Transcripts For SFGTV Municipal 20240703

Director hinsey. Present hinsey present. Director. So here. So present. Director uchitelle here you present director. Kahina here. Kahina present chair. Chehregan here. Eken present. For the record, i note that director hinsey is attending the meeting remotely. Director hinsey is reminded that she must appear on camera throughout the meeting, and in order to speak or vote on any items places you on. Item number three, the ringing and use of cell phones and similar sound producing Electronic Devices are prohibited at this meeting. The chair may order the removal from the meeting room of any person responsible for the ringing or use of a cell phone or other similar sound producing electronic device. This places you on item four approval of minutes for the october 3rd regular meeting. Thank you directors with any changes to the october 3rd Meeting Minutes hearing none open Public Comment for those in the room on item 4th october third Meeting Minutes and seeing none, please go to remote at this time well move to remote Public Comment not to exceed a time of ten minutes. Members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. Each speaker will have two minutes. No speakers. Okay. Close Public Comment. Is there a motion motion to approve the minutes . Second. Second please call the roll on the motion to approve the minutes. Director hemminger a hemminger. Director henderson. Henderson and director. Hinsey hi director. So i. So director Uchitel Uchitel i director kahina. I. I kahina chehregan. I ekin. I thank you. The minutes are approved. Places you are on item number five communications. I have none. Moving on to item number six introduction of new or Unfinished Business by Board Members. Okay colleagues, are there items of new and Unfinished Business . I see you, director uchitel. Id like to open with one new and unfinished item, which is i had asked previously our new directors director so and director henderson to share a few reflections on their priorities coming into the meeting, into the board and i know you had a chance to share priorities with the staff at a town hall, and i wondered if we could just turn the mic to you all to share a couple reflections on your priorities for your service. Thank you. Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. Welcome back. Many and i my priorities are pretty consistent. I think everyone had already hear it many, many times. And but i am really appreciative of putting it on this form. Um, because its become an agenda item and then we are going to set some of these items interactions in our next year. So my first foremost priority is Public Safety, but thats a really broad item. So i wanted to distill down to a few things that i think it could be in immediately actionable. So, so its a safe ridership on Public Transportation is what i really want to focus. And precisely it touches along vision zero. That is something that we all really wanted to get better at and we are working to get better at this and i wanted to see that we have this thing. Imagine every parents feel confident and safe to let their own children to ride muni to schools and after School Programs just as simple as that. I understand that this is not something that in our own agency we can single handedly to achieve that because there is so much it takes to how to get these kids to be on the street and get to the stop and safely wait for our muni and then get on and get off. So i would like to continue to work and foster more, relate with our Police Department and some other community. His group to help us to achieve this priorities that i want to have because thats a very important thing. Everyone has kids and everyones friends has kids. Not everyone, but we all understand. We all are kids once. So that is my priority number one. And my second priority is reaching out to more culturally appropriate community outreach, focusing on people look like me and people look like like they are a minority in this city. So Racial Equity and belonging is something that i hold really dear to and i carry it on from my previous experience in the Arts Commission and then in the Planning Department in this commission called Historic Preservation commission. And so i would love to continue you to see we i think our agency had a really robust program. So i would love to continue to elevate us to continue to adapt and be very, very culturally, appropriately reaching out to our different communities and especially in our community stations. So the third one is my priority is focusing on how can we find more money, more funding and i because this is this is really important, you know, at the end of the day, we need that gas. We need that juice to run. And precisely i see this as not just a local issue, as a regional issue. So we have to really think really outside of the box. And i would love to have a lot of creative thinking of people here and also whoever else is listening to. Im like really tapping into my friend us who have done Amazing Things themselves and just to see what can we do locally and also regional in the state level and federal level, because i think that this will really help us and to solve one piece of the puzzle or to better position our agency to be competitively to hire staff with a purposeful skill sets that are ready to face our current and future challenges. Thats it. Thats all i have to say. Thank you so much, director. So its really helpful to hear your priorities. Director henderson good afternoon, everyone, and thank you, chair, for allowing me the opportunity to share with you all a little bit about the priorities that i see. I pretty much am in alignment with with what director soul offered. I think that safety is really important. Safety on our systems, but also safe neighborhoods. I am a hauser by profession and so part of my every day job is to make sure that im creating communities that people want to live in, feel safe in. And part of that, i think, is our ability through this agency to really connect neighborhoods, make certain parts of San Francisco so that oftentimes are under the radar or or a little bit on the edges of the map. Make them accessible. You know, the hills dont make the city super easy to traverse. So i think that we really do have an opportunity to ensure that folks, whether they live in the center of the city or on the periphery, are able to access shops, health care, to have stable housing and stable neighborhoods and really are able to enjoy their neighborhood and parts of the city that they may not necessarily be visit often, but it doesnt take forever to get there. And i hope that i hope that we are able to focus while im here on on really creating neighbor hoods that families, that individuals that people can enjoy and feel safe in, safe walking down the streets, wide sidewalks. I think its so, so important to create a sense of place and so i look forward to learning more, but also contributing to creating that throughout the city and especially in areas where where they historically have have not had those types of amenities. I also really prioritize equity and want to make sure that those neighborhoods that ive mentioned across the city are adequate represented, have that seat at the table, have the voice at and are open for business. Just like just like other areas. I really want to make sure that the mta can continue to make the city excel and surpass all of the expectations that we have to be the great place to live that ive grown up in and that that i hope to, you know, be in forever really. And then finally and i think that, you know, its funny that find the money but also ensuring that we are caretakers of this resource that we ensure that the fiscal and financial viability of this agency is top tier and top notch, that were able to have a successful the next 100, 150 years of our Transit Systems building and building neighborhoods and commuter city. I think its one thing to create place, but really to create that sense of community. And i think ensuring that the Financial Stability of this agency long term will make sure that we can create that community, that that that is so important. And so i look forward to all the work that well do here together. And id thats it. Thank you so much. Yes. Really really grateful to both of you for sharing some some thoughts and just as a reminder for everyone, this was a question i asked all the members of the board at our february workshop at the beginning of this year, and were closer now to the january workshop next year than we are to that one. So well have another opportunity to revisit priorities. But its helpful for me as chair to know your priorities and i also think for staff and ensuring that we make sufficient air time at these meetings and Staff Resources are allocated to those priorities. So really appreciate that other members of the board, director yakusho. Thank you so much. Chair eken and im so excited to see both of my new colleagues get all that shit done. And i believe that you can. I also see the fire marshals in the room, so i just want to acknowledge him. Thank you for being here. Fire marshal coughlin and. I. I have some new business a lot of you may have heard. Maybe you didnt hear that i spent the last week and a half in israel, pretty much in and out of bomb shelters and decided to throw myself into the volunteer effort that had been going on there to collect donated items and deliver it to families who are suffering and being there was deeply inspired bring. I saw thousands of people come together, old and young people from all walks of life. And i actually was able to see in front of me what it looks like when a whole community can come together to get things done, to put their differences aside and work as a unit. And it reminded me of why i am in this work. It reminded me of why i consider myself an organizer and an activist and why i came to San Francisco. It inspired me and frankly, when i came back a few days ago, it made me really reconsider everything about about what im doing and how i spend my time and what motivates me and what lights me on fire. And so because of that, i decided that this is going to be my last meeting as an sfmta director and that im going to be leaving the board. I have so much respect for this agency and i know its tough because we just got our full board. I have respect for the agency. I have respect for you all, and i have even more respect for the thousands and thousands of workers who allow us to do what we do. So im really, really proud of what weve been able to accomplish on this board. Navigating our aging agency through a once in a century dark time and a pandemic, and being in the trenches with all of you on fucking Microsoft Teams building the jfk promenade and building dozens of miles of transit only lanes, creating a new slow streets network, pushing this agency to create a connected network of bike lanes, helping institute a first in the nation. Text before tow program re negotiating our contract with Clear Channel to clean our bus shelters and get them looking like we want them to look like and helping. Working alongside jeff, tom and julie to get our internal house in order. Im so proud of where this agency is now and all that weve been able to accomplish together over the last three years that ive been on this board. I have absolute confidence in the sf mta i have confidence in all of you and im so excited to cheer you guys on from the sidelines working with directors ly and board and brinkman eken kahena hemminger. So henderson and hinsey has been one of the great honors of my life. This is a varsity team and im so proud of what weve been able to do together. So thank you for making me feel so welcome. Thank you for giving me this opportunity and for believing in me. Ive only just gotten started. And that is my new business is. Who i know. Is there a motion to approve or disapprove . I make a motion to reject the premise of director leaving colleagues. I know this is probably shocking news, so i want to make some space. Not necessarily today, but at a future meeting. For some remarks and reflections and gratitude for director yekutiel. Once you can gather your thoughts, obviously, if anyone would like to add anything now, please feel free. But he has committed to me to come to at least one more meeting to be recognized for his service so we could do that. The next meeting perhaps. Okay are there any other items of new or unfinished. Director . So. Ill take this moment to say a few words because this is my new favorite neighbor for a few times in the past few months. And you or two. But is like to soon you are a legend. I always i met many many years ago in a lot of community benefiting event and hes always so enthusiastic about everything that is for the community and i live in the mission so many cafe is always the corner where i will hang out with my girlfriends, you know, and seeing the place had looking really spiffy. And jesse now for me, it was before and im going to miss you a lot. I will take some moment to process what i also need to say more glorified version of what i feel about you. But i just feel a little missing you, you know, like youre just going to be an empty seat, you know . And but i think that the work that you do throw yourself out there in this past ten days where everyone was fleeting and trying to find a place to leave, you actually jump into the fire to help really, really, really. Really hit really hit me. You know, its like that selfless of courage to go out and do your part. And thats i had you have my highest respect for you for to do that im just really grateful that you come home and safely and also use your ability to continue to do what you feel is the best use of your talent and your influence and advocating for the cause that you care for your. Yes. And this is really heavy and it trumped over what i actually wanted to also share. And that is something that i thought thats also really important and its a different topic, but many i just really, really appreciate you and were going to continue to be working on a lot of other issues in other capacities, right . So im going to share another thing i wanted to share for last week. I attended well, this month is the Filipino American filipino heritage month. So last week i got some time to actually i got invited to our Cable Car Museum and actually did that celebration with our Filipino American asian friends and colleagues and staff and even our fellow i believe hes in entertainment commission. Al perez was there. He also is the vice chair of the a Asian Heritage aapi, Asian Pacific islander heritage month organizer. So and our favorite secretary, christine, was there, too. And it was a really great moment where our equity, Racial Equity and belonging group find their time and actually some of the manager went across town to their favorite filipino stores to buy the best lumpia to share with everyone. And it was a very warm getting together moment in also in a very unsettled time of our current world. And i think its always good to take a moment and really reach out to our neighbors and friends and people that you you know or you dont know and you just get get together and celebrate each others press alliance. And this is very important. I actually was saying that we every year were going to go bigger. Right, christine . Every year were going to go bigger and do more celebration because i am aware of that. We have a lot of Filipino American in our agency, see, and i love all of them. They all have their talent and they spend overnight to decked out the cable car with the history of all the significant Filipino Americans that had contributed not only to San Francisco, but the history of transportation in our city. So that was very important. And i want to share it to everyone. And please ride the cable car with me next year. Okay. If theres nothing further from my colleagues, i will open this item for Public Comment for anyone attending the meeting in person. Board members. Luke bornheimer. I missed mannys share director eukaryal share. So i dont know exactly what was said, but i gather that Director Director is stepping down or stepping away from the board. Im saddened to hear that and i really appreciate the service that youve given our city, what youve done here, what youve done for our city. Beyond this board. And yeah, im sad to hear that, but hopeful for your future and whatever that brings. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, stacy randecker. I first just wanted to say i was so thrilled to hear your priorities. Director so and director henderson kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, kids. The only thing i would say is can we also get them to bike to school, to the bus . Is top notch. Yes. We want muni. My kids are muni kids, but i wish they could have been bike kids to you and making places. Oh my god. Are we could have so many places if we just prioritized people instead of Motor Vehicle throughput in our city. And we really need to look for those spaces where we can bring people together, you know, and our merchant corridors, we have so many spots and on the east side of the city is doesnt have enough. I live in potrero and its like i have to go on vacation to the west side to get all the good stuff. And id really like it in in our side of town to do and director curio i reject that. I mean i want what is best for you. Youve been i know people werent really they were skeptical about you joining the board. But i hope all of those naysayers have been won over. I really appreciate so much what youve done and i guess maybe now youll join valencia for people. I dont know. But all the best to you. Well miss you. Thank you. Not seeing anyone else in the room. Rise to speak, please open remote comment at this time. Well move to remote Public Comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. Members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. Each speaker will have two minutes. Moderator for speaker. Great. Can you hear me now . Yes, go ahead. Excellent. David pilpel good afternoon. I caught the end of director jacobis comments. I appreciate his thoughts and its great that hes back safely and im sure that he wont be too far away or for very long. As with many, we have not always agreed, which is fine, but i think that we respect each other deeply, and im sure that we will communicate at some point soon. And i wish him the best and i think the board will be worse with his departure. Anyway, thanks for listening on this item. Thank you. No additional speakers. Okay close close Public Comment and please call the next item place is you on item number seven, the directors report. Thank you. Directors and thank you directors. So and henderson for clarifying your priorities. A year nearly a year ago, back in february, we had a board budget workshop that were preparing for again and one of the most important aspects of that workshop is hearing from Board Members about your priorities, and particularly clarity about your values. That is how we make the hard decisions about allocating our increasingly limited financial and staffing resources. So the clearer you all can be, the easier it is for our team to make the hard choices that we have to make every day. And thank you, of course, to director curiel for your long service and partnership on this board. As we think about much of our work, a lot of our work is trying to align, not only with your values, but also the mayors priorities, which include delivering on our housing responsibilities, safety and security on our streets, and also Small Business success and economic recovery. And one of the things, manny, that i really appreciate about you is you understand the nature of San Franciscos boom bust economy that the San Francisco of 2018 will never come back again. But what we excel at in San Francisco is figuring out what is next and our Small Business leaders like lead the world at figuring out what is next of upholding San Francisco values and hopefulness and ingenuity at all levels and scales and bringing people together to figure out what kind of a city do we want to be. So even though youll no longer be playing that role for us on the board, i know that you will be continuing to play that role as a Small Business owner and as one of the most important conveners in San Francisco in these challenging times. Now id like to go to my directors report. Speaking of Small Businesses, we have recently launched our tiny little Marketing Team led by gene brophy here at the sfmta, launched a go local Small Business campaign in partnership ship with neighborhood associations and Business Associations across San Francisco and really being led from our own sfmta Small Business working group. So jean and her team partnered with local artist Dan Bransfield to do a set of psa campaigns highlighting our citys amazingly vibrant and diverse and creative Small Business district, all of which are there because of muni and muni is there because of them. As you know, San Francisco has this unique geographic quality where we have long, skinny neighborhood commercial districts that follow the historic streetcar lines that muni was born from. And so Small Business recovery and munis recovery go hand in hand. And as well talk about later, our our local business communities are now our main drivers of munis ridership growth. So were very happy to be promoting this this campaign. Next up, speaking of Small Businesses, were also happy to announce that Governor Newsom announced last week that we and our partners at the department of public works would receive a clean california grant to the tune of 3. 3 million. This is focused on allowing us to take our existing efforts at cleaning and upgrading all of our facilities and supercharge them so were quite happy about that. Well be focused on cleaning of shelters and stations, removing graffiti, improving lighting, doing much of the work that the team has been busy doing recently on the t third line, where weve been upgrading, for example, all every single one of the lighting fixtures, which are from 19 whatever technology in order to be more easily maintained, more energy efficient, more less vulnerable to vandalism and brighter for our riders. So were going to be able to continue doing more of this effort focused on downtown and south of market chinatown and the muni metro system. And thanks to existing contracts that we have in place, well be able to begin doing this work starting at the end of this month. The big news for this directors report, of course, is our legislative update. Late last saturday, october 14th, was the deadline for Governor Newsom to either sign or veto bills. And there was a big long list of bills that we have been tracking. Indeed, a long list of bills, some of which we have had as our number one legislative priority for over a decade. And i am very pleased to announce that the governor signed laura friedmans bill, ab 645, our top legislator priority, which authorizes finally speed Safety Cameras on a limited basis in california. California now joins us. Most of the rest of the world and at least 18 us states, including states like mississippi and virginia and tennessee, in legalizing ing this basic Life Saving Technology that can cut traffic fatalities by as much as half. We were fortunate to have attended a celebration event hosted by walk sf last night that included a based basically the entire spectrum of policy makers here in San Francisco, members of our board, many members of our staff, families for safe streets and advocates from all over San Francisco, all of whom came together under a quite big tent in order to continually expand the coalition of people who could support this this measure by listening to them carefully and by incremental adjustments to the legislation to the point where it finally got signed. So thank you to all of you, and particularly jerry ekin, for your support. Theres a couple of other bills that also got signed. Ab 361 now allows local agencies like us to install forward facing cameras on city owned vehicles to enforce double parking in the bike lanes, something that we have long wanted to be able to expedite. This technology will dramatically increase the efficiency of our parking control officers and allow us to make a bigger effort there. The governor also signed ab 434, which seeks to reduce harassment of women and other vulnerable groups on Public Transit by collecting better data related to these incidents. This builds basically its modeled after the work that we have already been doing here at the sfmta, but it requires us, other agencies like ours to do similar work, that together we will be able to do better by having consistent data across the state and therefore the goal being to attract Additional Resources since the safety of women and girls and children are High Priorities for this agency. Ab 413 was also signed into law. Again taking work that wed already been doing around daylighting here at the sfmta and making that state law. It prohibits drivers from parking or stopping within 20ft of a crosswalk with a bunch of very specific exceptions. Other news we are collaborating with the Police Department, the District Attorneys Office and other agencies, ces, in order to support their efforts around reducing vehicle break ins. We have found ways to take advantage of our new parking Meter Technology to include messages on our parking meter screens, directing people to not leave their valuables in the car. Those messages will be available in english and spanish and in chinese within a couple of weeks. Were also adding messages to the pay by phone app screen. And then finally, i wanted to report on our ongoing efforts to address state of good repair and our deferred maintenance backlog throughout the system. One of the things that i have directed staff to do throughout the agency is to be very clear about the condition. One of our most important infrastructure. And so they have been dutifully investigating the reality of all of the vulnerable cities that we face throughout the system. And so the team, um, completed the most extensive inspection of our over 100 and over 100 year old twin peaks tunnel, the most detailed inspection that we had done in almost 50 years, including not only looking at all of the structure, but actually getting behind the structure into the plenum space between the tunnel structure and the raw rock. And in some cases old growth redwood beams that exist between the tunnel structure and the rock. This is an old tunnel. They were also able to obtain all of the records of all of the previous repairs have been done over the last 100 years and were actually so grateful to our predecessors for keeping such extreme, ordinarily good records on the state of the infrastructure. It reminds us of the responsibilities that we have to our successors. The team completed very, very microscopically detailed lidar surveys and created a full 3d model of the tunnel. They found. Let me cut to the chase about the findings. So there are no immediate safety issues, which is a huge relief to me. But the tunnel is really old and it is starting to distort. This was something that was noticed 50 years ago and that distortion has continued a little bit. It will require some adjustments. And so what were having the time now to do in a nonemergency way is actually figure out exactly what adjustments are needed, what strengthening. Were also, because of the lidar testing, can keep very, very close track so that we know if the urgency level increases and therefore we need to speed up repairs or if its been 50 years, it can go another 50 years without us needing to do much. So we are now working on the next phase of the project, which is to investigate what are the appropriate corrective actions and when those might happen, and then to incorporate that into our Capital Planning and that is the end of my report. Thank you. Director tumlin directors, do you have questions or comments on the directors report . Director you could tell i dont know if you mentioned this in your report, but maybe you can. There were some. Well, it has to do with Governor Newsom. There was some money that was allocated to us to clean the bus shelters. Thats right. Did you talk about that just now . I did. That was the clean california. Was i just spacing out . Okay no, no, no. That was the clean california grant. 3. 3 million. Yes i saw that. But how are we planning on using it . So we are working together with the department of public works. So part of the money will go to supplies and equipment and so on for our own staff. A part of it will go to some existing contractors that we have that we already had on contract to help facilitate it. Catching up with some deferred cleaning. But like how how do you think the San Francisco public will know . Will they notice it . How could they notice a difference with this additional money . Well, what we hope is that folks will start noticing a difference like were folks are starting to notice a difference on the t third line. So the upgrade the steady upgrading just our crews were out there. They removed all the rust from the railings that had been there since the 90s. We repainted everything. We changed it all the light fixtures. We removed all of the graffiti for the ad panels and maps. We were able to replace, like the clear covers that kind of gotten sun damage over time. So the goal is a thousand small improvements rather than 1 or 2 really big improvements. The goal is to bring everything up to a state of cleanliness that that we would expect in a city like San Francisco. Okay. And then my second question and forgive me if youve also already said this , but when do you think the city can expect to start to see the implementation of the speed Safety Cameras, the speed Safety Cameras . The law doesnt go into effect until next year, and it requires us a series of part of the compromise of getting the bill passed was the requirements for a series of equity studies and Community Engagement and a lot of discussion around placement. So right now, the team has already gotten started. I been under the assumption that the governor was going to sign the bill. The team had gotten started and developing a detailed timeline as well as getting ready to make asks of other organized actions for ways of being able to help us shorten that timeline. The team is committed to San Francisco being the first to having cameras in place. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Director hemminger, please. Thank you, madam chair. And maybe ill begin where my colleague ended on the speed cameras and i do want to congratulate you, jeff, and your team, for getting the bill through a fairly, at times hostile environment in sacramento and im. I was a skeptic. I think, to begin with, that we would get there and weve gotten there. So i do want to thank you thank our mutual employee, kate breen, who made her this her lifes work in the last five years. And im glad we are where we are. One thing that would be helpful to me to try to assess this is a Pilot Project right . Its time limited. So weve got to go out there and do the best we can and then well go back and go through the mother may game again, given the fact that it is a pilot. What i wanted to know is, is were were limited to 33 of these devices is what what would the number be if we were just skipping a pilot and just implementing this as a citywide . Id project how many how many cameras would we be looking at . 100, 234. I mean, whats how big is this pilot . Thats what im asking. I mean, the authorized pilot is indeed small and one of the things that we are focused on is making sure that the pilot is successful in order to create the case that we can go back to the legislature and either continue it or expand the program. And that means not only demonstrating success in reducing speeding and reducing traffic violence, but also addressing many of the fears that opponents had put forward around privacy and equity. And thats those are two key. Consider asians in the bill language itself that we are ready to focus on demonstrating that we can protect the privacy of individuals and make sure that this technology is not being used to create more harm for people who had been targeted in in in in traffic stops in the past. So it is a pilot, but can you characteri size it for me at all . We believe. 10 or 10. I mean, how big how big is this relative to what we would need as a Citywide Program . This is a very small pilot, right . So were limited to 33 cameras. We have a lot more intersections in our High Injury Network than 33. So one of the things that we are hoping to be able to test with this pilot is efficacy as well as trust. And if we are successful, feel like this should be one of our primary tools for addressing the worst cause of traffic violence, which is excessive speed by people driving cars. But i mean, youre just indicating that weve weve got a fairly long road to hoe. Correct. To get to that kind of answer, get it back to sacramento and then scale it up right . Thats right. And thats why we appreciate the extreme patience and inexhaustibility of people like kate breen, who just kept coming back again and again until we got this passed and so the sooner we can demonstrate success, the easier it is to go back to the legislature. Well and look, i know ive been a bit of a broken record about this, but i think its also the case that this pilot is not going to scale soon enough and big enough to dent the numbers that we keep seeing every week and month, which to me means weve got to keep banging on the Police Department to help us enforce this. The law thats right. The speed cameras have a lot of benefit from them for a lot of reasons, but theyre were five years away. It sounds like to me, before weve got something that we can really make a dent with. Thats right. So this is we have achieved one major win in our legislative program. We have a long list of other desired legislative changes that we could also make. And i think following from the lessons of particularly the european union, one which has not faced that the dramatically escalating rates of traffic violence that we have in the United States, but is instead actually address the problem they address the problem through a long list of legislative changes that we are eager to see. Also here in the United States and in california. Thank you. And just a quick question on another subject, which is the twin peaks tunnel. The i didnt hear you say the word seismic was was that part of the assessment that we made of that tunnel and its stability . Yes. So we investigate it. All of the conditions, both the seismic condition. Theres a lot of water. Theres a whole river in the tunnel that we need to understand and manage around. There is theres the concrete itself. Theres the structure between the concrete and the rock wall. Theres also the very old anchors for the overhead wire. And of course, everything related to the track bed and the switches, although that was work that we had addressed previously. So the focus was the structure itself. Okay. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you. Director kahina, please. Thank you. Chair ekin. Question about ab 4346 is the bill against the harassment of women . So just wanted to get more context on how how the passing of this bill will expand our efforts to make transit safer for both operators and for riders. Thats right. And the focus of the bill is collecting data. So the best way for us to be able to help ourselves allocate our limited resources, but also so be transparent to the public about how were how what our need is and how were addressing that need is, is by collecting data and then being transparent about that data. So some of the work that our security chief, kimberly burris, just did this week is creating a new set of dashboards around operator and parking control officer assaults because that is a core part of our effort at addressing safety is both the street users and transit riders, but also our employees. And so we have been working to get way ahead of this bill to make sure that weve got solid data around the Passenger Experience and our employee experience. You can find our muni passenger safety data online. Already we have published that broadly. It is at , i believe its. At sfmta. Com muni data, but you can certainly search for muni safety data and we publish our Safety Incidents per 100,000 miles by category and theyre in two different categories. Theyre in the top. Theres a pull down menu and you could look at the historic Data Tracking a long, long time back. Plus the new, more recent data where we expanded our definition of assault. So one of the things that was very clear that was important to our security chief is we need to include assault, not just, you know, exterior facing violence thats going to require a trip to the hospital, but also experiencing harassment on muni because that its that whole array of experiences that folks face on muni that determines whether they feel safe and comfortable and therefore are willing to ride. So we expanded our definition in order to make sure that we are fully encompassing all of those factors. So with the passing of this particular bill, the signing of this bill, this effort is now expanded statewide. Thats right. So does that mean that we can now share data across agencies and work with different Law Enforcement jurisdictions . Or how does how does that connection get created . Yeah, i dont know the details of how that connection gets created, but what the bill sets is standard ised Data Collection efforts which we will be complying with. And then ideally that helps us create a stronger case and Stronger Coalition at the state level to get both funding as well as legislative changes to address the core problems. And thats great because we have a few different Transit Systems that operate within San Francisco. And so its great to see that. Now we have a statewide effort to make all transit safer for riders. Thank you. Thank you. Director henderson, please. Thank you, chair. I just had a question about ab 361. The or whichever number it is about the front facing cameras is there or do you have an idea of what the Financial Impact would be to implement that . I thought that that existed already. So is there a Capital Expenditure that is going to have to that you anticipate now that this is authorized . Yeah. So we have forward facing cameras on our muni busses that allow us to enforce double parking in the transit lane. This effective takes that same authorization in and gives us the ability to put cameras in our other vehicles to enforce double parking in the bike lane. And so we would use the basically the same techniques where we have pico parking control officers who review video at extreme fast forward and then stop and then manually issue a citation. There is a pretty significant cost to adding vehicle, adding cameras to our vehicles. But as we know from the cameras that are on our transit vehicles, theres also significant benefit. Well beyond being able to enforce illegal parking. The. 11 or 12 cameras on our transit vehicles are a critical component of our efforts to address both safety as well as crime. And that data, when its reported to the Police Department in time we can save our video data and use that for evidence in any kind of investigation. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, director. So. Ill make it really short, but i wanted to ask Something Else that you mentioned about how we can help with with car thieves in the city. And id like to see if i read an article recently last week about how this lady were able to find her stolen car through looking at the her citations on her car wreck record. So director tumblin, i wonder what can we do to help people get their stolen car back and then how are we how can we alleviate these Financial Burdens of those tickets that these poor car owners end up having to live with . But they werent the one that actually make the decision to park in an illegal spot. So how can we help them and also maybe Work Together with sfpd and it just leave it all to you . An open ended question. Yes. No, thats a very timely question. So the mayor issued a directive last week following that San Francisco chronicle story ordering us to collaborate with the San Francisco Police Department to make sure that we that our databases could talk to each other and that we could not only identify stolen vehicles, but also like not not cite the owner of the Rightful Owner of that vehicle for a violation. This has caused us to do an investigate mission into why we are no longer able to do that. So we used to be able to automatically do that and i was mistaken in the underlying reasons why. So one of the things that i had understood was that the citys privacy ordinance was an obstacle that is not correct from our current understanding that there is an administrative process that we may need to go through in order to allow databases to talk to each other. But the burden for solving this problem is on the sfmta. So we had Legacy Software that we had been using that software is no longer being maintained. And so what we need to do is just defined the api or updated software in order to allow the databases to talk to each other. Again and that work is the responsibility of the sfmta and we are working hard on it. And in the meantime, um, we do try to make it very easy. So sometimes as our parking control officers make mistakes or sometimes a motorist was doing something in good faith and inadvertently gets a parking citation, we try to make it very easy to protest citations and many citations can be dismissed administratively. So so theres a form online thats easy to find just sfmta dismissed parking citation or protest citation and so long as somebody has evidence, its like a Police Report that my car was stolen. It is very easy for us to dismiss those citations that were that were written despite the good faith of the individual motorist. We dont. We dont ever want to be in the position of compounding harm that our residents face. Uh, yeah. I trust that we dont want to do that. And i just wanted to see if anything that you need. The boards help to continue to expedite that effort. I think that will were all open here to help you. Yes both thank you for that. The board of supervisors includes president peskin has expressed as well the desire that if theres any legislative fix thats necessary, that we will fix it. I believe all of the problem rest on my shoulders and with with our staff team. So we will get moving on making that happen. Thank you. Thank you, director. So, um, i just wanted to comment also on the just pause on the ab 645 victory as well. Colleagues, i attended the celebration event that walkoff put on last night and im sort of still pinching myself that this is the world that were living in now, which is a world where something we thought for so long was not possible is in fact not come to pass. Its really quite remarkable. And i do want to just shout out continued to staff kate breen, though shes on vacation. Katie angotti, though she just had a baby when no ricardo julia for their work shaping the bill and of course just you jeff for having the sharp focus and reminding people again and again this is such a barrier to our efforts. And also just for putting in the work yourself and making trips to sacramento and getting this across the finish line. I also want to just acknowledge the mayor and her staff for coming out early in support on this bill and that encouraged so many other cities to get on board. And then just thank you to the staff, the advocates and community and anybody else who did anything else to get this bill across the finish line. Its really a remarkable victory , and i hope we can all just really pause and celebrate this moment. Thats all i had. If there are no other director comments, im going to open it up for Public Comment on the director report. Sorry, thats going to be item nine is not is so were on seven now, then eight, then nine. Yep. Hi. Board members. Luke bornheimer first, i want to thank director tomlin staff and the board, especially chair ekin and walk San Francisco and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition for their work and advocacy on ab 645 and Speed Enforcement cameras. Speed enforcement cameras will make the 33 streets that theyre installed on likely in 2025 safer. That said, theres no good reason to wait until 2025 to install these cameras or more red light cameras, which the agency hasnt used its full authority to install more of or install faster. And we need the agency to choose locations for Speed Enforcement cameras and install them as soon as possible. Ideally in the first half of 2024 since director hemminger mentioned arm Traffic Enforcement by sfpd, i think its important to highlight what we know will make our streets safer and directly address our roadway safety crisis, as well as our climate crisis. Our Public Health crisis and car traffic and noise and air pollution in our city. The single best thing we can do to address this all of these things is create a connected network of protected bike lanes throughout our city, starting construction immediately be a connected network of protected bike lanes will make more people feel safe using bikes, scooters and other forms of active transportation to get around our city. And we can start creating that connected network of protected bike lanes. Now for example, by agendizing and approving the 17th street quick build project, which has been purposefully delayed through private discussions within the city. We do not need to wait for the active communities plan to be finalized and approved. We can and should start immediately. I urge you to direct director tumlin and staff to start installing a connected network of protected bike lanes immediately. We need you to lead for our city in the planet. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, stacy randecker and ditto all of that that luke just said. And director tomlin, i think you forgot to mention the sponsorship of the San Francisco city football club. Its a brilliant placement for muni. Im glad to see it. Im a potrero mom of a footballer who practices at beach chalet. If we could get travel times to and from all of our soccer pitches to 45 minutes or less, it would be truly golden. And about our Small Business owners, can we turn those merchant corridors into pedestrian ized places . If busses are not easily rerouted, making it transit only is possible. Cities all over the world do this, including the very exotic san jose who has transit on a pedestrian ized plaza. If we really want to do right by our by our merchants, we would look to the throngs of people that are out for every sunday streets saturdays on valencia, weekends on hayes and that glorious night market that was out in the sunset. We can get goods to merchants. We can ensure accessibility for those who need it. We need these spaces for the vibrancy of San Francisco and to meet our safety and climate goals. Could we please stop wringing our hands on this and get moving to work for everyone . And yay for speed cameras . But and we will always need Something Like this. But streets with concrete protected bike lanes, concrete diverters at the ends every few blocks and chicanes with mannys redwood groves are impossible to speed upon. Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers in the room on the directors report . Otherwise lets open, please. Remote at this time well move to remote Public Comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. Members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. Each speaker will have two minutes. Moderator for speaker. Thank you. I hope you can hear me. Chair amanda, you can o. Olivia dew point for the record, she and her i talk about the directors report. Very good report. Im excited about the lighting improvements. Im very cognizant of that when im in the stations and tunnels and just want to get the best technology that we can. I have actually have entire led lighting in my home. So it works and the tunnel work is very, very important to me. You know, hear people talk much about that. But im very passionate about the tunnel and its not easy getting across the city. If theres issues with that tunnel. My resume with the twin peaks tunnel is not very long. Going back to about 2009. But i do have 43 years of experience using the north river tunnels, which are under the hudson river between new york and new jersey. And they were opened in november of 1910. And they are really getting old and sometimes its scary riding through those. I rode through those a couple of weeks ago. And so we dont want to let our tunnel get to that point. And yes, there were some other issues with in new york city with the superstorm, but still, we have to keep after the tunnel. And i appreciate the explanation about how this tunnel works because i thought it was just concrete all the way through making this 30s. So thats very important legislation. Were doing. All right. Im generally in alignment that im not really an expert on that. And i did hear a mention about director yekusiel. I said it right. I cant say i ever really met director yekusiel, but i wish very well. I really do. And maybe, maybe, perhaps, maybe i will meet up in new york city subway. True. Your time is up next. Speaker. Herbert weiner, director tumlin pointed out the importance of Small Businesses to the economy and thriving of San Francisco. Now it should be noted with the institute of corridors on mission street, taraval street and now gary street, Small Businesses have folded. And what is going to be done about the restitution of these Small Businesses . The projects resulted in diminishing revenue and too many businesses, Small Businesses had to give up shop. So my concern is the restitution of Small Businesses and the advocacy of it in the light of mta projects which were actually detrimental to them. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello good afternoon. This is barry toronto. I want to wish director yekutiel hallelujah to him after what he witnessed in the last week or so. I would blame him for changing his priorities and for stepping down. But i want to thank him for his help with working with Small Businesses, including taxis. The problem is we cant get enforcement at taxi stands and we are Small Businesses providing a service for people to go and frequent Small Businesses in different areas as well. But but we cant get enforcement at the cab stands in these in these Small Business areas, such as 24th and mission, which brings about the bill about harassment of female pcos while theyre giving tickets over there. So itd be great if they were protected while theyre giving tickets at the cab stand at 24th and mission. But we cant get any help. We cant get any enforcement. So and the next thing about getting congratulations on. Ab 645 the only problem is what do we do about the errant scooter riders who run red lights and speed through crosswalks and also pedestrians who take risks and walk while the light is green in the opposing direction at intersections, the for the word is no longer a good word of jaywalking. But you taking your life in your own hands when you are crossing the street, when you have the red light at the pedestrian. So i think at the same time, while promoting this speed camera program, youre also promoting that pedestrians also observe the walk signals. Thank you very much for your time. And im surprised you didnt mention anything about jaime parks and tom maguire. Thank you. Callers. Okay that will close Public Comment. Please call the next item lisa is you on item number eight, the Citizens Advisory Council report. Good afternoon, directors. Its a pleasure to address you today. Director yukkuri will allow me to, on behalf of the cac, thank you for your service. Were sorry youre leaving the board, but weve always appreciated your passion for Small Businesses, us, and especially for the riders of San Francisco and especially district eight. So thank you. We had three presentations at our last meeting. It was a long one. The first one was on the 2024 legislative program and our motion was as follows. The sf mta cac recommends that the sfmta board adopt the 2024 legislative Program Priorities as presented. Im assuming they are coming to you soon and so youll see the same presentation. We saw something similar next. We had a very long presentation on the valencia bikeway pilot, which has been rather i know youve received a lot of feedback about it. Weve received a lot of feedback about it. Not much of if any of it positive. And our recommendation is as follows the sfmta cac recommends abandoning the current unintuitive and dangerous Center Running bicycle lane pilot on valencia and refocusing the street toward its core needs commercial deliveries. Bicyclists outdoor diners and pedestrians by pursuing a road geometry that disincentivizes nonresidential traffic. And finally, we also heard a very interesting presenter session on Autonomous Vehicles, which everyone is very interested in as of late. And our recommendation is as follows the sfmta cac endorses the sfmta sfcta and sf planning commissions request for a rehearing of the California Public Utilities Commission august 10th, 2023. Approval of unlimited numbers of cruise and waymo vehicles charging for passenger rides 24 over seven in all neighborhoods of the city without doubt, an Environmental Impact report. Again, we i think like staff, we think there should be a greater level of transparency on Autonomous Vehicles and how theyre working or not working in San Francisco streets for to the benefit of everyone. Thank you all for your time. Colleagues, do you have questions for chair lee for. I did, if you wouldnt mind. Please go ahead. Director hinsey yeah. Um, i. Jennifer, thank you for your engagement. For those of us who missed the meeting, we know about your recommendation for valencia, but if you could provide a little bit more color as to maybe some of the reasons why your members might, might have landed on the recommendation that you did, that would be id be interested in know just a little bit about tenor, that discussion. Sure, sure. For the motion was not unanimously passed. And i think some people on the council were very concerned and we heard feedback from Small Businesses that are very concerned about having access to being able to park and for their employees. As we heard from a local bar owner who is in danger of losing her business that shes had for many, many years. I think some of us were swayed by that. And also, again, weve heard consistent feedback from cyclists that the middle bikeway is unsafe. They dont like it, they dont want to use it, and they either want to move to a geometry that has a protected bike lane on the outside of the street rather than in the center of the street, which would require i mean, its valencia is not a big street. Its small. And somethings going to have to give. And i think the thing that people think might have to give would be through traffic, which could probably be routed onto guerrero, which has a lot of traffic on it or mission, which has traffic on it as well. Um thank you for the thank you for that additional information. Very helpful. Sure. My pleasure. Ucucha. What do you mean . Get rid of through traffic . Im sorry. What traffic does . What does that mean . Exactly . What traffic i didnt getting rid of through traffic. Like cars that are just driving down valencia like a non resident because there are residences on valencia. So residents would want to have access to the street but not like people just driving down valencia. So the idea would be to have it be restricted to like folks that live on valencia would be the only ones that could drive on it. Hypothetically. Yes i think thats kind of what they were what we were leaning towards. Okay, thanks. Sure thank you. I also had sort of some follow up questions specifically on this last phrase, which is by pursuing a road geometry that disincentivizes non residential traffic. Just wondering if you could bring us in on your thinking. Were there are certain like scenarios you had talked about or what led the commission to make this decision . Again, i think those who supported the motion were really wanting something more where valencia is more pedestrianized and i think thats kind of where they were. I think thats where they were trending. And it was it was compromised language that we worked out to try and get them to get the motion passed because i think some folks wanted pretty much no cars at all. Other folks wanted cars. So we could have so it would be much more aggressive to say for businesses and things like that. But i think this was sort of the compromise that was reached. I dont know if that fully answers your question. No, its helpful. Thats helpful. Dr. Tumlin, can you remind us when the update is coming on valencia street . We talked about, i think december when we adopted it. I see sitting in the back livable streets lead. Jamie parks as well as soon to be acting livable streets lead. Kimberly leong, whos the currently the project manager for valencia yeah. Sorry hop on in. Hi kimberly liang, the project manager for the valencia bikeway project. We plan to return as soon as january 2024. Were in the process of collecting data right now for the project, and weve asked her to come back so we can give you a recommendation on on the pilot extension, because i think youre looking whether or not to extend the pilot in january. Right so in january. When we return, well have information from our three month evaluation mark. And as a part of that, well have any recommendations for where we should head next with this pilot, whether it be improvements or adjustments that need to be made. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Its our intention to give you a recommendation as well. Once we hear the data. Okay thank you for your report and for your service. Oh, sorry. I didnt see you. Yes, director. So go ahead. Oh, sorry. Sorry im always a little today. Im a little bit lag of my, my response was delayed, so i apologize. Thank you, chair. Thank you for sharing. All your input is very, very insightful and really liked it. And i keep thinking i actually live in the mission and ive seen the evolution of whats happening in valencia and yeah, we need to continue to refine this. And i like most part of your recommendations and i just keep thinking your last sentences, which our chair had brought up, if you can elaborate. And i thought of this morning, i spent my whole morning Holding Hands with one of my really Senior Mentor just to walk ten steps up to the alamo square park. And i know that i have a lot of my mentors that are actually we enjoy time to go to nice restaurant. And so spend like a morning and lunch or dinner. So if we can you explain to me your recommendation. So how am i going to get my mentor to actually enjoy these restaurants on valencia if she can actually walk really just just five steps or ten steps . Im just looking at people who actually cant bike, can row. Right. And they are relying on paratransit or their loved ones if theyre lucky and fortunate enough to have the resource, to have their loved ones actually drive them, to get them to where they can go to, to have their normal social life or sometimes simply some efficacy of community work. So i just wanted to see if you your, your your group had thought about the equity component of that was that yeah, we did get a comment. A Public Comment like that. And personally i think thats a very insightful comment and something that needs to be considered as we again try to figure out all of the competing priorities for that very slim street. But yeah, some people, a car is the only option really, especially if were not running transit down valencia anymore, which we arent. Its and its not really fair to say, well its only a block away and, well, a block can be a mile for some people. Exactly i think thats a very good point. Okay. Would you would is a good point. Would you would you refine your recommendation or maybe bring it back into to us to see what you. I think thats something well need to consider once we get the data and we come back with a recommendation in january. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Director hensley has a question for you as well. Sure i do. Sorry, charlie, for to put you on the hot seat today. But you did you did mention that you intend to come back to us with a recommendation. So im trying to figure out what your recommend for us today is or should we be should we be holding off basically until you come back with your. I think the recommendation in january. Yeah, thats a good no, thats a good point. I think the thrust of the councils recommendation today is moving away from the center bike lane. I think thats the real thats the meat of it. And then but youre still going to wait until the project is evaluated to come and write another recommendation. Yes i think we felt that since staff was going to issue a recommendation to you in january , we thought we would chime in as well. Okay got it. Okay. Thank you for your service. You bet. Lets open Public Comment on the cac report items, please, for those in the room. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Board members. Luke bornheimer, i urge you to take the cac unprecedented recommendation and direct staff to immediately replace this valencia Street Center bikeway with either curbside protected bike lanes or pedestrianization of the street, which can include access for commercial deliveries. Local residents and people with disabilities. As more people are crashing or being hit, killed or injured on valencia with the Center Bikeway and significantly more than the portion of valencia where curbside protected bike lanes were installed in 2019 and multiple evaluation by sfmta staff showed that cars parked in the bike lane decrease their 99. Close calls decreased to 100, and the number of people biking increased 49. Curbside protected bike lanes work phenomenally well. Improved safety for all people, including drivers, and increase revenue for local businesses and they can be installed on valencia using quick build materials in months, if not weeks in an email, sfmta staff told me they didnt create a design for curbside protected bike lanes because the design wouldnt allow for car parking on both sides of the street. Only 56 days after the Center Bikeway pilot was officially started, an 80 year old man was killed on valencia. Countless other people have crashed or been injured as a result of the Center Bikeway and even more have had close calls which could have resulted in them being killed or seriously injured, including a mom with a kid on her bike. About a week ago, the people of San Francisco and our planet need you to take immediate action to make valencia safer for people, better for business and effective for fighting Climate Change. I urge you to take the unprecedented recommendation in and direct staff to immediately replace the valencia Street Center, bikeway with either curbside protected bike lanes or pedestrianization of the street, which can include access for commercial deliveries, local residents and people with disabilities. As you are the only people who can help us and we need you to take immediate action to protect us, our local businesses and the planet. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, stacy randecker. I could talk all day about valencia, but i did want to say to director so, so i agree with everything that luke said, although im all for pedestrianization for as much of the corridor that it makes sense at this time. I think at the lower end and the protected bike lanes are working fine and it doesnt have quite the vibe that the center of, of valencia does. As for your mentor and friend, i totally understand my dad who recently passed, he was he couldnt walk either. It would have been an issue for him. But what i would say is what do you do when you take them to the airport . What do you do when you take them to the mall . Thats the same thing that we would ask to be done for valencia. We do not want to limit accessibility to anyone when were talking about pedestrianization, but we have to change our mind about what accessibility really means. As i was out on valencia, ive been out there the last three saturday nights all night that its closed and the things that ive seen the people in the mobility scooters, the dad with the teen daughter with a like a glider sort of apparatus, theres its so wide. Theres nowhere else you can go. You could never do that on a sidewalk. You could only do that on like jfk. Great highway when its closed or a place like valencia, i dont know where they live. I was too know i didnt want to go bother them, but it just was like where does she have to go . Like this to see the little kids out on their strider bikes and stuff . We dont have that on our side of town. We need spaces like this. It does so much for the merchants. And if its not working, then we have to figure out how to make it work. Our city and our planet, the people who live here, we need it to be more livable. We need it to be a place where people can go and want to go. And there its full of life. Not just cars. We can do this. We need as an agency, as the city. We need to start saying how can we do it differently . Not like what is the problem . What is the one off case . How do we solve for as much as possible . Thats what we need to move forward. Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers in the room for item eight . Seeing none, please open the phone at this time well move to remote Public Comment, not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. Members of the public wishing to comment on item number eight should dial star three to enter the queue. Each speaker will have two minutes. Moderator for speaker. Hello. Good afternoon again and sorry toronto. As you know, valencia street already is traffic calming because you you have to stop in every every light down valencia street unless youre going really slow. So its already not lights are not timed. The only problem is you cant get off of valencia street because you cant make any left turns in that area. So the center. So i applaud the for wanting to abandon in this failed experiment of the Center Running bike lane. I also want to applaud the cac for endorsing the rehearing request by the City Attorney and the city departments just the other night at bill graham civic auditorium, there was a rave like event going on at and one of the Autonomous Vehicles ran into the barrier blocking grove street between larkin and paul. It does not recognize these items that close streets off temporarily. So there has it has to go back to the drawing board to deal with these. Unlike unlikely situations that their Autonomous Vehicles cant figure out. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Next speaker. Afternoon, directors. This is cyrus hall. Im calling as a bike rider who rides in valencia sometimes im frustrated to hear that agency will not be bringing an update until january on the valencia bike lane. The number of issues that have been reported. Weve had a death. Weve had a number of injuries. Is calls for more urgency on this issue than waiting until january. I want to give a couple examples. When youre writing down the center bike lane and sfpd decides that they dont decide they have an emergency and theyre using the center lane to get to where theyre going as quickly as possible. You as a writer have nowhere to go. You do. You have to bet that other traffic is going to behave perfectly and cautiously as you try to escape the oncoming vehicle while in the lane. I dont know how this wasnt thought about when this was when this was designed. The bike turn boxes are death traps. No one wants to use them. No one wants to be in those boxes because it requires drivers to behave perfectly and drivers dont behave perfect. I urge a faster sped up analysis of the incidents the agency is aware of and quicker action on this issue. Thank you very much. Thank you. No additional speakers. Ill close Public Comment. I see director hemminger has a comment. Thank you, madam chair. And i apologize for not raising this earlier. You know, i fear that were headed toward another show on valencia in january. If all were going to be talking about is the results of the pilot with the Center Running lane. I believe i made the point when we originally considered this item that we really only had one option in front of us and that it was worthwhile doing being a pilot and doing an evaluation session. But it sort of compared to what an and one thing thats clearly been mentioned is a more traditional protected bike lane on the outside, which obviously is going to interfere with parking given the geometry of the road. And the other one is what weve done on market, which is to eliminate private vehicles , which comes with its own set of trouble, but it strikes me that if we only have one option in front of us again, were liable to get the same result, which is a room full of unhappy people on each side, determined that theyve got the point of view. I mean, some of the testimony now is getting a little bit ideological and i thought one of our purposes was to try to turn down the temperature a little bit. So, jeff, maybe you could just give us a sense of your expectation of how much work we can do to by january or if its a month or so later, whatever, in having 2 or 3 legitimate options on the table instead of just one with a bunch of people shooting yes and no at it. So excuse me, chair, may i interrupt . Deputy City Attorney susan clevelandknowles i did just want to remind the board that the item that was agendized today was a report from the cac and that the broader topic of valencia is not on the agenda today. So think if jeff wants to give a brief response, i think thats fine. But we should probably in their report was this item, right . Yeah right. But this is youve asked questions and sought clarification from the cac about their resolution on which was the identified object. Not a full not a full discussion of valencia. And so i would just urge some caution. I mean, i think we can respond to director hemingss question, but but its just really about what the cac reported to you, what i am hearing is direction from director hemminger that when we come back to you in january, that we evaluate an array of options. Yeah. In short, thats it. So if youre going to do that, im happy and i hope our council is happy to. Yeah, im no issues. Sorry, i didnt know how long the discussion was going to go on. Thank you. Okay thank you. Lets please call the next item. Next item. Very good. Item number nine. General Public Comment. Members of the public may address the board of directors on matters that are within the boards jurisdiction, but not on todays calendar hour. I do have a speaker card for stacy randecker. Okay go ahead. Hi, my name is rex ridgeway. Im the president of the ptsa at lincoln high school. And im here to talk about a situation with the number 48 bus. This is a condensed timeline of correspondence from our assistant principal to a person who works at the here. I wont name the name, but ill just give you the date. September 20th, 26. The 40. The number 48. Number 8657 stopped by this school, did not open the doors and drove off without picking up anybody. September 27th. Thank you for your time with us. The 48 number 8847 was listed as not in service and just drove by by october second 48. Number three, 48 busses on friday after school drove by our kids and did not pick them up. The bus numbers were eight, eight, 98812 and 8888. October 3rd two weeks ago. Our assistant principal emailed this individual and said, i know that you are investigating. Do you have any follow up . Our community is wondering if theres any improvement since you notified us. And to my knowledge as of this morning, two weeks have passed and we dont know whats going on. So im here because i have time and i would like to. And the assistant principal called me and said, rex, can you do something . I said, ill make a Public Comment. Thank you. So, sir, the board cant address your item, but al ramos, whos in the audience, can direct you to the right folks in our Transit Division. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for your comment. Next speaker, please. Hi. Board members. Luke bornheimer. I urge you to immediately approve a citywide no turn on red policy and direct staff to create a plan for implementing that policy as soon as possible to make it safer, easier and more comfortable for people to cross our streets and increase safety for all people, especially for children, seniors and people with disabilities, as well as people who walk, bike and even drivers during your meeting two weeks ago, the board of supervisors unanimously approved supervisor prestons resolution urging you to approve a citywide no turn on red policy on the resolutions First Reading of a remarkable event for the board of supervisors and a historic moment for our city. Since the board of supervisors unanimous approval urging you to approve a citywide policy. More than 15 news outlets have covered the Public Campaign i started thats support voters have sent you and other policy makers more than 5000 emails in the San Francisco chronicle and Los Angeles Times covered the approval. And this morning, the guardian covered it as well. This is an amazing opportunity for you and our city to lead on a proven Street Safety improvement that will make our streets instantly safer, especially for children, seniors and people with disabilities. As well as people who walk, bike and drive. I urge you to immediately approve a citywide no turn on red policy and direct staff to create a plan for implementing that policy as soon as possible to make it safer, easier and more comfortable for people to cross our streets and increase safety for all people, especially for children, seniors and people with disabilities, as well as people who walk, bike and even drivers. For anyone who supports a no turn on red, please go to or rssf. Com. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi stacy randecker again. So you all probably know that we are in a Global Climate emergency and even though we hear do rarely suffer the ill effects of severe weather, it is not the case with the rest of the world. Transportation is the number one single contributor to Climate Change for San Francisco, california and the United States. We need to change absolute absolutely everything about how people and goods move at the same time, our streets have been particularly dangerous for those outside of car. Instead of reaching vision zero, were at zero vision making effectively no impact in the near decade since our supervisors initially resolved that we would eliminate deaths from transportation trans base where sfmta gets its traffic injury data has not been updated since march 31st. It has been without an owner since july 1st, so sfmta, or at least the public is flying blind. With regard to the state of our streets, i realize that eliminating transportation and Greenhouse Gas emissions and traffic deaths seems like an impossibility. But we must. And they are absolutely intertwined. And i am echoing what i have heard many of you say that this agency needs to get creative about making change, change that our city and our planet require year. Could we reinstitute the innovation position that sfmta once had someone that is thinking about how to solve these very large issues and bring forth a variety of solutions every time . Could we have someone that is responsible for vision zero, someone that will ensure that the data is up to date available to the public completely comprehensive and reports out changes to be or a thorough analysis for keeping the status quo of our streets. Too often i hear that. Oh, its fine, no changes need to be made. Thats your time. Thank you. We need to make change. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Ill make this quick. My issue today in and quite frequently is parking tickets in the city. The number one thing that says i think that we should make some changes is if you google what city has the most expensive parking tickets . Theres articles that come out. Its always San Francisco at the top. And were a city that that prides herself on on on on change. And focusing on low income people. And i think its shameful that we have that and yeah its very frustrating and i and i understand you were talking earlier about the administrative process for dismissing citations. I think that the reasons that you can give or the reasons that that citation will be dismissed administratively are kind of kept secret. And its somewhat of a convoluted process. And then you have to go to the second level through the kangaroo court. And the third one, you have to pay everything and then pay more to go before a real judge. And ive done that and i won. Yay but its a struggle and it lasts months to get to get a refund. I just think its an issue that should be addressed. And i know youre following the law, but i think the city can can go beyond that and make it more more focused on on the residents. Thank you. Thank you. No other speakers in the room. Please open the remote Public Comment at this time. Well move to remote Public Comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. Members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. Each speaker will have two minutes. Moderator first speaker, thank you. Chair amanda alito. Dupree for the record, she and her speak generally, im just an ordinary user of muni. Maybe im one of a very rare few, but i am. I hope you hear me all right. And how do we build the best muni . We can . I often learn things in other places. I read about a program in new jersey on nj transit called ride kinds and saying hate has no place, hate has no seat on our system. Um, i would like to see us have that kind of work here at muni because i want to feel fully included on muni and i feel very fortunate that your senior staff has fully included me and welcomed me in the things that muni. But the leadership really comes from you. So ive been away from you for a little while, but i did go to new york city and i did ride on their legendary system called a subway. And every time i wrote it while wearing a skirt, nobody tried to stop me from using the system in new york. I dont think anybody would do it on muni, but i ask that you not entertain any kind of hate on muni because i want to be able to use the system fully and hopefully ill use the Autonomous Vehicles which will offer me a safe skirt friendly way for me to traverse the city. Im just waiting for my 30s code. Um. Some of you have not met me, but i hope to be meet you at a meeting in person soon along with the senior staff that has always welcomed me fully on this system. Senior staff can can only do so much because they work for you. Muni needs. The tone for muni needs to be set by you and i ask that you build the most welcoming system we can. We can learn from new jersey and new york. Thank you. Next speaker. Is herbert weiner. I wish to speak on the extension of parking hours. Now youve pointed out that, you know, you need extended parking hours for more revenue, but this could be greatly offset by the need to employ additional staff to enforce the parking hours. So in essence, the overhead cancels out the benefits of the revenue. So i think this is really a self destructive measure. Its going to alienate the public. Its going to hurt businesses, and its basically a loser all the way around. And when you want to extend those parking hours, you better think three times before you do it. This is a very destructive measure. And it really will not improve Service Delivery from mta. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello. Good afternoon. This is barry toronto again. Um, i first want to applaud you have another great employee in the Taxi Division in addition to peter woods is scott leone. Scott leone helps arrange for temporary taxi stands for special events. And i appreciate what he did to help us while the lesbians who are occupying the complete block of castro street. So thank you, scott, for working on that project. I want to say, though, is that because your mobility investigators are spending more time on scooters, were still having the legal solicitations going on in the cab staging area, particularly at chase center. And were having a problem with not having an investigator after concerts and basketball games there. Now that basketball season is starting. Please, please, please have investigators work the basketball games. But know you refuse to do it. You refuse to do it. Why why . Why . Ask director tomlin, why am and i want to applaud director so for bringing up about the patrons issue. People get to go to events at night because of using the paratransit debit card at and the subsidized rides so they can afford and go even though theyre seniors and disabled to go to a special events and i hope that you will be able to allow this allow them to have access to the events because were because if you make it tough for vehicles like ramp taxis to get to certain places, then its a problem. So again, i applaud scott leon for making arrangements so we can have access during the Market Street closure so that lighthouse for the blind and the Mayors Office of disability. Thank you your time is up next. Speaker. Good afternoon, directors. My name is alex landsberg, research and advocacy director for the San Francisco Electrical Construction industry. I want to say a couple of things. First of all, i tuned in late, so maybe i missed it. But in case you are or in case other viewers and listeners havent heard, San Francisco is going to be hosting the international Public Transportation associations north american Trolley Committee next week. Trolley Bus Committee hearing next week in San Francisco. And i think we should be proud of and following on that, i wanted to invite you directors of staff and other members of the public to you, to a question and answer session with Andres Restrepo and Jose Valentin restrepo from the Universidad Pontificia boulevard. Diana i worked with them to show how San Francisco can quickly electrify more than 200 miles of diesel powered muni routes at a lower cost and with fewer Environmental Impacts and lower operational costs than currently envisioned by through the battery electric bus program. Our report shows how we and were bringing andre san Jose Valentin up from medellin to answer questions, have a little reception ahead of the uitp people can rsvp at eventbrite. You can find it in eventbrite or at l, igad dot me. So with periods in there, its a kind of lead me slash emcee trolleys. Next tuesday, 6 00 at the ibew hall at 55 fillmore thanks. Thank you. Next speaker. Can you hear me now . Yes. Go ahead. Great. David pilpel two points, i think. Barry toronto earlier made referee to two people, leaving the mta staff. I understand that one of them is tom maguire, who will be leaving mta soon. I wish him well, although he is not perfect. None of us are. Hes a human being, but he, in my opinion, hes been a very decent and honest person at mta and mta could certainly use more decent and honest people. And i think its a big loss for mta management and for the city. So i wish him well. And if anyone can straighten out bart to san jose, good luck to him on that. On a separate topic , the board of supervisors just voted to limit remote Public Comment at its meetings. I think that was a bad policy choice and i hope mta will not follow suit and do so. Thanks for listening. Thank you. No additional speakers. Okay, lets close Public Comment and move to the next item. Directors that places you on item ten consent calendar. These items are considered to be routine and will be acted upon by a single vote unless a member of the board or public wishes to consider an item separately for all speakers. Providing Public Comment, please identify which item number you are speaking to and i will announce that item 10. 2 a to establish a shared spaces shared spaces road closure on hay street between gough and octavia streets has been severed from the consent calendar and will be heard separately. Item 10. 1. Go ahead and im going to read off requesting the controller to allocate funds and to draw warrants against such Funds Available or will be available in payment of the following claims against the sfmta. Thats items a and b in the agenda item 10. 2 approving various routine parking and traffic modifications and making Environmental Review findings. Items b and c and the agenda and item 10. 3 amending transportation Code Division two, section 801 for permit parking on hyde street between mcallister and grove streets,won golden gate avenue and mcallister street and larkin street between mcallister and grove streets to support transit improvements along hyde street and the relocation of the heart of the city Farmers Market to fulton street. That concludes your consent calendar. Thank you. Secretary silva. I will open now Public Comment for anyone in the room on our consent calendar minus item 10. 2. A seeing none. Please open remote at this time. Well move to remote Public Comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. Members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. Each speaker will have two minutes. Moderator first speaker great david paypal again, i assume i can be heard. I just had a brief comment on item 10. 3. I dont think it needs to be pulled. I note that page two of the staff report has a section on Stakeholder Engagement, but really only discusses what Stakeholder Engagement occurred and does not really summarize the input gleaned from that Stakeholder Engagement that is not the same as some of the other items that have some different and in some cases more discussion on Stakeholder Engagement. I think its important to have that section in Staff Reports and i think its important not just to document what Stakeholder Engagement events occurred and what mta staff broadcast to the stakeholders, but what input was received from stakeholders and much more importantly, what changes were made to the proposals as a result of that Stakeholder Engagement. And this applies not just to item 10. 3, but throughout to all items today and in the future. Thanks for listening. Thank you. No additional speakers. Okay, well close Public Comment on consent, 10. 2 a may i have a motion for my colleagues, please . So moved. Thank you. Please call the roll on the motion to approve the consent calendar. Item 10. 2. A severed director. Heminger heminger. Director henderson. Henderson and i director hinsey. I director. So i so i director ukotoa ukotoa i director gina i coquina regan. Hi egon. I thank you. The consent calendar is approved. Okay. Please call item 10. 2. A item 10. 2 a to establish a shared spaces road closure on hay street between gough and octavia streets from saturday, october 21st, 2023 through saturday, october 19, 2024. 1 p. M. To 10 p. M. Each saturday. We have staff here. Thank you. Good afternoon, chair egan directors. Thank you so much for having me this afternoon. My name is monica minich. Im the Program Manager of shared spaces and happy to be presenting to you all today on the application weve received and have been working closely with the community on to close the 400 block of hay street and hayes valley as part of the shared spaces postPandemic Program. Um, i prepared a brief presentation on the background of the application and program and what led us to the recommendation, the staff recommendation here in front of you today. So shared spaces is was established over the pandemic. It was intended to make a place outside possible for the neighborhood and Business Districts and restaurants and businesses to be outside when it wasnt safe to operate indoors through in the form of parklets roadway closures, sidewalk tables and chairs when it really was such a desperate time to be outdoors, it brought people together. It brought communities together. It really was a delight and has continued to be a delight throughout our city. In the summer of 2021, the mayor signed legislation to make shared spaces permanent and here to stay to allow our economy and Business Districts and Small Businesses to continue to leverage this and activate our public spaces, shared spaces for street closures are typically approved by the interdepartmental Staff Committee of traffic and transportation. This is chaired by sfmta with representation from Public Works Fire Department fire. Fire department. Police entertainment commission. Public health. But this application is brought to you today as the board to take action because of the 21 muni route that serves this street and the reroute needed to accommodate this closure, which requires a necessitates the board share shared spaces versus slow streets two programs that started during the pandemic, each very different and i just want to highlight so were sort of this is covered and intentionally sort of discuss the differences between both programs. Shared spaces are intended to be destinations. These are intended to be on commercial corridors. They have sponsors that are responsible for activating the space and setting it up, and they are recurring, recurring in nature. These are different than blocks that may be closed for a special event shared spaces are recurring slow streets, as were well aware, are on residential corridors. These are traffic on streets that are slow and accommodate all modes of transportation. Its a really a new sort of framework and typology for people to get from point a to point b, this is a form of mobility. Shared spaces. Some things we look at, although not required, but most shared spaces throughout the city and from the postpandemic permanent program. I think weve permitted about over 30 of them are typically on streets without Public Transit, bike lanes on low volume streets without fire or emergency c or medical facilities and likely few driveways. So theres not a lot of Public Access needed to be maintained. So not not possible, but additional analysis like hayes street may be required to confirm feasible city. So now to get into a little bit more of the specifics on hay street, when on the 21 hayes bus line was not operating during the pandemic, the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association and hayes valley Merchant Council applied for a street closure on the three, four and 500 block for fridays, saturdays and sundays. And they operated in that configuration for, i believe, well over a year. There were some iterations of the permit during that time, notably the end of 2021. It was scaled to be its current form of 400 block only for friday, saturday and sundays due to Community Opposition and traffic circulation issues. Then fast forward. To summer 2022, the 21 hayes came back and we were able to find a way to work with the community to continue to reroute muni to serve and allow the closure to happen every friday, saturday and sunday. And thats whats been in place since the Pandemic Program ended in march 2023. So weve been in this transition and Hayes Valley Merchants Council submit an application to continue the closure friday, saturday and sundays, fridays for 210 saturdays, sundays, 10 a. M. To 10 p. M. In the postPandemic Program. And just a high level to orient the three 400 block that weve been speaking and well be speaking most about today is that block between gough and octavia, 300 between franklin and gough, and the 500 block is between octavia and laguna. Hayes street has been a beloved Community Space during the pandemic. Residents report it loving to walk and gather and be in this space. And some businesses have noted additional foot traffic, foot traffic that has supported their business during the pandemic time over the course of the permit. The closure has also experiences some challenges. Many merchants weve worked with and spoken to would like to see more regular activation of the space sponsors have a lot of responsibility when they close the street. They have to set up the barricades, take them down, activate the space and in inspecting the closure during the period that it was activated ad the applicant was not able to do this reliably. The barricades, for example, were not always set up at the same location, and we were really committed to working closely with them and came up actually with a revised barricade set up within the last year that reduced the ability or the need to have staffing at the intersection. The staffing was needed to move barricades in the event of an emergency, and we worked together as a city team revise the barricades set up to eliminate the staff need that there really having a challenge to do consistently and reliably. Unfortunately i think with inspections, we still were seeing inconsistency in setting up the barricades during that time. Other notable things that weve observed and have been reported and many merchants talk about the Traffic Congestion affecting their businesses, particularly on the 300 block is illustrated here for and the impacts just to general circulation having on their customers and on the business deliveries and pickups needed to support their businesses. Lastly weve had a lot of reports on double parking at the intersection as particularly at gough and also on octavia blocking the barricades and really becoming a Traffic Safety and emergency access issue. Weve also received reports from muni about the reroute over the course of the pandemic, about passengers impacted from the new bus stops friday, saturdays and sundays every week. Two operators sort of trying to navigate the closure. I understand. And the friday service operates out of the presidio yard. Our trolley bus overhead wires, which are uniquely a little bit less nimble and how they come off wire and have to reroute that is presented just on fridays compared to the service on saturday and sundays. So some of the observations have been reported and identified over the last couple of years. This summer, staff convened stakeholders upon receiving the application to continue in the post Pandemic Program and met with merchant and neighborhood groups and really tried to all come together. Those that oppose and support all in one space to provide a space and a seat at the table to hear concerns and identify sustainable solutions. So while im here presenting this today, the recommendations that we bring in front of you are really a representation of our work with the neighborhood and the merchants advocates, the office of Small Business, the Fire Department, the Mayors Office, and our recommendations really are a direct result of all of that feedback, like. So to get into now more specifics on what the proposal that was brought forward to the to the group of stakeholders we met with as a result of those conversations, theres a common theme the community loves this space and they want to see it continue in some form. They want it to be activated and well managed, monitored for safety and consistent and reflect the diverse needs of the corridor. So ill briefly list out all of these and i have some follow up slides to go into them in more detail. But one of the main recommendations was scaling back to a one day only closure, having it be more intentional so we could focus the resources and set it up for success so they can see and build upon that success and that stability and the sponsor being able to activate the space. We were open to the day and try to sort of feedback. If it was one day with friday feel better saturdays and sundays and ultimately at present suggested a saturday because of the level of activity on that day compared to a sunday, for example. Well wed like to see more regular activation. There are resources for this. The shared Spaces Program in and of itself has an arts and culture grant that they could apply for to get things like music and art and really enliven the space. And then we also have a host of signage and wayfinding requirements and ideas to bring forth that will hopefully manage the space better, that include includes this new barricade setup that we developed with working with Fire Department and our engineers that places the barricades out side of the crosswalk instead of inside of the crosswalk. This hopefully eliminates the Additional Space and sort of invites the double parking, the illegal parking that we were seeing at the intersection. So we propose this at octavia and at sorry, at gough and octavia with that sort of art shape with a similar thread of thinking, sort of reducing that extra space that was there with the barricade setup during the pandemic. And then the additional wayfinding and loading and signage just to walk through that here on southbound gough, we like to put a no right turn ahead sign up so that its clear to drivers coming down southbound on gough that hay street is closed and they can circulate through the neighborhood hopefully easier. Weve legislated new commercial and passenger loading zones on hayes just south im sorry on gough just south of hayes as well as new passenger loading zone in the works on octavia just north of hayes. Wed like to put additional no parking signage on the barricades themselves so that its clear that shouldnt be happening there and also suggested that businesses put out specific wayfinding signage at the loading zone for their businesses to support that visibility. Again mta provides these barricades and signage to the sponsor at no cost. And they have to store it, maintain it, set it up. But we provide this to all of our permits. So i want to acknowledge that the permit holder, upon receiving the feedback and the supervisor office, felt strongly that the event time should remain the same. We recognize the event is loved by many and some things were not working well and wed want to see this succeed. And we want to really have this be a reset. So i share this because theres sort of six after that time, there was additional feedback done after the recommendation was shared with the stakeholders. Hayes valley did their own Membership Survey and heard from neighbors who overwhelmingly want to see the street closure continue. We also partnered with the office of Small Business, who went door to door on the three, four and 500 block. And i believe spoke to 59 of the 64 merchants. So over 90. And have a really good idea of their needs in addition to the neighbors and while a minority we heard from dont want it at all and some wanted the same the majority 66 wanted a one day or were neutral about a one day. So to show that a little bit more visually see this graph shows again those door to door small office, Small Business surveys and you can see on the third bar, thats the group, the ten responses that we heard that 16 that wanted to keep friday, saturday and sunday, most of them are on the 400 block. Some of them came from the 400 block. So its clear those right on the block are really are activating and enjoying that space. We also heard that a lot of businesses did not feel comfortable publicly voicing their concerns. So weve kept their responses anonymous as. In conclusion, this is not about a one day or a three day closure. This is about reset ing and rebuilding that trust in the community and making a process so its possible that the block can work well and get to 24 over seven. And it wasnt working for some merchants. And thats not a reason to cancel it entirely. We really want an opportunity to grow and expand. On the success in hayes valley and see it thrive. So with that, that concludes my presentation and happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Colleagues, do you have questions before we go to Public Comment at dr. Ikuko . Just one. I have i have feelings about this, but my clarifying question to you is there have been some talk of asking us to do some kind of study on what it would take to make this permanent and whats your thoughts on on doing that kind of study . Yeah, its would be amazing to pedestrian personally the space i think that we should leverage upon a pilot type program that shared spaces provides so often we go in with a blank slate go forward with a pilot and then evaluate results. Weve had three years to kind of build off of. So i think that that would be a great process that i would love to be part of. And i think to move that forward, we really need to kind of have merchants brought along iron out some of the issues we have been experiencing over the last couple of years to see if it really is a long term viable solution for all the merchants in the corridor. And you said that this is kind of like it feels a little bit like a timeout where youre like, go back to your room and think about what youve done. Kind of vibes. How long is this timeout in your mind . Like how long do you want to see that the merchants are able to run this block before they can . Its a good question. I mean, we whats in front of you is a one year permit and thats consists joint with the other shared spaces we brought forward and thats in to provide stability for the community. But we very well could talk about a three month or a six month period. I dont know if that means the permits 3 or 6 months or we just commit to an evaluation time that we are resourcing, are transparent about what the metrics we want to see. I think anything less than that, i think theres a theres a lot of work that goes behind, as you know, to get these going. I probably wouldnt suggest less than three months, but. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Director henderson. Thank you, chair. I have a couple questions. Just i appreciate the amount of what sounds like a lot of staff work that went into to working with the community to identify a path forward. And i have a question about the timing for this. Its a one year permit. So then what happens . What should we expect in a years time . Um, would it have to . Would it . Yeah. What should we expect in a years time . Yeah. All sponsors have to reapply, so theyre kind of like parklets as well. Theyre sort of still temporary activations of the street. So these are, for all intents and purposes, temporary permits. So a sponsor gets permitted for a year, and after that point they can reapply. Okay. And then do you have any in terms of considering a permanent programing of the space in this way . Is there a process or some sort of way that the community and the staff can commune, skate during that during that year to be able to consider something more permanent or like im just curious, how do do we have to wait a year to have that conversation about expanding it potentially . No, thank you for asking so i can provide clarification. No by all means. At a minimum, it can be a year, but we can entertain at any time. A permit scope can change and we can bring it back to the board and permit if we see after three months, we want to grow or revoke. Its not has to wait for a year. But thanks for asking. Got it. Thank you. Of course. Thank you, director. So thank you, monica. Really nice presentation. I like all the graphics. It really paints really clear. Picture for me to understand what has been going on and also what are the proposed traffic cone layout. I like to what you mentioned about some some of the incident or concern from our Fire Department. I like to know if can you enlighten us a little bit about about what are the situations that are concerning for Public Safety . I mean, im really aware of that whole area. I live nearby by all that area and golf street. Its like a major thoroughfare to, you know, everyone just racing down that street and i just want to hear when you mention some of these situation options where, when, when, when folks double park and congested that intersection and what are the concerns about when this street is i just want to hear historically what we have learned. What are the concerns . Of course. Yes. Thank you so 400 block has a is dense with restaurants and businesses that get a lot of activity. If someone is traveling in a vehicle down southbound golf, which as you know, is a big thoroughfare, they get to haze. They cant turn right because the block is closed. So naturally, were seeing them just get illegally double parked at the barricades. So basically in the middle of the intersection, not blocking the lane of traffic per se, but theres enough space there that theyll just do the quickest thing possible. And then they go out and get to the restaurant or business on the block and get back to their car. The businesses have told us they dont like that. They they the setup is detrimental to their business. And weve heard from folks like San Francisco Fire Department, what if theres an emergency and theres a blocked car in the way they cant get there, their truck down. So hopefully a new barricade set up and creating additional loading zone just south of hayes will and better signage will kind of alleviate that. But i dont know if you had specific questions broader than that specific activity. Me but that is my question is any incident or collectively we had alerts at our agency to flag this is a pretty dangerous kind of way to arrange the street the way we are. Like if anyone had been injured by this or i mean, yeah, no, im not aware of an a crash per se, but we do have the fire marshal here in the room and id love to invite him up to kind of respond directly to at least from their perspective, what theyre seeing for Emergency Response time. I dont if thats pertinent to your question, but that would be id love to have them come up. Thank you. And also, i know mary thompson, who i know has to leave at 330, and hes here with the office of Small Business. She wanted to speak as well at at some point when thats relevant and important. Thank you. Good afternoon, chair egan. Directors ken coughlin, your fire marshal. I want to answer your question. I see where youre going with that. Not physical instance, but the problem is that hay street and that block is a route for our battalion chiefs and sometimes our engines that cross town. So we have webster, webster and almost here we have a firehouse and we have another one at oak and franklin, and we have battalion chiefs who run a section of town. And every time you have a fire in building smoke, call, building alarm, they have to respond one way or another. And unfortunately, the their response area is not nice little blocks. Its kind of its interesting. Its been that way for a long time. Anyway, as we this closure, which monica didnt mention, actually has a 20 foot access lane down the center. Okay. Because there are still buildings. There are there are still restaurants there. We still have to respond, whether it be a medical or a fire, more likely a medical call. So the rearrangement of the cones was to allow the Fire Department to get through there without actually having a monitor to move the cones, because we noticed that was a problem. Specifically, it would be those cars that were double parked for food pickup deliveries that the chief the engines, the trucks tried to get through. And all of a sudden theres a car there and they just couldnt get through. So thats the thats more of the type of incidents we ran into and thats why we worked together with sfmta to reconfigure the cones, to bring them out. So we dont have that legal parking at the intersection and blocking the crosswalk. So what you said, not specific, harmed anybody more of a delay. The harm would be have to be analyzed afterwards. If somebody didnt get there on time. Thank you. I really appreciate your your expertise and what is the traffic cone look like now . What does it look like now . Yes the way the cones are, they will they type to barricade . Is that the type three barricades at the end . Thats what the larger ones with the slats. And then they have just simple cones in there. What weve asked and worked with is to still use the type three barricades. But space the cones a little bit larger so we can still get through without running them over. If you run them over the wrong way, then they get stuck on the wheel well. Now you got more of a bigger problem. Youre going to ruin a Million Dollar fire engine. So the thing is, the idea is to have quick access directly through the lane without and then also some cooperation with the operator side of the merchants. Right. Well the permit says you cannot put anything permanent in that space. Were not worried about people walking in the street. They tend to move out of the way when you have a big red fire engine making lots of noise and coming down at you. So thats not the problem. Its the its keeping the physical items out of the street tables and barricades and things like that. I believe the permit actually even calls for cones to mark down the street to say this is how far you can come out, you know, put tables and chairs in the parking place and even a little bit wider. But leave this area clear. So you may have heard of instances where weve driven down the street. Thats what its for. We are we do use it as a response route. We have used it to get from one side of town to the other. As you know, oak street fell street. Theyve gotten quite busier over the years as some type of reconfiguration. So hayes is an important cross town pathway for us. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Colleagues, id like to ask Marianne Thompson from office of Small Business to address the board so she has to leave at 330. Thank you. Board members. Thank you, monica. Thank you. So in the last few months, the office of Small Business has engaged very strongly with sfmta. Its important for us that the voice of Small Businesses be heard, and this has really been a great process in many ways. What sfmta did was they enabled us to bring many voices to the table. Those who were unheard, unseen in Merchants Association actions that sfmta did not know existed. I want to applaud sfmta and the Mayors Office for bringing everyone together in a really, really safe space and having these great conversations. For those of you who dont know me and my work, i have actually been with the office of economic and Workforce Development for over ten years. Open space activations is at the heart and soul of what i do every day. Besides engaging Small Businesses, many of you have been to a lot of my activate sessions and didnt even know it. Hayes valley. Thats when your work is good. Hayes valley is at the heart of this is deep to me because when i go to hayes valley and when i get there, by the way, i am a muni person. I dont have a car. So when im there and i see that space, i want to see it activated. And i want to see it be brilliant and i want it to be the shining star of the city. We have work to do to get it there. And i think its really, really important that we say that out loud. We have work to do to get it to be a shining star. And i and i really, again, want to thank monica and her team for listening to people. I also want to point something out because ive been here since 1 00 and a lot of Small Businesses have been here since 1 00. And this is something for all of us to think about. The business that are here are sole proprietors. Some of them may have had to close their doors to come here today, having people go through Public Comment for an item that impacts Small Businesses. Lets rethink how we do this and lets really rethink how we treat our Small Businesses. And again, i really want to emphasize this because it did come up in our survey. People were afraid to come forward and speak about this closure because they felt at times they would be bullied or treated unfairly. And so i want to make sure at the conclusion of this, the voices from the Small Businesses that you hear today, they can walk away feeling safe and heard. And thats all we ask for. Thats it. Thank you. Thank you. Director henzi, i believe you had your hand up. I did this sort of. This is a question for monica, but it sort of builds on what miss thompson just touched on. Do we have typically, um, evaluate evaluation metrics and sort of reporting requirements for storm surge spaces, street closures. Um, and if we dont, um, have you thought of evaluation, evaluation metrics possibly for this one, like the number of activations they have, the number of, i dont know, people that you use it on comparing on what days, etcetera, and the such. Um so could you touch on evaluation of the closure as we consider this, as we before Public Comment. Yes thank you. Director henzi have thought about it. I think is a wonderful idea in the effort of transparency and Decision Making. It is not easy to develop metrics for Something Like this. How do you its such like a soulful art and sense of being sort of can you establish a number . Is the number of people a certain amount then that is a success . Is it the quality of the event and the activation . And so i dont say that as an excuse. I think it is definitely something i would like to explore. We have a lot of Evaluation Programs here at the sfmta and people that think a lot about this and i would love to consult them and people that work with Small Businesses so that we can establish that. But it is we would want to do it thoughtfully so that we are right. It is measurable. Yeah, it is a hard it is a hard thing to measure, but yeah. Okay thank you. Manager. That was it. Okay. Thank you. Director henzi colleagues, id like to open it to Public Comment. Unless theres anything else pressing right now. Okay. Please. Speakers in the room on the hayes street. Shared spaces. I do have some speaker cards. Andrew andrew singer. Jennifer laszlo barnett. Trzcinski stacy randecker. Afternoon board. Barnett brzezinski. District two frequent visitor of hayes valley. If i could recap a little bit of the presentation we just saw the closure and the area there in hayes valley on hayes street is so popular for people double parked to try to get into the area even more than they already can with with legal parking. So if there is a moment of peace and quiet on the street, aka it hasnt been activated, thats a permit violation because drivers are behaving badly and violating the barricade. Were going to remove the barricade and let them in more. As an example of whats going on around the city. And these are all incidents that happened in the last week and a half. A car drove off the road and onto a building at filbert and fillmore, causing a gas leak in building damage and making the Fire Department respond. A driver committed a hit and run in the bayview, hitting a car which then hit a muni vehicle, which im sure a lot of you are aware of. A car recently veered off the road on divisadero and smashed into a bus shelter between page and haight, a store in union square was ramrodded socalled by burglars who drive a car into the building in order to then steal from it. And there was a 100 mile an hour chase coming up the peninsula that ended right at the freeway exit where hayes valley begins. This is the type of thing that we are inviting onto our streets as a default when any other more higher purpose, pedestrian friendly closure, more business activity, more just neighbors getting to know their neighbors. This is considered the aberration. You have to apply for a permit for this. I strongly encourage you to please, please, please consider sending this back to the mta in encouraging them that any increase in vehicle lane mile access is a contravention of transit first policy and the climate goals the mta has and also ask a question why are we the only city going backwards on this nearly every city in the bay area and even around the world in the country is expanding Pedestrian Access be street in san mateo, castro street in mountain view. One of the speakers earlier mentioned san jose. So we need to do more of this within San Francisco. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi im jennifer laska, the president of the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association. And i pulled the original permit three years ago and have been worked working tirelessly with the merchants on this as youve heard over and over again, this closure is very beloved by the community. The immediate community. And i hear from people who say that they come from all over the city to come, come and enjoy this space on the weekends. So that brings more business to our our Small Businesses in hayes valley. I want to note that the merchants actually applied for a three day closure. What youre seeing in front of you is a one day closure that was recommended by sfmta staff. That is not what we applied for. We still have not heard a good reason why a three day closure cant continue. Weve heard issues about the barricades. Theres a solution for that. Thats something that we totally agree with should be done. And weve also heard difficult days about rerouting the bus for three days a week. But no ones been able to explain to me why that really is a difficulty. And weve seen it done successfully for over a year now. So i really need to understand why that would be a barrier to continue ing this three day closure. I guess we have now heard the concerns of the Fire Department, but it sounds like the barricade reconfiguration will help with those. And i think the additional signage will also improve some of the traffic issues. Wed love to work on this as a permanent solution because there is an easy way to have two lanes heading westbound on hayes turn left onto gough and really improve that traffic flow full time. So in summary, i really urge approving the three day closure not just the one day closure thats in front of you today. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, my name is andrew signer. Ive been living in the city for 20 years. Ive been in hayes valley for seven at the beginning of the pandemic, a large group of volunteers, myself included, spent every friday and saturday and sunday stationed at intersections along the merchant corridor to get the shared Spaces Program off the ground. Three years later, i believe its been a shining example of whats enabled our neighborhood not only to survive the pandemic, but but thrive. And that includes probably our busiest time friday night all the way through sunday. Recently, the program has been the future has been a little bit uncertain that was definitely a wake up call for myself and a lot of folks in the neighborhood. And i created a website free hayes. Org along with the petition asking not only to continue the three day program but to find a way to get to a permanent pedestrianized hayes street. Since september, 1200 people have signed it. Theres enormous enthusiasm around this in our community. I also think theres a lot of capacity to help the sponsor make this a successful program. So with that in mind, i have two requests for you all. One, please amend the agenda item to allow us to continue this three day program that weve had for three years. And two, please instruct mta staff to design a process to a what it looks like to get to a fully pedestrianized street. And finally, i just want to thank you for all your work, particularly mta staff and folks in the Mayors Office and folks in our Supervisors Office. Theres tons of work going into this, so thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. My name is stephen breach and i urge you to not i urge you to not reduce the hayes valley shared Spaces Program from three days a week to just nine hours on saturdays. Furthermore i urge you to direct staff to help the hayes valley Merchant Council accommodate the owners requirements that are being placed on them by the Fire Department and the sfmta staff excuse me, to renew their permit and maintain the program. Hayes valley shared Spaces Program har merchants on hayes for the past three years and has helped revitalize the entire neighborhood by expanding patricias green and connecting it to the local businesses on hayes street. Once again, the Fire Department is fighting the shared Spaces Program on the grounds that closing the street to vehicles with traffic cones impedes their Emergency Response times. While i analyze six years of vehicle crashes on hayes street and the Fire Departments response times to 355 emergency calls that have been there over the past six years. And i found this at least four of the vehicle crashes on hayes street on the 3405 hundred blocks could have been prevented if the program was not scaled back in 2021. An and if it actually had been extended to 2018 when we should have actually started doing this earlier. Furthermore, the shared Spaces Program has not had an impact on Emergency Response times by station 36, which is three blocks away, and which services all 911 calls to the area. The two minutes is not enough time to go into the specifics, but you should have received a deluge of emails yesterday that link to my data analysis, which hopefully youve had a chance to review and im happy to follow up with any answers or any questions you may have. So the takeaway here is that the hayes valley shared Spaces Program expands a critical, probusiness, safe, open space simply by restricting unnecessary cutthrough traffic and does not have a negative impact on the on the Fire Departments Emergency Response times. Furthermore reducing the program from three days to one flies in the face of our citys Climate Action plan, or vision zero. And our transit first goals. Please do not reduce the footprint of this program and direct staff to help the hayes valley Merchant Council administer and expand it. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Hi, maggie. Crystal i own a hayes street facing business. Im also a resident in hayes valley, which means that i can actually walk to work. Ive been reflecting this last week on the terrible events that weve probably all been reflecting on, and its a bit ironic that were squabbling over a one block patch of asphalt. Im supporting. Im one of the 66 that supports the modifications proposed by sfmta, and im super hopeful that this reset any reset will reframe the conversation and allow for an opportunity for all of us to participate in a really dynamic and wonderful, active version of 400. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, stacy randecker. This all feels oddly familiar to the active communities program, the one where we are spending a year to go out and ask people how they feel or the valencia pilot where were doing this weird thing and checking it out to see how things go for a year. When are we going to have the thing that is like bold and like is where we should be going . Were asking people like, were going to scale back this thing thats awesome and were going to and we have to like, you know, activate it and do all this stuff and barriers up and barriers down. And it is too much. How about 24 over seven pedestrian ization of three blocks . Thats your pilot. Thats the thing. Thats what we all pour our efforts into. So all the energy thats going into, well, what do you think and how would this work . And blah, blah, blah. No actually do it. Go there and see what does the Fire Department need when we set it up this way, what do the merchants need to get access, etcetera . What do the residents feel and it shouldnt have to be this special, like, oh, weve got to jazz it up and whatever. Its just like the bike to roll work or school day for everybody. Its like it shouldnt be a special event. It should be every day that there are places you can go that is quiet or that you can get a bite to eat. You can gather with your friends. Theres extra space there is these islands should be throughout the city. We should make it so that everybody can get everywhere they need to go without relying on a car or more of this. Please expand this. Dont contract it. Expand this and multiply it. Lets go after i want clement and 24th street to thanks. Thank you for your comment. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, director tomlin and board. Im lloyd silverstein. Im the founder of the Hayes Valley Merchants Council and we currently hold the permit for the shared streets program. I also want to mention im a Third Generation owner of the oldest optical store in San Francisco, which got its start just a few blocks from here in 1907. I hope youll indulge me if i go over my two minutes, but theres been a lot going on here and i really want to be able to address everything. Hayes valley was hit especially hard by the pandemic. Within six months, one out of every three businesses had closed for no other commercial corridor in the city was hit this hard. Yet weve come back faster and stronger than any of them. We are fully leased. Take a look at Chestnut Union fillmore. Youll see dozens of for lease signs. The reason that hayes valley is thriving is simple. For much of the pandemic. I and others that youve heard from today spent our weekends touring hayes valley with brokers and potential new tenants. What they saw here and what they saw. Nowhere else was activity. People out in the streets, in our public spaces, in other words, customers for our Small Businesses. This is just part of the value of shared streets. Our Merchants Council is democratic by nature. We advocate for the greater good of all merchants. We also espouse that our neighbors successes and important as our own and the speaking with one loud voice that represents the majority of our businesses is in the best interests of our community. In the case of shared streets, that voice is loud and clear. Keep our existing shared streets program. This is not anecdotal. This is based on our unbiased Online Survey sent to 175 businesses in our community. It was completely transparent and available for all respondents to view. I will say for a moment here that the one mta conducted was biased. It only asked, are you in favor of a saturday . Only it didnt say. Are you in favor of friday . Only sunday, only all days. So it was very biased and obviously the results were biased to even though we were told by mta that our survey was not necessary, we felt that it was a way to get accurate census on the issue. Our survey was reviewed by mta and the staff before sending in all data, both raw and summarized, was sent back to them. The survey showed overwhelming support for the existing schedule and some people wanted to extend it. When our shared streets renewal came before the escort in march, we were surprised to hear that there were concerns from sfpd mta, as well as stakeholders outside the sheriffs. Thank you for your comments. That is your time and we have to be equitable with all speakers. Thank you for being here. Next speaker, please can i put this in the record for anybody to see . Sure. Next speaker please go ahead and approach the podium. Hi. Hi. This is my first time. Mike gallagher im not going to speak as eloquently as everyone else, but id like it to remain the same as it was and hopefully close for good. You dont need to activate a park. We can look at a bunch of cities around the world that are way ahead of us and i guess we always talk about wanting to be a world class city, but it only takes trips elsewhere to see that it looks like were living 30 years in the past and people need to have more space outside to hang out and this is just its clear that somebody wants this close because as it was tried to be done behind closed doors, pretty sure we know who that is. The mayor doesnt seem to like this stuff. And its time that we do bold things and not just mess around and make the merchants do all this stuff. Just let just you know, do your job. Like build this stuff out like they do in dutch cities. I mean, this is a its a joke. Ive been here for over ten years and nothing changes. And its just do something bold. We saw in the pandemic what this city could be. I mean, when it was so quiet, when there was just so much less and we got all these great programs and now every single time i look, its getting scaled back and scaled back and scaled back. Were not growing anything. Were just scaling, scaling, scaling the slow streets, little chips here like you can have through traffic. All this little, Little Things just chip away at it, chip away at it so that it doesnt work so that it can be stopped. Its pretty clear that thats what people want to happen. Thats all i have to say. Okay. Thanks for your comments. Next speaker, please. I apologize. It couldnt be here at one because i was on a surgery table. Its very interesting to hear everything today. I ive owned a business on hayes street for 20 years. Ive lived on grove street for 15 years. I am the perfect person to represent the fact that all of these huge successes that theyre talking about arent successes in any way, shape or form. The information theyre based off, including lloyds survey, biased, manipulative in the tremendous victories that you guys are saying are nonexistent as far as i can see by pure stakeholder, as the people whove done the work, the heavy lifting on hayes street for the past several decades, i want to just say im sitting in here. I just realized the politicization of everything and theres a Necessary Evil called politics. And i see you guys working. I have a business on hayes street, not street, not a hayes shared street. My business is on a street where 81 of my customers drive their car to that street. Its gotten incredibly difficult. I understand. I can look at what the city has done to abide by the rules of the biking community. The manipulations thats going on. I get it. Id like to be a progressive city, too, but were also a city thats founded on streets that the fire trucks have to go down on. And all of the successes that ive been hearing about today, im going to tell you, please, they arent as great as you guys think they are. And if my business for 81 of the people im sorry, im going to leave with this with you guys, 70 of the people who come to my store visit other stores in hayes valley. The congestion in on laguna and octavio for the byproducts of all these things, a nightmare. I have traffic jams where ive never had traffic jams before. I have people honking their cars at all times when it never existed. So i dont even want the word i hate the word activation right now. I apologize. Maybe im old school. No activation. Im not with maggie. I dont agree with the one day. Thank you. Thats your time. Thank you very much. Does anybody want this like lloyd . I can leave that for you guys. This is a 140 customers who are real people. Ill go ahead and leave it. Thats fine. Next speaker, please. Hi. Good afternoon, directors. Zach lipton, first, ill just say im sad to hear the news from director uchitelle. Thanks for all your work here and i know this is far from the end of your efforts to help build the thriving and more livable city. One of those efforts is, of course, the side street shared space. And im disappointed with this proposal to reduce the successful and popular shared space program. I hope we can continue the friday through sunday shared spaces or at least just continue this item for a bit while these issues continue to be worked out. But i dont just want to focus on the number of days i hope the agency can work more to support the merchants in the neighborhood to make the shared space a success and work towards a future permanent, 24 7. Hayes plaza. Im honestly confused why were framing this as a compliance with permit terms issue and not a what do we need to do to help make hayes street the best place it can be . One hayes street has been a sewer of double parking for decades, so why only now are we punishing merchants by curtailing the shared space . Because we suddenly expect them to be responsible for Parking Enforcement . Why do we keep creating impediments instead of building on really one of the most popular successes of the last few years . When is the last time youve ever sat in this room and heard a near unanimous parade of merchants praising an mta program anywhere in the city . This this program has nearunanimous support from merchants on the 400 block of hayes that are directly affected. And its one of our citys most walkable and transit rich commercial areas. And for those who need to drive, theres a 600 space mta owned parking garage around the corner for everyone. Obviously, as youve heard, the shared space is not perfect, but instead of retreating, which will do nothing to address those concerns, we can work harder to make the shared space work better and live up to the values that we talk so much about. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. Board members. Luke bornheimer here. I urge you to amend the item today to keep the three day closure intact. Its wildly successful. It should continue. I also urge you to direct staff to work towards a 24 over seven pedestrian ization of this block of hayes street because its so successful. Many of the concerns about the closure have to do with barricades being moved and put back and where they go. Theres a great solution for that. Weve done it on a car free jfk. You make it 24 over seven and then you can install barriers that just stay there and you can actually engineer them, work with the Fire Department to make them work great. You can also install furniture, Street Furniture in the street and activate the street on car free jfk. We dont have concerts every day. We have some furniture out there and its activated by just people coming. We dont need to throw parties on every single car free street in the city, every single day at every single hour. You can install furniture tables shade just allow people to come to the space. So i urge you to amend this to make it a three day closure. But i urge you to go further and direct staff to work towards making it a 24 over seven, pile it, whatever we want to call it. We should be working towards that as a city. We know the crises we face. We know what our policies, our goals say. We know what we talk about in press releases or press conferences is we can actually act to fulfill some of those things that we talk about doing right here. This is a very tangible way to do it. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is pete wilson and i am a resident of district five Western Addition and something somebody said earlier today about other countries really made me think because as somebody who lived in italy, 20 or 30 years ago and rode my bicycle and was hit several times on the city streets and then went back a year ago and was just amazed at the little lanes that they have and how what a great job theyve done. And how much fun it is visiting places over there where you do have city sidewalk streets, not pedestrian streets. And so i definitely would support that every day. And i like the people who are saying 24 over seven, seven days a week. I would also like to see as a somebody who is certified as a trolley bus operator, i would love to see the 21 hayes trolley bus going downtown, actually going somewhere and providing for not only the tourists. I used to work in the tourism industry, but for the residents and to bring more people to hayes valley because it goes as far as hyde. Wed like to see it go all the way downtown and to say that we need diesel busses or electric busses to come in on the weekend is not true. Right now, the 31 balboa is going off wires. It could go all the way to caltrans on wires. It drives under the wires for 1. 1 miles, and theyre electrified wires and theyre choosing not to use them. And trolley busses use 30 less power than a than battery busses. Lets remember the mining of the lithium and all that other stuff, folks. So lets bring back the trolley bus. We can use it seven days a week and theres operators who love driving those. And thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your perspective with any other speakers in the room. Seeing none. Please open the remote comment at this time. Well move to remote Public Comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. Members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue each speaker will have two minutes. Moderator for speaker, good afternoon, this is barry taranto. I was surprised as well to see that you cut down the proposal from 3 to 1 day. I think hayes valley does need the help by having the street closure for the business, but there has to be some mitigation measures to alleviate some of the issues that are created by the by that block closure. Excuse me. Um, first, you need to have enough vacant space for our taxis and delivery cars to pull over and not block the intersection or not block the not double parked on golf street. You also need to also have some space on golf east of the intersection, not golf city. Hayes so because what happens is that light that that left turn arrow is not long enough and so you have cars stacked up at that left turn and you have cars double parked in the right lane. So what do you do . You so theres a problem there. So i think its important to actually put up permanent signage saying on this day during certain hours its a towaway zone. So therefore, when someone gets their car towed because its a white zone during that time period, then theyre not surprised. And i think its important to enforce it. Unfortunately, you dont have pcos at night enforcing the no parking zones. So this is something you have to rectify and maybe make that arrow a little bit longer. So that so therefore, the cars dont stack up to that left lane and so i think its important to may even add another day to this. And the last thing is that the grove street exit from the performing arts garage also creates a problem when the symphony or another event breaks before your 10 00. Like a lot of the time, it ends at 930. Thank you. So thats another time is up next. Speaker. Conservatoire minor. One concern i have is what access to close streets will the aged and disabled have now these are long these can be long blocks and physically impaired would have a difficult time patronizing business. So you really have to think it over as far as patronage goes aged and disabled. Also Byproducts Services on this on this street and youre actually shutting down your revenue and im concerned about that. Basically about access for everyone in the city. And you cannot favor one population over another. It should be open for business for everyone. And whats going to happen during the winter . Oh, its going to be great to be in the open air during the summer. What about the winter when it gets cold . So basically businesses might be freezing themselves out of revenue. And i think everyone loses in the process. So i think this over very carefully and make accommodations for everyone and be flexible to adapt to all, challenge changes. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon. This is mitch records with the hayes valley Small Business association and hayes valley safe. We want to underscore that throughout the entirety of the street closure on hayes. Weve been advocating for a fair and equitable process. Our concern has always been that that process for a program that was rolled out as a temporary during a pandemic was never clearly defined. Now that weve been part of the process, we support the recommendations set forth for this pilot by sfmta. We also hope that you will not be dissuaded by others who have been trying to change the narrative for an initiative that has impacted Small Business operators and residents not always favorably, who have spoken up over the last couple of years with respect to their concerns evolving around scheduling traffic issues, signage and lack of activation. The current permit conditions at face value seemingly try to address these. So lets try it and reassess. I also want to express concern about the inability of Small Business operators to speak up and share their stance when it has become evident that there is another agenda being driven here which has hindered the much needed conversations about how to improve the vision of transit. First, in hayes valley, we would like to see the same synergy applied to optimizing the many open spaces in hayes valley and the Western Addition to try to really capitalize on the big vision we once had with the removal of the freeway. As it stands now, we have serious traffic issues. We have serious Public Safety issues, all of which weve been advocating for the last few years. All the focus has been on this one. Block thank you. Thank you. No additional callers. Okay colleagues, the item is before you are there, comments, questions. Director kahina, please. Thank you, chair, and thank you to everyone, all the members of the public and the Business Community that came out to give Public Comment on this item. Um colleagues, i do see this this particular proposal as a way to formalize a pandemic era program. And that alone has tons of growing pains to it, right . Like were trying to figure out how something where the economy was shut down, all activities were shut down, was quite successful for a lot of folks. A lifeline for a lot of folks. And how we can bring that back and formalize it with our new activities with all our different systems up and running. So i know this is going to feel painful for a lot of folks for some time as we figure out how to make this work. Now with everything active again, um, i do see the proposal before us laying the foundation for something bold. I dont see it closing the door to that and it gives us about a year to regroup and really understand how to rightsize a solution here. Im really grateful that staff worked with the office of Small Business. I think that was a very smart move, but also a very intentional move that i think we need to do more of in future projects as we work in commercial corridors. Ive worked with Mary Anne Thompson before when i did my work at the excelsior action group, and so i understand and a lot of the work that she does and the integrity with which she does that work. And so i was really grateful to see that she was part of this project and that she was part of the surveying process and truly want to thank monica for all the work that youve done to shepherd this this project. I did have a few clarifying questions, though, on the proposal itself. Um, you mentioned that that during the three day closure we rerouted the 21 right . I wanted to just get your sense, if there are any material changes in ridership during that time, if the closure affected ridership on the 21 and if in this proposal were mitigating some of those challenges. So a great question. Director unfortunately, i dont know. I dont have that information readily available, but can easily pull that the metrics and what i heard mostly from the working closely with the transit team were around reported passenger confusion about where to find those bus on those three days because for example friday is 4 to 10 part of the day part not and also the operator some of the operator complaints and confusion about where they need to be when. But the ridership number i dont have. And so i think as were evaluating this permit, that would be something id definitely be interested in understand more. I anticipate were going to see this item again in a years time. So it would be lovely to have that type of information available. Um, additionally, getting the operators perspective to i think that would be wonderful to also have to understand, you know, is it has it been easy to navigate any changes there . And as it pertains to the barricades, you know, ive thrown a few festivals myself. Ive thrown a few events myself and ive gone through the process and its quite intensive. And you have all these folks there from all these different departments weighing in on on a street closure for one day. And so i imagine we had that sort of level of inspection for this particular for closure in this permit process. And im so great that fire was part of this and they were part of the equation here. Who was responsible for setting up the barricades . I understand were purchasing the barricades and were setting that up, which is quite generous because its got permit holders have to pay that fee themselves and they have to pay fees for all the signage and all that stuff. So it seems like were were doing our good faith effort and supporting this by also doing that. But who is responsible for setting up those barricades . The sponsor for . Yeah, thank you for asking that. To clarify for every shared space street closure it is the sponsor the permittees responsible city to store and set up and take down so store the barricades throughout the year they get one set of barricades and put them out so we make sure our job, in addition to providing the barricades, is to educate them. We hornbostel our amazing engineer is here. He works on all these renderings and does this assessment for us. Hell draw up the barricade schema, get on the phone with sponsors, talk about them, talk about the spacing, why we need them. Weve often gone out in person and marked up maybe the crosswalk for them, but ultimately they have to set it up every day and take it down every day and. If this was an issue with a three day closure, just wanted to get a sense from from the team on what were going to do to ensure that this is being set up in a compliant way and how were working with the permit holder to ensure that theyre compliant with that piece. Yeah. Um i think like i mentioned, the education the most we could do up front. So theres, theres this Technical Information so that they understand it. So theres no discrepancy from the get go. But ultimately, yeah, we dont have bandwidth. We are not going out every week. We are surveying, we are out on the ground all the time. Ive gone out there, jared has gone out there. The fire marshal and well take photos and we can like share that back with them. Sort of like, hey, this is the tweak needed. And we dont have an official Enforcement Team at the mta to do that. It kind of has been on our own time, but i think thats Something Else i can think of is sort of as theyre rolling it out to be kind of monitoring and reporting, but ultimately, again, it is a lot of the responsibility that these sponsors are taking on when theyre applying for a permit. And so if in the event the permit holder does not comply with that, what do we do then . Or how do we learn about it and what do we do then . Yeah, this is New Territory for shared spaces because they are recurring. My understanding for escort is special event when there are compliance issues, its more reflected on when a sponsor comes back the next year. Kind of like maybe are we permitting them again . So weve developed revocation thresholds and we can and we will iron that out more for transparency and working with the sponsors. We havent had to use that yet, but having a documentation of, ah, you not closing the street when you said you could, thats one problem, like having im permitted for fridays, but some fridays im not and some fridays i am. So having that sort of when we will on what grounds and how we would communicate at first communicate verbally and then youre on. You can be revoked. We have the ability as mta to revoke a permit. So we want to make sure that that is kind of that process is documented so we can do that. Its just a matter of how and we havent had to do that yet, but were still sort of new and rolling out the shared Spaces Program. We werent doing much of that type of enforcement during the pandemic as we were more lenient. Yeah, i would definitely say like as we as we start formalizing this process more, i think it would be helpful for us to understand what what sort of compliance measures we have and what sort of enforcement measures we have. So that we could support more projects like this and make sure folks are given the proper guidance and the tools to succeed and see these succeed. Right so thats the hope. And lastly, this is more for jeff, but i did want to acknowledge a letter that we received from supervisor prestons office and hoping that you could address some of the recommendations that were in that. And ill point them out. So one of them, i think, was was already addressed by by members of the public. But also with your presentation, monica, of why a restoration of three day weekend closure to private vehicles. It would be challenging at this point. So i think youve addressed that pretty well. But understanding the time sensitive of this proposal, there was a request to entertain an idea of continuing the item until december to give the community an opportunity to address outstanding issues. And so i just want to get a context of is there a time sensitivity in deciding this now, now and have we do we think within a months time we would make any material changes to the project at with more outreach and more engagement with folks . So. Well, first of all, the timing issue is just that the previous permit has long since expired. And we need to formalize the permit for a whole variety of reasons, including liability. What is clear from all the engagement that weve done is theres near universal agreement on the desired outcome. The only question is how do we best get there . The staff recommendation is very clear that the best way to achieve success, to achieve the desired outcome of a vibrant, car free, active street is to temporarily shrink the number of days we work with the community in order to figure out how to one, comply with the rules of the permit to figure out activation and three continue engaging with community and getting support from merchants and then expand from there. Once were able to achieve success. So thats that is our primary reason in terms of the desired outcome. Um, staff and supervisor prestons office are in agreement and i think generally what weve heard from the community is, is mostly agreement about the goal that were trying to get to where theres disagreement is on how to get to the goal and delaying this item simply delays our ability to work with the community to get to the goal. Weve weve heard loud and clear the various voices. Thank you, jeff. Colleagues, are there other questions . Okay, director henzi, i see you. Go ahead. Um, director kikina actually, actually only asked my questions. I was curious if these permits were revocable and how we were measuring compliance with the, the, the, the, the to configure them weighing out configurations. I did want to and this is mostly for my colleagues i did want to and i think maybe director uchitel has a proposal that he might want to propose as a compromise. I did want to say i know director kino was mentioning a year, but i didnt want to maybe consider one, maybe director you could deal gives his proposal well, maybe that we shorten the permit , permit duration and add some evaluation metrics. But ill let director uchitel maybe toss out his proposal and then ill add to see what he might have. Yeah okay. Director uchitel, please. I feel like what is the Sports Metaphor . A year . What did you give me an alley oop . Okay um, clearly not my strong suit. Its that thing where you pass the ball and then the person puts it in the. The basket. Im going to keep my comments. Just the hayes valley and the hayes valley. Shared space. Yes, i have spoken to a lot of merchants on this corridor and its a corridor im very familiar with. And i know that this has been really tough. Monica, also alex sweetened the Mayors Office. Marianne i think my greatest disappointment with this is that it got to this point where its become so divisive and i know a thing or two about this, this getting divisive and its the hardest thing too, because like the Small Business is ecosystem of owners. Like were all working so hard to keep our businesses open. And for and honestly, the pandemic was a moment where that really brought us a lot of us together to kind of support each other. And love each other and survive and ive seen in the post pandemic period as as we try to continue to survive that unity and that that kind of togetherness really starting to splinter, it makes me sad from a very tactical perspective. I think there should be a compromise from just reading through the survey results that we gathered. It seems like a fair bit of merchants on the block like it and merchants on the either other block dont like it so much. Not so surprising when weve asked them to go from it sounds like about 30 hours to Something Like 9 or 10 hours. Ill tell you what, my suggestion is, colleagues, that we can talk about, but ill just take a step back and say one of the fatal flaws i think about this on hay street is, is how temporary it actually feels. And were basically asking communities to reorient themselves around a street in different ways on a weekly basis. So a couple of days a week you can drive through a couple days a week, you cant. And it actually is really hard to build community in a space thats quite so temporary. So i think i understand why other merchants and folks who are getting out of the symphony and people in around are annoyed and frustrated and confused. And part of it is because, as you know, our streets are also Community Spaces. And when we dont have any reliable city of what theyre going to look and feel like, it creates a lot of frustration. An and so i get that. So i do think that if were going to start if were going to be closing streets and opening them up for businesses and other uses, we need to choose some streets. We do need to make them permanent. We need to actually sfmta and the city needs to invest in them and make them awesome or else theyre just going to be like cones in the street and merchants trying to book deejays and making it cool, which honestly is not really what were good at. So i do think we need to pick a lane pun intended and we need to try to show how we can make a couple of these spaces really special. Well, and putting cones up a couple times a week is not going to cut it. So i think we should meet in the middle for my understanding, they had a friday night closure an all day saturday, and all day sunday. I know its inconven decent for our busses, but i think we should bring back friday night, which is like five hours. Thats 15 hours. They used to have 30. To me, it seems like a fair compromise to kind of meet them in the middle. I also think that we should study what would it would take, how much money it would take, how much time it would take and how our agency could