of 25 miles 25 miles per hour the current speed limit and the roadway is designed to encourage drivers at 25 miles at 25 miles per hour which is not what the current conditions promote and thank you you have our support we want to see designs for build outs and we want to make sure that they are as large and safe as possible so thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> howard stras inner ner. >> i'm one that supported this project and it's finally coming about that's so great. you talk about all these improvements but the people in the the people in the city won't believe it until they see it happen. we got to get a project that really shows that happening and we find the statistics and also want to answer some of your questions and my friends at the opera and ballet some some of the senior citizens we walk from van ness. i hope it stops north of market that would be terrible to cross market in order to get to the opera house. so i don't think they have a real case. we walk it everybody can do it it's not a problem. for access to the middle lanes that one of you brought up it's really so you walk halfway one time and halfway the other time. it should be safe and of course the -- so i just want to get started on this thing. one of the problems that comes in parking people will probably come and talk about parking. i remember we were maintaining most of the parking and caltrans came in i guess they were salivating for 50 years to get back to 12-foot lane lane and they had a chance and took it so i hope it doesn't make the streets less safe. thank you. >> next speaker please. >> thank you again directors. mark gruberg speaking for myself. just a historical note i was living in brazil in the seventies when the first rapid transit lanes went in there and i've been there it worked very well there i'm sure it will work very well here i have a couple of concerns one has to do with taxis which is -- i haven't looked at these plans in any detail but noticed from the agenda that while a number of streets have prohibited left turns for all kinds of traffic and i can understand why that that might be necessary there are others where there's an exception for muni and i think if there's an exception for muni there should be an exception for taxis we're part of public transit and the cheaper it is for them and the quicker we can pickup the next person and i think you know we fit right into that category and we should have that same privilege as muni and the other thing i'll say looking at the map it seems like it's an awfully long distance between the mission street stop and maccal cal ister and there's no stop on market street and i think there certainly should be one close to that and i also i'm hearing what the people from the symphony are saying that's a very busy corner and seems to be an appropriate place as well so thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> i remember some some of the initial meetings and i know it's going to happen but there are some concerns that that ought to be dealt with and looked at just in case these issues come up. a lot of the cars are going to end up switching to the other north-south streets in order to be able to make those left and right hand turns and could create problems on those streets and create messes as well especially when there's double parking on those streets that are not enforced very well and i think that's important to look -- the remaining left hand turns and to allow cab drivers the exception -- i'm looking at golden gate south bound and at fell southbound are going to create messes on those other streets as well i don't know if you did an environmental impact report or not but the impact to other streets because you are going to push cars to other streets i know you want to to to move muni faster so the streets from sacramento up to to bush it's a mess there and i think if you would look at solving that issue we wouldn't have such slow issues that go on the rest of the street and also eliminating the northbound pine left turn could create a huge mess as well pine street is a cross town street that particularly cab drivers use on a regular basis to go all the way across town and i think to push the cabs on other streets you are going to get stuck in traffic and you know how many times cab drivers are asked to make illegal turns and thank you. >> robert weiner, marlene and mark moreno. >> the descending voice. for one thing, when you remove bus stops that means there's going to be more time for boarding because you are going to have a greater concentration of passengers also this difficulty in access and that reflects on the seniors and the disabled and i'm wondering if that's in conformity with the ada the adult, the american disabilities act and as as far as pedestrian safety goes, were the police ever consulted on this project? was there any working relationship with the police? if anyone should know about pedestrian safety, it's it's the police department and also with the removeal of left turns that means drivers are going to have to turn right to go to polk street in order to make the left turn across van ness avenue you are going to have a greater glut of traffic on polk street and the other basic question -- why wasn't the brt built underground to begin with? this is the central subway that would be more appropriate. you are making the problem worse on van ness avenue by concentrating cars on 2 lines i realize there's a there's a prejudice to cars some people absolutely hate cars and which they were banished from the earth but this is no way to solve the problem. >> thank you next speaker please? >> marlene and i can't read her last in her last name and mark moreno. >> good afternoon i'm here on behalf of folks for polk we're really excited and applaud the measures of the of the brt it's important to support transportation so we're excited that it includes pedestrians and vehicles and also like the cyclists that take their bikes on board i take mine on board at times so i hope that's also included so thank you. >> okay next speaker. >> mark moreno. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon i represent the market street van ness neighborhood association and i want to say we're very much in favor and support of what the representative said from the symphony grove street gets a lot of traffic and the southbound bus stop which is currently right now in front of 25 market street has been moved to between hickory and fell street the gentleman that's from the homeowners association referenced and we believe it should be closer to market and it's been moved back a half a a block and not easy for pedestrians to access it it should be closer to market. i've used that exit myself the neighborhood association is very much in favor again of the grove street stop and also where the current stop is which should be closer to market going south if you notice the northbound proposed stop is just on the other side of market street and there's a big gap between the the two and i think they should be closer so i hope the commissioners will take a look at that last stop and note how far it is from market street it's really not convenient convenient for anyone. >> seeing no one the publicment could comment is over. >> what's your pleasure? >> could you answer a few more questions? thank you. >> thank you. we had a lot of public questions and comments about it so can we talk about briefly the stop locations? as i'm looking at the map it appears the red dots on page 9 indicate do they indicate both north and a southbound stop? >> yes there's a couple of locations where the stops are on the same side but tend to be to be to be strad led cross the block. >> i know we always have the push and pull between making this as efficient as possible and not loading it up with stops versus having enough stops that are where people need to get off. if we did consider moving the stops to grove i assume we would therefore remove a stop at macalister and that would just slow things down just like it is now thank you. >> we were looking at doing stop consolidate consolidation and my understanding is what tipped it towards macalister misstates er instead of grove so that's how the decision was made. >> the light house for the blind is on grove and you mentioned them. do they weigh in on this at all? >> we actually did discuss it. they didn't have any strong objections to it because the geography in that particular part of the corridor is very flat and they understood the need to do stop consolidation to speed up the service. >> i would just say that you know, if we could look at moving i understand the -- i don't know how much you have studied how many people make that transfer that it's such a critical link right there but i think there is the light house for the blind the symphony the opera a bunch of stuff and actually where most people get off to go to to hayes valley and people don't typically walk along macallister the same way they walk along grove. >> i have a quick question so if we approve this as it is, the traffic modifications, how difficult would it be to add any accommodation in the in the future if it turns out it's horrible and cripples our entire city i'm just wondering is it pretty much like once we we approve this there's no going back or no accommodation? >> i wouldn't say that exactly. we are hopeful this is the that we don't have to make any modifications to the design after this point where a 65 percent design right now and there's always the risk that we're going to run into something between 65 and a hundred percent that's going to make us change a parking space or relocate right now minor changes where we might have to come back with a minor change to this board. what i would have to investigate is that the stop locations are very exclusively spelled out in the environmental report and i would have to go back and talk to my counter part at the transportation authority and see whether we made any changes to the environmental report to reflect a change in the stop location. >> i don't remember i'm pretty sure though i was one of the of the people that certificated the eir that there was a range of options of stops wasn't like it was just one corner so i can't imagine that would be a be a huge hurdle. >> i'll have to check. it was explained to me these are the stops we looked back and forth within staff for a long time to make sure that everybody was satisfied and did a lot of outreach along the corridor at that time because the people wanted it locked down at the environmental level and so it may not be a significant change but i'd have to check. >> there's at least the no project alternative so the status quo had to be reviewed under the environmental review document so those intersections would have been reviewed so i would think -- my only thing is -- i don't want both stops i want one stop i know there's a lot of traffic at grove and i'd just say if we could do some pedestrian counts at those intersections before moving forward in that direction it might be worthwhile. >> i would just make sure that -- if you think about the distance of the stops the maps can can can be deceiving the maximum distance that someone is going to walk is the distance right in between two stations so if you were to move from macalister to grove -- and so i think that in the interest of distributing the stations i think that a lot of work went into what they are doing and thinking about the ridership needs for everyone including the folks that are trying to make that connection on macallister i like the way it's designed right now i don't imagine that walk that we're going to be asking people to make if they are going to the symphony or ballet which i have done and i think by doing this you are going to get significant amount of improvements there's trade-offs being made here and i think in the long run the benefits surly outweigh the negative impacts and so i think that it would be a good idea to just move this forward the way it is and recognizing a few, you know, options for the future and it's a flexible enough system so if we really do feel it merits change, we can change it but i think a lot of work has gone into where we are and it probably means we're working out little detail and see and to do any kind of changing would dramatically change the timing of this and put funds in jeopardy and all this good stuff so i think we should give credit where credit is do staff has put a lot of work on it and a number of people that have already done a lot of thinking about this and i think that i'm confident that the considerations that were made with respect to serving the opera and what-have-you were made and we have the best compromise possible. >> i'm with him on this. can i ask one more question we had somebody comment about the bulb outs and removing the parking spots but i believe the design of the bulb out is still to come in terms of how far out it will go and