roll out of what weve done with shared spaces in other programs shows what government is capable of doing and if were clearing about our values and we continue measuring results engaging with the public after the initial pilot is put in in order to make adjustments, make changes, cancel programs, shift them around, this is what if is possible if were clearing what were going to do and engage through doing. Great. Anymore questions . Even heading into this pandemic, the assistant Streets Division has significant amount of unfilled staff positions and that were constraining their ability to deliver on our version zero objective and so, that is the reason for the question or are we going to continue to receive feedback that we just dont have the staff to do it and are we strategically keeping positions open in line with those goals. Every division in the agency is going to strengthen through attrition. Thats why the muni service cuts are so steep. It will con train the ssd to deliver the great street projects that san france enjoying. We are cutting everywhere. Dr. Heminger. Yes, sorry, madam chair. Maybe this is a second round here. I wanted to get back to the buses and trains. And this question of peoples perception of safety. Ive heard a number of different ideas discussed and jeff, i just wanted to ask you maybe if you could put them together in a package at least in terms of what the status is today. One is the idea of Temperature Checks before people get on vehicles and a second is handing out masks. A third is some kind of visible cleaning campaign, you know, we might generate fare revenue if people just saw cleaners get on the buses as well as fare inspectors. And then some kind of an i thought there was some kind of regional Public Information Campaign Underway or plan that will tell people and we are vemming not only sort of clarity about what all of the bay area transit operators are doing in order to keep their workforce and passengers safe but also put that out there to the public because were doing a lot and were gutting our Marketing Budgets and we have no budget to tell our story so hopefully they will help since every operator is facing the same conundrum. On cleaning we need to follow two pats simultaneously. One is rooted in science. Its continually changing and its about reducing the actual rate of transmission of the virus. And there is another pat of increasing trust. We are literally looking at cleaning products that smell like bleach. Even though they are better for our chemical sensitive riders, having our buses smell lick cleaning products is pure theater but may actually be necessary. Which know is the virus is transmitted by people who are a systematic. Thats why Face Covering are essential. My mask protects me from infecting you. I dont have a severe. What they found in is the public Temperature Check acted as a kind of Public Theater that encouraged people to reminded them were a new to this single state of emergency and reminded people of the simple measures like wearing a mask and washing your hands so it we have to weigh efficacy in terms of Public Theater and in terms of costs. Theres a lot to do. And, you know, another thing getting in the way is so much of the talent of this agencies are working 80hour weeks answering those questions and trying things out in the field every single day. Just a fie things. The attitude issue is going to obviously be a big one. I think in general were going to need the city to step up and the region to educate people. I hear this with restaurants who have behavior that people show up to dine being not social distancing and not Wearing Masks and in that situation, because people when they sit at a table take off their mask, masked steph maps are unmasked to wait on them and so its like we have a lot of work to do and educating people that they do think its a problem but theyre worried about muni buses. Theres a massive education issue around attitudes and i think i am fearful the worse is ahead of us with the rising rates of infections and the concerns that are rising from them. And we would probably intuesday congestion pricing so the numbers we talked about are not achievable and the near future. I did have another question about the developer fees. The reason we could have a greater increase is because of deferred fees because it went to 26 million. Are we sure we have enough in the bank of deferred fees we would reach something close to 20 million . So, there are two fees there. The old transit impact and where we did have a fund balance that we use for onetime or capital. We will use it for onetime procurement in the budget and not salaries and and there was a period, i want to say it was like 20092010 where the decision was to defer your fee payment from typically when come in and pay when you get a Building Permit so when you got your certificate of occupancy because people had a fee deferral for three to four years as they were building their towers and only at the pound where they were making profit and they were selling the condos and renting the apartments so weve had a large uptick due to catching up on the prior year and all the Development Going on in the city. Its unsustainable which is why we recommended no more than 10 million for operating onetime costs and we have enough in the bank now to feel comfortable. People want to do Small Projects for that regular stream of revenue. We have enough carbon hand to cover those amounts but i say again and i scream its a onetime source and well never have that level of resource again in the objective is to create stability service so people feel comfortable coming back and we have the service so theres an economic recovery in the city, so we are using the credit card hoping our salaries will go up to pay the bill later. I know people brought up salary and Salary Budget cuts. They are discovered by union and city wide union and so i guess what is the number one dealing with that issue of Major Management across the board which which was anyone making over im assuming some 75 or 100,000 a year. I dont know. What is the process for the city taking budget cuts at that big macro level and for us individually its a conversation with individual unionses and when does that cycle come up or opportunity or not . Were coordinating closely with the department of Human Resources city wide on those questions. Sfmta we had the steepest, fastest cuts to our Revenue Sources because we get money on a daily and weekly basis. The city is still getting data on the longer term impacts, for example, to selftax hotel tax and other quarterly and semi annual taxes. The over all city budget is needing to ask itself also some very painful questions and well be coordinating with them to coordinate with labor about all city departments make it through the financial crisis and its worse than any financial crisis the city has experienced since the great depression. Even if all the city officials took a cut that wouldnt necessarily mean that money came to mta, correct . It would be because of the way the budget is done but not all of it. Its something to note. Going forward, i love the analytics dashboard youve done. If we can also do something similar of like projected budget goal and where we are so the public can real time and i also do think that we should launch workshops where we provide trade offs. This amount and serious things and helping people do some surveying and getting out to the to understand them make the trade off and we need these conversations with the board of supervisors about the changes to specific districts and what we can take from this period is take the things that happen successful and the sim betterness weve been able to show to make things happen quickly and some programs whether its showed streets or shared spaces and how we can marry the wonderful thanks that came out of those processes with helping us a chief on the bun et side and i dont know if theres revenue or other opportunities there but we have to figure out how we keep the public engage from here is the question from making process and these are two programs that are similar and serve the same purpose. Not that you are putting a Bicycle Program against a pedestrian program. I dont think thats what we want to do and what we want to be doing is these are true Pedestrian Safety over arching projects. Not in a particular neighborhood, right. But in theme if we have to cut, which is more important, right . Signalization or marking in the sidewalks, its not a good example but its what i mean. We need to really give people honest, in sight and especially our elected leaders because what we need them to do when we defer the fare increase, was that the board of supervisors would help us come up with another revenue stream and having the public fully engage in the process and problem and the des decisionmaking us because anything we decide will have to be voted on by the public and the public has to understand theyre part of the process of getting through this crisis to get to the other side so i do think having workshops, even early, starting to figure out the priorities there are and working with neighborhoods to think about those things. Now is the time when people are online and paying attention to zoom meetings and all that staff theyre not as much fun as the inperson things but for sure people are doing those. Even if we did mta happy hours where people came around the topic, being creative doesnt have to be super formal but we can figure out ways to be more engaging with the public and i think it will be very helpful. Its incredible and all the deep dive and if we can continue to and keep the trends and data like you did with the various study you drafted we could be in a good position moving forward doing that theres no good position in the current state. So with that, do i have a motion from board moms. Motion to approve. Second. All in favor, secretary boomer, roll call. Clerk [roll call] clerk 40 the budget passes. Moving on, madam chair. Item 10 amend add of section to designate temporary transit only areas at laguna honda boulevard, clarrenden, for tol portola, min street, seventh street, masonic street, woodside avenue, bossworth and presidio avenue and add a section to temporarily authorize the city traffic engineer to approve temporary transit only lanes and tow away lanes and improving temporary parking and traffic modifications to put into effect the temporary transitonly lanes. Great. So with that, were expecting sean kennedy and michael roads s so please, take it away. Excellent. Thank you, very much. Good afternoon. My name is sean kennedy and im the transit planning manager here at mta. And my group does two things. Daytoday Service Planning of the system as well as planning and implementing the Muni Forward Program including these temporary transit lanes we are going to be talking about today. Obviously the city is facing some economic and mobility crisis. You know, the positive things about that, you know, we are lucky to have tools in our toolkit to mitigate the issues this crisis is raising and obviously over the last five years, staff has worked together with this board as well as board of supervisors and other stakeholders in the city to implement almost 70 miles of transit improvements and even