tv Municipal Transportation Agency Board SFGTV May 3, 2024 12:00am-4:31am PDT
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are very chatty today. apparently, which is wonderful. good afternoon. i'd love to call to order this. april 16th, 2024. regular meeting of the municipal transportation agency, board of directors and parking authority commission on. secretary silva, please call the roll on the roll call. director hemminger here. hemminger present. director henderson here. henderson present. director hinsey present. hinsey. present. director so here. so present. director. tarlov. here. tarlov present. director. kahina. here. kahina. present. chair. eken. here eken present. for the record, i note that director hinsey is attending this 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. any person responsible for the ringing or use of a cell phone
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or other similar sound, producing electronic device places you on item number four, approval of minutes for the april 2nd regular meeting. i do want to share that herbert weiner requested a correction to his public comment on page three, item seven, expressing appreciation specifically for paratransit service. if you feel inclined to include that correction, it would be appreciated. thank you, directors, are there any other changes to the april 2nd minutes? yes seeing none, we'll open public comment for anyone in the room wishing to speak on the minutes item for okay. seeing none, we can close public comment. is there a motion with mr. weiner's amendment so moved. second, second. thank you. please call the roll on the motion to approve the minutes with the correction director. hemminger a hemminger director henderson, a henderson i director hinsey i hinsey i director. so i so i director tarlov i tarlov i director. katina i katina i can, i can i thank you the minutes are approved places you on item
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number five communications i have none. moving on to item number six. introduction of new or unfinished business by board members directors. is there any new or unfinished business? director henderson, please. thank you. chair, i just wanted to say thank you to you and to director tumlin and twu local 250 a for having me at the safe driver awards ceremony on saturday. it was so cool. i had the chance to, watch a number of the operators accept awards for 15 to 45 years worth of safe driving, and not having any preventable accidents, which i find an amazing inspiration for my own driving. so i, i really am trying to embody, you know, some of the spirit of the, of the operators that were there. i just was so impressed by the level of obviously skill that they approached their jobs with
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and poise, and it was just such a joyous and fun filled room. and so i appreciate the opportunity to attend and to say some words. and it also was an opportunity for me to, you know, just remember my grandfather and, you know, the same sort of, i think, approach to his day to day is what i saw in the room, just really hard working people who are delivering an important public service to the city and take it very seriously. and so i wanted to say thank you. and thank you to madhu for helping escort me around a little bit. and i look forward to attending other ones. i also heard a little bit about the rodeo. i know you went last year and so i look forward to that. i'm definitely putting my, my, my name in the, in the ring for, for attending that. so thank you. i just wanted to, to point that out. it was a really nice event. so thank you for having me. amazing. thank you very much. director henderson, for attending the event and just
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also reminding us how important it is to acknowledge, just pause to acknowledge and celebrate hard work and accomplishments. are there any other items of new or unfinished business by board members? okay. seeing none, we'll open a public comment on director henderson's report out on the safe operators event. any public comments? okay and close public comment. please move on. places you on item number seven, the director's report. i'd like to call up our cfo, bri mcwhorter, who will be honoring some very special awardees this afternoon. good afternoon. directors i'm barry mcwhorter, the cfo, and we're here today to honor the financial reporting team. they are a group of very quiet, very hardworking people who do not often get the light shined upon them, but often get bugged by me, if it weren't for these people, i would literally
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have no clue what was going on. they tell me all the things all the time and they are very, very hard working in fact, they're i have had to tell multiple of them on multiple occasions that they are not allowed to work while waiting to go into surgery , while immediately coming out of surgery or while on vacation. these are hard boundaries, and as you know, from going through the budget cycle recently, it is a process that has very strict timeline lines, and i only have to do that every two years. these folks do it every year because we have a year end close, and they produce the reports that are foundational to what we do. we could not exist without our financial statements. we could not issue debt without our annual debt report. we could not get hundreds of millions of dollars in operating grants without the mtc report. and we would not be a legitimate transit agency without our ntd reporting, all of which is done by these folks. also they are one of the few jobs where you actually get a
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grade like you do in school. they are the folks that do all of our audits, all of our audits, and say whether we did well or poorly as an agency. and we have had no audit findings in libreville memory, which is a real testament to their work, and so i would like to call them up, i'm going to say each of their names, but if we could just all come up and do a round of applause at the end so we can move speedily through this process, and then is there matthew, would you mind coming up and doing the, this is matthew matthews, the controller. he manages the team. and then evelyn bruce also manages the team. come on up, evelyn. you're one of the people that i want to thank. evan is, like, the human embodiment of a hurricane. it's crazy. she's like, she's an accountant with, like, so much energy and