take this one block back street and make it Something Different than what it is now, and work with the Fire Department to think about a solution that feels good with everyone. So i think we should put our money where our mouth is. Study what it would be like to make one block of hay street into a permanent pedestrianized space. And i think we should add back friday night and take away sunday night in terms of the timing of the permit for this, i think its a very i can imagine for hayes valley, for any Merchants Association, its a lot to go through the approval process for this. So i wouldnt actually advocate for reducing the time of the permit. But i do think and im sure, monica, youll be in communication with them where the kind of checking in on how things are going. We shouldnt wait a year to do that, right . We should be checking in with them more regularly and trying to be a partner to them. In terms of how its actually going and how we can be helpful. So thats my proposal. It seems fair, kind of meet them in the middle. Ive heard that friday night was very good for them from a Small Business perspective. As we know, friday nights is a different vibe than weekend days. It brings out different kinds of folks and theres a lot of restaurants in and around this block. Ill second that. I i was going to suggest six months, but directory you could tell obviously has much, much more background on what it takes to secure one of these permits. So im happy with the year. As long as that maybe in a memo to us you know Something Back to us via memo in about six months just sort of check in on on on how things are going okay Say Something here. Um, i really like this idea, but then i also think that this is this is the first time i actually got to see the Small Businesses representation and also the Fire Department representation here in my, my in my tenure working or volunteering at city hall. It really shows shows that theres also a gentleman actually just got out of the operation desk and just to show up. These folks do have im myself a Small Business. I understand like every second count and you make your choice. Why you are aware or you are that day to spend your 24 hours and really appreciate the study. And then this is not about not wanting share streets or not wanting climate, you know, saving the world, saving the earth. You know, we are all in the same focus here. We want this. We want all these Amazing Things on our street. This is about about, in my understanding, hearing from all sides. Im also really aware of that. The side that actually has lesser voice are the one that actually drown ing. They cant. When you drown, you cant even speak. So it is really about the when were getting into the pandemic, it is what i seen is like we all have to improvise and just do something where to get everyone happier and make things happen when normally we actually would do something a little bit more and try to figure out a plan and a policy and accountability and how we actually enforce certain situation and if that actually has had life and safety hazard or concern. Right . So but we dont we dont have the luxury back then. We didnt do that. And this is a really great time to learn. And how to adapt and different neighborhood is different because the dynamic is different. So i really appreciate the our staff also know the Fire Department, the Small Businesses, and also our Mayors Office really reach out to talk to everyone on not just the few representation representative of im really aware of the people that actually has less of a voice. And i really want to give them the equal opportunity to live peacefully the way they want to live. So i wanted to know if on friday evening is there more likelihood that the fire truck needed the access to these zones . Because i kind of remember those nights where things are a little bit more colorful in our city. I mean, if, if thats not really if that if that number data is not available right now. Um i dont i dont know how am i able to justify doing the friday night. Right. But my understanding from what we heard was that the new, the, the point of the new design, even when it is in effect on saturday, is that we can accommodate fire access, is that the Fire Department was at the table and has worked through this, approved design. Correct. But but my thing is here im seeing this line saying the reason of challenges is lack of activation. And then point two is inconsistently meeting permit conditions such as barricade placement and monitoring intersections. So when folks got the notice of violation in the Building Department is because once people got the permit and they violated what they agreed to do under that permit, so im just using the similar application on policy on permit holder and how we can help each other out to make our city safer and better for everyone. So yeah, i mean, i would just say to mike, to the friday night compromise, it sounds like if were coming up with barricade placement that ameliorate some of Fire Departments concerns about folks double parking in the intersection, then thats going to be the new barricade placement. So well see if that actually works or not. And adding friday night maybe just gives more potential opportunity for double parking, but well know if it works right . If it if the kind of curve works or not in terms of activation like i think the importance is like when are people coming to this area and theyre going to want to sit outside and enjoy themselves. And i think the Public Commenter who said like like making people do like, like the irish jig in the middle of the street is not how were going to make these places cool. Its by putting Adirondack Chairs and umbrellas and like just like letting human beings be human beings. And i dont know how were defining activation, but i dont think we should be defining it as like, like number of attendees whove signed up to a flash mob on eventbrite. Okay, i agree. I think the example of the adirondack i love that. Just to jump in, director, i agree that we would define that as activation. It doesnt have to be some live event. People using the space and activating the space. And i hope supervisor prestons office, if theyre listening like maybe you can provide some funding for this neighborhood to buy some Adirondack Chairs and some umbrellas and some furniture to like make it interesting. And maybe you could also help the merchants find a place to store these things, maybe also helping them to train folks that they can actually monitor and better with the barricade placements and monitoring intersections is so and these are all things that were eager to do, but were currently not staffed to do. We are eager to develop a strategy for helping make sure that these activations are successful. But thats currently not within our means. I also just need to point out that that changing the recommendation to include fridays will require that we restart the entire process, including forcing the community to go back through the task process and it loses about a at least a month of staff time that would require we halt progress on other street activations while we redo this process. So just for your consideration, as you think about what todays action wait a second, havent they theyve applied for a three day permit. You we came back to them and said we think it should be one day. Weve hauled them out to the mta board for us to presumably flush this out and we cant go back to them and say, as the mta board, we think you applied for three days, well give you a day and a half. So deputy City Attorney susan susan clevelandknowles may speak to it, but why would you bring this to us to, like discuss directors . Deputy City Attorney susan clevelandknowles so at least for this hearing, you can act today, day on director teals motion, which would amend the resolution thats in front of you. But we would recommend you vote at your next meeting because what was noticed on your agenda for today was a one day closure. It was a little interesting notice, but it was just for the one day. So wed be expanding it to a day and a half. May i have just let me ill let you finish and. Sorry, director. So let me just finish on the task. Notice that i do not have that in front of me. I dont know if it was the application and everyone discussed all of the issues with one, two and three days. If thats the case, it may not need to go back to task, but i cant know that sitting here unless this miss moonwatch understands how that process worked. And apologies, director. So for it did go to escott in march for three days there was no action taken, but at least that that was a step taken with the original application. Three days there was not consensus, so we werent able to sort of approve or deny at that time. So i dont know if that would facilitate that requirement or another action step would be the likely need to cut frequency on the 21 days, because friday night is when the bus is experiencing the most delay. As a result from the friday evening commute, congestion on the reroute. So im going to jump in here. Okay, director. So director tilghman, you said something very important, and i think it really needs to be sort of fleshed out and explained a little bit more. You said there is near universal agreement between sfmta staff supervisor preston, the merchants, the community on what is the ultimate outcome. So i think its really important for everybody here to hear you say what is that ultimate outcome in kind of specific terms so that we actually know what were talking about. Could you elaborate on that statement a little bit more . Sure. I mean, the outcome is a space that fosters in enjoyment and commercial success. It is a space thats vibrant, that feels safe for people of all ages and abilities that supports the merchants success while accommodating the merchant functionality like Curbside Pickup and drop off somewhere. Right i mean, weve weve seen these streets all over the world. We love them. Were capable of delivering them here in San Francisco. But success for these streets follows a very specific set of requirements. When we look at such successful spaces around the world. And so one of the key things that were working on trying to develop is, is what is that entity that fosters the activation . So can we work with a Nonprofit Organization to have commercial activation in a box and a sort of nonprofit that can receive private funds and can staff up around a certain amount of expertise where the sfmta is role is, is making sure that the functional needs are taken care of and that the safety requirements are met for all Emergency Services as well as for Traffic Safety, as well as to the extent that its appropriate, funneling public money that can be then combined with private money in order to create barcelona or paris or, you know, antigua, you know, where where wherever it is that you love. May i . May i . Yeah yeah. May i . I dont want to forgot my thought after being interrupted, but i thought the idea. So if. If a call is entertained, my idea. If we approve what the staff recommended today with the condition to monitor the if the operators of the merchants actually do work collaboratively to address these challenges that have been listed in here, they could come back within this year period of time to request for a longer duration of street closure. Yes, thats actually exactly what were trying to set up by consolidating two saturdays and investing in success. Were eager to not only allow, but actually encourage the merchants to expand just as quickly as theyre ready. So thats an unfriendly amendment to my motion. I want to advocate for adding friday nights back, because its been made clear to me from the merchants that friday nights was a very successful evening for them. And so if were trying to emulate what a successful street closure feels like in this block, having them continue to have a portion of it, were talking about five hours where lots of people were already coming to this neighborhood, giving them an opportunity to try it out on a friday night. And a saturday, which is a reduction by 50 of what they had. So its still cutting it in half. Seems to me like a fair compromise. And but i agree, giving them this opportunity, letting them activate it, giving them a little bit more time because it sounds like some of the merchants want it gone. Some want it all the way to three days. Weve asked them to go to nine hours. Its just giving them a little bit more time to figure this out on friday nights. And. Yeah, i think its no ones going to be happy with theres no ones going to be happy with everything that comes out of this. Im just trying to figure out a way to give that, to give them a little bit more. Yeah i acknowledge your intent and im trying to work around. So then also our agency doesnt cause another month of payroll to go back into the drawing board and come back again. I mean, you know, so then we approve it now so they can actually start trying this out. And the merchants will really start to operate it in the way that the permit is intended for them to do, and then they can come back and then add that those hours back. Director henderson, you want to weigh in. Im really i have a question for the City Attorney, because i didnt understand the order of operations that you laid out. So if we i hear the amendment or. Yeah, right now i hear theres its too its too i want to add friday night and i want us to study making it permanent, how much it would cost, what it would look like. Okay and so thats different than my recommendation is approve it right now and lets with the condition of monitoring the merchants operation now and then giving them an opportunity to extend the operational hours within this year of the permit. So then we can policy. Why administrative, why we can actually proceed according to the timeline and we dont have to wait another 30 days of moniker and the rest of the teams time. But but whats on the agenda today or how to, i guess im trying to figure out like whatever the vote is today. I heard you Say Something then could occur in a month. And so what . So, yeah, let me so first of all, director, sir, was that a motion that you were making a recommendation of the. Yeah as a motion that i recommend. Okay. To work around with everybody. The, the, the, the, the circumstances we have and with the fiscal responsibility that we have as an agency and also the yearning for the merchants that director to share with us and also seeing on the our staff and also the Small Businesses. And also can i do a hybrid Fire Department . Can i do a hybrid motion of these two . I just hoping to capture the best of both to clarify what what did we actually hendersons . Yeah, let me just reply to director hendersons the, the reason i asked is if. If director feels motion which has a second by director hensey is voted on today, it would be a motion to amend whats in front of you today to add it to a day and a half based on what miss munich said, it sounds like it was noticed at escott for three days, in which case i do not think it would need to go back to escott. It would just come back to you here at your next meeting for a vote with the notice for fridays and saturday, and ill be watching. Oh if director sos motion is seconded and approved, she does not have a second at this point. But if she does have a second and its approved, it would become effective. You would vote on it and it would you wouldnt do anything else except vote today. It would not come back to you have i answered your question . Yes okay. Thank you. If there is a third motion, it looks like we got a supervisor in the room from the chair. Then we would need to discuss that. Okay. I am going to make a third motion, but supervisor preston, would you like to address the board . Thank you very much. Usually i dont have the pleasure because our board meetings are going at the same time as yours. And this one ended early and i was listening to some of the discussion and decided to stop by. So thank you for the comments on this. And you you all obviously know the background. I do want to just emphasize a couple things. First of all, there is Incredible Community support for the three day active activation motion and car free space that we have now had for several years. And to undo that on basically a weeks notice, maybe 8 or 9 days is, i believe is would really is not going over well in the community i represent and is not going over well with with our office s the i would understand the boards reluctance given the staff recommendation to move forward today with a full three day closure. And i understand from the conversations thats not where the discussion is headed. I do not understand and want to reiterate our request that this matter be continued. And there is absolutely no reason that all stakeholders cannot be brought together to plan out an activation that is satisfactory to mta staff to preserve of this three days here at and to. It makes little sense to take that action now. Now my understanding is in terms of temporary authorizations that it could continue on a temporary basis through december. Theres nothing expiring here in terms of authorization to continue on a temporary basis at and we really run the risk by adopting something that limits us to a day or even two days of severely undermining the program. And sending, i think, a message the opposite of what we should be sending in terms of having a vision of really trying to protect and expand the car free space in in our city. So i just want to reiterate the request and i know you have multiple motions and procedurally well figure out where you want to go at the same time, i do think a motion to continue would be in order and would take precedence, if im not mistaken, over the various, i guess three different to three different motions that youve got. But what what ive not heard at all is any reason why this has to be done against the wishes of so many in the community on about a weeks notice just doesnt make any sense. Gives us some space. Our Office Community leaders are looking forward to doing whatever it takes to preserve this for multiple days. And finally, i just want to say, because as a avid supporter of Public Transit in San Francisco with all due respect, using the 21 bus as an excuse is not going over well. As someone who rides that bus daily, that thing is running once every 20 minutes. So if theres a problem with service right now, its not about the shared spaces and the threats of friday activation to ongoing bus service. Its the fact that the bus is barely running at this point on a shortened route three times an hour. So supervisor preston, can i just bring you in . I dont know if youve been watching, but can i bring you in on on an important thread of this conversation and get your perspective on this . Sure. I think that director uchitelle made a very compelling point, which is that we want the rules of the road. To be clear, we want people to understand whats going on and that the clearest solution is actually to look at something more like a 24 over seven closure rather than well, which days of the week. I cant keep track. And this is causing frustration and we dont want that. I cant even remember what what nights it is. And i go there all the time. So. So thats compelling to me. And that that that that gives an opportunity for some more permanent placemaking and permanent community and that you made the point that popping up and going away and popping up and going away doesnt actually kind of create something meaningful. So i just wonder in all your dialogs and conversations, is that your vision as well . Look, our offices vision is we would absolutely be supportive of looking at ways to expand the hours weve worked. Weve tried to balance the various interests around the days, and i know ive spoken with some of you and with director tumlin about whats been an evolving you know, originally it was a three block closure to private vehicles. Has since become the one block happy to discuss. And i think there would be significant Community Support for more like a round the clock type closure. But again, i dont think these kind of decisions should be on the fly, constricting it or exploring the broader closure. The again, theres no reason these, you know, these kind of decisions should be made on this. The kind of 7 to 10 day timeline. So im wide open to and i appreciate that suggestion and i do think that would give increased clarity to folks. I think we have to we would have to talk to the businesses and the residents. Right. About their views of the of the 24 hour closure. But our office, certainly, to the extent there was Community Support for that, would be supportive of that. But what im concerned about is whats before you right now, as i understand it, is eliminating 70 of the hours. I will just tell you on behalf of my constituents and from my office that that is perceived as and i believe accurately perceived as a gutting of car free. Hayes that is unnecessary. And that to the extent we can have a collaborative discussion and bring everyone together and explore these kind of possibilities, i see no reason that cant be put over a number of weeks or we had recommended early december here that id like to go ahead and put my motion forward for consideration. Thank you, colleagues. Thank you for being here. Did you want to respond to the supervisors comments . I have a quick point of clarification. If i can. Go ahead. I just wanted to in the spirit of things being clear on the street and the hours, they are closed, i just want to make sure its top of mind and doing my transit colleagues justice that as i understand from them, the friday difficulty of a part day is really challenging for reroute possible. But when its a part day, it is difficult not just because of the yard compared to the weekend, but how they do it for when its not a whole day. And it impacts riders as well. When they they know know to pick up the bus part of the day versus another part not its solvable but it is just a trade off. I want to be transparent about for fridays as well as the fact that were going to be going into earlier evenings very soon. Itll be dark sooner. Yeah. And that just means nighttime activations are just feel a little different into the winter. Okay. Thank you. So i would like to recommend that we approve. We take action today that we approve what is before us and what has been noticed and what has been studied of the saturday permit, because that is a foundation as vice chair kahina said so eloquently that we can build upon that is not a ceiling. That is a foundation. So we take that action, we approve that piece, we direct staff to study and explore if there are solutions on the friday night closure and come back to us within six months with a recommendation. If we want to add that piece in and that we look at what it would take a study of what it would take to actually make it permanent to your vision. Director of the 24 over seven, which may ultimately be the evolution that makes the most sense for this community. So that would be three pieces moving forward and you would get to vote on it today. So jerry can for clarity, what was that that middle piece . So weve got weve got the approving ones before us today. And the study of and then we would direct staff to look at just rather than doing this on the fly, we would direct staff to look at the friday night piece which weve heard from the community as meaningful. But rather than doing it today, we would study that and make sure that were working through the issues with our operators whose concerns we take very seriously and come back to us in six months with a recommendation of what you what you think is the right way to go forward to potential add fridays and study what what it would take to make this permanent in line with so many peoples visions that weve heard today. So then the duration then would still be a year or sorry, sorry. Director lindsay, the permit duration, would that still be a year that under your motion permit duration would be a year. But im open to alternatives. If people feel strongly. Right right. So youre recommending a year as well . Yeah okay. Okay. So can i respond to your i mean, well vote on all these amendments and see where the votes hit. But this street closure has been worked on by our staff and by the community and nauseam. Theres been two surveys, multiple departments, the Mayors Office, the supervisor, his office. I think there are two competing petitions us from from multiple groups about what should happen and should not happen. I just dont want to send our folks out there and have to do like a whole nother set of surveying and look ing and wondering and just to come back to add five hours. And so i just i actually dont think that more study about what the Community Wants is what is needed right now. I think they need i think they need to be given their parameters of what the street closure should be. I think the merchants have heard loud and clear, i dont want to speak for them that the mta wants certain things to be done, not mta, but also fire the Community Like this has been bruising. So i think we should we should we deserve to give them some clarity about what this block should look like and then we should give them the opportunity to try to make it happen. So i would just say from the perspective of like putting this to bed a bit, having them like we think we might want to give you friday night, but we want to give you like a couple of months to see if you can do friday night. Like it just feels very unsettling. So i think whatever should come out of this, we should be giving them clear parameters. We dont we dont make them come back to scott and go through that whole process again and then just let them try to make this work or not work. Thats just my reaction to your to your third. But we should vote. See what people think after the fire forgot how to address you. Fire marshal. Fire marshal was trying to Say Something to us earlier. I wonder if hed like to share. I just wanted to respond to director sos inquiry regarding feedback. As as monica stated, theyre not there 24 7. Were were working 24 over seven. And we provided consistent feedback. When we have problems. Actually, one of the slides, one of the pictures was one we took our when we couldnt get through or upon return from a call. So we you will receive feedback because the Fire Department will send mta feedback of incidents that occur. And that has happened consistently over the last year with lloyd through monica has received feedback regarding it and hence the reason why we modified the cones in response to the inability to staff the ends. So whatever you approve, we dont the Fire Department doesnt have a problem with it. We just want to be able to get through. Okay. Thats thats all it is. So we provide soul feedback on can we get through when we need to in an emergency situation. So you will receive consistent feedback from us because we have let our companies in the field know we have our own process internally to feed that through. It goes to my office and then i just send a nice little message over to monica and she can go ahead and archive that. So i want to let you know you will receive feedback, whether its one day, two days, three days through mta what kind of response were going to give. Okay. So thats all i wanted to say is you cant get feedback. Director tomlin can you can you just please explain how significant of an issue the 21 friday piece is . Because we want to honor the fact that this streets change exists within a part of a multimodal agency, and we want to honor our transit colleagues. I cant quite tell how much of a concern this is. Monica, do you want to speak to this or i will try my best. So two things is i think when they reroute, theres certain shifts that an operator takes. And i think when its broken up and when you only close the street for the five hours in the weekend and on a day like on friday, it is proven to be very difficult for those shifts. So an operator comes into the shift. It could be midway through a shift. Theyve actually driven through the closure a few times on fridays and weve had photos sent to us and its like, oh my goodness, and a problem. We can work through. But it is unique to fridays in terms of shift. And then the second piece again was, i believe, the presidio versus the kirkland yard, presidio yard on the friday services trolley busses overhead wires. And that reroute is also different for oh, julie, just in time. Were were a three minute time delay back there. Okay so i would love to just hear what you just said and then im happy to. Julie i was explaining about a friday closure in the 21 that there are my understanding the presidio serves it on fridays, that there are shifts that operator takes. So if the closure is just 4 to 10, it has proven to be a little bit difficult for operators and how theyre communicating. And it could be part way through a shift versus the weekend and the kirkland yard, those operators have much clearer understanding of what they need to do with a longer day closure and also the rubber tire busses can maneuver around the closure a little bit more easily. So its clear from this discussion that theres a lot of moving parts to this issue and transit does not want to be a barrier to follow thing. The boards direction on this topic. We do currently have to go off wire in order to implement this change. Thats very easy to do. When we remove the wire, the poles from the wire because that doesnt require the operator to get out of the vehicle. So it is a little harder when we go back onto the wire because cause even with some of the pans we have that direct the wire, theres still about a 1 in 3 chance that the operator is going to have to get out of the vehicle. We also had some challenges is kind of with with this friday shutdown because it happens mid shift so we did have especially when the barriers were not put in place, we did have operators that either didnt receive the proper training or just kind of lost the. Were not were not expecting it and went through the project area instead of doing the reroute because it happens midshift its definitely harder to for us to manage something thing that doesnt happen all day long but that being said, we have other places that we are dealing with complexity in the Transit System. So we will certainly be follow the boards guidance and make whatever our kind of solution we come to work. For the 21 days and for the customers having more, much better support on signage is critical and having support on the barriers is critical, which i know is something that we have communicated to the project sponsors via the via monica. Okay. Some times my colleagues use the term blocking concern. Do you have a blocking concern with us approving friday night . No. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other colleagues want to weigh in. Okay. I think procedurally ill look to you, susan, whats the best first order of business here . We have these three motions. You only have one motion that has a second motion. Thats a second. Marnies motion on the table. And also for procedure for christine is also a good resource here. Okay um, so can you, can you can you restate your motion, director uchitel, for clarity for everyone . Its to amend the item to add 5 to 10 p. M. On friday nights and to require the sfmta to study the cost and the design potential Design Options for a permanent street closure on this block of hayes with been. Six months, six months to just study those questions study the permanent peace. Yeah how much it would cost and what it could look like. Yeah 24 seven but thats it. Was it different than what you were suggesting at first . No no, i dont think so. No its seemed to me okay. Is she trying to comment . No, i was just backing up. Director. You could you. Okay. And you still second that motion . Director hensley. Yes. Um, yes. Yes. Assuming so. Director or deputy City Attorney susan clevelandknowles. Youre saying that were not going to hold your feet to the fire, but youre saying that this would not probably need to go to as god . So with so we could vote on this today and then it come back at our next meeting and then itd be would be binding on. Yeah. Okay sorry. Director hensley. Yes. So the vote today for director yaku would be to amend the resolution thats in front of you. But because it expands the number of days and hours noticed for today, that resolution would be brought back to you on november seventh or whenever the secretary calendars it and you would vote on it at that point. We appreciate you. Yes. Still second that motion, you would vote on the amending the resolution today. Yes. Then the resolution would be amended. And you would then we would re notice it with the appropriate days and times. And it would come back to you at your next meeting. Yes. Okay and it could be on your consent calendar or not. Okay thats your preference to have no action today . Well, its not no action on its amending the resolution and you guys have to do a vote. You have to vote on an amended resolution. Director hemminger, please. Well, im not going to make a motion because weve got plenty of those. I do want to ask a question. Supervisor preston indicated that he had gotten very little notice about this proposal. So what are the facts on that question . Ill defer to staff. Monica minovitch sure. Um the permit expired in march, so weve been working with the Community Since march. They were, for example, went to a public hearing in march because the permit expired and weve worked directly with the Supervisors Office through the summer to while theyve been in this sort of transition period. And and when did the one day come up for first versus three days, which is the status quo . Early september for about a month and a half ago at the completion of the stakeholder meetings is when we first brought that back to the community. Well, labor day weekend, you know, there are a lot of ideas on the table here and im just trying to distinguish among and between them. It sounds like director yakhchals idea cannot take effect until a subsequent meeting and i dont know why. We just couldnt take advantage of the fact if thats true and id call it a continuance until that meeting. And talk to people and vet the idea that hes suggested as a compromise, which seems reasonable to me, and go forth from there, you could call it a continuance. You could call it a delayed reaction in which i guess is the implication of the motion that is on the table from director yekutiel. Does that all track with you . Council well, yes. That is correct. Also, just because you amend the resolution today does not necessarily mean you need to have the same vote at the next meeting. So you could approve director yakhchals motion today and but you could also direct staff to notice its a broader spec item of dates and times. You know, im not going to go into potted plants today, but but it seems to me this is one of those moments again. And i just dont think we have a satisfac free way of dealing with uncertain certainty because as you bring a staff recommendation to us at a board meeting, we want to change it, which is what policy boards are allowed to do. And were told that, oh, in that case youve got to wait 30 days or 60 days or and its sort of that information is being weaponized against us. So that we adhere to the staff recommend motion instead of having a better way to handle an independent policy view. And i think if it has to do with just how we organize as the meeting and how we characterize the items so that we have some wiggle room in this case, the wiggle room is one day or three and twos in between. So if we had written it so that we could have chosen chosen among them again, i just dont think the process should be a way of tipping the scales on whether we approve your recommendation on or approve one of our own and im afraid were stumbling into that too often. I certainly hear what youre saying, director. We have talked about this issue before of making sure that for our more challenging or controversial projects that we invest the extra staff time necessary to have a discussion item first to get feedback and then do the additional staff work to have potential multiple completed resolutions is available to you. And i realize thats a drag, but i do think it would allow us to have a pure policy discussion instead of worrying about what is this going to trigger this codicil on the brown act . Yes. So were in complete agreement. However, youve also provided us with a direction to move a lot more quickly. And the greatest constraints that we face here, in addition to money, is staff time. And our staff time is our staff. Availability is shrinking dramatically right now. So we are simultaneously trying to deliver more with fewer people and that means making some hard choices about where are we directing the staff time regard to with regard to decisions like this. In this case, we made a judgment that that because what we were doing, because theres agreement about the outcome, were wanting to take action about the floor or to build from towards that outcome and that we can change that outcome at any time. We could change it three months from now if we figure out some solutions to the problem. But in the meantime, we needed a real permit and so in this case, the staff recommendation was to move quickly to establish the floor for and then use our staff time to build success rather than using staff time with more bureaucratic processes and writing additional resolution for a more for a policy choice to happen here. And i have to say, colleagues, i find that to be compelling. And that is why i am motivated to act today as opposed to continue this, which then involves more staff time, more process, more dialog, more bureaucracy. And ill heat up a vote today. My bias is to second chair egans motion. The rules of order. Thank you. So we have two motions with a second and i want to state something that according to the slide that i got today with the report that the office of the Small Businesses actually went out and conducted aid and reached out to the merchants on these three blocks and 92 of them. And the result im seeing is that 66 of them are in favor for prefer or satisfied with a one day closure. I just want to state that that on record. So, susan, we have two motions now. One is for an action today. One is to amend the motion. How do you advise we proceed, christine, do you want to answer that question or my understanding is that you would take the first motion first. So