>> good afternoon. everybody. i'm san francisco mayor london breed and i'm so excited to be swearing in janet tarlov to the mta board with her family, her friends, people from the merchant's association and so many folks that she's had an opportunity to develop relationships with to the council of district merchants and so many of our communities. the glenn park community. food is a unify but your establishes in glenn park was something of an institution. it still is, the grand canyon --

did i not say that right? i think it's the grand canyon. the canyon market. which i loved going in there and talking to the people because many of the people that work for you and still work there, you know, they handle food and the community with such love and care. and that is a special thing to have especially in a big major city like san francisco. but more importantly, this body -- the mta, it's important that we have people who are on boards and commissions that have an understanding of what it feels like to run a small business in sphrbltion. that understands what it feels like when decisions get made and small businesses prosper because of those decisions. it's important that when those

decisions get made that you have a voice of understanding, offer reason of experience as a small business owner at the forefront of the decisions whether it's to move from where it was, where it's to tear up the streets like we're doing now in a couple of neighborhoods and businesses are impacted because people are not happy maybe about parking and we have no we haven't made alternative plans and how it impacts their family. i know, mayor, i know. but just having that diverse voice of reason on the mta body is so critical to the success of the organization. so that we don't encounter some of the hiccups that we run into in some of these neighborhoods. construction is challenging, change is challenging, the

decisions have have to be made with our huge transportation network to ensure that buses and bikes and different modes of transportation are able to move around the city safely and efficiently is an important component of what the sfmta does especially around its construction projects and having a bigger understanding of how it impacts people's lives is critical to the success of this organization and changes necessary to move san francisco forward. i'm excited to have you serve on this body. we appreciate your willingness because it's a lot of work, a lot of hard decisions and there are a lot of people with a lot of opinions but more importantly, there are people that care. they care about the city and the changes that we are implementing and they want to ensure that these situations that occur are a win-win for everyone.

and that's what i think you bring to this body is the possibility of a win-win solution oriented decision making in order to ensure that small businesses are at the forefront of the conversation. with that, i will turn it over to jeff tumlin. all right. jeff tumlin, the director of the sfmta board. [applause] >> j. tumlin: thank you, mayor breed. the success of muny and small businesses are inextra bli linked. they're there because there is a muni line there. small businesses depend on mobility to get their customers and goods delivered to the districts and muni depends on

the riders that we generate. here in san francisco, we're challenged by some of the greatest amount of work from home. our downtown stations are only at 35% of their pre-covid ridership. in our neighborhood commercial districts, almost all of our lines are back at pre-covid ridership and some are as high as 130% of pre-covid ridership in part because of the creativity and importance of our neighborhoods. we understand that our future is dependent upon small business success and we're eager to learn from janet and the community in which janet knows through the city in order to help us be better, how do we make the mobility system work safer. how do we make it easier for people to get around by all modes of transportation and how

do we foster commercial success in san francisco particularly among our small and locally-owned businesses which is one of the most important reasons why all of us love living here in san francisco. i'm honored to have you be my boss and i look forward to many years of working together. thank you. [applause] >> mayor breed: okay, for the moment we all waited for. i'll do it this way so your family can hear. all right. please raise your right hand and repeat after me. i state your name. >> i janet swear do solemnly swear. >> mayor breed: to support and

defend. >> j. tarlov: to support and with defend. >> the constitution of the u.s. government. >> to support and defend the city of san francisco to support and defend and i take this freely without any mental reservation brd or purpose. >> or purpose of evasion and i will dwell and faithfully discharge. >> mayor breed: the duties. >> j. tarlov: the duties upon which i am about to enter and during this time as i serve as member of the san francisco municipal transportation agency