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personality. it's amazing. okay, so this is evelyn. paulette she's not. she's just in surgery because she's recovering from surgery. she's the one i had to tell she wasn't allowed to work, pwyw is. come on up, howie. sally tan. kevin. woo. winnie wan, selena li, rita. sung, suzanne zhang, connie chu, aparna gorky, michael. ho, cindy. kong deo. ahsha. merrillville. paula paula. ganas. burton. woo, teresa chan, rochelle ralston, and samuel say names i see in my email all the time, it's nice to be able to put a face with all the names. so this is the financial reporting team. and thank you guys so much for all of your hard work. and now a round of
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applause. do you want pictures in the hall ? yes. okay. we're a large team. so. so come on. what evelyn or anyone else like to say? say a few words on behalf of the team. oh, i will, i'm not shy. not at all. i'm. i'm one of your recycled one. it's my third year coming back to mta and i'm proud of doing it in the last 40 years. but i'm really, really lucky to have a team of accountants, cpas as well as going through and sleepless night to make the deadline and making sure that we make the deadline and with no findings as much as possible at the same time too, though, this is the first year that we went through a change in auditor kpmg for 30 years, first year of growth,
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which we went from low, low risk to a high risk, and we came out with no findings and we intend to improve it even further. so that we can they can all enjoy thanksgiving. thank you. and i am very appreciative. she knows what she's asking for and sometimes we said, does she really want this? yes she does, and she's very detailed and she knows she goes through it. and my staff are able to actually provide her with, with all the responses that she needs. and thank you to mateo. thank you on behalf of the board, i would just like to thank you all for your public service. anytime. i don't know if you are invited to join the ribbon cuttings, but any time we cut a ribbon on a bike lane project or celebrate the highest transit recovery numbers in the nation on van ness in the 22 fillmore, that is because of all of your hard work, and we want you to know that we recognize your work, and
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we thank you so much for your dedicated public service. thank you all. i don't know somebody. all right , carrying on with the director's report, i'm also incredibly grateful to this team, our accountants not only have an incredible, attention to detail and to precision, but they're also, problem solvers and troubleshooters. like, they're the ones who identify when something is going awry that needs some correction. and so in order to actually manage the agency, i am utterly dependent upon good accountants in order to figure out, how to make sure that we're spending our resources wisely and in a way that upholds the public trust. speaking of public trust, i am very pleased to announce that we are starting the formation of a full service
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office of civil rights. this is something that i have wanted to do for four years, and we figured out how to make it work, we are going to be actually doing a little bit of internal reorganization to pull together all of our civil rights related functions, much like most big transportation agencies do around the country, and we have not yet done, but we are now doing so. we're going to be pulling together eo, the office of racial equity and belonging, our ombudsperson, workplace complaints, title six and contract compliance into one house. and this is a great opportunity to recognize that for so many of these job functions, it's not just about stopping the problem. once a problem arises, it's about correcting the problem at its root. it's about making sure that everyone at the sfmta feels a strong sense of belonging and is not in any way held back as a result of their race or, or or
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level of education or ability or gender or sexual orientation or any protected category. so this is a team that i am excited will be actually doing the structural change necessary in order to make sure that the sfmta is an equitable, and welcoming workplace on the inside. and that is also collaborating to make sure that our external work puts equity first in how we allocate our resources and how we engage successfully with communities. so i'm also really happy that our current, eeo and contracts manager, virginia harmon, is going to serve as the initial interim director of our office of civil rights. and one of her assignments will be to identify a permanent office of civil rights director. she will not be a candidate for that position, but i trust her completely in order to find the
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best possible person for it, next up, i wanted to talk about some of the ways in which we are working to implement the mayor's transportation vision, some of which we're able to finally do since our parking control officer staff is fully staffed up for the first time since the beginning of covid. so in addition to doing their regular duties, our parking control officers are going to be doing some intense operations in each supervisorial district around the city, where we do about a week of intensive enforcement of all the rules, but particularly the safety oriented rules like parking on the sidewalk, blocking fire hydrants, blocking the crosswalk, parking too close to the corner, so we are now in ongoing conversations with each of the members of the board of supervisors to make sure that we're able to get the word out to community that this is happening, because in many san francisco neighborhoods, given
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the scarcity of parking control officers that we have faced for several years, there are people who think that the rules don't exist. so we want to make sure that we get the word out that we are finally able to start enforcing all of the rules, next up, we have an update on winston avenue. we've been notifying community who are living along winston through fliers that we are going to be putting up signs the week of april 22nd, restricting parking to four hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on both sides of winston from lake merced boulevard to buckingham way. and we will not be doing any enforcement of these new signs until after the paving program is complete. and after we give h'sh the opportunity to do additional rounds of outreach to winston residents, we also wanted to let you know that we are making progress on some