again in light of safety issues are we able to maximize those bulb outs? >> that is the absolute maximum within 2 feet of the of the active traffic lane and any further than that would run the risk of trucks making that turn and yeah we've gone back gone back and forth with caltrans to get this as far out as we can. >> great and i want to recognize the gentleman from the market street neighborhood association spoke up i know there's so much going on in that intersection your neighborhood association is about to get a lot larger i think all the buildings there at 15 hundred new resident actually people in those buildings that are changing and going in there. >> there's at least we've been coordinating to try to stay out of each other's way and there's two plans for market and van ness on the corner. >> i'm going to agree with director ramos i believe it's gone through so much discussion and i want to commend all the people who worked on this and i want to make a motion to move this project forward at this time. >> is there a second? >> any further discussion. >> all in favor say aye. >> i'm abstaining. >> there there can't be an abstention. >> is that right? >> part of the rules? >> okay thank you. >> [applause]. >> next item. >> item 12 12 approve various traffic modifications at 3 intersections along columbus avenue vallejo street and you have one member of the public who wishes to address you on this matter. do you want to take public comment on this matter? columbus street. >> item 12. >> one member of the public. >> so why don't we hear from that person? >> nicole schneider. >> okay. good afternoon again. i'm just here to support these bulb outs along some a few of our high injury corridors where 6 percent of our streets count for 6 percent of total injuries and fatalities and looking at you at you at you know reminding yourselves that you adopted vision zero and you are looking at projects that continue to support the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities. >> thank you. >> as i was reading through the document i know we've had some requests from the public to amp this project up and make it a more complete street i did note in the staff report this does not preclude at some point in the future adding bicycle lanes and i'm going to go with that assume it's true. >> that is correct. and i'll ask the project manager to speak to this. >> good afternoon directors and chairman nolan correct this is an opportunity to join with the paving project it's an opportunity for us to realize a prop b funded project and also an opportunity for us to realize the vision zero project . this particular item is legislation for the bulb outs in coordination with the paving project and down the road there's an opportunity for -- there's been discussion about potential temporary sidewalk widenings and bike lanes and all that can happen at the tail end of the paving project and that's kind of the plan going forward. >> thank you i'm happy to make a motion to approve. >> second. all in favor say aye. >> next item. >> item 13. the board will be also asked the proposed traffic legislation requires no further environmental review. >> while we're bringing this up the backdrop is this is one of the muni forward projects that you approved under the transit project both environmental and project approvals and like the the last two items these are the actual parking and traffic changes. john kennedy. >> thank you good afternoon directors shaun kennedy with the transit division i'm here today to talk about pedestrian improvements and transit reliability on on the haight street corridor so as director reiskin mentioned this project is coming out of the tep planning process and it is now under the muni forward umbrella the implementation phase. it basically serves as a communication's umbrella to talk about all the great projects going on on at the mta throughout the city family and to improve reliability and on time performance of our muni system so there's four major kind of categories within muni and the major point it's going to be implementing a lot of vision zero projects and some really unique and exciting additional projects such as transit signal priority and lrv's that are coming to the system as well so you know i'm here today obviously to talk about 71. over the next 2 years with the exciting news of prop a passing and hung huge huge support from the voters i'm going to be coming to you 40 miles for legislation and this is i'm going to keep adding to it so you will keep seeing the progress. the top 3 have been legislated by this body and the one today in red the black represents about 2 1/2 miles of priority projects already legislated and another one and a half miles of vision zero and transit priority projects and so why haight? why are we looking at haight? short answer we have 200 thousand riders on haight. there's a lot of opportunities for improvement as my grandmother would say [laughter] so high pedestrian volumes especially in the western half of the corridor and street furniture on top of those narrow sidewalks everything from shelters to benches and other transit amenities and that creates very crowded conditions and unfortunately that also leads to pedestrian safety issues there's been 25 pedestrian collisions which is obviously a super high number and the intersection of masonic and haight is one of the top intersections for pedestrian incidents so obviously pedestrian safety issue the buses are crowded if you look at the peak period peak direction so the the 2 hours in the morning and afternoon there's about 24 buses going in that direction and all 24 of those buses are standing room only and many much more crowded than that and not only crowded buses but buses stopping a lot. the 71 for example is on time about 50 percent of the time in the study corridor. >> so, you know, obviously there's a lot of issues and opportunities in haight one of the great things is we're really lucky because there's a really rich network of community groups great history of public involvement on the haight and we've been working with some of our inter agency partners planning department and on projects in haight as well as improving bicycle access on the haight and we've also been able to do this public infrastructure the public participates and started a few working groups one in the upper haight and one in the lower haight and specifically the bulbs and that's one of the concerns that's been kind of driving the city ni