director patels motion. Okay. Which has a second. They both have a second now. They both do, yes. Okay so are we trying to weigh in again . Well i was i think trying to ask you a question because, again, getting back to the point, i was making, theres going to be a delay either way. Right unless your motion is approved. And if director udalls motion is approved, it cant take effect until all the next meeting at the earliest. Right okay. Yes yes. Or we can act today. Continuing to evaluate friday with our transit operators to study the 24 7 closure and keep moving forward of trying to act fast. I dont know how much more , more discussion we need to have about one versus two versus three. Its three choices. One, right after the other. And there there clearly is not consensus on. Three and one on. And so that i believe, is why direct tory was trying to come up with to and so i dont know how much more vetting to would have to take. But if we do the vetting and it comes back and we can say, okay, were going to do two instead, or were going to keep three, or were going to do. One my understanding from staff, this was always your intention on approve this floor today, continue dialog, continue building activation, continue to explore what the vision is for this space. So thats consistent. Thats right. And in particular, remove the hardest day, which is friday in order to build success and then once there is success, we can reevaluate fridays. Can i just throw another bone in here . What . What it sounds like, at least from the staff perspective, that friday night presents a lot of difficulties. What if we give them sunday instead of friday and. In that way we remove the like, the potential issues with the shifts and the 21 days and im just trying to throw the merchants who really love this and think its really helpful to their businesses a bone here. I am not advocating for staff to go back and do a whole nother round of surveying and talking to the merchants and figuring out one versus the other. I do not want to advocate for that. Director henderson. So i what im hearing, i just want to be clear. What im hearing is not necessarily go back and study one, two or 2 or 3 days, but go back and study, move forward today and study permanent, which would be beyond three days. But instead, the entire set of blocks for or 24 over seven. And i think that so i dont think that theres a today i dont hear a choice between the one or the two or the three days. Its either one, one or or not or we continue for this half a day, whichever days of the week. I guess we can work that out with the, you know, by next month. But study but i hear the direction is figure out the next the possibility for a long term 24 7 closure right and so can we make sure that or can we add that direction to study to any of the motions that come forward . Because it sounds like thats where the that sounds like the goal or the end goal of this is to figure out whats possible for the long term, whether whether we land on one, two, three days. I think that was in both. Yes. Okay. And so we vote now or you know, whenever your direction is. But we vote first on on director hotels. Day and a half proposal and we dont does that day and a half have to be specific like do we have to say 15 hours between friday and saturday or can it be open like we were suggesting in the staff and the merchant groups . Figure out the best 15 hours of the weekend to do it. Can i respond to that . The reason i proposed friday night is because it was communicated to me from the merchants that that period of time that that luscious kernel of time was the time that people were utilizing this space the most. And so trying to protect the time that people are actually going to hayes valley and eating and want to be out on the street. And we all want it to be successful. But so the idea is giving them a little bit of more of that time to utilize. And so thats why i wanted it to be specific, because weve done a lot of feedback. Weve done a lot of surveying. Thats whats been communicated to me as like an important time not to lose. Okay so yeah, i do want to keep it specific. I do want to i do want to amend the resolution to add friday nights. We both are in agreement that we want to study what 24 hours would look like, though. Okay so just from a process standpoint, so everyone understands if director kaushals motion is approved, thats it, then theres not a possibility to take an action today, correct . Sure you can. If i could correct myself. Im sorry. Okay the substitute motion should be voted on first. So your your motion. The second one should be voted on first and then we can go to the original motion. Okay. And then process wise, if that motion to approve today and study the longer term as director henderson laid out, if thats approved, how do we then why accurately consider the other motion . Because that feels like direction today. Whatever. If the first motion thats voted on is approved, then thats thats done. Okay, but not like a why not me vibe. But if i, i propose my motion first and it was seconded first and shouldnt shouldnt since that was the first amendment, that motion that was proposed in second, shouldnt that do i not understand the rules properly . Maybe i dont. Is that the direction of our secretary if i dont at this point, five years later, the situation should get voted on first . Is there any understanding as a substitute. Ive been substituted. Youre the main motion. No, shes the substitute. Your main motion. Okay okay. So were going to call a vote on the proposal, which is to move forward today. Move forward with the floor of saturday. Closure for directing staff to study the question thats been raised of the friday night and just make sure that works for our transit partners to bring back as soon as youre ready recommendation on that piece as well as to study the larger 24 over seven closure, which has been seconded. Could you please call the roll on that motion . This is your this is chair eakins motion. Correct. Okay. Correct it. If i may, just quickly ask the City Attorney, there was a resolve clause that that staff needed to add to this approval. Yes. That is correct. The vehicle code requires for a road closure that your resolution includes the following an additional resolve clause that for the reasons discussed in the public hearing, the sfmta board finds that the street closure is necessary for the safety and protection of persons who are using that portion of the street during the closure. So, chair aitken, if you could amend your motion to include that language, so we would appreciate it. Thank you. Deputy City Attorney clevelandknowles okay. On that motion and the amendment. Director hemminger no grenade director henderson. Hi, henderson. I director hinsey no. And director. So yes. So i. Director uchitel. No. Uchitel no. Director kalena nay. Kehena no. Chair aitken a chicken. And i thank you that motion passes 4 to 3. No, it doesnt pass. I think we. Oh my gosh. Only im sorry three votes. So that motion fails. Okay, we can go back to the second. The original motion director ukotoas motion director teals motion is to amend the resolution to add the friday evenings and require the agency to study potential permanent street closure of hay street. And dont forget, deputy on that and susan clevelandknowles amendment to very good thank you. And what about the sunday versus friday thing that you just put in play . Im going to im were going to forget that. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Can someone repeat one more time . This motion is the motion is to amend the resolution motion to add friday evening and require the agency to study potential permanent street closures of hay street within six months. And to add the amendment, as stated by the City Attorney, adding that resolve clause. Okay go ahead and call the roll director hemminger. Hi hemminger. Director henderson. Hi henderson. I director hinsey. Hi, director. So. Director. So im thinking can you go to somebody else first . No, you cant. No we cannot. This is voting to just amend this resolution and not take a vote. Not take an action today. All right. I so i. Director yuku a yuku i director coquina coquina i chair egan egan. I thank you. That motion is passes unanimously. Okay. Next item. Lets go ahead and call the next item. Thank you. Item 11 amending transportation Code Division two, section 601 to designate full time transit only area on hyde street between eddie and mcallister streets and approving various traffic and parking modifications between geary and mcallister streets to improve transit and Pedestrian Safety as part of the hyde street. Quick build project includes items a through. To you in the agenda. Okay. Can you hear me okay . Yes, go ahead. Thank you. Um. Thanks. Good afternoon, chair ekin directors. My name is Jennifer Molina and my Senior Transportation planner in the Streets Division in the project manager for the hyde street quick build. Id like to recognize the entire project team. This project was a team effort across multiple divisions. But most importantly, this project would not be before the board today without the determination of the Tenderloin Community. Before jumping to hyde street, i want to provide a quick overview. Two of the important work city staff and Community Partners have accomplished over the past several years in the tenderloin. This map highlights the various Traffic Safety and street changes that have taken place in the community. This includes four quick builds, two shared spaces and a neighborhood wide no turn on red and speed limit reduction from 25 to 20mph. This work would not have been possible without the dedicated advocacy work of those who live and work in the tenderloin. So hyde street quick build. Its the fifth quick build in the tenderloin. Our quick build efforts continue to inform our agencys ongoing outreach and engagement practices. Hydes outreach process was centered on partnering with Community Residential based groups within the community. Also, i want to point out that this Team Continues to work closely with our transit priority team, who are leading the high transit project that that went to the board earlier this month. This ongoing ongoing coordination was key to advancing this proposal. Proposal you see today. So hyde street today, hyde street is busy, mixed use corridor with a variety of civic facilities, libraries, parks, as well as Small Businesses, apartments, sros and health and Service Oriented organizations. Its also a very popular pedestrian corridor for those walking or strolling and rolling, especially for families, seniors and people with disabilities. High street is a one way southbound corridor with three vehicle lanes between geary and mcallister street. It also has parking on both sides of the roadway and loading the 19, polk wrote in three golden gate transit regional bus routes travel on the hyde street within this project corridor to the 19, polk connects several neighborhoods, including neighborhoods identified in the Muni Service Equity strategy on average, one person on hyde is hit every month based on five years of collision data over half of those collisions are pedestrians. The top three most frequent crashes crash types are drivers failure to lead and yield in the crosswalk, followed by red light violations and unsafe speeds. Starting in fall of 2022, our project team focused on listening and Relationship Building with Community Stakeholders along hyde and nearby. This work included several visioning sessions with our Community Partners to codevelop an outreach plan. Partners included organized and residents from the community, including the tenderloin, peoples congress, cbd, safe passage, the tenderloin, Traffic Safety task force and code tenderloin in winter of spring of 2023, the Outreach Team focused mostly on inperson engagement, including pop ups in block to block outreach stakeholder meetings were also set up to connect with community and resident based groups, both virtually and in person. So during this listening period, the Outreach Team collected hundreds of surveys, mostly in person, to understand project priorities and top Traffic Safety concerns. The top four priorities include ensuring Pedestrian Safety, improving transit reliability, considering a protected mobility lane and speed reduction on. So based on these priorities and the feedback collected on both phases of outreach staff recommend actually, i apologize. Slide eight building up the teams first phase of outreach, the project team developed two quick build Design Options as understanding a hybrid approach was important for outreach. The team developed an interactive story map that presented project background and walked viewers through proposals with an option to take a brief survey. Our Outreach Team also organized several inperson tabling events and workshops at trusted Community Spaces and sros to review designs and engage with project staff. These workshops included monolingual events in both spanish and chinese. Okay so based on these priorities and feedback during both phases of outreach, staff are recommending advancing a road diet between geary and eddy in a transit only lane from eddy to mcallister street intersection safety improvements at ellis and eddy would include painted safety zones and left turn safety treatments. The project also includes a modest curb Management Plan that proposes additional or extended color curb to provide more space for loading and also to deter double parking. Given the growing interest in the community to see a protected north to south. Mobility lane in the neighborhood, the team did propose a similar design to our recommendation that also included an east side running mobility lane. The design proposal for a quick build was was limited by several constraints for the project team that included existing bulb outs, muni Service Loading and parking in Emergency Response needs. One of the major trade offs with the design. With this design specifically was that all east side parking and loading would need to be removed for the entire six blocks. While it was clear that the Tenderloin Community is in support of a protected mobility lane, the design this design would further exacerbate parking and loading challenges, especially for Small Businesses, but also for paratransit and taxi services. Staff are still committed to working with the Tenderloin Community to identify a north and south mobility lane. There is currently an opportunity to identify future active transportation projects and policies with within the active communities plan. So so given the teams recommendation today, we are asking the board to consider for approving the transit lanes on hyde street between eddy and mcallister street in improving traffic and parking modifications on hyde between geary and mcallister streets. If approved, quick build implementation would start in late october into early november. For this project will also be followed by a six month evaluation in spring of 2024. Our project work will also include ongoing coordination with our transit colleagues, both in construction and project evaluation. That concludes my presentation. An and thank you for your time. Thank you so much for your presentation. Jennifer directors, are there any clarifying questions . Yes, i did have some questions, but im very scared. If i may. Yes, please. Before director lindsay. Um just a few comments and questions. First question questions. I know that when the transit only lane came before us last week, we talked to we talked about an express some concern around the fulton plaza, um, surrounding areas. And i, i know that staff has been doing some work around those intersections. So i dont know if kimberly or jennifer, you want to sort of summarize at a high level where were at with those, um, with those discussions. Sure i can speak to the updates that i have. And also kimberly is here to add if needed. So thank you, director, for that question. Yes and so as part we did receive some feedback from Community Members around some of the Pedestrian Safety concerns they had at fulton and hyde as well as fulton and larkin. And thats really essentially with the Farmers Market moving over to the fulton plaza, the there is a there is a concern around people, particularly seniors and people with disabilities, accessing that and crossing over. So our team did actually look at some options. And we are we are recommending right now is installing large wide painted safety zones is essentially to shorten the crossing distance for people, but to also increase visibility through the application of post and some khaki khaki paint essentially. And that one we know is feasible on the larkin. So on the west side of larkin, we can do so. Its just a beefed up version of a painted safety zone. Weve done it along. Lincoln and this is something we know we can do and do fairly quickly. The option on hyde and fulton is a little bit more complex since were working with our transit colleagues as well as theres ongoing construction with the with the project work that our colleagues over at ruskin park are doing. We have to see if and when that actual application of a large painted safety zone would be actually feasible and so thats ongoing conversation with with transit and our city colleagues. But we are committed to the larkin and fulton application of a large Pedestrian Safety painted safety zone. And that i think at this point we anticipate we could complete that by end of year. Excellent. And thank you for looking into that so quickly and um, weve, weve had a lot of conversations around and other hearings today and needing to come back with other hearings. So um, and i dont want, i dont want to put the community through another hearing so can you maybe clarify that we wouldnt need a additional legislation . Yeah. No, thats a great question. I think well, essentially for the larkin fulton location in the area where were actually proposed posing a painted safety note painted safety zone is already a tan set. So essentially we wouldnt we wouldnt have to go through through a legislation process there. The other location, again, i dont have information on the hyde fulton location. We still need to see if and when thats actually possible. Yes. And then my last question and then have comments and gratitude for the team. But our last question is, i know that there is some concern around when the this segment of the transit only lane is going to be color colorized. And i, i know that transit technically considers is this a you know highlight while we look at the design so if we if you could speak to that speak to that i know staff intends to colorize it at some point in the future. No thank you for that question. And i do want to note some transit only lanes in the city are not necessarily colorized red. So in terms of the question around and i just want to confirm youre asking whether the section from eddie to mcallister would be colorized red, correct . Yep correct. All right. Thanks. Well, at this time, we are not colorizing the section between mcallister and eddie red. We our plan is to actually evaluate the effectiveness, effectiveness of the travel of the transit lane as part of our six month evaluation plan, including looking at transit travel times and the reliability of the 19. Poke our conversation with our transit colleagues is essentially any reduction in the speed or impact to the 19 poke will require us to review and look at the revision of our design, how its functioned operationally wise, like in terms of our our lanes, how operators are feeling and then that would include the option to colorize to increase driver compliance between eddie and mcallister street. I think this evaluation actually the timeline syncs up really well with our agencys commitment to colorize hyde between mcallister and market in mid 2024. So meaning the entire eight blocks could be colorized on a similar timeline. But we really would like to use this time to make observations and monitor how this extension of the transit only lane on hyde is working. I would. I would actually agree with you. You you you know as well as i do that um that this project for the transit lane is its also a transit lane but its also a road diet. But i know because of the design of the transit lane that we need to assess the effectiveness of a transit lane. But it it is critical as a road diet. But i do understand that we need we need to evaluate it before we paint it red. So i im actually and i know that staff knows that in portions of the road diet to the community. So those are those are my questions and colleagues i have been sort of involved in the outreach process and working sort of ive had jennifer can attest ive had many meetings with staff about this and i just want to emphasize that jennifer has done a very intense level of outreach to the community. And she was being very modest in regards to the amount of work that shes done. So i did just want to read commend the team for this model of outreach that weve taken up. And i know that you will. Theres a commitment there to work with the tenant and continue to work with the Tenderloin Community. Also so and i know that there is a vision within the Tenderloin Community to have a protected bike lane of some sort someday. And i know that staff isnt necessarily giving up on giving up on that. So i will. And i know that well continue to do an increased amount of work in the tenderloin. And so i just want to acknowledge that. And i think to that end, kerrigan pending discussion and Public Comment, i will make a motion to approve the project. Second, it great. Theres a motion and a second we dont have any other director comments. You took your hand down. So lets go to Public Comment please. For anyone in the room on this item. Hey, good afternoon. My name is simon viloria, organizer and cochair for the Traffic Safety task force. First off, thank you again to jennifer and mta staff for the engagement and continued communication with our community. Um, ive already mentioned in last meeting, but again, want to reiterate the need for this project to be done simultaneously as the rest of hyde street. I know its also frustrating that added complications to this project with one chunk having a separate hearing as well as an additional issue on Pedestrian Safety with the market moving, i understand that this wasnt anticipated and i think staff might share the same frustration. So i just want to put that on record. Also, we need a solid commitment of painting the transit only lane red and evaluate before and after colorizing as colorized transit lanes is a greater visual indicator of road diet. And with the problems in the lack of enforcement, it may also act as a deterrent. And then finally, we ask that we continue to be transparent and to continue Clear Communications with the community of the evaluation results and if any changes will be made. And this will help continue to build trust, exemplify this culture of care and put equity policies into action. So again, thank you for your time. Thank you to mta and looking forward to getting this project completed. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, stacy randecker for the tenderloin. I believe has the lowest percentage of car ownership of any neighborhood in San Francisco and they suffer disproportionately because their neighborhood is designed as essentially a highway interchange. You have these massive three and five, including parking long one way streets going in in in opposite directions. The sister street whole concept its great for throughput, but its terrible for people. I didnt see a bike lane in there. If polk were pedestrianized, id get it. Id understand, but polk is a show. Okay. It is very difficult to bike on. It is not safe and it is the only north south corridor for in in the whole that whole quadrant of the city. I mean. Yeah. Oh yeah. You gave a little bit on battery but what are you supposed to do. I mean its like this is not equitable. Public transit includes vanpools is an economically and environmentally sound alternative to transportation by individual automobiles within San Francisco, travel by Public Transit, by bicycle and on foot must be an attractive alternative to travel by private automobile. This is in your transit first principles. It goes on all the documents that are printed. Every project has this and more are emblazoned upon it. Why arent we adhering to it . Why are we talking about keeping parking . Why arent we read ing and greening this entire city or closing it to automobiles so that you dont have to do any of those things where are we going to do that . Please is thank you. Any other speakers in the room . Okay. Please open the phone. Actually, i want to speak on the project. Jay is not quite yet. This is the hyde street. Thats item 13. Thank you. Remote Public Comment at this time. We will move to remote Public Comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. Members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. Each speaker will have two minutes. Moderator for speaker. Hi this is dylan Faber Community and policy manager at San Francisco transit riders. We support the hyde street quick build project and thank staff for the extensive outreach thats been done to transit riders and the Tenderloin Community. But we would at the same time like to see the addition of red paint, the inclusion of transit only lanes and a road diet on hyde street from eddy to mcallister will improve safety and reduce conflicts on the corridor, all while improving speed and reliability for the thousands of riders who rely on the 19 transit. Only lanes are a common sense solution to improving Transit Service in our transit first city. But were concerned that the proposed designs presented today do not include the red paint. Its standard for 24 7 transit only lanes in San Francisco to receive red paint to make it clear to drivers that they should keep the lane clear for transit vehicles. We know red lanes work sfmta studies have found that painting transit lanes red can increase compliance from drivers by up to 55, even if overall overall car traffic on the road increases. So we support the swift implementation of this project with transit only lanes added immediately as soon as possible, with or without red paint, but red paint should be added as soon as staff capacity and resources allow. So before approving this item, the board should direct staff to update the proposed designs to ensure that red paint is included as part of the transit lanes. Final implementation. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello directors. My name is eric roselle and im a long term resident of the tenderloin and the director of state programs at Timberland Community benefit district and chair of the tenderloin Traffic Safety task force. First, i want to thank the sfmta staff in particular jennifer and kimberly, and their hard effort in addressing our some of our questions and then some of our concerns throughout this entire process. As jaime had stated earlier, we really do ask that the fast track, the quick build project in its entirety from geary to Market Street. Second, we ask that the complete implement station of the transit only lane from eddy to market happen in tandem with the high street transit lane project. And that number three, that the paint of the traffic only lane is red painted red from eddy to Market Street. That was indicated in the first outreach extensive outreach that was done that was shown that it would be red. It wasnt until later that it was indicated that they would not be red and there was not extensive outreach when that plan had been changed to inform the community in detail that that plan had been changed. Um, and so we feel like theres been kind of a bit of switch bait and switch going on there anyway. We also want to ensure that transparency again does happen with the evaluation process. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker. Can you hear me now . Yes, go ahead. Great. David pilpel, again. So on this item, i am opposed to this proposal. Hyde street feeds eighth, which is a major freeway access route in my opinion, there is not that much Transit Service on this segment. The 21 hayes the 27. Bryant and golden gate transit can all be rerouted off of hyde. So that would only leave the 19 polk, which doesnt run that frequently. Somehow i thought that capacity on hyde street was either a condition or a mitigation measure for the van brt project or the polk street project. Its one of the few north south streets, in this case, a southbound street that was not impacted or was not directly affected other than having additional traffic from the van ness and polk street projects. And as i said, it feeds eighth, which is a major freeway access route. I think that if this project is approved , this will mean more congestion and pollution on a corridor in a neighborhood that doesnt need it. Its not my idea. But in fact, people drive people who live in the city drive to the peninsula to drive to the east bay, need to get to a bridge and a freeway. I dont see that the benefit here outweighs the costs. 30s i am opposed to this item. Thanks for listening. Thank you. No additional callers. Okay, close Public Comment. We have a motion and a second. Please call the roll on the motion to approve director hemminger. Hi hemminger. Director henderson. Henderson. I director hinsey. Hi, kinsey. I director. So i. So i director yukou i director kahina. I kahina i chair egan i egan. I thank you. The motion passes us. Thank you, colleagues. Id like to given the late hour. Id like to recommend we take item 13 next, which is an action item related to the j Church Project and then reevaluate if we want to continue item 12 to the next meeting or keep going. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Places you on item number 13 amending transportation Code Division two, section 601 to designate full time transit only areas on san jose avenue between ocean avenue and carter street, and approving various parking and traffic modifications include the designation of a class four bikeway at church and Market Street, with staff available to present. Okay good afternoon, directors. Good evening. Whatever it is now , my name is michael rhodes. Im the transit priority manager in the Transit Division and ill be presenting today about proposed muni forward improvements on the j church. The j church line, the J Church Muni forward project is a Capital Project that is split into three segments. Today. Ill be talking about proposed upgrades at the intersection of church and Market Streets and on san jose avenue in the Mission Terrace neighborhood. A future phase of work will be looking at muni forward improvements to the j church in noe valley. The project goals are to improve safety, accessibility and comfort at church stops to address Traffic Safety concerns and support reliability on the j church, as well as supporting Small Business and neighborhood commercial vitality, especially at the church and market intersection at church and Market Streets, thousands of people get on or off the j or 22 every day. Its also a key transfer point to church street, muni metro station below ground. And just as importantly, its a vital neighborhood commercial hub. Weve made a series of quick build improvements since 2020 to enhance safety and accessibility and the overall transit Passenger Experience. At this stop in short, weve basically been gradually upgrading this area from a basic transit stop to more of a transit and pedestrian plaza. And were working on more quick build upgrades coming soon, focused on enhancing the transit, enhancing the actual plaza space. As you may recall, this board already approved permanent transit plaza upgrades in december 2021 at this intersection, Detailed Design on the permanent plaza is underway in collaboration with public works and local merchants and we expect construct on the permanent plaza to begin in 2025. The reason were talking about this intersection today is to give you an update on the design and to seek approval for a sidewalk level bikeway through the permanent plaza. Here are some of the elements that will go into the permanent version of the plaza. There are basically two main zones in the plan design. Theres the transit passenger zone. Thats kind of where people are waiting for the train. Thats kind of more to the left of the diagram here. And then a public plaza space kind of an extension of the sidewalk right next to sort of verve coffee and in that area there where people can drink coffee or dine from local restaurants and basically have high quality neighborhood gathering space. The plaza will include a permanent, Wheelchair Accessible platform, um, comfortable and welcoming transit, Passenger Amenities and streetscape upgrades and seating. Church street is not a designated bike route, but it does have a fair volume of cyclists and we want to make sure theyre not riding in the track lane. So were proposing to include a bike path between the two zones. The original approval for this plaza included an exemption for bikes in terms of the traffic restrictions, but it didnt designate it as a class four bike route. So this is sort of an administrative clarification of what was originally approved. So thats an update on what were working on at church and market. And again, the only action item for the board for church and market is going to be to potentially adopt the proposed bikeway. Shifting south. Weve also been working on improvements to san jose avenue along the j church in Close Partnership with local neighbors and supervisors. Our safires office there are three main challenge areas were looking to address with the proposed improvements on san jose. First is safety. This is a high injury corridor and weve had extensive you know, requests for safety improvements from neighborhood residents for many years. Its been on the radar for a long time. There especially concerned with speeding and safety when crossing san jose and as well as Pedestrian Safety at transit stops. Second, of course, transit reliability and finally, accessibility. Theres currently a gap of almost two miles between Wheelchair Accessible stops on the j church in this area. Thats from basically glen park down to balboa park. As i alluded to, theres been really a tremendous amount of Community Advocacy around improving safety for people walking in this neighborhood. On san jose avenue about a year ago, our project team kicked off an initial round of outreach to key Community Members and Community Based organizations in the neighborhood who were already kind of organized and interested in safety improvements and knocking, knocking on our doors to have us come talk to them. Over the past year, weve presented about potential improvements to the local neighborhood association, to Community Based organizations, missions, to neighborhood leaders and merchants along the corridor. And this august, we returned to the community to share a final revised proposal that incorporates a lot of the feedback that weve heard throughout this outreach process. Throughout the outreach, weve heard very strong support for safety improvements and improving transit reliability. Weve heard a lot of requests to enhance the crossing experience, especially for pedestrians, particularly along balboa park and some more localized feedback around parking and loading needs, especially at the roxy food center at san juan avenue. So heres what were specifically proposing on san jose avenue between to 80 and ocean avenue. First, it would be transit lanes, which would really primarily be there to reduce speeding while supporting transit reliability. This is really about creating a road diet on an overbuilt roadway to reduce speeding while keeping transit moving. So this would reduce the roadway from four general purpose lanes, so two lanes in each direction to two total through lanes. So one lane in each direction, vehicle is making a left turn and taxis would still be allowed to use the left lane or the track lane where the trains are. There would also be extended boarding islands to provide safe loading for all train doors. Currently, some of the islands are too short and people are stepping off into a traffic lane. Wheelchair accessible transit stops would be added at two intersections, so four total transit stops would have wheelchair ramps added that dont currently have them to improve accessibility and flashing beacons, sidewalk corner bulb outs, daylighting and left turn, traffic calming and continental crosswalk striping to improve safety for people walking as well. In total, this project would remove a net one parking space. As i mentioned earlier, one of the key pieces of feedback weve received has been about crossing san jose avenue along balboa park. So this is an important gathering space for the neighborhood. Its a major a major destination park as well. Currently there are four intersections along the park where people may cross. As you can see in this map, labeled one, two, three, four, where currently focused on upgrading the three intersections that have existing marked crosswalks to make these really good crossing options at havelock, santa ynez and ocean. So those are three location that are not only intersections, but they have a marked existing crosswalk. But weve also received a good amount of requests to add a marked crosswalk crossing. San jose at Sergeant John young lane, which is a small park street midway through the park. These requests came a little later in the outreach process and weve just completed the engineering analysis in the past few days. So in the interest of transparency and timeliness, we wanted to share an update today. Instead of waiting to get these results out to the community a later date. For now, were recommending that the focus does remain on upgrading existing marked crossings to the park. Were not currently recommending adding a marked crosswalk at Sergeant John young lane based on a few key considerations. First, theres been no recorded injury collisions at this intersection crossing san jose in the past five years. The pedestrian volumes based on the counts weve done are pretty low. This isnt a through street, so for most people santa ynez or ocean would be the most direct path of travel. The closest marked crosswalk is at most about 370ft away at santa ynez, where theres a stop sign and marked crosswalk and a j church stop and finally adding a crosswalk here would require significant investment, such as curb ramps and flashing beacons or a traffic signal to really make it work well, because if we just put a crosswalk there without ramps and without some higher visibility measures, its not going to be a successful crosswalk. Unfortunately, we do have limited resources and improvements are urgently needed at a lot of other high injury locations throughout the city. So thats why wayne, this current Safety Record versus the cost of adding a crosswalk here with signalization or with a flashing beacon and with the curb ramps, were recommending that we do not add a marked crosswalk at this time. But but we do understand the interest in this crossing and will continue to monitor it and can revisit our recommendation if conditions change on the street. So in summary, heres what were asking for. The board to vote on today along with the san jose avenue corridor, were proposing transit lanes that allow busses and taxis or that also allow left turns from ocean to carter street. A left turn must turn left northbound at ocean avenue on san jose to facilitate the transit lane. It attended boarding islands and new accesses stops at santa ynez and santa rosa intersect ocean daylighting at san juan paulding, santa ynez and biden and baden rather. And flashing beacons at san juan and pauline avenues. These flashing beacons, if youre not familiar with them, are those pushbutton signs that you push and it lights up and says theres a Pedestrian Crossing the street as well as pedestrian bulbs or sidewalk corner extensions at paulding and baden streets at church and market directors due to the fact that the required language for the class four bikeway was not included on the agenda for today. We are recommending that you approve the entire item today except kept the bikeway, which is item h, and we will bring the bikeway back for your approval on november seventh. On your consent calendar, we will. Weve given you the Background Information on it, but we would bring it back for approval in two weeks on the consent. And here are our proposed and next steps. October 17th. Thats today. The sfmta board is reviewing our proposals for san jose avenue, the class four bikeway at church and market would be postponed for two weeks. As i mentioned, youre going to receive an overall update about muni service today, but just to clarify, there are no proposed changes to the church as part of this project or in general at the moment. Later this year or early next year, we will implement the quick build phase of the project on san jose avenue. If approved and planning and outreach, we hope to also start for the noe valley segment. The final segment of the J Church Muni forward project in that time frame over the next two years, we would complete Detailed Design of transit plaza improvements and the san jose avenue permanent version of the improvements and starting in 2025, we would Start Construction of full capital elements at church and market, san jose. The whole project, including boarding islands, flashing beacons, accessible stops, bulbs, all of the elements that we cant complete during quick build. So so thank you very much. Directors of course, our team is available to answer any questions you may have about the proposals. Thank you, colleagues. In light of the late hour, im going to go to Public Comment ahead of your questions. Thats okay. Any commenters in the room for the j church item . I do have some speaker cards. Prudence hall. Hillary bao. David hooper. Samuel thomas. Go ahead. Im hillary brown. So start comedy. Yes, actually, my name is hillary brown. Im with the mta. Sam m sfmta museum and accessibility committee. Ive been serving on this committee for like five years. I would like to eventually invite to speaker, do a presentation to the to the Mac Community because we want to learn about how this project is pertaining to accessibility throughout the citizens in San Francisco. Im wondering, ive been serving it for five years and i want to hear about how they talk about accessibility. For example, not just wheelchair, but people who are blind. That should be taken consideration. I wasnt speaking that because i also wish there was a committee i think theres a committee for the geary line, of which there were a visory committee for this project. And if there is, i would like to serve on it. I just all i want to say thank you for your comment. Next speaker, please. Microphone is tall. My name is prudence hall. Im a resident of the Mission Terrace and i have been meeting with sfmta for a number of years on this on this. Thank you. I am personally in favor of everything that i see on this list. I mean, some of the items i like more than others, but you know, hey, anything is great and we would like them all. And im very disappointed. Covid that Sergeant Young lane was not included in this list, although i want to really appreciate it that its on the map now, because when we first met with philippe and with Aaron Mcmullen , it wasnt even on the map. But we have followed their suggestions at the several meetings weve had with them and with Michael Jacobson of the traffic calming program. Weve pulled in our Community Partners. Carol jankowski, who is the area five manager for rec and park, and also now captain amy hurwitz, the captain of Ingleside Police station, and shes appointed a person, sam berenson, who works with us on this. And weve asked for a crosswalk at that spot. But i do want to point out that its not just a random road. It is the access to Ingleside Police station. It is the access to boxer stadium, a commercial stadium, and it is flanked by by a childrens playground. And the baseball fields. And we really need traffic calming at this t intersection as all intersections in this section are t intersections, not squares. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comment. Next speaker, please. Hello Board Members. My name is samuel thomas. Im a Mission Terrace resident at and i live on san jose avenue. Im a part of the movement for a safer san jose. I have a 17 month old son who uses balboa playground and crosses the street, literally every day. So this is a big concern for me and for other families in our community who are in the same boat that my entire family uses the corridor and we use it regularly myself and the Community Supporting safer, san jose are very excited that this project is moving ahead. We appreciate all the mta staffs hard work in making this happen and in making this project a reality. Were glad the board is listening and taking action. These are all great things. Overall, weve heard from the majority of the community that weve spoken with that theyre pleased with the proposal, even if it doesnt contain everything that we would like to see, we would like for the board to approve this item today and for the mta to move immediately with the quick build portions of the project so that we can see the situation improved as quickly as possible. With that said, one remaining issue that has not been addressed in addition to the crosswalk is the elimination of left turns from paulding onto san jose. This is a big problem in the current configuration vehicles turn into a crosswalk across four lanes of traffic and that includes transit vehicles, cars and this is extremely dangerous and puts pedestrians in harms way. We know its dangerous because our 80 year old neighbor who one of our directors has met was struck and injured in exactly this way a little over a year ago. And he now requires a Home Health Aide with him most of the time. So with that said, i think we view this project as just the beginning, and theres still a lot more to do. We need a comprehensive set of streetscape improvements every thing in this proposal is fantastic work. It is a transit optimization project. We would love to have the signals team as well as the streets team engage with us to move things ahead. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Stacy randecker. Both these projects hit me hard because my son, well, both my kids went to Everett Middle School and because the 55 doesnt go all the way to across to church and market, we will often drive him to church and market to catch muni to go to lowell and my daughter started her High School Career at balboa. My son played ball on that field many, many times and i am very familiar with the street theyre talking about. And that is a desire line that is how people go to the park. And that should have at minimum, the lousy freaking crosswalk that you have there right now. Just stripe it. Just make it something, make it bold, make it pretty big. I dont know. But make it so that drivers can see it. If you cant do all of the other capital improvements, at least apply some stinking paint. So these people feel better and in terms of like how can you make it, they dont read signs, they read the roads. So you can have all the signals you want, but youve got to think about dieting it. Youve got to think about taking away some of that, that parking have the park, the rec and park get involved. How about having tree plantings that go out that, you know, we dont have enough street trees in our city. We must have i know weve allocated budget for that. Can we get street trees that come out and make these roads more narrow that take some of these Parking Spaces that make it safer for people so it doesnt have to come out of sfmtas budget, but weve got to start getting crafty about how we make these streets safer for people all. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name is david hooper. Ive lived in Mission Terrace since 86. I want to throw a little cold water on this project since the line was extended in 1990, there were no tracks on that portion of our neighborhood. The line itself, my i. I did 33 years with muni. My last 12 years were at Central Controls, the train controller and a manager. The line through our community does not suffer for schedule. Thats the first. The second is that its only 12 years ago that we got the crosswalk with a stop sign at santa ynez to be able to cross to the park. Weve been beating the drum about Pedestrian Safety , you know, why did the pedestrian cross the road and weve been trying to work with this so some things are great. Improved islands, the bump outs at the various intersections, the effort to square off for the motorists at paulding and at baden, that hazard, the yellow hazard lights thats like are they going to work . That has to be seen. Its a very wide street. I saw the lights are on either side. But the big item for me is that painting the town red painting, the transit lines. Red is its nonsensical and the line doesnt need it for transit at the street on either side. We have nothing but left turns. We go, its a t, you have to make a left turn to go into the park, to go to the Police Station, to go to boxer stadium, you have to make a left turn at paulding or at baden going northbound because you are going on to a freeway overpass coming southbound. Its the same thing. We dont have any of the squared off intersections. The cars will still be in the red lane, the left lane. And its monkey see, monkey do once others do it, people will do it. I dont see the value. Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers in the room, please open the phones at this time well move to remote Public Comment. Not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. Members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. Each speaker will have two minutes. Moderator first speaker to. Great. Can you hear me now . Yes, go ahead. Great. David pilpel again. So on this item, while there is some more discussion of Stakeholder Engagement in the staff report, it just raised some additional questions for me. If the Community Asks for various things, it didnt really commit more than just, oh, were going to, you know, maybe look into it. So im im just concerned about the lack of meaningful discussion about Stakeholder Engagement in Staff Reports. It is not particularly clear to me why these changes are being pursued right now, given what staff said earlier about about staff availability and other things. This just doesnt seem like the highest priority to me. I did hear david hooper speak a few minutes ago and i heard him speak at the friday hearing on this that essentially that this project by itself will not improve j church reliability. And i agree with him. I think that is true. And he has a lot of experience since as a transit supervisor for Central Control dispatcher, train controller manager for it seems to me that there really are far more important priorities right now. So im not sure that i would approve this particular action today as it is, staff already said that part of this will be back at your next meeting. And i agree with the speaker a few ahead of me that said that this really needs a comprehensive plan and this just seems like bits and pieces on the san jose avenue portion. 30s and its a thanks and its a follow up piece that church and market thats somewhat inconsistent with other things that could be happening there. Bottom line is im not sure i would do this the way this is currently packaged. And i think the better solution is to harness. Stacy ran deckers energy as a power source to supply power to muni and to all of us, because i was very impressed with her passion on this and other items. Thats all. Thanks for listening. Thank you. No additional speakers. Ill close Public Comment. Colleagues, i think we had a couple of questions or comments earlier. Director kahina did you want to . Yeah speak. Of course. Well, thank you to staff and to all the Community Advocates that really brought this issue to the board. I think it was last year where where folks were really pounding the drums to make sure that we paid close attention to san jose avenue and to really focus on traffic calming in that in that corridor, particularly after mr. Martins collision. And i did have an opportunity to meet him and it was really challenging to see how he was just still navigating the streets, still bravely crossing the street, even though he almost perished after that collision. And it wasnt a fatality, but it was a hair away from being a fatality. So i just really want to thank the community for rallying for him and for his for his safety and for so many of the folks are elder Community Members in d11 because we do have the highest percentage of seniors, highest percentage of families in that district. And so a corridor like this that serves the park, that serves schools, its imperative that that we are doing our utmost to make sure its safe for pedestrians. And so i did have a few clarifying questions about the project itself. I did see that. So the intersection where mr. Martin was was hit was on paulding and san jose. And so i appreciate that we are looking at some solutions there, particularly the rapid flashing beacons. And i do see that within the i guess like the many options of treatments there. We also have left turn traffic calming as one of the pieces that were considering implementing throughout that corridor. Why are we not implementing it there . Thank you. So the challenge at paulding, unfortunately, is that there isnt the street space basically to add the Additional Space that youd need to put the left turn traffic calming. Its basically a, you know, its posts in the street or kind of a space in the street that that folks people to make a wider turn at at at a at at baden there is space there is extra lane space but at paulding the lanes are really you know basically as narrow as you can make them without squeezing in. Theres not really room to squeeze in that kind of traffic calming. We can certainly, you know, sharpen our pencils and look back at it. It doesnt its not really a legislative change. Its a project feature, but its not something that requires an approval per se. But we can you know, we can certainly take another look and see if theres anything else we can do to further support that. Yeah, i think thats its critical, especially like paulding and baden specifically. There there are ways that folks from the monterey boulevard or that that particular neighborhood connect to san jose then get on the freeway or cross into other neighborhoods. And so its a theyre both like feeder streets to the freeway. And so its i think its super important for those streets in particular to get the most amount of treatments as possible because folks are usually speeding to get across those streets at the other street that came to mind and i appreciate all the Public Comment on this too, because its i think its merited. Sergeant john v young lane so i understand. And that you all did a study, so i appreciate you doing the study. But you know, i know the street very well. A lot of folks theres a theres a parking area for folks that frequent the park and its cars are often going there like frequently just to find parking to access the park, to go to the Police Station to use the diamond ring, like all these different activations that are that the park has. And this is one of the few parking areas is in that park. And so there are always cars going through there at various speeds, even though theres a Police Station right there. Its really interesting and so curious why why were not proposing something there more substantial to create a safer passage for pedestrians. There yeah. And to your point, that is a busy well, you know, it has it has activity. People accessing the park and the one collision that we do have in the past five years at that intersection is actually somebody walking along san jose crossing Sergeant John young lane. So its, you know, in that crosswalk where theyre crossing, Sergeant John young versus crossing san jose and so we will be upgrading that crosswalk from a kind of traditional kind of two lines kind of crosswalk to a continental crosswalk to improve the visibility. Weve also so the that that intersection has full daylighting at this point to increase the visibility there. But in terms of the collision history, what weve seen is really just that one collision. That was somebody crossing john v young and it speaks to what you mentioned, which is that there is activity of people kind of driving in and out of Sergeant John young. There are people crossing in. John young, so certainly we want to make sure thats as visible as possible. So again, like i think we really need to explore for making crossing across san jose, whether were exploring it or studying whatever it is. But i do think we need some intervention there and i feel quite passionate about it considering i think also the members of the public also talked about this too. So there are tons of families that get serviced by that intersection. And i just i see it as as a miss if were not really paying close attention to how that that particular intersection can be safer. And i dont want to wait for a collision to happen to make the call. So i would encourage staff to really explore that thoroughly. If were true to our visions or goals, the other piece, lets see if i want to let me see. I think those were the two main pieces that i wanted to bring forth to the board, and i know there is quite a lot of energy for folks to eliminate left turns on paulding. But i can understand why why thats something that the i dont know if you all want to explain that a little bit more, why we opted not to eliminate left turns. There yeah, it mostly comes down to the street grid in that neighborhood. Theres only a few streets that actually cross to 80. Its not a regular street grid where streets go through. Theres not a lot of full kind of four leg intersections. So when you restrict the left turn there, its not like the mission or somewhere where you might just make or downtown where you might make three rights to be able to access your destination. It requires a lot more foresight to know, oh, i guess i need to turn left here and turn right there and if you miss your opportunity to do that, youre kind of in a tricky spot and there is a commercial corridor immediately north of paulding that we want to make sure people can access and not make that too difficult for the Small Businesses that are there. So those are the primary considerations. We, you know, we like restricting lefts in some cases to preserve safety or protect safety and keep transit moving. But this is one location where we think the circulation was a little bit bigger consideration. And just to state my position on this, i fully support this project. Of course, i want more on that street. This is a neighborhood that doesnt really get its due, its investments. And so i appreciate the level of effort and care that the team went through to make sure that they were connecting with all the members of the public. And i understand that not everyone got 100 what they wanted, but this is close enough for me to support this. Thank you. Vice chair cajina director. So and thank you for the presentation. I like a lot of the graphics and im trying to make it brief because its like 6 00. I just to really two questions. I love that balboa park playground and also my daughters always go there now practicing various different kind of sports. So im just curious of why you chose to have a stop sign on santa ines crosswalk. Whereas you know, on the Sergeant John vision, you just have a no mark crosswalk. Yes. Thank where . Im sorry. Thats actually where exactly all the parents would go with their three year old toddler thats like that would be the one they will cross. Yeah. Totally understand the question. As a parent of a three year old toddler, i totally get that. But the main theres kind of a couple main reasons, one of which is that Sergeant John v young does not continue as a street once it crosses san jose. So the only kind of case where Sergeant John v young would be your most direct path of travel is if you were located immediately be kind of to the east of its not a through street, whereas santa ynez is a through street that, you know, kind of circulates into the neighborhood. Santa ynez is also the location of a j church stop. So thats where people are getting on and off the train. And we want to make sure thats safe, accessible place to have a stop sign. So those are you know, its that circulation element and its the its the train stop. So is it too much to ask for having that . Number three, you have that blue dot there to actually have some sort of flashing on the marking on the street . I just want to make sure that we dont have another our toddler got run over by a car and killed. So. Absolutely. So most of the time we will take the shortest cut because kids, we just want to get them to the playground as quick as as possible. And you know, i mean, like, you know, thats thats the you know, can we do that . You know, i get that completely. So the reason that we made the recommendation is that if we are going to mark this as a crosswalk and say this is a place you should cross this, you know, right now what the street tells you is you should cross at santa ynez or at ocean because those are marked crosswalks. They have a signal or they have a stop sign. They have the infrastructure that sort of invites you to cross. Right now, if we were to add a crosswalk at at at Sergeant John v young, wed really want to add more than just a crosswalk because as weve seen at other places along the corridor, once you have a basic crosswalk, thats not enough by itself, right . So we would probably need to do a flashing beacon. We definitely need to do curb ramps which dont exist currently. We might need to do bulbs to really make it work well or a signal, you know, theres all these additional infrastructure pieces. So it isnt necessarily a decision between nothing and a little bit. Its sort of like, do we make a significant investment in this intersection, which, you know, isnt a through street, doesnt have high pedestrian volumes right now, right now, our recommendation is to channel people to that, that nearest intersection 350ft away. But we understand that, you know , if youre trying to get across the street, theres the playground, just get out of your car. We get it. I totally get it. That thats thats an attractive place to cross. So i would just weigh, you know, this is a location with no injuries. We have a lot of locations in the city with high numbers of injuries that could use that same investment. It would probably be, you know, 600,000 or so to make the kind of basic curb ramps, flashing beacons and striping that, you know, a lot of other intersections have competing needs. But thats thats sort of a policy choice to weigh. And thats why we made our recommendation. But its not, you know, its something to consider. So because it was going to cost a lot of money. So how about you combine the two . I move the bus stop or move that number two point that you have. Im just trying to im just trying to say that can we solve of a lot of problems with one resources that we have like move the number two and three together. I think if we were to do that, there would still be the desire to cross at the existing streets and wed still have requests for crossings so that would be my concern with that. That is kind of unfortunate. Yeah, its really unfortunate. My other question is that you mentioned about that bike path of travel on on the other side of town. Now, bike path of travel is going to have to go through some review. Its not even that its simpler. We just literally theres some additional sql related language that should go on the agenda thats posted for the board of directors and the item itself was listed, but it should have said some language about this being an approval action under sequa. Et cetera. So its just a noticing issue. Its not a review or anything else. Do you mind then explain to me where does it start and where does it end . Sure. I only see the little highlight photo shop color block on the map. Yes. So it would be basically from, um, Market Street, which is kind of the north end of the transit stop. And it would travel through the transit stop shop and then it would stop sort of midblock through the market to 15th street block of church, basically just getting people through to the, the boarding area, you know, because after that, theres a second lane of traffic that bikes can use. But through this transit stop area, theres just nowhere else for bikes to go other than into the track lane. So its probably, you know, 300, 400ft, halfway through the lock. And its it doesnt continue into a bike route. Its not really a street that were trying to channelize bikes to, but we know that there are you know, 60 to 100 bikes per hour that use this route because its flat and theres restaurants and theres places to go. So we need to basically we feel like we need to give them somewhere safe to get through that transit plaza. Theres no bump or anything. Its just the grade level is the same currently. We would propose it to be at sidewalk level just to kind of make the plaza feel more like a continuous space. There would be there would be kind of truncated domes or, you know, like things on the street. So if your vision impaired or have other, you know, just so that because its flush, we want people to know where the bike lane begins. But it would be at the same level as the rest of the plaza. So when the bike get off of this path of travel, they will they will need to have like a little curb cut or something to kind of make sure theyre safe to get off. Yes, there would be a ramp at the beginning and end of it. Okay that answers my question because i was like, well, this is doesnt look very safe for cyclists. You would do you would make sure that they dont end up ran into these little ram edges, right . Yes they would have a ramp that would meet our standards in terms of the you know, how quickly it goes up and down for bikes. Okay. All right. Thank you. I would really highly, strongly encourage you to really consider doing something more to mark that crosswalk to the balboa playground. If you can. Thank you. Thank you, director. So, director util, i will make this very, very quick. It is about the plaza. I believe we talked about it almost four years ago. Is that right . December 20, 21, three. Two years ago. So im just a little it says here that it will begin construction in 2025, which is over a year from now. And that intersection is suffering a lot. I pass by it every single week and there are a lot of that side of the street. Theres been a lot of closed businesses. Theres trash everywhere. It looks very Junior Varsity right now. And im a little worried that were saying it will be another year and three months before we even begin construction. And i dont see an actual timeline for completing construction. So one, why cant we Start Construction construction sooner . And two, how long do you think construction will take . Right. So the that it doesnt that the treatment we have right there right now is not abetting the neighborhood like Junior Varsity is a good Sports Metaphor for the Current Situation out there. Yeah, its weve been kind of iterating on it. We added some some paint to kind of claim the space and clarify where the plaza is. But totally agree with you. We dont want to wait till 20, 25 to make any kind of improvements. The next step would be another phase of quick build that would be really focused on supporting the businesses. And we want to were working to partner with pwd and the local castro Business District to activate that space to get it, you know, to get better parklets out there, to get the kind of near term activation we can. We think this is stuff that we could do in a matter of months versus waiting till 2025. Does that look like just like filling it out with something that isnt like dirty white paint, like concrete or even like a some kind of temporary structure . It could be seating, landscaping, some kind of programing. So youre saying that youre youre planning on doing that in the next few months . Thats what were working towards right now. We you know, as as sort of came up during an earlier discussion, ideally mta sets the safe traffic conditions and we partner with a local organization that can operate some of the, you know, the seating or the, you know, the other elements that kind of make it a great space from a pedestrian plaza standpoint. But we are reaching out right now to take those steps and partner and then completing the final, final plaza with everything in the permanent way you said begins in 2025. How long is that supposed to take . When will it be done . So the overall project, we expect that to be a two year construction time frame for the whole j line corridor. But i would expect that the plaza would not take as long as the overall project. It will probably be one of the first things that we work on, given the you know, it might even happen simultaneously with san jose. So probably you know, hopefully under a year. Okay. Then my final thing is just as i know were working on a lot with muni forward, just dont forget this intersection because its been such a tough one for some of these Small Businesses. We just had another Small Business open just like 2 or 3 months ago, and its such a like delicate, delicate ecosystem right now. And i really want to protect it. Those Business Owners who are trying to make it and i do think our treatment right now is hurting them because it feels very abandoned. And so thank you for trying to come up with a short term and a long Term Solution for it. Okay do we have a motion to approve the item . Motion to approve a second. Second, please call the roll. I do want to clarify that you do as staff suggested, you amend that resolution to indicate that items a through g striking item h for the class four bikeway, which will come back to you at a future meeting and remove the associated language from the first resolve clause for the bikeway. Can i presume that is the motion . Okay, great. Thank you. All right. On that motion and amendment, director hemminger hemminger, director henderson henderson. Director hinsey hinsey director. So i. So i. Director yaguchi i director ina i kahina. I chair. Ekin i ekin. I thank you that motion passes. Okay colleagues, we have one more item. The Media Service update weve considered pushing it to the next meeting, but we have a packed agenda for next meeting and we now have to take hays street again at the next meeting. Thank you. Director yekutiel. And what was that about appreciating you at the next meeting . Im just kidding. So i would like to go ahead if its okay with staff and go ahead and take that presentation now. So very good. Item 12 presentation and discussion regarding fema update. Right good afternoon. Slash evening. So well keep this fast. So but do have some great news to share. So thank you for allowing us the chance to address you today. So sean kennedy im the senior manager for the Transit Planning Group at the mta. My staff has already handled most of the difficult discussions today. So ill just get to talk about good news. Basically, we want to go over where were at with the Service Restoration and talk through some really great trends that were seeing both in ridership and Customer Feedback and then talk about kind of next steps and where were going over the next several years. So i guess with that, oh, one other thing before i get going. You know, a really good Transit System has is great transit priority and Great Service planning put on top of each other, complimentary hand in hand. So i will be today im focusing just on service, but well be coming back at the second meeting in november to talk through a muni forward update as well. So with that, you know, with the support of this amazing board, weve really become National Leaders and looking at changing ridership patterns and how to adjust and adjust and change for that growth. And over the next two years, were going to have the opportunity to get even better at those skills. So we are really focusing on quality of service. Thats kind of our our key metric these days. And what we mean by that is a fast, frequent, clean, clean, safe and reliable service. We have been focusing you see the five bullets on the on the screen in front of you. You know, we could go into ad nauseum detail on a number of topics and projects that are addressing those different bullets. I do want to highlight three real quick just to give you a taste of what kind of stuff were doing to address this quality quality of service idea. One is weve changed the way we do our scheduling. So now we are now scheduling based on operator hiring or the pace of operator hiring. If you may remember precovid, we were delivering in 92, 93 of our scheduled service. That means we were missing about 5 or 600 trips a day, really, really impacting how customers viewed our service. You know, really breaking that kind of bond of trust that we were getting with riders. So we have really refocused. Weve pulled back. We now have about 82 or so of our service, precovid schedule out on the streets. So weve really reduced the amount of service were putting out on the street, but we are now delivering 99 to 100 of service. So really trying to reacquaint that bond with people that when we say theres going to be a bus there, theres actually a bus there showing up on time. We are also, of course, continuing our muni forward work. Michael just did a great job on the on the j church couple last month, this board approved the geary project, which gave us the last ten blocks of transit lanes on geary. So now the entire corridor has a has a transit lane and protecting that service. We also this board also recently approved the 29 sunset project, which we think will save about 15 travel time for that route over the next few months. Once we get the quick build in place. So really exciting stuff getting Getting Better use out of our existing resources. His and the last project i wanted to highlight is our msw staff who you know i think julies talked about this before but the great work theyre doing on the it week to even come up with that idea and then put it in place once a quarter in case you you dont know that project once a quarter we shut down the subway a little bit early for a week we go in and do state of good repair work so that it doesnt become an emergency and doesnt become that huge long delay that the subway subway was seeing precovid. And thats why this graph here is so important to us. Were really proud of it. We reduced long subway delays by 70. When you look at pre covid service. And one of the big reasons for that really is that fixit week program. So the customers are noticing, which i think is a super exciting part of this. You know, often we do projects and it kind of goes unnoticed, but our Approval Rating is up 10 from 2021. We have of, you know, a lot of tweets and a lot of anecdotal things that are saying that people are really appreciating what were doing. And i do want to point out that its not just the structural changes were making on the muni forward side and the service side on, you know, on how we do our maintenance work, our frontline staff are contributing a ton to this, this idea of quality. Our maintenance staff, you know, our car cleaners, our operators are really embracing this idea of, of, of leading with quality and leading with kind of the customer and Customer Service as our north star, as we keep delivering this service. So thats really exciting. And, you know, our ridership is backing that up, backing up some of the good things were hearing. I want to i want to highlight i cant say it enough and im really excited about it. I know jeff and julie are two, but september was our highest ridership month in four years. You know, four years. Its super great going in the in a really great direction. If you look at our average ridership in september and average day versus our average ridership in august on an average day we have about 20,000 more people taking muni in september than they did in august. So going in the right direction, really exciting to see. And if you if you look at just those general trends, those are those are interesting. But even more interesting is when we kind of dig down into it and look at some specific lessons that we can learn from from these trends. This this graph is showing what our top ten recovered lines are, meaning looking at 2019, our precovid ridership and the 2023, what we saw in we were using actually august for this this look, look ahead. So what we saw in august of 23 versus august of 19 and what lines, as you have seen, the biggest growth and youll see on there, you know, some lines are at 100, 120, 130 of what we were seeing in precovid. An interesting thing to note is that seven out of ten of these lines are what we call crosstown routes, meaning