>> mayor breed: board of directors. >> j. tarlov: board of directors. >> mayor breed: and the parking authority commission. >> j. tarlov: and the parking authority commission. >> mayor breed: for the city and county of san francisco. >> j. tarlov: for the city and county of san francisco. >> mayor breed: thank you very much. [applause] i'll continue right now. there you go. >> j. tarlov: thank you. >> mayor breed: congratulations and thank you for serving. >> j. tarlov: i would like to say a few words. i'm not as practiced as the

director and the mayor, but i prepared some remarks. thank you -- thank you very much, mayor breed and the san francisco board of supervisors. i'm truly humbled and honored to be trusted with this responsibility. it was a great pleasure to work with the mayor's office through the nomination process, in particular jean eld berg, gelsy and alex were generous with their time and insight as i prepared. i'm also grateful for the time chair eaken spent with me and director tumlin and the many other mta staff members who took the time to bring me up to speed with their important work. i would also like to thank my family and friends here to support me. richard, max, elliot and nancy, i love you all. i'm so grateful for my

colleagues on the board of the glen park merchants association to tony and the best vice president ever marianne delarry. thank you for all you do and i can't miss carolyn from the glen park association who braved the rain to be here. i would not be here without the rules committee, [indiscernible] sharkey and paul terry and sam who was not able to be here today. i would definitely not be here today without the encouragement of the board of the san francisco council district mer tants association. there are many other people i would thank, but instead, i'm going to express my gratitude by working as hard as i can to successfully fulfill my

responsibilities as a director of -- of the sfmta board and work for the work for san francisco, residents, students, workers and visitors. providing safe, reliable, clean and well-maintained modes much transportation, motorists, pedestrians, bicycle riders, disabled folks and seniors is the awesome tax that the sfmta staff, maintenance borkers and operators dedicate themselves to every day. i'm honored to join you. although i will always strife to serve all of san francisco's many and varied constituents, i will bring my own 16 years of lyft experience owning and running canyon market and natural goods grocery in glen

park. businesses on the commercial corridors whether they realize it or not are independenceable partners with the sfmta in managing the flow of people, goods and services throughout the city. i hope my business will bring students for collaboration with the small business community to the work of the sfmta. thank you all very much for being here. [applause] >> mayor breed: thank you, janet, for your work on this body. i hope you're strapped in and ready for the ride. it will be something else but rewarding had you see the great work that you're able to do while serving on this body. we appreciate you and everyone for being here today. thank you all so much and let's

get back to work. >> you are watching san francisco rising. today's special guest is jeff tomlin. >> hi. you are watching san francisco rising. to show that is focused on

restarting, rebuilding, and reimagining our city. our guest today is the director transportation of the sfmta and he's with us to talk about the agency's 23-24 budget with the muni equity strategy and new projects across the city. welcome to the show. >> thank you it is good to be here. >> i see the sfmta's budget for 2023 and 2024 has been approved. how will it help provide a strong recovery during the next few years for our riders, operators and staff? >> it has been a challenging couple of years. covid wiped out the basic finances. our agency is funded primarily from transit fares, parking fees and a fixed set aside for a general fund and covid has meant we have lost more than half of our parking and transit for revenue. we are not expected to recover them until 2027. this budget takes a one-time

federal release funding and spreads that out between now and 2025. and our task is to rebuild trust with the voters that sfmta can actually deliver on their goals and that includes things like making muni faster, more frequent, and more reliable. includes making our streets safer and making everyone feel safe riding the bus. it means taking advantage of the amount of change we're going to experience in order to advance equity so that we invents -- invest the most amount of money in communities that need our services the most. it also means supporting san francisco in its larger economic recovery. basically two years between now and 2024 in order to build trust with the voters and figure out how are we going to find muni moving forward because it is in 2024 and 2025 when the one-time

federal release fund went out. >> are you planning on starting up? >> as a result of covid, we have 1,000 vacancies in the organization. that is why muni service is not fully recovered. this budget allows us to fully staff through 2024, which means we can restore muni service, invest in safety, and invest in other programs in order to make the transportation system work better for everyone. >> can you talk about the mooney service equity strategies? as you move out of the pandemic, how has that plan been updated? i have heard there are elevator upgrades in progress. >> we have been working a lot on equity during muni's recovery. we have been basing our work on the muni equity strategy. this is the plan we update every two years that looks at the changing demographics of san francisco and helps us direct our transit resources where

people need it the most. that means people with low income, people of color, seniors, people with disability, children, all the folks who have the fewest choices. during covid, when we had to strip back the transit system, 13 quarters of the workforce were in quarantine, we directed all of the agency's resources to the equity neighborhoods. places like the bayview, chinatown, the mission, the valley, and even through our recovery, we have continued to deliver the best muni service's so -- to the neighborhoods that need it the most. right now we are still operating more frequent service in core lines in equity neighborhoods than we did precovid. and the result of that is extraordinarily high ridership. we are finding, for example, by investing in the frequency and reliability on lines like the 22