changed a number of our lines where re adjusted where service is going to make it more efficient and these interventions have really been successful and weve proven theyre successful and wove grown ridership by 10 on a number of lines and so, now we really need to apply these lessons that weve learned over the last five years quickly and earnestly. As you know, for the city to recover, transit has to thrive, not just be a part of the mix. It really is a huge bit of the answer to the larger problem. And so, you know, my group is taking on two different approaches to make that happen. One, and that is director tumlin has talked about several times. [please stand by] so there is a deep and urgent responsibility to direct our limited resources to protecting Public Health and establishing the basis of a strong economy. If we dont get congestion under control, many people who have to drive for work or other appointments will no longer be able to do so without getting stuck in endless traffic jams and transit riders could face much longer delays before covid, even. We have to act fast and make sure the congestion doesnt drive our recovery to a halt. As sean mentioned on top of congestion in the coming year, transit in San Francisco faces two major challenges to providing the capacity we need for Economic Equity and for Public Health. First of all, our budget can only carry a third right now as we talked about the and second we face a major reduction in service as we have been speaking about earlier in the meeting due to the impacts of covid19 on our budgets and workforce. Next slide, please. Our bus capacity is now reduced by about two thirds, as i mentioned, due to distancing requirements. Normally a bus can carry 60 people, but we now have 20 people viewed as crowded. We are carrying 30 people right now compared to about 100 before. This means it takes about three buses to move the same number of people as one bus did back in january, but we obviously have fewer operators than we did before, so our capacity, in effect, is just limited. Once ridership does start to return, we think the loss in capacity is going to be equivalent to, you know, two out of three riders not being able to complete their trip because they are getting passed up. We will see real constraints on how many people can get on board. To put it another way, these limitations would basically impact many more people than if the bay bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge shut down during rush hour. Its a huge issue to have reduced capacity. On top of reduced capacity, we protect service in 2021 project service in 2021 is going ab about 70 of what was scheduled in january 2020 due to our budget impact. Our Service Delivery will be reduced by budget measures that we talked about earlier, as well as cleaning requirements and higher share of operators on leave and other impacts that will bring us down to about 70 of what we were before. Congestion has actually been lighter than usual since shelter in place went into effect, and the lines are seeing about a 15 reduction in travel times. But thats not going to last. As weve seen, congestion is returning slowly and steadily. In fact, more than slowly. Its coming back much faster than transit ridership, and if we dont do anything, we expect well see an additional 10 reduction in Transit Service providing as a result of increased congestion. The buses we have out there are going to be stuck and not provide as much frequency as they did before. Next slide, please. We also know that people who are riding are a lot more likely to be essential workers and less likely to have any other travel choices. In doesnt mean that their trips should bear any Greater Health risk to those of someone able to drive, walk or bike. Like many other cities, our current ridership is much more likely to be black, indigenous, people of color and individuals of lower income, and those without housing than the population as a whole. Were conducting a survey of our riders right now to better understand their demographics and their unique needs that transit is serving in this time, but we know that covid19 has exacerbated existing racial and economic disparities and social distancing right now is a privilege thats not available to everybody. Now is the time we think if ever to make equity the center of our recovery efforts. And from our Bus Operators to Grocery Store and health care providers, were fully committed to prioritizing the health and transport of the essential workers who keep this city going. We also know that doing so is essential to reducing the transmission of covid19 in the community, for Public Health reasons and for equity, this is something has to be done to address this. Next slide, please. This map shows the transit travel plans during shelter in place on some of our busiest lines. While the systemwide average i mentioned was a 15 savings during the peak, some areas saw up to 50 travel time savings in peak hours. As you can see here. So the vast majority of the time savings is due to reduced congestion with only about 5 of it coming from reduced boarding time. Its not less people boarding the traffic. Its less traffic the buses are stuck in. Were investing this time savings in more frequent service with the same number of buses, which is something were already doing right now, which we know reduces crowding and supports social distancing and both the safety and comfort of people on board right now. One kind of remarkable thing we saw when we looked at travel times across the system during shelter in place is where weve already implemented muni four projects, we generally saw little travel time savings because we were protecting our buses from traffic. As sean mentioned, there are basically proven measures to protect us from congestion and keep transit moving. Next slide, please. So to ensure congestion does not crush peoples ability to engage in social and Economic Activity and create more crowded conditions on muni, were proposing a program of emergency transit lanes. These lanes will be used as soon as possible using reverse l material. First responders will also be able to use this network of lanes to respond to Health Emergencies faster. With the city progressing through the next levels of reopening in the coming weeks and months, whatever that timeline is, we need to have the first set of transit lanes in quickly, likely within the next six to eight weeks, to get ahead of increased congestion on some of these early corridors. Under normal conditions these projects would go through much more extensive outreach but these are not normal conditions. We are proposing more quickly to get the benefits ond ground before we start seeing buses have congestion again. The lanes are temporary, and without further board action, they will automatically within 120 days after the citywide emergency order ends. So they go away if they dont have further approval. Next slide, please. The program is meant to ensure that people who have the fewest travel choices, especially lowerincome people of color are not stuck on slow crowded buses. Its also about reducing the spread of the virus as the city reopens so that Public Health impacts, and finally its about ensuring our citys economic recovery can continue without getting stuck in catastrophic congestion that will undercut our efforts to come back. Next slide, please. So this map shows the locations of the first batch of transit lanes which were seeking approval for from the board today. These lanes would be installed as quickly as possible. They were chosen based on their travel time savings during shelter in place which tells us that normally were getting stuck in congestion on these lines, for their equity benefits in terms of the whole line, and from the board of supervisors, the sort of ease of implementation and how quickly we can do it, their proximity to hospitals in some cases, Transit Service levels that were going to be providing on these corridors, and other complementary benefits such as enhanced safety in some cases where well have a shared bus bike lane. All of these lanes that are benefiting from the first batch of corridors or Muni Service Equity strategy neighborhoods and everyone on the line will benefit from the travel time improvements. It will support increased frequency on the entire line. You wont be stuck in congestion in that segment. And as of august, each of these lines will my understanding is will have more frequent service than ever just to keep up with demand given the reduced capacity of buses right now. So a line like the 14 mission, we are running more frequent buses on it than ever in the past just to keep up, even though we dont have as many riders with that social distancing requirement we need to be running more buses than ever before. Next slide, please. So the first project in more detail is Mission Street south of market, which is shown on the map here. This corridor was chosen because of the 14 and the 14r. These lines also serve multiple equity strategy neighborhoods including the mission and others, and the 14rs ridership is 82 minority and 62 lowincome. Thats one of the highest rates in our bus network. Were running more service on mission, as i mentioned, than ever, but the buses are still not meeting demand because of the need for physical distancing. So theres a really urgent need to do something here to at least preserve the level of time savings we are getting. The demonstrating the need that we have here to protect buses from traffic congestion. This project would create 24 7 dedicated transit lanes and widen the existing travel lanes which are currently too narrow for our buses. As a result of that, this is one of our highest collision corridors for transit collisions due to the sideswipes that occur there. Currently mission has parttime restrictions on both sides of the streets, and to widen the lanes we would need to remove all of the parking on one side of the street, about 160 Parking Spaces in total. Wherever possible the loading zones, commercial loading zones would be relocated nearby, and most of the parking removal would be primarily focused more on the western part of the road since theres actually generally already no parking on many of the blocks closer to downtown. On the opposite side of the street, so on the side where were not removing parking, the current [indiscernible] regulations would actually be rescinded, which means that about 120 Parking Spaces would be newly available all day instead of having a tow away restriction. Almost every space has a parttime towing restriction right now to help with the transit lanes, but in the future, only one half of the block will have that, and the other half will actually have fulltime parking available. So that actually means that theres going to be more parking and loading available than before in the peak hours, even though were losing parking offpeak. Its going to be an increase in parking and loading during the peak areas. And the impact of this proposal is we can run the 14 and the 14r faster and more frequently than we could if we allow congestion to come back, which means less crowding on board and just, again, one of our most heavily used bus corridors, so reducing crowding is really an urgent need. Next slide, please. The next project