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changes to lower great highway near the terminus of the n judah line. we're making a bunch of changes there in order to address, mandatory safety upgrades that we've been directed to do from the california public utilities commission, as well as converting some of the parallel parking to angle parking, at the request of supervisor engardio, in order to increase visitor parking availability along lower grade highway, the some of the striping work, has already started. as of today, but the angle parking work will be happening the week of april 22nd, i also wanted to let you know that we, in the aftermath of the terrible tragedy in west portal that both our streets and transit teams have been working together to try to reimagine an the intersection of west portal avenue and yolo. we've been working closely with the mayor herself, as well as supervisor
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melgar, supervisor melgar is pursuing this in tandem with her district seven participatory budgeting grant and we've also been partnering with the department of public works and the planning department. we're starting to develop some, conceptual ideas in collaboration with the neighborhood and with west portal merchant stakeholders and will be hopefully getting back to you very soon with some conceptual designs, update on our taraval project. we're really proud that the rail work is now at 100% completion. all of the water lines are fully complete, the sewer replacement, along with all the sewer connections, are fully complete, and we're now moving on to the final surface work. and that includes we've completed about 70% of replacing all of the overhead lines, about 90% of the new curb ramps, about 70% of the
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final work on the boarding islands. and now we're at about 60% for redoing the rest of the roadways. so this project does remain on time and on budget, one of the remaining risk factors is the shallow gas lines that are owned by pg and e. as you know, pg and e has been a big challenge to do schedule coordination with. but thanks to direction from the mayor's office and the mayor's chief of staff directly, we are finding that we're getting much better collaboration with pg and e, so we're hoping to eliminate that final remaining risk factor. we also, as a reminder, will be doing the special track work out at 46th avenue, but we're still on schedule for resuming el terrible service in the fall. i do this normally. i wouldn't bring this up in a director's report, but we had a kind of adorable little, ribbon cutting on april 4th with supervisor mandelman, this was for a
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flashing pedestrian crossing sign at douglas and diamond heights, douglas and clipper, not diamond heights boulevard, i think. douglas and clipper. yes and the what makes this newsworthy is typically when we're installing any kind of signal infrastructure like this, the work takes an extraordinary long time, given the constraints that we have on our contracting mechanisms. so for this project, we worked directly with the department of public works, allowing us to actually install the work in house, which enabled us to get it installed in record time. still not the sort of timeline that i would like to see, but we're getting better and it's demonstrating what once again, what our crews are capable of are really absolutely extraordinary and efficient crews, next, i want to just update you on a couple of
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additional things. and we're also proud, as you know, as you've seen from the work that jessica garcia and sean kennedy are doing around equity analytics for muni, we're finding that people are increasingly taking our data and taking it further. and recently, ucla grad student ryan caro did a report on using data science for equity at sfmta, and ryan's work just won a 2024 american planning association association northern california section award for the equity analytics. and we're expecting to actually see some more of that, particularly as we are able to share more and more of the data that is coming out of our muni planning team. i do want to thank director henderson, along with board president aaron peskin, for joining us at the safe driver awards and would love to invite any of you and all of you to come both to our
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upcoming bus rodeo, as well as our rail rodeo and a special invitation, a special invitation to do some operations training in advance so that you can compete in the bus rodeo. and there's potential maybe even for doing so at the rail rodeo, one of the most extraordinary things that i have ever done at this agency is compete in the bus rodeo, which was utterly terrifying and gave me a lot more understand ing of what our operators deal with on the streets every day. and, you know , we will later have a moment of silence for the orange cones who sacrificed themselves and i will continue to confirm, despite those in the audience who would contest this, that my second place prize was totally legitimate. i did not get any any extra points from, from the
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judges, and then finally, i do want to, cue up a video that our team has produced on the history of the central subway project, focusing really on the community engagement work that we've done that not only influenced, but led much of the design, including not only the public art and the station design, but even more so now. how for example, the public spaces at chinatown rose park station are being used with community actually leading in the programing of the space. so with that, if you can bring up the video. it's a strong coalition that would bring a new subway system downtown. this new system later would be known as the central subway. a project of this magnitude required a strong partnership between city leaders and agencies, community groups
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and construction firms, community groups and leaders formed a strong coalition that advocated for a new transit system that would connect the southern and northern parts of san francisco. to celebrate the partnership with communities in chinatown, union square, and yerba buena, the sfmta held a series of community appreciation events at the new stations. successful project completion would not have been possible without the patience and understanding of communities that endured years of disruption and construction work on their streets, the opening ceremony took place on the first day of revenue service, and the guest list included state and local city leaders speaker emerita nancy pelosi and mayor london breed cut the ribbon in a symbolic gesture to signal the opening of the long awaited central subway. muni customers now have more options to commute between the northern and southern end of the city. the covid 19 pandemic brought some challenging years, but san francisco is resilient and
