Transcripts For SFGTV 20140321

Followed by charles and jenna lion luna. Good morning mr. Stressner. I want to speak ahead of your budget. You have no item on your budget to really improve subway operation for the metro. Here you are doing great work in the tip to speed up the l and the n, and thats going to attract more drivers. The n is over load and the n is close. And the solution is to do more on street coupling the way the system was originally designed. We dont know if its going to work. We dont know if its going to take more study or capital or if the coupling has to be improved. I would love to see you put something in on that to get started because whatever you do its going to take time to work it out and you have to be ready for this. Just a little item, you were talking earlier about the fines for sunday. I walk down west pearl and i dont see signs telling people, on sundays, we have were collecting for meters. Its only fair to be straight with the folks so they dont get up set. If youre fair with people, you can get more revenue on evening parking meeting and thats going to be big revenues in time. And so and you need these fundings so you can do more service improvements. Im glad to see the little money is creeping into the budget. Youre going to get some service improvement, but every time you get one, more people will ride and more people on metros and it goes back. You have to make the subway full proof and its a big problem and you better get started. Thank you. Charles, and jenna luna. Yes, good morning. Charles minister. Senior in disability action and a member of California Alliance tart americans. First off i want to give out a solute to local 250 a and all of the members of immuny who keep the function, the Transportation System in this city. Theyre a main stage of our community and they deserve everything they ask for in the upcoming contract. We quibble about the few Million Dollars of giving free Mini Services to senior where we can spend 3. 2 billion a subway and youre proposed 240 million on gary so it increase time. We can give free mini to every resident in the city especially over the money that the resident have put in this city. These bankers dont on montgomery street stole trillions and making trillions. Lets dig into their pockets and plus the Tech Companies coming into this town and want to run it. Theyve got plenty of money floating around for doing nothing. I didnt see anything in this budget about the fair shake down, i think you got a lot of problems on Market Street with the traffic. What better place to put these guys and put them to use saving lives instead of harassing the muni passengers. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Jenna lion. Patricia, faya. My name is jenna and im apart of fap and were apart of disability and i dont like what the budget is doing to us because our disability card is right now 23, its going on 24. And 8th and howard, we go to read skills and theres a lot of traffic there, and were right here at howard and theres a lot of traffic and people with disability cant walk. They have wheelchairs and this has to stop. You know what, the buses, they have muni because people dont pay and the buses are not working. The elevator go down is not working and people are using the buses for free thats why the police are there and enforcing the law. Thats not fair for all of us, its over crowded, we have people with canes and walkers and its over crowded. Next speaker. Pablo. What i was upset about the budget, they didnt they talk about bikes, and they talk about pedestrian, but ive been riding buses that are unsafe of the community to be in. And i think you should take some of the 194 million under the bikes towards repairing your existing buses or replacing them. Not all of them. Im not against bikes but i think one of the problems you have with these committees that you set up is the selective one sided and where you may not be able to get the full story thats whats happening on this committee. This may mention four of them and ive never heard of one of them. I firmly believe you should work repair what youve got first before you start these major programs examine we have a serious repair problem. Another thing too, theres eight minutes, four minute, et cetera, the bikes, drove down scott street, theres two bike lanes. One on the right and one on the left. Its dangerous for the cars to drive down that street because you set up so many bike lanes that its dangerous. I think youre not allowing the public to be have correct input and youre not advertising these committees directly to be able to reiterate the issues. Theyre talking about bikes and childcare, many people because of the ages of the childcare, if you have stepping stone children, its almost impossible to get from one school to another on time and not get fined from the school for being late. So you must consider some of the issues that are existing in this city. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Cia. Pablo, and nicole. Good morning. Good morning. First i have a couple of things i want to say. I wish i could be here all day but i have to be back at work. The San Francisco Transit Riders Union which im a board member is endorsing free muni and would like to consider you increasing it up to 19. I want to make that public. We would really like for you to consider service increases, the ten Percent Service increase in 2016 to be moved to 2015 ask and the way to do that is a petition is, with a 119 signatures and taking some of the money and putting it into operating service. We endorse the vlp and the ttp and the bond measures that are going to be put forth and well fight for them hard, but we would like the vlf to be spent on services and one way that they may be able to get the money that you additional need for capital if you use that money for services is obama has a big transportation bill, part of the budget and perhaps some of that federal money missing for years may be matched for us here so we can get our Capital Needs met but give the riders of San Francisco what they deserve is taken care of. Thats it. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Nicole, kevin stall. Good morning. Thank you director. My name is pablo and im the Business Program i want to thank you for your strong direction on Market Street. This is a project weve been talking about for a long time and im sure you have been waiting for. I want to flag the capital cost for this project is 2 million and highlight the bang for the buck for making improvements on our busiest and dangerous street. With that said, at the last budget discussion, mt staff or rather the board directed mta staff to take a closer look at the budget. And administrative costs to find money for increase Safety Improvements, including biking as to reflect and support the number one goal of it agency, and the most recent budget, i want to flag that theres more money dedicated to paper and the use of paper than there is for the entire biking program thats 4 million. I want to flag i have a list of all the expenses in the budget that weve gone through with mta staff to find justifications for and also identified some areas where we could actually find more money for these important safety projects. With 30seconds, i want to flag a couple of other troubling items and one is from this presentation, were coming up short on our ten mile bike improvements, i want to work with you ways to bump up that number and im concerned that much of this funding for bike projects is predicated on bond measures, and these Public Safety improvements should not be up for public referendum. So in closing, i want to thank you for your time and choosing people over paper. Nicole snider, kevin. Shirley. Good morning board members, im the executive director of walk San Francisco. My name is nicole. Thank you for adopting vision zero and thank you for the presentation for walk first and how were going to achieve vision zero. I want today to ask you all to direct the staff to help us identify funding through achieving funding zero. The 17 million set out for walk first over the next five years is 6. 8 percent of the budget, and point 68 of the pedestrian who make up the traffic fatalities and the trips taken, point 68 is too little. We could go the mta and the Mayors Office release walk first and highlighted that every year 564 million is spent on lost Economic Cost due it pedestrian injuries in our city. 564 million if double the cost that it will take to implement walk first. Im not saying we dont have a very ambitious goal of reaching vision zero, but if we can reprioritize our funding and direct more funding toward prevision verses treating injuries after the fact. We can use tax payers dollars wisely but we can especially had those most effectively and those who have been injured and the family members who lost loved one. We can create a system. So im calling on you to ask the staff to come up with a plan to achieve vision zero and this year and not wait two more years. Thank you. Next speaker. Good morning. Good morning, my name is kevin stall. Im a Pedestrian Safety on the Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee representing district six and im a resident. I like to speak on vision zero. In todays article, they were talking about the enforcement of the police who have been issuing 50 percent more citations to pedestrian, bicyclist and vehicle drivers, which is apart of the the enforcement part of vision zero and im glad that number has been going up, but as part of the education enforcement, earlier today i saw a Hasting College of law student standing in the middle of the crosswalk taking pictures of a building and she was holding up traffic which obviously is not a good thing which there needs to be more enforcement in education so she knows the law. You guys should invest eight percent more for safetien y engineers since the streets are more congested and having other investors help pay for the cost since its due to them and doing more pilot projects and it can be implemented quickly like the one on sixth street which has had helped the straf traffic. I want to thank you for your work on vision zero and hope you do more. Shirley johnson. Good morning, chair noland. Im Shirley Johnson and i live in the mission and ride a bicycle everywhere. When i first moved to San Francisco 12 years ago and i looked around and said this city has too many cars and theres too much solution and too much noise and i dont want to contribute. So i told my car. I ride my bike to work. I rode it here today and i ride it to the store and to social events and people say you ride your bike everywhere and people ask me if it was safer and my answer is, it would be safer if you ride your bike too. The more of us out there, the more careful cars are around us. What im asking, if you could increase the budget for Bicycle Safety programs, theres demand out there and it will get people off of crowded buses and lets save the seats for those who need the bikes. I was loading my groceries on my bike and a woman said i wish i could ride my bike to the store and i said you can and i looked at her and i could tell she didnt feel safe. Thats the issue, is safety on our streets. If we can improve safety, that demand will be met. Those who want to ride, will feel safer. We would love to get them off the buses and cars, and we bicyclist are so appreciative when you make a Safety Improvement because our lives are on the line. We dont have 2,000 pounds of metal protecting us like a car driver us. Make improvements and increase the budget for bicycle improvements. Thank you. Next speaker. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Hi, im john. I live in haze valley and a month ago i was crossing octavia and she was hit by a car. Im here to voice myself on the protection. My dpirl friend was hit on octavia and her head was split open and when we took her to the side and laid her down, the emt was holding her neck while waiting for the ambulance to come, the cars just kept speeding by because its coming off of freeway and the lights are timed so that the cars can continue to go about as fast as they were going on the freeway. The infrastructure of this city needs to reflect and change the way that drivers are thinking. The infrastructure of the city allows the allusion that drivers arent apart of the community that theyre in where theyre driving and makes it much more frightening and much less safe and ill tell you after that incident, weve been afraid to walk in a city thats supposed to be a walking city, so i urge you to put the pedestrian and the citizens of this city before the cars that drivethru the city. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please. Winston followed by ellis and then fernando. Good morning. Good morning. My name is winston and i live at pine avenue. Born and raise in the city and i work with a wise bike program. Were one of the educator that work with youth to teach them how to walk and bike safely in this city. Im excited to see bicycle and walk safety being done in this budget. Its a step in the right direction but i think there needs to be done. I like to echo brickman comment, that network, this connected network stops those in their i can teach families how to bike safely, but its hard for us to expect them to go out there and want to do it if its so many things in their way so i think infrastructure is greater than painting paint on the ground is important, we need to do more on that. For the youth, its awesome. We need to do that more. I dont know if youre the right panel for this, he didnt get his application back and he didnt hear back for his six weeks and on the website, it says if you dont hear back, you should reapply. Thats for a child who didnt speak eng establish fluently. That makes it hard for him and his family to do that. We need to make people to take the bus and bike and to behave properly on our streets. We need to pak make it harder for them to behave recklessly. It feels like token they should is pay for it whether at the feel like it. It shouldnt be prompted by outrage. Thank you. Ellis, and Fernando Mark and those are the last to turn in speaker cards. My name is ellis, im with the bicycle coalition. I bike here today, i think that if the city wants to meet its goal of 20 percent of trips by 2020, it needs to be doing more than what its doing right now. To me it seems like a lot of people are afraid to bike in it city, probably rightly. Also im with the Transit Riders Union. I think muni needs more funding and taken more seriously. I would like the vehicle license fee to pay for muni. I would like parking meters to be enforced on sunday. I think this would be a good continuing. Drivers would have to pay, but theyll be paying to find a parking spot more easily, theyll be paying to increase turnover and help businesses. Theyll be paying to make it easier for everyone to get around were they drive or not. It seems smart to me. I would i agree with nicole about funding for Pedestrian Safety even if its expensive and its probably cheaper in the long run than treating for injuries and dealing with deaths. I at i think thats it. Fernando is the last. My name is fernando with the Community Housing authorize. I want it say a couple of things around your budget for this year. We are very supportive of extending free muni for youth and 19 years old and theres a need for improvement. Also i think on the Pedestrian Safety issues, youve already heard quite a bit. On the necessity for prioritizing Pedestrian Safety. As some of you know, director risken weve been working with a group of transit advocate, and the muni youth around discussions for revenue coming in the new year and particularly around license fee. Its important as you all talk about your budget to consider how the vlf will impact your budget coming up and particularly how we can meet equity goals for this city as a basic standard. The seniors and people with disabilities, low income folks who are dependent on our bus system. Theres another item that is going to be coming around around the transit effectiveness project but within that and how your budget effects the tep, i think its important for you all to consider particular notes that are of particular importance to low income communities, how do folks get to general hospitals, especially when youre going to talk about tpc and you see which lights are going to be cuts and how are folks going to access city college when the 26 is gone. Et cetera. Theres places, there are particular importance, theres particular communities that need to be prioritized as you think about your budget and how the license fee is going to roll out. And im going to step away to a discussion around the rail thats our conversation. Were not taking action but give direction to this staff. I like to say a couple of things first. I was in washington dc the last the grid lock could have major impacts on the highways, federal highways administration, the funding and the blueprint that expires this fall, and there is little action about it. So its a sobering message from back there. And the second part of the message is we got to rely states are going to have to do more and locality is going to have to do more which rends lends more measure. I would support raising the age of muni to 18. Im supportive of premuni with those with disabilities and youth. Thank you. I really appreciate and echo your comments. We do at a local and state level, we have to take care of our states until it get better at the federal level. The free muni for low income and include 18 years old is a great thing and including seniors in that. Did we sort out the question of the legality of senior fairs for low and non moderate seniors, did we figure that out. If its federal money city and local money you can, and we can do muni assessing if we want to and well hear up from the attorney in the next week or so. Thank you. The clipper verses cash fare and we want to increase our clipper and cash fare. Im supportive of that, but im still just hesitant until we have a Better Network to buy and recharge clipper cards. The clipper machines, so i do want to see us move towards us, but i want us to do it carefully to make sure were not putting a burden on those who dont have access to the clipper opinion and clipper cash. Its important to remember as one of our public commentors said, theyre hard to calculate. Several years ago we talked about how much money we could save if we speed up the average speed of our muni buses and this speaks to the Market Street improvement and im supportive and we have to stress again how much money we can save and how much we can increase the rider experience on those buses on market if theyre moving along Market Street quicker and i know director hineke will agree, a lot of them dont want to drive. The signage to help them what theyre looking for is a confused driver is something we dont want and someone not paying attention, so i at this the Market Street improvement is going to be a great thing. Theyre going to save Us Public Health dollars and save us operating dollars by improving efficiency of those transit vehicles. Thank you for the sunday meter citation trending rates. S i think its fascinating. And a lot of areas where weve institute on sunday meters, dont have the new meters yet and its less clear if people have been so used to not paying meters, have to shift. I would love to investigate. How can we bring that citation rate down so it looks like other days. We want people to pay the meters and not have citations. The new parking meters, we see the citation rate decrease because its easier to pay so maybe thats apart of the answer there. Going back again to the bicycle and pedestrian spending, i think one thing and im sorry because i discussed that out of order so i wont chew my cabbage twice on that one. I do want to know when we