is along the 43 masonic and the 44 oshaughnessy. Laguna honda, woodside and bosworth. We have seen up to a 31 time savings in these corridors. We cant really do priority on the entire route of the 43 or the 44 because of the limited street geometry and some of the segments, but these segments have the most impact of the entire line. Its bang for the buck of improving the travel time and capacity on these higher lines. They are also both equity strategy lines, and compare to covid19, ridership on the 43 was 56 minority and 44 lowincome, and similar on the 44. The proposal would take the existing curbside travel lane on each of these streets and convert it to bus, taxi and right turn only. Bikes would be allowed on three other streets, already bike routes, so we want that lane to be available to bikes still. And no parking removal would be required on any of these corridors. Left turns would be restricted in some places, but were actually were actually looking at making those potentially 7 a. M. To 7 p. M. Instead of full time if possible to minimize impacts to local residents, maybe get to their garage or parking near their house. And i also want to note here that based on feedback from residents were actually staff is requesting to withdraw one of the restrictions. Thats a lowturn volume street. Its just kind of a culdesac. The turn volumes are very low. We dont think the left turn there will pose major problems, so were proposing to implement it without that, see how its going and keep monitoring it. But that is different than what was in the legislation today. The end result in this corridor is increased frequency and reduced crowding on these critical lines and serve multiequity strategy neighborhoods, including the western edition, the excelsior and the bay view. Next slide, please. So the final of the original data for the first set of corridors were talking about today is 7 and 8 street and were seeing up to a 35 travel savings on these corridors right now. Again, this is an equity strategy line as well, and this section is a key equity strategy neighborhood with a very high share of transitdependent people who rely on muni to make essential trips. Its serving the tenderloin and the bay view as well. So prior to covid19, the ridership was 57 minority and 44 lowincome, also one of the higher rates in the system. The proposal here is to convert the curbside lane on the right to bus and taxi only with returns allowed. Essentially from market to townsend. Improved travel time along the slowest sections of the route which will help make crowding and reduce riders exposure to covid19. One note ill make about all three of these proposals is that the exact extent of where the transit lanes will be is still somewhat in development. We have to look at things like the transition from one lane to two and where exactly these pick up. Some of these may not be every single foot of the corridor, but the snaps you will see here show the general extent of them. Next slide, please. Youll notice that the first set of projects are generally either in very dense neighborhoods, like thelma, where most people get around without a car. Or they are in neighborhoods that are less dense, less central, but where theres not a high concentration of lowerincome people. The goal is to provide benefits to historically marginalized people, muni riders who are coming from equity strategy neighborhoods, for instance, while assuring that were not unduly impacted vulnerable populations that need to drive because they are not well served by transit, walking and biking lanes. Very thoughtful about what neighborhoods we start in. As we learn more from the first set of projects, well be reaching out to communities one by one as we pursue additional corridors beyond whats presented today. We are asking for the sfmta board to delegate authority to the traffic engineer to approve additional corridors following a public hearing if they meet a very clearly defined set of criteria. So they have to have at least 12 time savings or more during the shelter in place, and we have to be planning to bring back muni Service Within 45 days and preserve at least one travel lane per direction and not be removing more than one travel lane per direction for that corridor to be a candidate. In addition to that, any of the muni metro rail corridors would also be potential candidates for this approval process where it would go to a public hearing and have the city traffic engineer. We need to move ahead of congestion, but were also looking closely with communities to ensure the projects achieve their goal of supporting equity, health and the citys economic recovery. I also want to note that this delegation of authority includes the [indiscernible] rail Service Changes that sean alluded to earlier, including transfer accessibility improvements at church and market and at west portal station. Those improvements could go ahead after a public hearing and with approval by the city traffic engineer if the board approves the delegation of authority today. Next slide, please. The timeline for implementation of the first steps of the project is fast. If approved today, we plan to start implementation as soon as the beginning of august, which is as soon as our crews that are available given that they are finishing up work on other projects on locations like field street, which was just transit lanes that were just approved at the last Board Meeting. And that will be complemented by simultaneous extensive evaluation and outreach that will start as soon as these projects are on the ground. Where were seeing strong benefits and have Community Support, we may also support we may also pursue legislation of permanent transit lanes in the coming year, but thats really going to be a matter of going through a process of Deeper Community engagement and evaluation before we take that step. All of these temporary emergency transit lanes will automatically stop within 120 days after the emergency order ends, except for those that the board takes action to make permanent. So we expect a much more robust action before any of these any portion of any of these would be even presented to become permanent. Next slide, please. As we think about outreach for this project, weve had to rethink our usual approach given all of the limitations that covid19 imposes on our outage. We are facing new challenges to reach everyone and to bridget the Digital Divide as not everyone has access to a computer, smartphone, et cetera. So far weve informed communities via online forums and Public Notices at 73 intersections about this meeting. Emails to over 5200 recipients on our email list, people who are already signed up to learn about mta project updates, as well as reaching out to over 70 existing community and business groups. So we thought are either in the neighborhoods that are affected or have a general interest in these types of projects. Weve also presented to the other board and met with each individual supervisor on the board of supervisors, multiple times, to discuss the proposed projects and their district. We are also working to ensure that outreach is deep and robust as the project moves ahead. Next slide, please. Going forward were going to employ a suite of engagement options such as text message surveys, online meetings, website updates, potentially phone calls to people, other measures during our evaluation processes to ensure that particularly historically marginalized communities are prioritized and not overlooked in the decisionmaking space, but really that we reach everyone once these things are once these initial projects are on the ground. As plans are implemented, well be actively soliciting feedback and input from members of the public once they have the chance to see the lanes for themselves and see whats working and whats not working as well. Again, thats especially in communities of color and for lowincome residents, but really for everyone. Were going to use this information to inform and really codesign the future iterations of project implementation. So as we think about what these projects look like in the future, whether its nearterm fixes or more permanent ideas, we plan to do that in close collaboration with Community Members. We have to move fast, but we are going to establish a strategy to rapidly mitigate any unintended impacts, especially to marginalized communities incurred through the implementation of this project. So if we see, you know, unexpected levels of traffic diversion happening to a side street or a street thats really backed up, were going to be looking at ways to very quickly get in and make changes. Again, temporary lanes automatically sunset if they are not legislated, and they can even be removed or adjusted before the sunset date if needed. Next slide, please. So the key aspect of the plan is the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the elements as plans are implemented really with an emphasis on the project goals, again, of equity, Public Health and economic recovery. Community input will be an essential part of the evaluation process, as ive mentioned. Were looking to work with the community both to shape the design of the evaluation, but also to take Community Input as an input into the evaluation itself. In addition to community feedback, you know, other areas of the evaluation were going to look at are going to really hit on the project goals. We will look at health and safety benefits, Economic Health of the corridors, look at neighborhood general impacts. Look at transit performance, of course. Traffic safety is something we will be monitoring, and really looking at impacts to other users. Those are all things we want to be monitoring and kind of be keeping a finger on the pulse of once these projects are implemented. Public engagement will shape adjustment to these projects and help us determine if and what longer term improvements are pursued on these corridors. Next slide, please. So to recap todays legislation would do the following. It would approve temporary emergency transit lanes on mission and thelma, masonic, shaughnessy, laguna honda, woodside and bosworth. It would also delegate authority to the city traffic engineer to approve temporary emergency transit lanes on additional corridors that meet a defined set of criteria after a public hearing. Next slide, please. So today the in terms of the next steps today the mta board reviews this proposal and reviews it for an approval, and if approved, this program in july would you know, wed immediately begin developing the evaluation framework with the community for each of these initial projects bs and also continuing to inform neighborhoods that temporary transit lanes are coming to the neighborhood. We got started on that but we would shift to informing people about the changes in the corridors. And then in late summer, to probably august, and into fall, we will begin installing the first emergency temporary transit lanes. We will begin the evaluation process of the first set of lanes to go in right away and monitoring on a realtime basis how the travel time, other impacts are playing out. It will develop proposals for additional lanes that could be approved for the city traffic engineer after public hearing if the authority is delegated to do so. Again were