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together will rebuild and make our communities thrive. and that is the end of my report. thank you. colleagues, are there questions on the director's report? director heminger. thank you, madam chair. jeff, to the two questions, the first on the rose park station and the leaks. can you just give us the top line assessment of where we are? yes. so, as you know, all of our tunnels leak. we pump a whole creek's worth of water out of castro station every day. the work that's happening right now in rose park station is grouting of micro-cracks, and what we're needing to do is wait for the water table to rise. so the central subway acts as a dam across an underground river. and
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so the water is building up behind the central subway. and so the leaks are steadily going up the wall, up to the top. and so in order to identify where all of the micro leaks are, we're, we're letting the water rise and then we're filling those, those up. so that work should be done soon. the work is successful. there's absolutely no safety concern. again, all of our tunnels leak. what we're concerned about is the esthetics of mineral rich water dripping down the sides. and we're particularly concerned about getting any water on the platform so that work should be complete soon. and so you're describing what should be a one off. that's right. break in maneuver. yeah. that's what we're expecting, and you know, and again the technique, we fixed all the problems low on the wall. and as the water rises , we're not getting any leaks down here, but the leaks are
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moving up the wall and towards the center. as the water table rises up and over the dam. and then once the water gets to the top, then it will simply flow over the other side. and is this just us? this isn't bart right? i mean, bart's got tunnel issues on market, and they own some of our stations. don't they, they do. so they own our market street stations. bart pumps an entire stream out of powell station every day, there's. i mean, you can see the water running in the runnels in the bart tracks, particularly at powell. okay yeah. the this issue is, it's an esthetic concern. we want to make sure that the drips don't discolor any of the wall treatments and particularly don't drip onto any passenger areas. yeah. the last thing is a safety problem. correct. right. okay, the other
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question i wanted to ask about is, i think you characterized it as your, your adorable intersection, project, and my question is why we don't do more of those, as you know, it's dark half the day, and i think the data bears out that a lot of our crashes happen at night or at dusk, and i remember asking tom mcguire about this. a couple of different times, and i never liked his answer, so i thought i'd try again, and see whether or not we could expand the use of that tool. so it's a tool that we like, rapid flashing rectangular beacons there. it's a tool that is also very, very expensive. so they're not much cheaper than a standard traffic signal, the starting price of which is about $1 million. as you know, we had most of our capital money stripped away in 2022, and the last of our bond
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money that we've been using for these street safety projects is, is running out. so our challenge with vision zero has always been, how do we take our limited resources and maximize its utility? well do we have any that are like on the books ready to proceed or we're just at zero on this? well, so we have a long list of signal projects that we want to do for, for safety purposes. you know, full on traffic signals at the in the case of clipper and douglas, that intersection didn't warrant a full traffic signal. it's a, you know, relatively minor intersection. and so the appropriate design solution was the pedestrian beacon. well, look, i'll just leave it that i. i hope it's something that we could turn our attention to when time and resources permit, and again, i, i think we're to the stage with vision zero that
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we've, we've got to try some new things, and if they cost us some money that's going to be the price maybe of success. thank you. madam chair. thank you. director heminger. are there any other, colleagues wishing to speak on the director's report? okay. seeing none. i will just, reinforce this related to the enforcement update that you provided. director tomlin, the. thanks for your ample communication so people are not caught off guard. i don't think any of us want people to be caught off guard. we want people to know the rules so that they have ample time to comply with the rules. and this was just to remind everyone this was one of the board's six priorities laid out, in our january 30th workshop that director keenan and i summarized in our blog, it was also a very important theme in the mayor's transportation vision that we share information
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transparently. no one is caught off guard. so thank you for your commitment to that. just underscoring that. and then can you just remind us the date of the bus rodeo, please? julie, do you remember the date of the bus rodeo that's coming up? you can come and get your training down at the cow palace, though, whenever you like. okay we are we are not allowed to participate in the rail rodeo, but that is happening the first weekend of may. may third, and then the bus rodeo will happen in october, give you lots of time to practice. okay? okay. thank you very much. okay, director. so, please. well, to that point, i would love to echo the director tomlin and also julie mentioned about please try the rodeo. it's really fun. the lesson was really fast and quick. and after the entire experience, i have so much admiration and deep
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understanding of the challenges our operators face. so it's fun. do it. please okay. thank you. that we can open up public comment on the director's report. chair egan, we did receive a request for translation services for this item. should i take that first? yes. okay, so we received, language service translation request for both spanish and brazilian portuguese. i have our two translators here available, and i think let's start with spanish. can i have. yes. very good. any members of the public wishing to provide comment in spanish? you can make your way to the podium. and if we could perhaps do that in language. okay. could we have the translator just could we have the translator make the announcement about anyone wishing to speak in spanish? persona necesita interpretacion en espanol. aqui estamos no mas