they are connecting neighborhood to neighborhood. Its not the downtown centric you know, straight into the financial district during the peak period type of ridership. And that is just a really interesting testament to how the riders are using our system now, but also explains how you know, kind of we need to shift our thinking and really kind of focus on where ridership is going versus where we traditionally have have seen that ridership. Also, i do want to point out all ten of these lines have either a Capital Project or or frequency changes attached to them as we try to address this additional crowding that said, you know, our budget outlook is becoming a little bit more clear, and it does look most likely that during the next two year period, we are not going to have an increase in in funds for adding service. And so what that means for us in my group is that we are going to have to be making ng adjustments to crowding in and trip, trip, trip serving in a cost neutral manner. And that sounds kind of kind of strange, but basically what that means is were going to be moving resources around and on the margins, really, its theres no big huge moves that are going to be made. Its trying to move. You know, weve got some crowding over here. Lets take two busses from this line and put it over there to try to reduce some of the crowding per bus there. So its going to be a lot of that kind of were calling cost neutral movement of resources is, of course, our, you know, our our highest mandate is protecting the most vulnerable of all of our users is so because of that, we really hope to really kind of continue using the Decision Making framework. We protect we really made during covid. And thats thats this slide here. I know you guys have seen this several times, but, you know, focusing on equity strategy, neighborhoods, using data, both actual ridership data, but also feedback from from our customers on where Service Needs to go, where we need to add more service on the on the margins and where we can take service from to make sure that that happens in order to kind of formalize that framework. Were starting a new program called the biannual Service Evaluation, which will be looking at system needs a holistic look at system needs across the entire system and then prioritize leading into every two year budget cycle coming up. So this is not just a data driven, data driven process. Of course, it will involve a lot of stakeholder interactions and feedback. Most importantly, we are starting a muni Equity Working Group that will be directly involved in in talking through these trade offs and how we make some of these decisions. So really excited to get that work going and moving forward as we as we look once again at a cost neutral cost neutral, forward looking stance. So that said, i wanted to you know, i think the theory behind cost neutral is easy to understand. And, you know, maybe it it it kind of loses a little bit in translation. So i wanted to walk through with real, real examples like what does that mean on the street . How does how does how do we make these changes . What are the impacts s and how do we reassess . So using what we did in august, august 19th as the base of that beginning, beginning example, i want to talk through, you know, it was the start of the school year. We looked at data at the end of the Previous School year, so the may june data store where crowding was happening in got cers from School Students and others to understand like kind of where the big problems were going to be. When School Started back up in august, one of our biggest and most crowded lines was 19th avenue, specifically the 28. So we knew we had to get some more service on 19th avenue when School Started back up. But we also knew we had to do that relatively in essentially cost neutral. So what we did was, is we took the 28 local, reduced that frequency. So instead of coming every nine minutes, it now comes every 12 minutes. And with the busses we save from that, we started up the 28 rapid. And so now at our rapid stops on 19th avenue, we have six Minute Service instead of nine Minute Service and were able to do that really at a at a cost neutral way. And youll notice also in august we did some extra school service, some extra school trippers, which we paid for by basically reducing the five frequency on the weekends. So you know, thats how we thats how we kind of made some adjustments cost neutrally, but, you know, since then weve been doing a lot of data work and coming up with our next round of Service Changes. And i want to bring up my acting manager of service planning, jessica garcia, whos going to talk through the data that we looked at and where were going in august. So jessica. Thank you. Good afternoon. Or good evening. Board of directors. As sean mentioned, we wanted to share some of the ridership trends that weve been seeing since making those changes in august and also how theyre influencing our Service Changes in the future here. So this chart here compares current ridership on some of our highest ridership routes to last fall, and we typically see an increase in ridership when school starts. But we wanted to see how that compares to this time last year. And so what we are seeing is even with that traditional spike , that spike is actually even larger than it was last year on these routes. And again, mentioning the 28, it was particularly interesting in the data that were seeing is even with the introduction of the rapid line in august, instead of the rapid line absorbing ridership from the 28 line, we are seeing that the 28 line ridership has been actually pretty stable and the 28 the rapid line is actually capturing more riders. So overall, more people are riding the service and its just another indicator of our overall growth that were seeing. And with that ridership increase, we also are seeing increases in crowding. So this chart here shows the percent of trips that are over crowding capacity in a given hour. And we have a defined threshold for how many people can fit on a vehicle depending on its size. And in this chart, we defined a crowded trip as a trip where the passenger load meets that crowding threshold for at least 5 of the trips along that route. So looking at this data, it really helps us to see which routes need more capacity and at what time of the day. And a trend that we have been seeing is that the crowding is happening at actually very concentrated periods of the day. So its good news to see that our ridership is increasing. But the challenge is with our resource constraints is how are we going to address that . How are we going to address that demand in a cost neutral way . And so this slide narrows down, narrows down the previous chart to concentrate on the routes where we are seeing needing the most help from here. We look at the passenger loads at the stop level and the direction and the time of day to know how much service we actually need to reduce the crowding. So viewing the data in this way is really helping us target out, be more targeted with our solutions. As, for example, if the crowding on the 44 line is highest from 7 to 8 a. M. In only one direction, then we can then look for more Efficient Solutions to address the crowding, such as maybe scheduling operators to do an extra trip on the 44 line before do they go to their regular route instead of assigning an extra vehicle on that bus for the entire day . So we are also looking at the inverse of this data to knew, to know where to pull from, um, so that we can know how many resources we can pull without pulling too much. And so overall, this approach has been driving our decision options to reallocate resources where they are needed most, especially in this environment where were seeing the ridership growing. But were needing to find a way to address it cost neutrally. Its also dynamic. So we are evaluating the effectiveness with each Service Change and our fine tuning as needed. And so there are next Service Changes planned for this winter with an Effective Date of january 20th. Using the data that i just covered in those previous slides, we identified these routes as those needing increased frequency to address crowding during the school day as well as on weekends. And for these routes we are increasing frequency another minute or two on these routes with some of them being all day changes or just where the frequency is needed based off of some of the analysis that weve done to remain cost neutral, though, we are offsetting these increases with decreases on other routes. So we selected the routes though based on the extra capacity we saw in the ridership data and are implementing the changes that would not impact our ability to deliver high quality service. So the five rapid and local and the nine local will open up from a ten minute to a 12 minute. This will make the combined frequency on these corridors is six minutes from the current five minutes and the 33 ashbury we are opening it from a 15 to a 20. The 15 line. We are not taking any resources away, but we heard feedback that the line was not meeting its schedule. So were keeping the number of resources the same and instead adjusting the headways from 10 to 12 to make the service more reliable. We are also making a couple stop changes to this route in response to feedback that we heard to add better connections around the caltrain and ball park area in the Hunters Point area of this route. So in the coming coming up with our Service Changes, as as sean mentioned earlier, we want to take the opportunity again to point out that we that looking at ridership is only part of the larger Decision Making framework. Our overall approach continues to be rooted in our equity strategy. And to refresh your memories on the background of the equity strategy, it is based on the muni equity policy that was established in 2014 and the strategy is updated every two years with our budget cycle. And the overall purpose is to focus our investments in the system centered around people who need and depend on transit the most. So as sean mentioned earlier, well be rolling the equity strategy framework into that biannual Service Evaluation project. And ill hand it back to him to cover what our next steps are for that and others in the coming coming months. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you, jessica. So as we look to the next budget cycle, well be starting the biannual Service Evaluation, working with our muni equity, working group and then, of course, continuing to make cost neutral changes like we like we just went over, i think, you know, one thing i want to point out and you know, michael did a great job on the j. You know, there are a number of lines that are not going to rise to the level of needing additional service. You know, based on crowding, based on ridership. And the j is one of those lines we are not planning to add service per se to that line right now, but we are still doing Capital Projects like the Muni Forward Program to still improve the quality of service on that line, regardless of, you know, Actual Service resources. And well be able to, you know, if we can save enough time, we can roll those resources back into the j itself. So just wanted to point that out. And with that, glad to take any questions or comments. Thank you so much. Director hemminger, please. So sean, when are you going to start picking on the five . Fulton well, i mean, you hit you hit us in august and now youre going to hit us again. What a memory youre going to roll in the five r, which is the best thing muniz ever done. Well yeah. You know, that was like my first project, by the way. Im really proud of that project. It used to be called the, you know, the, the five limited, but we changed the name to rapid lo those many years ago. But yeah, you know, unfortunately or maybe fortunately, i dont know how you look at it but you know the five corridor has more service on it than, than than what it needs. Now i know that that i know that trip by trip or trip by trip, thats not necessarily true. But right. Well, and when youre looking at the whole system, you know, and trying to weigh all those different things, the five just has a lot of service on there. What what were proposing right now is itll go to 12 and to 12. So the long and the short will both be 12. So that still gives us six in the inner portion of the line. But you know, the point of kind of going over those august changes and now these next january changes is to say. That, you know, its all iterative and iterative and well just were going to keep looking at it. And obviously, if we miss the mark, you know, and we and we pulled too far back in the five, well be finding a way to put some more service back in there the next time. So when you say cost neutral. Yeah. I mean, how fine grained do you get . Because i assume some bus lines are more expensive to run because they attract more senior drivers. I mean, am i wrong . Well, i mean, well. So cost neutral meaning the umbrella of our overall operating budget will stay basically the same. And how you kind of plug and play in there. You know, typically we use might have played into the effect on the five, right . No yeah. No. Right. Right. No no. We dont lay off our senior personnel and then thats thats what i have to conclude. Yeah. Yeah. Well so and thats why all these Service Changes are tied to sign ups. Right. Because what happens is, if we, if we say were taking a couple busses off the five and senior operators wanted to drive those, now they cant right now their seniority allows them to pick other runs where it makes a lot of money so they can go to a different line and make the same amount or more money depending on their seniority. So im hoping that the five user to my right will make some comments as well. I can only speak for myself. Yeah, tough decisions for sure. I see you, director henderson. I have a related comment to that, if i if i may, and this is just i remember when we did the very significant redesign of the Transit System during covid took away some lines. You made recommendations to bring back certain lines. Some were left out, out. And then sort of in response to Public Feedback as i recall, we sort of reluctantly brought back some lines that maybe had not been in staffs initial strategic recommendation. And i would think because its been a topic of conversation today, like the 21 is one that occurred, that it feels to me like its part of that category, like it was not originally your recommendation to bring it back. And then we did in response to Public Comment. So what i want to know is what have we learned from that . Because the case was made effectively that its a lower frequency route, that the five is performing much Higher Service and ridership anyway. So why bring that back . We did, as supervisor preston said today, its running at very low frequencies. My anecdotal experience, its not that reliable all its very empty. So i want to know what we have learned from those ones where we maybe made the decision that we had not originally recommended as a nod to what we heard from the community. And if in fact we are affirmed in our initial recommendation. And then why arent we seeing some of those proposed for reduced service if that was staffs original recommendation, does that make sense . I know theres a little bit convoluted. Sean, do you want to take that or do you want me to . Sure. Well, i mean, i can start and then and then maybe you can add add any extra bit in there. But you know, yeah. You know, we have definitely learned a, you know, were always learning. Hopefully knock on wood and you know, the 21 provides us some connectivity for some people that maybe had mobility issues or something getting up to the five or down to the seven. But yeah, you know, we have seen stronger ridership on the five and the seven than than the 21 is providing. And you know, were just going to have to continue to make those those changes. At this point, we are not proposing. I think what youre trying to get at is, well, why dont we just, you know, not run the 21 and instead that way we wouldnt have to reduce service on the five. You know, at this point, like i said, were pretty these are pretty like minor changes. And our budget, you know, it it it looks pretty stable, at least, you know, for right now it could all change of course. But i dont think we have to make those kind of big, drastic moves at this point. Were making some subtle changes based on crowding. But you know for sure, if the Budget System or the budget outlook goes goes, goes south, then, you know, things are back on the table and were going to have to get more drastic because, like i said, were were doing cost neutral cuts. If we have to actually save money, its a different ball game and were going to have to be coming back to you with with much harder decisions. Thank you. And if i could add a couple points to that as well. So San Francisco, though, is one of the cities in the world with the greatest extent of work from home. That wiped out the Financial Base, not only for muni, but particularly for bart. That was really, really dependent upon downtown commuters. Those folks are slowly trickling in to downtown San Francisco and activity and ridership is slowly coming back. So one of the things that we learned is adapting to changing travel patterns is super important. And no property in the United States has adapted more to changing travel patterns than the team at muni. The second thing that we learned is that investing in making transit , as sean said, fast, frequent, reliable, clean, safe that drove ridership up far more than anything that we dreamt possible. So here were in the city in the United States with some of the greatest loss of transit riders due the loss of commuters. We also have some of the transit lines with the greatest rate of precovid ridership recovery in the entire country. What are we at . Its over 130 on the 49 and close to that on the 22 fillmore that we had never dreamt like we were hoping to get up to precovid, we never dreamt that it was possible to greatly exceed precovid ridership on now ten of our lines so that was an extraordinary learning that people would respond to so quickly, even when overall travel is down. If we deliver quality of service and at the same time, the third thing that we learned a lot of it in the very, very detailed work that we did with community in the tenderloin in japantown town and other neighborhoods, is that for some of our lower ridership and lower frequency lines, some or portions of those lines were exceeding important to Community Members and that align in 2 or 3 blocks away simply didnt replace that function. So one of the reasons why i think the two sutter is a really interesting case study where we brought the line back but reconfigured it and shortened it based upon what we heard. And the two is actually getting more riders than i would have expected, given that it is significantly shorter. Similarly, the 27 bryant we rearranged in interesting ways and have been tracking that significantly. Its never going to be crush loaded like the 49 vns but but it remains exceedingly important for the riders that it serves. And so that is our challenge. And one of the reasons why were fighting so hard for Additional Resources. Muni is this outlier buyer Success Story in terms of how weve made investments during covid, but our underlying financial goals are still weak because we cant reroute our train lines. Our train lines are all pointed downtown. I cant have them serve our neighborhoods. And so were still struggling with our Financial Base and seeking additional gap funding as for our ridership starts to increase throughout the system and not just on our our non downtown lines. So core core learnings. Director henderson, please. Yes, i just have a couple of i think im going to say some of my questions to the future presentation that you mentioned, but i just have a quick question about how will you measure the crowding . So is it measured just by taps or are you doing some sort of visual survey or like how does the. Yeah, great. No, good question. Yeah our busses and now trains are equipped with with are equipped with whats called apcs or automatic passenger counters. So every time somebody gets on or off a bus, we know somebodys getting on or off. We dont go by fare revenue. We dont go. We by visual inspection except on the on the cable car system. So so, so yeah, all of our busses now have apcs and same with our rail system. Got it. And then excuse me. Im sorry. Also the slide that you had about with the tweets or the xs. It just says to me that there are some thought about Customer Satisfaction. And so im curious to know not now, but im just curious to know how are the ways that you go about determining Customer Satisfaction from, you know, im sure through social and other or other ways, you know, theres you know, when youre in the airport, right, and they have the happy face or the smile, the sad face in the bathroom, you know, is there like some version of that for. Well, we do. Do we do a rider survey . And that was the number i was quoting. I quoted that we were up 10 on favorability since 2021. So we do do a rider survey to gauge Customer Satisfaction and what they feel. Additionally, the city does also. So same kind of thing. They dont obviously dont do riders, they do the general population. But yeah, theres several different methods that we gather that information. The tweets i note we carry a relatively robust social media presence. And so we have pios that monitor tweets, get back to people that are tweeting, and then we capture some of the some of the good ones. So we also have whats called 301. So really, its a its an information system. I mean, usually its used for complaints, but sometimes people say good stuff, too. So you know, we have a number of different ways that we capture what people generally think. Okay. Thank you, director. So. So i really appreciate that to share all these data. And its like a really nice way. One thing about is like transparency is very key to bestow trust amount all the stakeholders and i really appreciate to show us like how you dissect the data to really identify why the overcrowding and the busses that where we need the resources. So really applaud you on that especially me addressing crowding for our school kids time like the number 49, the number 29 and the 44 which each service not only High School Children but also Elementary School children. And i really appreciate these effort and the presentation on the numbers on the charts is really self explanatory. I love it. I only wish that we can see when the really friendly, smart lady who show us the jessica. Yeah, right. Thank you. Thank you, jessica. When she said that she used the same strategy to look at the inverse version to identify by which bus line that we can utilize, because that may be a little bit overly resourced. So we can create a equilibrium equilibrium and cost neutral hopefully. Right. Kind of like take some of the area. I wish i can see those numbers to identify that. Like how the san bruno number nine and then the bayview 15 is actually ended up on the board of like increasing wait time. So i would like to see those similar transparency on data. Mostly it will be helping us and also helping our communities to understand. And wait a second, you know, because we are talking about we are looking at Racial Equity and communities and but then now were like looking at the san bruno and i and number nine and also the bayview number 15, where we havent actually increased the speed for the t line. So actually after getting off of not dr. Sorry director henderson swearing in ceremony i jump onto the t, but then the t got stopped for no other, whatever reason. So then i was told by the operator to quickly hop on the number 15 and that that 15 is fun because it just goes it zipped literally. Thank you. It zips through so, so, so i would love to see those similar level of presentation. So it just helps us and also help the public to understand. And maybe theres too many zips, you know, i dont know. So and also maybe if because the number nine express had already taken care of the majority of the capacity of the passenger for, then we can actually delegate the number nine. But we should it will help us to deliver that story to the public better in a comprehensive way. So then that then we can really get out here really happily. So thats thats all i wanted to say. But im im happy that were adding more on number 22 on the weekend. Thats my favorite line. And the warriors seasons coming and also all the concerts. So im looking forward to that. So thank you. And number 44 is my daughters favorite line. So thats i got to tell her, hey, you dont have to wait for too long now. So thank you, director. So i want to use this as an opportunity to do a shameless plug of our data portal. So all of the data that sean showed today is available on our muni data portal and is updated every month. And thats at. Sfmta. Com muni data. It shows the crowding, the ridership recovery, total system ridership. We try to be completely transparent with the public about how we make hard choices with our limited resources. Thank you. Thank you, director. So and i just do want to underscore, im a little bit dismayed to see the 15 bayviewHunters Point express on that line for decreased frequency as well. I consider that a huge Success Story. Weve celebrated that line again and again. That was a Close Partnership with Shamann Waltons office. I understand we have to make tough choices. The nature of my previous question was if there were certain lines that were marginal to bring back at all before or and you had you had tried to convince us that we dont even need to bring back those lines. I would rather see some of those lines on this list than what i consider to be some of our workhorse routes, like the five, five, 15 and the nine. Thats the nature of my question. Yeah. So so thats great. So just trying to explain this a little bit more, the you know, i was i was when we were talking about the five, i said, you know, its good or bad, depending on your point of view because theres so much service on the lines like the five line, the 38, the nine, the 14 that when were looking for a few busses, you know, you go to those lines and not the lines where a bus is coming every half hour. Because if you take a bus that comes every half hour now youre talking about our headways and thats, you know, no basically no service. So, you know, it really becomes thats where the balancing act comes in. And i would just say on the 15, just to reiterate what jessica said, we are were not taking any actual busses off the 15. Were having problems meeting the schedule with the 15 because the running time is not correct. We had too few busses to meet the running time. And so the number of busses on the 15 is staying the exact same. But were were changing the frequency so that it can actually come every 12 minutes when we say were going to be there instead of coming. You know, every 11 to 14 minutes. So hopefully by providing a more like reliable system, itll actually work better. Even though on paper it looks like were reducing the frequency by two minutes, hopefully that made some kind of sense. But okay. Okay. Yeah. Please Julie Kirschbaum the only other thing i would add is that time frame for the changes that sean and jessica are making is very short, so we wouldnt without a more extensive public process. Reckon mend diverting the 21 hayes resources is eliminating that route and then applying it to school crowding in the kind of 4 to 8 week period that theyve had to put together these types of changes. Were doing things that are more incremental and less likely to be noticed by customers. But if it is the boards direct action that we go back and look at some of those harder choices that would take more of a process, yes, we can start to see how that would fit into the overall work plan. Its just not something that would build trust under the timeframe that were having to say, wow, august was amazing. We thought we had solved school crowding and in fact we had put an itty bitty bandaid on school crowding and now need to go back in january and make more robust changes. So having the board feedback back on those kind of tough trade offs would would be very helpful. And then we can take that back and think through the kind of timeline and the process that would need to be allocated in order to consider those bigger type changes. Dr. Hemminger yeah, i wont be long here, but sean, i think you mentioned the fact that if were talking about saving money, thats a totally different ballgame. And i guess im wondering when that game is going to start and how prepared you are for it, because it does it seems to me thats where we ought to focus a lot of our attention. I mean, i was giving you a hard time about the five, but this the changes youre making now are at the margins. Yep, exactly. Yep. If you need to save 20, thats not the margins anymore. Nope. So do we have a schedule for when that whole bunch of trouble is going to start . Yeah. So weve been more successful than we were expecting at improving efficiency and generating revenue. So that pushed the soonest we would need to start shrinking the agency into calendar year 25 when exactly in calendar year 25 is dependent. You know, theres many the cliff is the cliff. The cliff just got pushed out a little bit. We are of course, working very hard at the metropolitan Transportation Commission level and at the state legislature to identify additional gap funding to, you know, the goal being to push the cliff out beyond the november 26 election. And so in the meantime, we are keeping a very, very close eye on revenue and on hiring, on thinking of hiring again as a throttle. So we can we can push the throttle forward. And if revenue looks good and we can hold the throttle steady, which is what were doing right now. So were neither shrinking nor growing. Were continuing to hire to replace those people lost through attrition. And then we can stop hiring in order to shrink the agency. And my goal from the very beginning of covid was always making sure we have enough runway to be able to shrink the agency as needed through attrition rather than layoffs in order to meet a worst case scenario, budget projection. And we are maintaining that a lot of time im going to open to Public Comment for anyone in the room on the transit item. Thank you for this update. Hey, good evening. Ill make this quick. Im organizer in tenderloin. I do appreciate this presentation on kind of curious about the metro lines and how theyre doing. I also appreciate the comment about incremental changes versus anything drastic. Im definitely think we should not think about redirecting resources by getting rid of services, at least not in the meantime. Um, i think we should consider the timing of those decisions, especially if there are any ballot measures that were going to be pushing for in 2024 for that, if we cut service , that could affect how people will vote for a transit line that doesnt exist. So again, just want to make sure those are considered. I think i heard director tomlin mentioning 2025. So i think that thats a good timing. But but definitely not into cutting the 21 or any of the services that are currently running. So thank you for your time. Okay. Thank you for staying so late to provide comment. Our next speaker. Hi stacy randecker this is it was great to hear this report and i love the little incremental cost cutting. It seems like thats something that we should have always been doing all along and maybe we have been, but like thats thats the kind of stuff it should be. A well oiled machine that is always being fine tuned based on needs. My daughter started at balboa, but she graduated from lincoln and shes one of those kids who got passed up many times last year and her trick was and many of them, they would ride it backwards to ride it forward so that they actually could get on the bus and so anything that can be done in terms of working with the schools and their release times and the schedules and whatever to make sure that our kids get where theyre going. Would be great. I mean, my son just got home hour and 11 minutes from lowell soccer. So its really tough to be sticking with muni and not drive when your kids have these, you know, hang ups about about getting where they they need to go and then the other thing that really hurts is hearing about any sort of constricting or whatever or funding and whatever. And i will say once again, youve heard me say it before, are ppe this city there you should never be parking for free in this city. We could essentially be doubling the budget of the entire agency if we would put make every person pay for parking and then be charging a more market rate for that. If youre worried about any legal things, throw in a free muni pass with it. Charge 1,200 a year for parking in our streets and you get a free annual muni pass that i believe would help solve things and is we need the money. We should not be cutting transit. We need to be cutting down cars and i think that would help. Thanks thank you. Any other speakers in the room . Seeing none. Please open the phone at this time. Well move to remote Public Comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. Members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue each speaker will have two minutes. Moderator first speaker great david paypal so i continue to converse regularly with sean kennedy on more of the detail on this topic. Our next scheduled chat is this friday afternoon, just as an example of some of the ideas that i have that were talking about, i support rerouting the 28 r to the Golden Gate Bridge with the 28 local bypassing the bridge during the day and to provide a connection from the bridge to the presidio ultimate to connect to the marina. Some 29 sunset trips could be extended back through the presidio as is service used to exist to improve those connections. As and i think i can do that in a cost neutral way. Other proposals should be considered, including some combining of route segments on the 18, the 23, the 54 and the 58, the 66, the 37, the 35 and the 55. The 12 and the 27. And the most obvious isthe easiest thing is the 22, which should have a long line, a short line pattern. And there are others i know and i think we all know that we can have Better Service where riders need it for the same or less cost using available staff and operator availability. So i support cost neutral resource reallocation on that. John talked about. And to that end, i plan to continue working with sean and others at mta on those efforts. I wanted to conclude by saying once again thank you to director yasujiro and for the record, i have nothing against the five fulton ive ridden it before. I will be on it again very shortly and finally, despite the level of division and strife in the world today, i think this meeting, although long was quite civil and this is actually kind of a model of how we can have civilized debate and discussion. So thanks for listening. Until next time. Thank you. No additional callers. Thats a great note to end on. Thank you, david paypal. All right. If there are no further comments, well go ahead and adjourn this meeting and id like to adjourn the meeting in recognition of the service of our dear colleague, director, we are going to miss you very, very much and we look forward to acknowledging you more fully at the next meeting. If you can commit to being there. Yes yes, we. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Good night. Shop dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges resident to do their showing up and dining within the 49 square miles of San Francisco by supporting local Services Within the neighborhood we help San Francisco remain unique successful and vibrant so where will you shop dine in the 49 San Francisco owes must of the charm to the unique characterization of each corridor has a distinction permanent our neighbors are the economic engine of the city. If we could a afford the lot by these well not to have the kind of store in the future the kids will eat from some restaurants chinatown has phobia one of the best the most unique neighborhood shopping areas of San Francisco. Chinatown is one of the oldest chinatown in the state we need to be able allergies the people and thats the reason chinatown is showing more of the people will the traditional thepg. North beach is i know one of the last little italian community. One of the last neighborhood that hadnt changed a whole lot and San Francisco community so strong and the sense of partnership with businesses as well and i just love north Beach Community Old School Italian comfort and love that is what italians are all about we need people to come here and shop here so we can keep this going not only us but, of course, Everything Else in the community i think local businesses the small ones and coffee shops are unique in their own way that is the characteristic of the neighborhood i peace officer prefer it is local character you have to support them. Really notice the port this community we really need to kind of really shop locally and support the communityly live in it is more economic for people to survive here. I came down to Treasure Island to look for a weve got a long ways to go. Ring i just got married and didnt want something on line ive met artists and local Business Owners they need money to go out and shop this is important to short them i think you get better things. Definitely supporting the local community always good is it interesting to find things i never knew existed or see that that way. I think that is really great that San Francisco seize the vails of Small Business and creates the shop dine in the 49 to support businesses make people all the residents and visitors realize had cool things are made and produced in san thank you, everybody. I just want to thank everyone for coming today. This is truly one of the most proud that ive ever been at Mission Housing and on behalf of us, to you, thank you for coming. Kapuso at the upper yard is a true product of whats possible when Community Works together. Youd have to go all the way back to 2008 for when Community Groups and organizers really started focusing to work on this, which is well over a decade. It was the community who came together to ensure that this piece of land would one day become the landmark that it is today. This development is many communities, many cultures and ethnicities, many heartbeats acting as one. It