moving as fast as we can to get ahead of congestion and ensure that we can provide a Transit System that will support equity, Public Health and our citys economic recovery. Thank you very much, directors. Thank you. Are there any looks like there is a clarifying question. Yes, thank you, chair borden. Mr. Rose, good presentation. Thank you. I want to bring up the issue that was kind of one of the hot button issues the last time we approved some red transit lanes, and that is the question of shuttles in the transit lanes. At the time, the board was still supportive of shuttles using the red transit lane, but i know that some members of the board of supervisors and members of the public think that the shuttles dont belong in the red transit lanes. It looks like all of these lanes are being classified as transit and taxi or transit and taxi and bicycle. Im supportive of the shuttles using these transit lanes because i think it increases the capacity of the lane. It was pointed out to me by a very smart engineer that it also helps with enforcement, keeping cars out of the transit lanes if they are seeing shuttles and buses in there so that the transit lanes look like the transit lanes are more used. Are we in the evaluation process going to have a component that shows the impact or lack of impact on shuttles using these transit lanes . And do we think that were going to see more shuttles spring up in light of businesses trying to get their employees to work under the in the postcovid or covid world . And i guess this kind of just if you could speak about shuttles in the transit lanes and how we intend to kind of monitor these and what we think that scenario looks like. So let me speak to that. The issue is complex, so i will try to provide as brief a summary as we can. From a Public Policy perspective, we want to make sure that were managing the streets of San Francisco to move the greatest number of people and to prioritize both the public as well as people who have the fewest mobility choices. So that means muni being the most efficient mode of transportation and also the mode of transportation that serves people with the least means and fewest choices. Muni always comes first, and we want to make sure that nothing we do is impeding the [indiscernible] muni buses. But with leftover space, we then ask the question what else can we do with that space that serves the public good . So on, for example, the masonic street corridor, a service that uses that street [indiscernible] frequently are the [indiscernible] so we have the you know, our bus frequency is not so much that sharing masonic would pose a problem, and that could create great benefit for many essential workers in San Francisco. We want to make sure that continues. There are also a number of shuttles, like the mission bay shuttles that we dont have any concern with. Many of the concerns we have heard from the public are specifically about the privately operated publicly restricted shuttles that leave San Francisco. What were finding from all of those employers down in the south bay is these are the sorts of jobs that lend themselves to telecommuting. Many of them have no immediate plans to fill their offices and that will dramatically cut off those shuttles leaving San Francisco. The people who still need to travel are San Franciscos essential workers, including the essential workers in businesses that are starting to reopen, and that includes a lot of shuttle riders. So i think this is something that well want to include in our evaluation and continue to watch over time to make sure that we are always prioritizing the flow and reliability of publicly accessible, publicly regulated services, and this would include taxis as well. And you know, and having a hierarchy of use that serves the greatest number of people but mostly optimizes for the public good. Thank you. Thats excellent. Thank you. Great. Are there any other clarifying questions . Okay, director ekins. Thanks for the presentation. I just wonder if you could go back to slide 13. You dont necessarily have to show it, but i think i was a little bit confused about the parking situation where were both taking away parking on one side and making it permanent on the other side and putting in bus lanes on both in both directions. Can you just walk through that one more time . Yes. It is a little confusing, but i think what we have today is there are already four lanes on Mission Street, two lanes in each direction. And theres a parttime transit only lane. So the sort of curbside lane is a transitonly lane during the peak hours, but its so narrow that it doesnt really make sense for it to be a transit lane unless the parking is removed, so we actually have a tow away restriction during peak hours, so theres no parking just to make that travel lane wider. Thats the current condition. If you drive or walk down Mission Street in rush hour, youll see the parking is towed away, transit is in the curb lane. Its really wide dedicated lane, and most places many of the blocks the parking is removed on both sides at that time. What were proposing is that instead of sort of having this parttime thing that then reverts to having four very narrow lanes that buses have to straddle, were instead proposing to have just one parking lane thats always there on one side of the street and then get rid of the other parking lane and kind of shift the travel lanes so that you have four travel lanes that are always there, that are always wide enough and that the buses can always pass other vehicles and have a 24 7 dedicated lane. So what it looks like is its always having one lane of parking and then always having four travel lanes, two of which are dedicated to transit, instead of sort of like the two parttime tow away lanes on both sides where we see a pretty high rate of people we know that right now its an issue that people try to park in those lanes and theres no loading available on mission, so this option gives us at least a way to provide dedicated loading that is gonna be there on one side of the street all times of day. And so the loading on the other side of the street . What happened there . So part of the time we know that already thats got a tow away restriction there, so they are not able to load even today because its tow away. Other times of day what were looking to do is now that we have fulltime parking on the other side of the street, were going to look at relocating loading spaces to the other side of the street or as close as possible. Part of the process will be working with merchants to identify loading needs. We have done our best job to identify relocated spaces for now, but we are going to be looking at merchant by merchant by merchant is this meeting your needs, and we rapidly get out there and find an alternative solution if we need it, including potentially even this might open the opportunity for Outdoor Dining and other things that wouldnt have been possible before because of the tow away restrictions. [indiscernible] Market Street was we looked at all of the cross streets and rearranged most of the parking for the first half block of the cross streets to make sure that there was adequate loading Space Available for every commercial business. Ensuring the Small Business on Mission Street is just as important to us as ensuring that muni was in place. Great. Are there any other additional questions, clarifying questions before we open it up to the public . I understand we have members of the public. Okay, great. Moderator, can you open up the lines . Operator thank you, madam chair. If anyone is watching from sfg tv, if you wish to address the board on this topic, please call the number so summon each question, press one, then zero. You have 13 questions remaining. All right, first speaker, please. Give us your name or Start Talking and we will set your two minutes. Go ahead. Hi, this is michael [indiscernible] thank you [indiscernible] in general, im bullish on trials. Through trials we really get to learn. Please share the metrics on the [indiscernible] particularly on its major alternative arterials. Engineers, im one of them, love to solve problems, but we all run the risk of unintended consequences. Masonic, to me its an artery which keeps the city flowing. I think of it like a body. When we choke it or eliminate it, we have problems. Traffic will find another way to go, side streets or arterials. [indiscernible] buses or bikes. People are going to get nifty, and thats going to need side roads or getting aggressive. In my neighborhood i already see cars moving aggressively in my neighborhood, and when traffic goes up, aggressiveness goes up, and pedestrian risks rise. Here are some alternatives. If the goal is to improve transit, turning masonic into a or a bus sign that has 12 [indiscernible] if this was a 5, 14 or 38, i could get on board. Consider making the line shorter ore breaking it up. Its currently 50 minutes long. 10 delay is a 5 minute delay in transit. As you are reporting 12 reduction, thats about 30 seconds on the stretch of masonic in question. Consider also making [indiscernible] a priority or just limiting it to peak hours only, which i think you said. Im in support of that. If the goal is issue focus on the issue of our neighborhood and thats masonic at oak and fell. 30 seconds. Pedestrian intersections to lower the risks. I fear that removing a lane and removing a [indiscernible] make risks like whack a mole. It will go some place else and into residential neighborhoods. The other general question is what is the equivalent passenger minute of a bus versus nonbus. The director said you wanted to have equity, so what is that equity in your tradeoff studies . Thats the general question i have. Thank you very much. In general im support of trying this. Its a different way of moving. Great, thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 24 questions remaining. Next speaker . Can you hear me now . Hello. So i support this, but i would make three changes to the proposal. One, i would limit the lanes to not 24 7 but to either 7 a. M. To 7 p. M. Or 6 a. M. To 10 p. M. It seems to me that there really is no significant delay congestion traffic at 3 in the morning and theres no reason for the restriction to be in effect 24 7. Number two, i dont understand why the thing would expire 120 days after the end of the emergency. I would make that more like 30 or 60 days, unless theres such a subsequent legislation to retain all or some of these lanes. And three, in terms of the conditions that the city traffic engineer would have to abide by for the delegated authority, which im generally not crazy about, but i can live with here, i think the level of Transit Service on a particular corridor should be a factor. If were putting in all of this effort for temporary transit lanes, for routes that only operate every 15 or 20 minutes, thats only three or four transit vehicles an hour in each direction, and it seems like thats a pretty high costtobenefit calculation. For those corridors that have a higher level of service, where theres a higher level of service, i think it makes more sense, so i would perhaps limit it to those corridors where service is at least every 10 or 12 minutes or more frequent but not for those corridors where its every 15 or 20 minutes, or less frequent. So those are the three changes i would make to the program. Otherwise i am supportive. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 24 questions remaining. Hi, martin calling from d5. I want to thank the board and the director on moving forward with transit lanes during this covid19 pandemic. Were going to see an increase in car usage. Thats going to adversely impact transit riders like myself to depend on muni to get around the city. Certainly i dont think that this plan goes even far enough. I looked at the original plan. It looked like there were many other lanes that were considered that were not in this final plan. I do encourage the Board Directors to consider expanding the emergency transit lanes to the original plan that was presented in a draft thats not in this version. Furthermore, id like to push back on the fact that on the comment that says that transit lanes will push traffic to other streets. The reality is that when people can use transit and when transit is fast, people dont actually move on to different streets. [indiscernible] is that side streets did not get more congested, so this is frankly false and we should not be considering the need of car drivers who have the possibility of going anywhere any time when were trying to be a transitfirst city that puts the kneads of muni riders, many of which are lowincome people, and sorry, many of which are lowincome people and people of color above the needs or desires of drivers. So again, thank you to the board of directors and to director tomlinson for bringing this plan up, and i hope that it expands rapidly. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 23 questions remaining. Hi, this is [indiscernible] San Francisco transit riders. I want to thank sfmta staff and board and members of the public for their [indiscernible] i want to reiterate our support for extending temporary emergency transitonly lanes [indiscernible] city. The lanes you would be approving today would make a transformative difference for riders across the city. They also demonstrate your commitment to truly making San Francisco a transit city. These transit lanes give muni riders the experience of benefiting from [indiscernible] while still having opportunity to weigh in [indiscernible] this process where the pilot supports outreach will only strengthen community engagement. That said, these lanes already have widespread support, including from many of our members who tried to [indiscernible] unable to stay for the entire length of the meeting. If we dont support dedicated transitonly lanes, muni will become increasingly inefficient to use, expensive to operate and more punitive to those without options. This will impact people of lower income, disability, class and communities of color throughout communities of San Francisco. [indiscernible] economic recovery, support Public Health and lay the groundwork for a new visionary Transit System that serves all san franciscans. In short, we really urge you to support the first set of emergency temporary transitonly lanes. 30 seconds. On additional corridors. We look forward to working with you to build the support and outreach to make this possible so that everyone in San Francisco can benefit from fast, reliable transit. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 22 questions remaining. Next speaker . Good afternoon, my name is dan fedderman. Im a transit rider and calling to urge to also presumptive the temporary transitonly lanes. Like more than 30 of san franciscans, i do not own a car. I rely on Public Transit and biking to meet my mobility needs. As we reopen, the mobility of many, many thousands of citizens will be limited if muni cannot run frequently enough to avoid crowding. Im hoping San Francisco can live up to its transitfirst values. [indiscernible] bus lanes at future public hearings. We really should be doing this faster. That will be all. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 21 questions remaining. Im from north panhandle and i wanted to thank the staff for the work that theyve done. I wanted to support the all of the route improvements. I think its important. I see the masonic line as being a valuable northsouth route. I think its important to show that this city does prioritize transit over cars. We are basically transit delays regularly and where i do see that we have red lines. Id love to see the red lines the red lanes. But where we do have red lanes and where we have transit priority, there is an improved speed, and i think thats what we need to do in the city. Thank you, mta board for your support and thank you. I hope you do support it and thank you director tomlin for your work. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. You have 21 questions remaining. Hello, i live in district 7. Im also a member of San Francisco transit ride ers. Ill urge you to support this program for all the reasons the staff and members of the public have given. In the second round of transitonly lanes, i strongly urge you to include geneva and ocean avenue, especially in the area of balboa park station, 280 city college. That area experiences a significant amount of congestion that delays multiple, multiple lines including the 8, the 29, the 43, the 49, the 54 and in august i guess will be the kl li line. The transitonly improvements also have [indiscernible] improvements should also be considered for rapid implementation there. Thank you very much. You have 20 questions remaining. Next speaker, please. Im a district 7 resident and muni required for most of my life. Im also a member of the sf transit riders. I am in full support. In fact, i also believe that this doesnt go far enough. This is a small smidgen of the possible transit lanes that id love to see across our city. And i would love to see that if this is the first step, im fully support of it. I think there should be a rapid expansion of this network because in the end it is a network and reliability of the network is what brings people to the service. Many people use many different lines to get different parts of the city and i hope that that expansion comes soon on the heels of this. And thank you. Thank you to the board and to the director tomlin for pushing this along. Thanks. Thank you. Operator you have 19 questions remaining. Hi, im speaking on my own behalf today as a resident in opposition to the tet [indiscernible] either side of oshaughnessy boulevard. Due to a lack of understanding of the actual congestion causes along these segments. Specifically the westbound tetl on bosworth avenue is particularly ineffective. Oshaughnessy is a 7. 1 average grade uphill with the first segment reaching a 20 grade. Transit buses are simply incapable of making it up this grade as efficiently as smaller vehicles, and frankly allowing these slow vehicles to cut in front of others is rude and will cause the congestion that we are trying to avoid. I also think that some of the other comments have already addressed how this will redirect traffic on to neighboring streets. Its already faster at certain times of day to actually make a return on to elk and make a u turn to approach the intersection from the north. Operator you have 19 questions remaining. Im a resident of district three and also a member of the San Francisco transit riders. A four and a half hour session today and i, like the majority of the callers, are urging that the sfmta approve the temporary emergency transitonly lanes for the bus lines indicated. I am a rider of the no. 19 and i do believe this would be a marked improvement to service and safety of both riders and drivers. Also in agreement that the city traffic engineer be allowed to approve additional lanes that would support timely Emergency Response. One of the things i wanted to comment on was that when was passed in november, district 3 supervisor enthusiastically proclaimed that he was thrilled to see sfmta ready to act on this mandate which was supported overwhelmingly by the people to keep our city moving. And reviewing the data and improved performance safety which now includes the health of riders and drivers are unequivocal supports and will also be following that supervisor support to help another revenue stream as part of the deal for what happens with the muni passage discussed earlier. So very informative meeting. Thank you. Time yielded. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 19 questions remaining. Hi, i am a frequent muni rider and district 8 resident. Im calling to encourage the board to support the permanent expansion of the network of 24hour transit only lanes. They need to be far bolder than the small measures its done so far and needs to be bolder than the fairly minor proposal here. As our economy prematurely returns to normal, we need to make sure that in San Francisco, something which historically has not been proved. In addition, Climate Change has not gone anywhere. The arctic just recorded a temperature of 100 fahrenheit for the first time ever. Transit is an incredibly important part of mitigating kriech and we need to ensure that we continue to remove cars from the street. 24hour transitonly lanes are one of the only ways we can make sure the transit continues to function on time and that transit riders continue to use transit instead of going to other transit modes of transportation subsidized by capitalists and artificially low gas prices. If muni is stuck in worse traffic, it will be expensive to operate and more punitive for those without other options. We have to make changes now if transit and San Francisco as a whole is going to survive and thrive after covid. This is a good small start. I would like to voice my support for making transitonly lanes permanent. They should not be temporary. Before the covid19 crisis we have constantly seen how buses and surfacelevel trains were constantly delayed by traffic. That means that transitonly lanes 30 seconds. Should be a permanent change to our streets. I support restricting these lanes to Public Transportation only. I strongly oppose the commissioners comments asking to include priority shuttles in these lanes. We should not be subsidizing private transportation when they get free money from vulture capitalists to shove their substandard Transit Solutions down our throat. It should be for Public Infrastructure only. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 18 questions remaining. Go ahead. Hi, my name is robin and i live [indiscernible] im calling in support for this transit lane proposal presented. Its time this city made a tiny [indiscernible] prioritizing transit travel time is a privilege to prioritizing our essential workers, people of color and elderly folks who rely on muni more than others. There will be lots of callers in opposition today who are privileged and have other travel choices, like their cars, and they will worry that their car trips might be slowed down by muni priority. We should not cower to those demands. Transit lanes will return our local economy and Small Businesses faster, help us achieve our climate goals, help us reduce the number of cars on the road and achieve our vision zero goals. This is a pilot temporary program and we will find out from the data where it works. Im not going to pretend to be a transportation and give you suggestions. The data will tell us what works. Every multilane street in San Francisco that carries muni should have transit lanes and im sad the 24 was cut from this proposal. I would advocate that every transit lane, even parttime ones, should be painted red. I used to live on sutter street downtown, and it was abundantly clear that drivers did not know when it had a transit lane because its too confusing to read the dark roadway. Paint them red, please. Thank you for all your tireless work at this insane time. All of us transit riders are very grateful. Thank you. Thank you so much. Operator you have 17 questions remaining. Hi, my name is cliff barringer. I live in put relo hills. I have the 22 roll down my street. I want to express my strong support for the transitonly lane. I want to echo the comments made earlier by those who want to see this go further. Im really glad that mta wants to try this out and see what works and then evaluate the data and fix what doesnt work. I also want to express my support for the directors philosophy around what types of highcapacity vehicles should get to use transitonly lanes. I absolutely support putting muni first, but when theres extra capacity, i think we should allow other types of shuttles, especially shuttles like the ecsf shuttle, but even private ones that are high capacity and do have a large number of passengers. I think if they can use the transitonly lanes without slowing down muni, then they should be allowed to. And i hope that the m. T. A. Will record data on whether or not those sorts of shuttles do slow down muni. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 17 questions remaining. Hello, i am a resident of district 4 and a rider of the 14 line calling in support of the emergency transitonly lanes. They even before the pandemic, the 14 wus was frequently slowed down by traffic. It often took upwards of [indiscernible] painful and inconvenient. You can only imagine how worse it will be with even more cars congesting the space. Transitonly lanes have been shown to be a cheap and effective solution that moves more people in less time. Looking at the busway in new york to [indiscernible] with existing transitonly lanes to see that they are a winwin for everybody. If merchants are concerned about the loss of Parking Spaces, you can show them data providing showing an introduction that it leads to increased foot traffic. Please approve these quickly and allow the city traffic engineer maximum flexibility to approve additional lanes as easily as possible in the future. Thanks for listening and moving quickly on this. Operator you have 16 questions remaining. Hi, this is peter and as youve heard from zack and a number of our members, this is a superb proposal and deserves your complete support. The staff is really spot on with this, and its essential that we get priority for our buses in there before we get completely overwhelmed by traffic. I do want to comment on one thing thats mentioned. Its important that these are set up as 24hour lanes. Buses may not need them in the middle of the night, but neither do cars, and its essential that the messaging be as clear as possible for drivers, you know, to keep out of these lanes and 24hour lanes are essential for that. I do have one concern about the priorities, however. Specifically concerning the t third, which has been in operation for 13 years and has been broken for 13 years. The t third needs help. I would ask the board to direct staff to include measures for the t third, you know, in this first set of proposals or as soon thereafter as possible, and specifically along 4th street heading northbound approaching the 4th street bridge, which has always been a major bottleneck, and we cant allow the t to be overwhelmed when service is restored. Thank you very much, and vote yes. Thank you very much. Operator you have 16 questions remaining. Next speaker . Hi, my name is nick. Im a muni required. Im in district 8, and i am also a member of the san franciscan transit riders. Im in full support of this measure, and im i think we should a lot of other callers have made some of the points that i want to make. I just think we should be thinking about who this emergency is actually, you know, impacting. Its falling along racial lines. Its falling along socioeconomic line, and to be less abstract, its impacting lowincome people. Its impacting latino people and black people way more than anyone else. In the presentation it noted that these lines are in neighborhoods that serve those populations, primarily. As the economy opens up prematurely, but it will open up, tech workers that are able to work from home are not going to be impacted. Its the very people who need transit who are going to be taking it, and if bus lines become overcrowded, they cant move, thats were sentencing people to covid19. The very people who call in opposition noted dont want to be taking this transit wont have a choice. Theyll be taking crowded bus lines, slow bus lines, and they will be you know, its a choice between getting sick or not having any money. 30 seconds. So im in favor of this strongly, as strongly as one can be, just so that we know that were helping people who need it the most. Thank you. Thank you. Operator you have 15 questions remaining. Next speaker . Hello, i live in district 7. Im a 35year muni rider and a member of San Francisco transit riders. I support the plan for temporary emergency transitonly lanes. Bus lanes are the infrastructure which truly embodied San Franciscos transitfirst policy. They will help in the covid19 recovery by transit riding possible for more people. Transit has become more appealing to more people for our city to function sustainably. I encourage the city traffic engineers to speak out and approve additional transitonly lanes in the city. In particular, i want to encourage the consideration of transitonly lanes around balboa park, a station which serves a large number of commuters. And as one of the busiest stations outside of the downtown area. Has room for such a lane for the 43 masonic, and there is a need for it serving as it does for city college and ballboa park decision. Its congested beyond reason in rush hour when college is in session, and it will have greater pressure on it after the balboa project is completed. That project is explicitly build as a transit redevelopment, and the city needs to support that project and its Transit Needs if its to succeed in 30 seconds. Getting the majority of the thousands of new residents at the development to take transit. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Operator you have 14 questions remaining. Next speaker, please. Hello. I am calling in opposition to the 43 masonic temporary lane because that part of masonic is not busy. They just reconfigured it about a year ago to have the new bus stops, and the bike lanes, which i dont want you to take out, and on presidio, the bus downtown go there now. I dont understand why that has to be part of the line, part of this transit lane. And it seems to me that people youre assuming that its going to be all this traffic. Well, thats not shown to be the case because so many people are staying and working at home and will continue to work from home after the order is lifted. It doesnt need to be on masonic. It will go faster to the next stoplight. I have not noted substantial traffic delays for the 43 on masonic. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have 14 questions remaining. Next speaker . Hi, yeah. Just wanted to say transit lanes are great. Im fully in support of this. We know that they reduce inclusion collisions up to 40 , speed up traffic up to 33 , improves ridership on lines like fulton street. The people who are using these buses are often lowincome people of color, essential workers, our youth and our elderly. These are people, the callers who are calling in today, they have choices. Some people, they dont have choices. Transit is their only option. We know that transit improves access to businesses with increased foot traffic. We know that it does not increase traffic on side streets as better Market Street has shown. We know that cars are taking up the most space on our streets and that they are the worst for the environment. So this, the callers who are calling in, they are the ones who have the options. They are the ones who dont have to take the bus. They dont have to be on a crowded bus. They dont have to be on a slow bus. I know. I rode those buses. It takes five minutes to go from 8 street to oak street. Why so long . Because we put the car first. This is a transitfirst city, not a carfirst city. We need to approve this and approve a whole lot more transit lanes. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please . Operator you have 13 questions remaining. Next speaker . Hello. Good afternoon, board of directors, or almost good evening at this point, actually. Im also calling in strong support of the temporary transit lanes. A couple years ago i took the 14 from about 16 to 14 street on mission into thelma thinking whats the worst that could happen. Well, it took more than half an hour. I should have just walked back and i would have been there in 10 minutes. So the completely dysfunctional transit lane on Mission Street has long been a bug bear of mine, and im disappointed that it took a pandemic to fix it, but im very glad that its finally getting fixed. I would also like to echo the comments from other commenters that m. T. A. Needs to be bolder and implement more of these in the second round, so im glad to see the delegation of authority for that. In particular, i live in district 6 in the tenderloin, and so im glad to see the improvements to the 19, but i would also like to see bus lanes for the 5 and the 38, especially on the segments in the richmond that will in turn improve performance of this bus line where i live as well. And finally im hoping that m. T. A. Bus lanes that have already been approved. For example on fulsome street in selma. This board approved a bus lane there, and it would be great to see that implemented quickly for this pandemic as well. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Operator you have 12 questions remaining. Next speaker . Yes, hi, good afternoon. This is barry again. First i want to thank the sfmta staff for a wonderful presentation and explanations, and Great Questions by the directors regarding the transit lanes, and i want to thank profusely on behalf of the cab drivers for including taxis as part of these transit lanes. I just want to point out a few issues. One, on Mission Street, i think someone brought up the idea of maybe make sure, just say that its an operational 7 a. M. To 7 p. M. Because theres actually a nightclub at 6 and mission, and of course the nightclub is closed, so they couldnt give any feedback. Im wondering what kind of outreach you gave. There are also some restaurants on the southside of Mission Street that do a lot of deliveries. So theres some issues that have to be resolved regarding the conflicts there and the impact on some of the businesses. It may have not been a chance to weigh in. Regarding masonic, i dont even know if first i want to say i dont know if you need a transit lane. This is one of the few corridors where the lights are actually timed properly to move traffic, and so i dont know how much faster buses will go with a dedicated transit lane on that corridor. They have also restricted left turns. Youre not going to allow us to make a left turn from masonic to oak, or even from masonic to fell . And also two other important left turns. 