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facil. estamos aqui para servir les. okay. thank you. buenos tardes. good afternoon, senor president, mr. president, directors and directors. my name is walter mejia. my name is walter mejia. you veo una rv una moto. i live in a rv motorhome in la a wilson, righ on winston drive. e tengo anos de estar viviendo ahi. and i've been living there three years. campo uno de cuatro horas. and i've seen that for our signs, for our limited signs have been put up in dos por medio de ustedes. and we need from you. un espacio seguro para poder modelos. we need a safe place where we can
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move. not otro estamos con toda la voluntad el dia. ustedes lo nos tienen el espacio seguro. ahorita no tenemos right now we have all the will. when you tell us to please move to a safe place. but right now we can't, el motivo. yo vivo con me, hijo. mijo. trabajar yo también trabajo. and the reason is i live with my son, and i work, and he also works for suficiente para pagar un apartamento. we don't have the funds to pay for an apartment. he esos son los me palabras ustedes y si i algun espacio vuelvo a repetir para con gusto lo podemos mover ahorita. and so right now, i ask you, and these are my words. and we would with all will, if you
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can give us a safe place e ahorita estamos aqui por eso venido aqui a ustedes. and that's why we're here in front of you. yes. some unica palabras. and those are my only words. thank you, thank you. okay, we're gonna have the next speaker. when i start, senores. good afternoon. my name is marlo arostegui. my name is marlon aristegui. a yo sano viviendo in winston drive. i've been living at winston drive in. in las. in la. rodante on the around the
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curve. okay. a as an informal. okay. a poner restrictions de parco. and we've been informed that we're going to get parking restrictions and tones and aqui en calidad de apoyo de las personas. and i'm here to support all the people that are coming here. and also for myself , correcto. para apoyo a de casey no pueden ayudar para conseguir un poco seguro. and so we're asking for your support in finding a secure place to park, he a mosquito principalmente es mas siempre nosotros como como ahi. and so that's mainly what i'm asking otherwise we do our best to solve our our solve our
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problems. solamente muchas gracias. just that. thank you. alcs. okay. she needs portuguese. otra persona. necesita en espanol. okay. thank you. thank you. we'll move on to any members of the public requesting portuguese translation came precisa de publico traducao do portuguese forgive para fazer seus comentarios. you can go ahead and make your way to the podium. any members of the public to area para falar de vida. umbertide. good afternoon, madam alicia. my name is leticia aristo moreno. nuovi com as as
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duas filas. i'm living in an rv with my two daughters. yeah, no tenemos, concerns. we don't have the conditions to pay for rent. is getting urgency. mover porque caso cuatro cuatro horas estaciones. and we're being asked to move because we can only be parked for four hours at a time in un lugar seguro. and we need a safe place. no, we don't have anywhere else to go. i'm tudo eu preciso ter un lugar para ellos. my two daughters are in school, and i need a safe place for both of them. un lugar de seguranca a agua tena escoto e fique seguro. we need a place that is safe, that has water, sewage where we can be safe.
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yeah. thank you, thank you. okay. miss kefala, portuguese kevlaar sabi. okay. seeing none, we'll keep our translators here for the duration of this item in case you're needed, but i'll go ahead and read off some speaker cards for, for public for comment. that's good. thank you, i have a comment. cards for marcello fonseca, leandro lowry, ma7, de oliveira, leticia diaz, shiba bandeira. okay, just making sure these are comments on the director's report. yes, yes. correct. great. yeah. my name is marcello fonseca. i've been a member of the tax industry for 35 years. a lot of you are fairly new to this
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board. i'd like to give you a little bit of history. in 2018, the san francisco federal credit union filed a lawsuit against the mta regarding their actions related to the now failed medallion sales program. in 2021, they lost their trial and almost two months ago, they lost their appeal, i know this is a legal matter, and you cannot talk about it here, but i was expecting, director tomlin to give us a little bit of a report. i don't think we should, spend money on a pacer account to find out everything that's going on in court, we have been following this case with great interest, to be honest, we are the real victims in this case, even though we are not
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plaintiffs. so, if possible. well, a week ago, the credit union filed an appeal with the california supreme court. so we'd like to know what's going on, the outcome of this case will have a major impact on our industry. so we really like to have that included in the director's report. thank you. okay. thank you for your comment . i will double check with the city attorney, but i believe we are looking for comments that are on items that were addressed in the director's report. is that correct? these types of comments should come under general public comment. that's correct. thank you. okay. thank you. so that would be under item nine in the future. thank you so much, next speaker, please. hello, directors. my name is sheba ben diba. i'm a policy
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associate at glide and a member of the end poverty toes coalition. i'm here in solidarity with the monolingual spanish and portuguese families living in rvs on winston drive and buckingham way. it's truly so disappointing that after so many conversations with city leaders and h'sh and you all, to delay the enforcement of the four hour parking restrictions, you have all decided to move forward with this initiative. without a safe parking site available in less than two months, these families with children will scatter in the hopes of finding new areas around the city to live. this will disrupt their daily routines that they've established for work and their school age children. for the past three years, as many of you know, at least some of you have joined our coalition outreach. you have learned that this community is an integral part of our city. they're working residents trying to make ends meet and to support their families this untimely displacement shows a lack of coordinated efforts of collaboration between city agencies and community members.