fillmore, that we are getting 133% of precovid ridership, even when the overall system is only at about half of the ridership recovery. that is 133%. that is on weekends. we are at about 96% of precovid ridership on our main equity lines on weekdays. we're also investing a whole variety of infrastructure projects aimed at making transit work better, particularly for people with disabilities. on the market street corridor, our elevators to the subway station date back to the 1970s and need significant renovation. right now we are busy working on renovating the elevators at the station. we have completed the elevator upgrade for the eastbound platform. we are now working on the westbound platform. that will modernize the elevators and make them a lot more reliable, and make sure that we can continue to prioritize people with the

fewest mobility choices. >> that's great. changing topics slightly, i understand the improvement project is halfway completed. have shared spaces made the product -- project more complicated? >> yes. lots of things have made the terminal project more complicated, including things like covid and supply chain issues. we learned a lot on the first phase of the terra vale project, which rebuilt the street from sunset boulevard to the zoo, including rebuilding all the infrastructure of the streets, the underground utilities, to modernize all that infrastructure and make it more resilient, and make sure that we do not have to rebuild the street, hopefully in any of our lifetimes. we also learned about the importance of collaborating, particularly with neighborhood businesses and residents. we want to make sure that we are constructing the city's infrastructure in a time that the city is suffering and we are

not adding to suffering. we're doing things like partnering with the mayor's office of economic workforce development to support neighborhood businesses through programming during this time. we are also making sure that businesses that create shared spaces in the parking lane, some of those need to be moved out of the way while the utility work is done underneath them. we are making sure that we will either move those platforms and outdoor eating areas back as they were, or help local merchants rebuild them so that we are not adding to the burden of local businesses and that we help everyone recover in this challenging time. >> quite right. finally, many of the sfmta vision zero quick build projects have been well received. can you talk about the evans street project? >> one of the things we did during covid was dramatically expand the rate of what we call quick build projects, which are

fast-moving projects using simple and cheap materials in order to redesign streets and test out new ideas and see how they work, as well as get a lot of feedback from community before moving into a larger capital project that converts all of that plastic stuff into concrete and trees and, you know, curb extensions. what we have been finding is that our quick build safety projects are able to cut severe injury and fatalities between 25 and 75%, depending upon the location on the techniques that we use. so we are targeting streets that have the highest rate of traffic crashes, particularly injury crashes and fatalities. we focused on evans, which is really important connector for all modes of transportation between the bayview and the central neighborhoods of san francisco. also a street with a terrible track record of severe crashes.

on evans, what we are doing, again using paint and plastic posts for the time being, is taking the lanes that are out there right now, and converting them to one lane in each direction plus turn pockets. what we found on streets like valencia or south bend this, or -- south van nass, is a street with one lane in each direction plus a term pocket can move just as much traffic as a street with two lanes in each direction. left turning vehicles mean the two lanes of traffic are never really available for through traffic. these road diets that we do have been tremendously effective for improving safety outcomes for all road users, without exacerbating traffic. they do make all cars slow down to the speed of the most prudent driver.

this week we are getting started in partnership with the department of public works on work to restripe all of evans between third and cesar chavez, and as part of this work will be collecting a lot of data, talking to industrial users in the industrial district and talking to folks in the bayview commercial district and in the mission about how it is working. we will make some adjustments along the way and if it is successful, then we will start another project that is more capital-intensive to make it permanent. if it is not successful, we will turn it back the way that it was, having spent very little money. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate you coming on the show. thank you for the time you have given us today. >> it has been great being here. thank you so much. >> that is it for this episode. we will be back shortly. you have been watching san francisco rising. thank you for watching. [♪♪♪] good

morning everybody, and welcome to the san francisco chamber of commerce. city beat breakfast on this valentine's day. i'm looking out at this crowd and actually, you know, it warms my heart to see everybody here on valentine's day. and i know this sounds a little bit strange, but i have to start off by how proud i am of all san franciscans. yeah we all deserve a hand. these past three years, i've stood up here at this breakfast before you and shared some pretty daunting numbers. but i want to be clear that there's still remains some serious work to do. however, the results of our annual poll bring me more hope and renewed sense of pride for our city and our residents. we saw two trends that i really want to share with you. this morning. one being that san franciscans are showing new signs of optm