30 seconds. Off of peaktime hours is turk and fulton. I wonder have you reached out to u. S. F. , which most people are on summer break at this time, in terms of the impact its going to have on their service to their students and the faculty and their guests . So this is a problem by eliminating some key left turns, grove and hays are not a big deal, but i think its a big deal to eliminate those left turns outside of the peak times. Time. Commuter hours. Thank you. Operator you have 11 questions remaining. Hi, my name is kevin burke. I live in the mission. Im speaking in support of the transit lanes and i hope you will be more aggressive about having transit lanes in the future. I think its really important, one of the Silver Linings of the pandemic has been the air quality has been really good because there havent been as many cars in the city. Theres a ton of research that shows that air quality poor air quality is really negatively correlated with a whole bunch of outcomes, students do worse on tests, people do worse at all kinds of tasks when the air quality is bad. And its bad for longterm Health Outcomes as well. Theres cases for that. More respiratory problems, which is exactly the opposite of what you want in the middle of a pandemic. So yeah, im a big fan of this, especially because the buses actually a lot of them use electricity or are renewable fuel so they are not polluting as much, and having more people on the same set of tires is not going to pollute as much. I think we should be as aggressive as possible about moving as many people on to buses as possible so we can keep good air quality in the city Going Forward. Thanks very much. Thats all ive got. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 10 questions remaining. Next speaker . Hi, my name is daniel tahara. Im a resident of district eight and member of San Francisco transit riders. Im calling to [indiscernible] transitonly lanes. Also like many others, id like to see the m. T. A. Go even further with more lines and lasting just wonder the emergency. Over the last number of years ive lived in the city, ive benefited from living in wellconnected transitrich areas, and i realize that not everyone is so lucky, and moreover not everyone is able to work from home during the pandemic, as i am now. If we want to keep this city accessible to everyone, especially those who are for the covid crisis in order to keep our city running, its imperative that we provide fast essential options for those workers. Im in support of them for the climate and health benefits. Local and regional air pollution, the more we can make muni a safe reliable option for folks the better. Thank you. [please stand by] sustainability is human. The environment a better functioning system will bring more people out of cars to the bus. Two, sustainability for muni. If we want a system that works and presenters touched on this. Buses have to be running smoothly and clean and nice and there will be a future that is pleasant where people want to be on the buses. They wont want to be in cars. I also support the flexibility of shuttles as long as they dont slowdown muni. If they are taking people out of cars that is the point. We can use these lanes for shuttles as well. I like the pilot of community engagement. That is a good approach. Thank you and i hope you approve this initiative. Operator you have 8 questions remaining. Caller i am a district 9 resident calling to urge you to approve the lanes for the 14, 19, 4, 44. If we can reduce congestion on the muni we can make the buses run more frequently and make them more reliable to serve more customers and avoid crowding and maintain social distancing to keep people safe. There are callers against this and they say traffic will come back and then maybe this is unnecessary. We are not hurting any vehicle traffic and we are making Transit Service better and that seems like no harm intervention if it is true. The congestion doesnt come back. I am in favor of the changes to the 14. The 14r in the city. These bus lanes should be red colored for visibility and 24 hours. I urge us to expand the program much like we did with the closed Streets Program and because these are temporary we can see how they get used and the 24 would be a great candidate. Tnc should not be allowed in the lanes. Those serving Public Institutions should be and i urge the approval for the city traffic engineer to approve further lanes with this public hearing. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 7 questions remaining. Caller i am in district 8 in the mission calling to echo what was said and support these tempetemporary bus lanes. I will ask a question given how many potential options there are in implements the bus lanes if there is any testing to see what measures can make the bus lanes more effective. Signal prioritization, how effective is paints it red. To maximize the potential benefits of this. Furthermore i think that providing Better Service is more important now than ever during the pandemic to prevent overcrowding on the bus to obviously prevent the spread of coronavirus. Finally just asking the board to think bigger here. It is ridiculous a train with 100 people has to stop at the stop sign with a car with one person in it. If you are trying to favor transit, i think that anyway that we can push this to expand the program hopefully beyond this pilot is a great idea. Thank you. Operator you have six questions remaining. Caller thank you. This is very, very important work. I support it. The idea of productive high capacity bus lanes is not new. It is certainly not unique to San Francisco. Consider that in new jersey there is an exclusive bus lane that runs 2. 5 miles between the new jersey turnpike and lincoln tunnel precovid19 it moved 1800 buses per day and 18 Million People per year. I have used it for years. I would rather pay 2 for a bus trip to new york city than to pay 15 to drive through the tunnel and pay parking on the other end. Signal priorities are essential so buses dont have to stop so often. Stops is hard on the brakes and not fuel efficient. We want to keep the vehicles moving as best we can. I support 24 hour lanes for safety and consistency is nowhere near new. In las vegas the high lane system operates 24 hours and that includes buses. These San Francisco bus lanes should allow diverse operators to use them over 100 different bus carriers use the new jersey bus lane. Our bus lanes should allow for diversity to be approved to use this so we can move more high capacity vehicles in the corridors. It is much better to move people on a bus than in a bunch of individual cars. Just too much cars. All cars should be electric. This should be approved. Lets get to work to make it permanent. Thank you. Operator you have five questions remaining. Caller i am a member of the transit riders. Transit rider and Citizens Advisory Council voted to recommend the transit lanes. I am in support. I hope the board encourages that to people to be assessed as often as needed. We have this we know the traffic is coming back. This is a great tool for equity in the city since we know many of the people who take transit are people with lower income, black and latino. Especially with reliability. This is that vehicles are a point for bus service. I ride the 47 and 49 a lot. It is a big question cars on vanness to the market on the freeway going south. It is not just the average car which i appreciate that feeling. Also thinking about the bad and worse case times when i have been stuck in the bus going three blocks from one side of city hall to the other side. It is a peace of mind. More security people can get to where they need to go easily and within the timeframe. Thank you very much. Operator you have four questions remaining. Now, i have divided feelings about the bus only lanes. It is going to contribute to automobile congestion. Some people obviously hate automobiles and they dont care what happens to them, but i think transportation should be for everybody and m. T. A. Should stand for transportation for everybody. One thing i dont want the uber and lyft in the muni only lanes. They are predatory reagency with no right to be there. I can understand it for u. C. S. F. And Human Service vehicles, yes. That should be allowed. For gods sake keep uber and lyft out of there. They are vultures. Next speaker, please. Operator three questions remaining. Carl articl. Caller i am in support of adds transit lanes and adding more of them. I ride the 19 and the buses are packed with cars with one or two people in them. Sometimes it takes five or 10 minutes to travel the last few blocks up seventh to market. We should have taken one of the three car driving lanes and made to a bus lane years ago. You cant go back in time. We can approve today and making it permanent and extending to other streets. Thank you. Operator you have two questions remaining. Caller i live in district 7. I am a transit rider member. I would like to ask the board to approve the transit only lanes. Speed up the buses and help those who cant work from home to spend less time on board. I would like to ask the board to request broader changes from staff. What we saw today is a great start. We should be ambitious about experimenting and collect data on what moves to help people. Please move quickly. Thank you. Operator you have one question remaining. Caller i am district five. I am a member of the San Francisco transit riders calling to urge you to approve the emergency transit only lanes. The Transit System is essential to the San Francisco recovery from covid19. I used to live in Cathedral Hill and take the 19 to patarot hill from work and it was slow. The transit only lanes on seventh and eighth street would have been helpful. I think they should be made permanent. If muni is stuck in traffic it is inefficient to use and people wont use it unless they have no other choice. There is going to be more congestion. I guess that is all i have to say. Thank you for your time. I look forward to seeing these transit lanes. Thank you. Any more callers . Operator you have zero questions remaining. With that we will close Public Comment. Back over to directors. Director hemminger first. I have two comments. First i apologize to director tumlin when i was first introduced a saw a map that looked scary to me. I said you have got to do that in phases. Today, of course, i am complai complaining this phase is too small. We have heard a lot of testimony about the necessity of being boulder. One of the great flaws of muni is it is too damn slow. We have to speed it up and this is a way to speed it up. Secondly, these three projects it is not obvious why they were picked. It would help to have an evaluation where i could have seen creteria against the projects and why these three rose to the top. For example there were clearly a lot of other routes with greater time savings during the shelterinplace than these so there must have been other mitigating factors that weighed against them of the transparency on that