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i urge you all to please prioritize these already vulnerable families to stop their displacement, to delay their enforcement, and to work collectively, collectively, to find a safe parking sites that will actually meet their needs. we often hear about the amazing investments the city leaders have put forward to elevate racial and economic justice for historically marginalized communities, and we hope that advocacy fauci and that grace really still apply to this particular community. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. hi. board members. luke bornheimer, thank you, director tomlin, for your update and report, i wanted to touch on two different things west portal and parking enforcement, thank you to you, your team. the mayor and supervisor melgar, for prioritizing improvements to the
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area around west portal station. i look forward to the conceptual designs and, more importantly, the implementation of improvements to make this area safe, equitable, and sustainable, especially for children, families, seniors, and people with disabilities who walk, bike and take public transportation, including the roughly 80,000 muni riders who take muni through the area on a daily basis, but also drivers and people in cars, regarding parking enforcement, thanks to you and the team, for increasing park enforcement, which increases safety for all people, especially children, families, seniors, and people with disabilities who walk, bike or use mobility devices. i encourage you to continue to prioritize parking enforcement, especially in neighborhoods, wealthier neighborhoods with more single family homes where parking on the sidewalk is common and decreases accessibility and safety due to people who can afford to own cars storing their private property on public land, and as for increasing awareness and helping people transition back to having parking enforcements
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and parking violations enforce consistently, i think it would be great if sfmta, instead considered allowing every driver, to have one ticket for given, so that they can get a free warning, without sfmta having to spend a bunch of staff time and money, doing an awareness campaign or creating a warning system. so i think there's an opportunity there to just everyone gets one. you feel bad, but then you find out you got it for free, and now you know, don't do that again. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. more cards, secretary silva, i'll read off more speaker cards. jessica hernandez, rodrigo lopez, eliana binder, ian james. hi. my name is jessica hernandez. i'm here once again. i'm speaking about the four hour parking implementations and i'm here to speak up, in favor of opposing to this. well, it's already going to be implemented, but
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it's not going to take away, you know, the streets are going to be there forever or people are not. and you're going to be displacing a lot of families. and it's true that it's for the safety of the public. but are we thinking about the safety of these families? are we thinking about the safety of where are they going to go after they are displaced, we're not thinking about that. and i guess we're just thinking that, okay, after this is implemented, the problem is going to be gone. it's not going to be gone. we have a huge problem of homelessness in san francisco, and we need to open our eyes that this is happening, and we're not going to get rid of it by putting up for our parking implementations, because it's going to be there. if not in arv's, it's going to be in the streets, if not in the streets in other places, it's there. and i'm just going to bring awareness. it's happening around you. and even if you close your eyes, you open them back up and there's going to be there. you're not going to get rid of that problem unless you do something to solve that problem. and i know it's not in
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your department, but you guys are responsible for those for our parking limitations. please think about it. before you put them up. think about who you're, whose life you're going to ruin. after all, you're going to go home and you're going to be happy. but they're not. they're not. so we have we have families who live there. humans thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. thanks, everyone. my name is rodrigo lopez. we don't choose to be a homeless. we are living on the street because we don't have any other option or choices at this point. the city already decided to remove the rv community on winston drive even without finding a safe parking space for the community. for the rv community. so i'm asking for help to find a safe site before removing the rv community on winston or buckingham. thank you , thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon,
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directors. my name is eliana binder, and i'm the policy manager for glide, as you've heard today and previous meetings, there are dozens of community members living in rvs on winston drive and buckingham way who would be negatively impacted by the enforcement of the four hour parking limit. we are very grateful that this board originally delayed implementation and enforcement of parking restrictions, but recently signs were put up on buckingham and notices were given out on winston and this forward movement came at the surprise of almost all stakeholders, there have been delays because all involved have thankfully recognized the need to proceed in a thoughtful manner, given the community of rv residents living on those streets, but especially with these signs and notices, this community has been very anxious about what will happen and where
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they will go, since they will not be able to leave work or school to regularly move their vehicles to comply with the parking limits and avoid ticketing and towing, i'm grateful to hear that there is an understanding of this in terms of a delaying, further delaying of enforcement, because the city has not yet been able to establish a safe parking site or connect everyone with housing, so we really hope that you all will not only be working with h'sh and, and supervisor melgar going forward in general, but also with this july repaving. that came as a bit of a surprise to many people as well. and that's sort of an initial displacement of people, even if we're delaying the enforcement until after the repaving. the repaving does represent a displacement. so we really hope that all stakeholders will be coming together to avoid the worst outcomes of these the displacement of repaving, the displacement of parking restrictions so that people have
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a safe place to go and they can maintain some stability in their lives. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. hello. my name is ian james. i'm the community engagement manager at glide center for social justice. i am also here to just try and bring attention to the harm that these four parking restrictions will cause. i know that we've talked about it in this meeting before, but i think it bears repeating that families will be displaced. people will have to miss their work. students could lose their spots in school. we don't know where people will go, and i also want to just really raise up the leaders from the community who are here and taking their time out of work and out of school today to try and make their voices heard. and they're not just coming to you, they are meeting with homeless oversight committee. they're trying to
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meet with h'sh. they are trying to meet with their supervisor. they are doing everything that they can to make this happen. and i think that all we're asking from the mta board is to make that same commitment to do everything that you can to make sure that these parking restrictions don't go into effect until people have a safe place to go. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. there are additional speakers on the director's report. go ahead. it's because the board of supervisors is coming up, so i need to go, what do you expect out from the pandemic of unintelligence? but unintelligence. so it's a mess. yes obviously. so now you your goal is to stop following the script written by an intelligence or is difficult. it is to understand this or strong
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is a torture. here you are receiving by the people asking you to do something. it's because you're going to get worse. until you decide to pay, you must pay. there is nowhere to hide. i'm going to say that for the first time. i'm sure people are going to repeat it because you don't want to be a waste of space. so you are becoming more and more a waste of space. san francisco's future is happiness. using beauty as an emotional direction. you can't be happy without beauty. what you are covering up is ugliness. that's the demonstration here. what we heard from these people having to live in their. what is this? yes. coming up, third world country usa. excuse me.