would have been helpful. Thirdly, i am leery about just approving a couple of these as a board and delegating the rest of it to the traffic engineer. I would strongly prefer that we hold onto our authority for another cycling or two and get this into firmer ground before we hand it off to somebody who is clearly less accountable to the public than we are. That would be my suggestion. I certainly dont want to stand in the way much moving ahead today with the projects selected but i think we need more insight into why they are selected. My recommendation would be that we not hand this off to the traffic engineer until we work it into a better shape. Thank you, director heminger. Can you tell us how these were chosen specifically. Very good question. Some of the corridors we are most interested in we dont have control offer, 19th avenue and lombard. We are working with cal tran, which controls those corridors for approval for hov lanes in order to facilitate not only our buses but higher occupancy vehicles on the state highway network. Other corridors we have at capacity. Our constraint right now is the availability of workers. We wanted to get started on corridors where there was less. Our immediate priority whether engineering issues were simple. Local neighborhood and board of supervisors support and it was coming back first. The critical corridors we received clear feedback from members of the board of supervisors. They wanted to see some advance engagement with members of the community and businesses along the way they wanted to take more time to come second after engagement while tame supporting the process of doing the substantive engagement by observing how the traffic patterns change as a result of the Pilot Project to also codesign of the details with the community in the field. We expect once we are able to do a little bit of this to show what we need we will be able to have time to do some additional engagement on some very, very high value corridors where we believe there is support but that is contingent upon more time for talking with people than we have had so far. In terms of the quantitative metrics, we will be wanting to look at i think first and foremost beyond merely what the savings and resulting frequency and capacity savings from muni. A critical performance metric does this allow the street to move for people . To the extent that the street is moving more people . Who is it moving . Are we we prioritizing the people with the greatest privilege or are we prioritizing people with lower incomes, people of color and fewest mobility choices . We will be wanting to quantify negative consequences. We care about issues of traffic on the parallel streets, safety impacts. We will collect the data as we go along. There is a good chance that just like with flow streets we will change the designs as we go along and a chance that we will decide the costs out weigh the benefits. This is a very much new way of doing business where rather than relying upon consultants that we know the demand models dont tell the truth we are experimenting and engaging people. Just for clarification around the delegation of authority. That would be for temporary lanes, not for all, correct . Thats correct. We wouldnt be giving up our authority in terms of anything permanent . We are required to come back to you for actual legislation to make any of these changes permanent. Secondly, you dont have the ability to give up your authority in perpetuity. If we decide that this program is not going as well as we had hoped, you can rescinds your delegation. The delegation allows us to move more quickly if congestion comes back in surges. We wrote that into the staff recommendation back when we had seen a huge and very rapid increase in congestion during that first rationing of shelterinplace. If we saw another spike like that we would need to act more quickly and we would have time to put together and put it on the agenda and get to you and follow with implementation. Does that dress your concerns, director heminger. First is spilled milk. Part of jeffs answer to the first question there is sensitivities about the lanes at the board of supervisors. We will hear about it if the traffic engineer picks a project they dont like. I would rather be the one picking the projects, proving the projects at least for the next cycle if it is another three, four, five of them. Then maybe at that point it would make more sense to delegate. Delegate is that step means that you have got some sort of routine that you think can be done by sub sidda bilevel of dn making. The motion of approving three and handing off is too abrupt. The cost of not ge not delegg adds a month in the schedule. We meet every two weeks. What it takes to put it together, what my crews do behind the scenes to prepare for you is substantial. I understand that. It is just a lot of that work has to be done for the city traffic engineer to make a decision anyway, right . It is a different set of work. All of the procedural work necessary to prepare materials for the board while the engineer staff work contributes to that is a whole other matter. I guess related to that. Maybe secretary boomer could talk about the meetings this summer. That might be illuminating to give us when we can slot these things in. Madam chair, the next meeting of the board is july 21st. Following that we do not anticipate that we will have a meeting on august 4th because there may be a quorum issue. We will not likely have the two nominees with us by august 4th. That meeting will possibly not happen. The next meeting would be augus. Then we would be back to the regular meeting in september. Madam chair, could i ask jeff a question. Sure. When do you think you will have the next batch of projects ready under which ever procedure . Good question. We had news this week of slowing down every opening of economy. That takes some of the urgency potentially, but where we are going with the shelterinplace is difficult to predict from hear o on out. The answer is i dont know. That is an honest answer. It could be as soon as a few weeks we would bring the next projects to public hearing. One other thing to mention is that which i should have mentioned in the presentation. Our thinks is if the project is controversial it will go to the board. If there is a project with broader support and not controversial it is appropriate to public hearing only. As we make progress on this we will provide you with the full information of what is Going Forward. As i said before, you have the authority to rescind. If we move too aggressive without Due Diligence we can change that. It is also as mr. Roads just saider much in our interest when doing controversial projects to have the board to provide not only cover but the opportunity for public input, which will be important to us in this time. Director heminger does that answer it. We might as well cut to the chase. As i said, i am in favor of moving ahead with the proposal. The part that concerns me is the delegation. If it doesnt concern the other three of you, there is no use talking about it. Could i weigh in here . I think, you know, sort of from where we said we have no idea what that delegation looks like. I imagine you have a good idea what the next several corridors will look like. I wonder if it is a information gap if you were able to put any parameters around what that delegation looks like. For example one of the corridor os slide 9. You know you look at the data all of the time what the next couple corridors might be. What are we talking about . Maybe if we are able to have an additional conversation at the next meeting, next july meeting what are the next corridors to close this information gap that we are experiencing. I believe our authority is limited. Yes, it is called out in the calendar item at the end a map of the corridors. It overlaps with the travel time savings map in the presentation. Those are corridors that meet criteria during shelterinplace or on rail corridor to meet that criteria. That would be the universe. It is basically the green line travel time. This thing . Look at that. Yes, as an example that is one of the corridors we are looking at. There are a few others. It is looking at the map is the easiest way to get the picture of that. Director brinkman. Did you want to weigh in . Thank you for the presentation. I amsei am very supportive. I understand the concern with delegating this authority completely. I am comfortable with the compromise if there is a lot of Community Push back for the route would it come to the board . My biggest concern was not so much in delegating authority as much as hanging staff out to dry. I feel more comfortable that it comes to the board so the public can hear our reasoning and understand why we support something. I think the com the compromise f allowing the delegation of authorities if it looks controversial but is important enough to pursue that it come back to the board for our input. With those comments i will make a motion to approve if director heminger is happy with that compromise. Staff did make a previous request, if i may. The motion to amend the resolution to establish no left turns except muni between 8 and turk street would delays the pro habbition for you. Do i need a motion to amend first. Yes. Motion to amend. Second. Roll call, please. Director borden. Aye. Bring plan. Aye. Eaken. Aye. Heminger. Aye. The motion to amend is approved. I need a motion on the main motion. Overall package. Motion to approve as amended. Ready for a vote . Motion to approve as amended . Can we discuss. I like director aakens idea about eakens idea getting insight. There is that information gap between, you know, we know the three and Everything Else is invisible. Wha what is your suggested amended motion . I am not sure i need an amendment as long as we have commitment from the director to bring us back something later in july. We are planning to bring item to you in july on the rail Service Changes. This is probably something that just like with the budget we should may be coming to you monthly on updates to planned expansion of transit priority treatment as well as updating you on the data we have so far about performance. This is a Major Initiative that we need to keep you engaged on. Madam chair, do you need a motion to approve the proposal as amended . Yes. I will do so. Second . Second. Secretary can you call the roll. Borden. Aye. Brinkman. Aye. Eaken. Aye. Heminger. Aye. The item is approved as amended. That does conclude the business before you this evening. We will adjourn our meeting in honor of art curtis. Thank you all. We will be back on the 24th. Goodbye everyone. Welcome everyone to the Health Commission meeting on tuesday july 7th. A special note our meetings will continue on the first and third tuesday of every month at 3 00 p. M. Until september 1st, when well going back to a normal schedule as we have seen before and all meetings will be conducted virtually. It is also a great official and personal privilege of mine to introduce the newest member of the San Francisco Health Commission susan christian. Susan joins us for her first meeting today. Shes served with the San Francisco District Attorney since 2005 and bridges a wealth of knowledge and experience to the commission with regards