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i'm here to change this. i'm going to do it. you can't stop me. it's impossible. thank you. next speaker, please. have a good day. good afternoon, he's always a hard act to follow, but i'll try. i'll do my best. marie hirabayashi, i am one of the founders of soar. i'm the executive director of connected sf, and i wanted to comment on the director's report that i think there's a lot missing from this report. there's a lot going on that i think the public needs to be be informed and that you are aware of and that you are either taking action on or admitting that you're not going to do anything about it. and one of those items is the impact that the sfmta has had on small businesses throughout san
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francisco. so i'm sure you're aware or i hope you're aware that there is a business owner who is on a hunger strike on valencia street right now because of the impact that those bike lanes have had on his business. you have decimated geary, you have decimated venice, you've decimated hays, you've decimated valencia. i could go on and on. there's i don't i'm not aware of a single commercial corridor that this organization has touched that has improved as a result of that touch. so i would request that the director's report henceforth include the economic impact that you are having on small businesses throughout san francisco. so i would also like to comment what i think is missing from the director's report is, is that despite the fact that you have 6500 employees, everything seems to
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be late and way over budget, and the accident that happened, the horrific accident that happened in west portal a couple of weeks ago, was the result of sfmta's incompetence. okay, that's your time, and as i said previously, we are looking for comments on topics covered by the director in his report. if there are things you would like him to cover separately, those should be covered in item nine. general public comment. going forward, i'll let that go because you're here and speaking already, but i would love to have future comments focused on topics that director did address today. thank you for the, commentary. portuguese.
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you. mataj. no mercy. vo. good afternoon. my name is marcio bong. noise. estamos aqui porque from superintelligence. we are here because we were surprised. nearby. we live wisdom. we live in an rv on winston. did you have bench stone colocando placa para a gente mover. where villa nao temos lugar pratica. and suddenly there were signs everywhere telling us to move. but we don't really have anywhere else to go. pouca coisa. no, we want to. we don't want a lot. we just want a little bit de vida in sao francisco to move to alto. so immigrant tenho sustentar me a
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familia. the cost of living in san francisco is extremely high. i have to sustain my family. nos estamos aqui trabalhando pagamos impostos. we're here working. we pay taxes. e estar in san francisco. por eso. no queremos mudar. and we like being in san francisco. that's why we don't want to move poca coisa un lugar para identificar colocar no service and maintain. also vida trabajando para sustentar la familia. we just are asking for a safe place to put our rv so we can keep working in san francisco and a safe place supporting our family. that's it. thank you very much. thank you. are there any other speakers on the director's report? item seven. okay okay,
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okay, seeing none, i. oh, sorry. thank you. go ahead. yeah, i have my, speaker card, but it's all good. good afternoon. directors. my name is gulab musa. i am the community engagement manager with the episcopal community services. i'm here on speak on behalf of the end poverty tales coalition that, we need to further delay these, restrictions from from taking place on winston boulevard and buckingham way. dozens of households residing in rvs face displacements due to impending, parking restrictions set to take effect soon. this enforcement caught the community off guard as they're lacking the support needed to find a place effectively without a safe parking site or a housing. these families risk further housing insecurity. these are families. these are seniors, students and
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children deserving dignity and safety, yeah. as the board, you have the power to make these restrictions cease. so please collaborate with the community. please collaborate with h'sh and melgar's office to establish a secure parking site and offer suitable housing options for these families. thank you. okay. thank you for your comment. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is eric argue. i'm the advocacy manager under the center for social justice at glide, and i'm here to speak on behalf of the immigrant families that are living in rvs on winston drive and buckingham way, i think it's a very important for us to be part of the solution, making sure that it's a win win situation for everyone, for the neighbors, for you, for the families that are living in these rvs, to make sure that they are they find a place that's secure, where they
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can thrive and then can also find better housing situations. i think if we don't and if we place these signs, it's actually going to exacerbate the situation further. they may lose their rvs or get them towed, it's going to cost them money to get them out. most likely they're going to end up on the streets homeless. and i think that's what we're all trying to avoid. so i think by really, you know, thinking collaboratively with everyone that this can be a win win situation for everyone. thank you. thank you for your comment. any further speakers on item seven? good afternoon, directors. my name is alicia and i'm the policy and organizing manager at compass family services, and i'm also a member of the end poverty toes coalition at compass. we're seeing firsthand that the family system is oversaturated, in which there are 386 families on the single room shelter queue. as of last week. i've given public comment a few times, and
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every time the single family shelter queue number has only risen over the past year, the parking restrictions would ultimately push families living in rvs into an overfilled shelter system that we already don't have enough staff to meet the need, as well as services we need a safe parking site or a long terme solution before these four hour parking restrictions go into effect. i'm begging you to please listen to our family leaders as well as the nonprofit providers all across the city on what can be done. thank you so much. thank you for your comment . additional speakers on item seven, the director's report. good. hello, directors. my name is rachel clyde, and i'm the west side community organizer with the san francisco bicycle coalition. i'm here in solidarity with the end poverty toast coalition to talk about lake merced, winston and buckingham, because it's unacceptable to displace our most marginalized community members in the name of street safety. if we want to talk about
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safety improvements to winston and buckingham, we need to address speeding vehicles and insufficient crosswalks and crosswalk safety and the whole area needing infrastructure improvements, which is the issue, not the residents living in rvs who are already impacted by these unsafe street conditions themselves. we have seen no discussion around improving the bike lane itself, which runs along winston, and only just now heard that there might be some improvements coming, so we question why these parking restrictions are going up in the name of bike safety. as much as we love to see bike improvements along our streets, they should not be done at the expense of our fellow san franciscans at the sf bicycle coalition. it is our mission to transform san francisco's streets and neighborhoods into safe, just and livable places by empowering and enabling people to choose biking as their primary mode of transportation. we joined the poverty toes coalition because our streets are our largest and most shared, our most used, shared civil space, and we can't achieve our orgs mission without addressing all the ways that our streets are being used. the entire city is facing a housing crisis, and changing parking limits on just
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1 or 2 streets will not fix this issue. we need to see our city leadership step up and take big actions to resolve this and uplift our entire community. and we know this isn't something that the sfmta can do alone. we stand with the end poverty toes coalition and rv residents and ask the board to delay the parking restrictions until a safe site is secured and to work collaboratively with h'sh to urgently and collaboratively find a safe site. thank you. thank you for your comment. go ahead. good afternoon, directors , my name is sandro fuentes. i'm brazilian immigrant and i live in my rv on buckhorn way. and they put, like a, signs for, parking and, i'm talking about the only for, one space for we
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live in and with security and water and dumping and energy and that's it. thank you. thank you. any other speakers on item seven, the director's report? okay. seeing none, did we have a remote accommodation request for this one, not at this time. okay. i see director henry. your hand raised. sure, thank you, madam chair. i, in respect for all the folks that came out today, i wanted to ask greg to come when i know you're not speaking. i know you're not in a position to speak for. but if you could, if you know at a high level what they're going to be doing with the time between now and when enforcement would be
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going into effect, i think at a high level it would be good for the public, good for the folks to know what that might be. that's right. well, so first of all, director henry, we have continued to work with supervisor melgar and h'sh to try to identify viable, safe sleeping sites. we have said yes to all potential asks on sfmta property. we understand that our job is managing the public right of way for the public good. so we continue to try to work in good faith to best use our property in order to support those with the greatest needs, and again, i can't speak for h'sh, but i know that h'sh has been out on winston trying to help families and individuals identify other housing options, by postponing enforcement until july. that gives h'sh time to do additional rounds of outreach, and then for the lake merced
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quick build project that we approved, i think it was last summer. is that done now or are there elements that still need to be done with that? most of the lake merced quick build project is complete, and we're just finishing up the final details. okay. thank you, madam chair. okay. thank you, director henry. so i'll just remind we heard a lot of calls for a safe parking site. we heard a lot of calls for delay. i just i will remind everyone that when the board took up this item in september of last year, we had a robust discussion with h'sh present. we chose to delay any implementation of the enforcement. three months at the guidance of h'sh, and to give time to find the safe parking sites. so this board has already expressed a strong preference. and so the staff, of course, for finding the safe parking site that's been requested, there's
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been additional delay to allow for time for outreach. i understand there's been significant outreach to families to try to find permanent housing solutions. and so, again, with the theme of not wanting to catch anyone off guard and have transparency and communication, i think we've actually provided, quite a bit of delay from the original action that the board has taken, and i wanted to just make sure that the announcement just in that, in that line, in that vein of sharing information, if we could ask our translators to just translate the announcement that director tumlin made about what what will happen and when for those here. so he's going to read it now. and could i ask our spanish and portuguese translators to just make sure that that information is shared with everybody? please pause. so signs. signs are expected to be installed on winston the week of april 22nd. and by installing elemento in la
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calle winston el veintidos de abril, there will be portuguese. sorry vao colocar sinais de abril venmo instalar signs are already installed on buckingham way. yes. thank instalados and la calle buckingham way. yes. thank presentados. yes, thank. i just know buckingham way, on april 22nd, the signs on winston will allow for our parking from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. veintidos de abril. yes senales yavar comenzar enforcer caso puede estacionar cuatro horas desde las cuatro de la manana hasta las seis de la tarde, it was it was sinais von jen psaki. voce pode ser sonar por cuatro horas, dice oito da manha. até oito.
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there will be no enforcement until the repaving project begins, which is expected in july. no se va llevar a la letra hasta pueden estar ese proyecto de pavimento. repeat the last part, until repaving begins, which is expected in july as the pueden repaving de la calle y eso va a ser in julio el segundo de julio. now there are fiscalizacion, at julio. cuando comenzo proyecto de repaving. so thank you. thank you to our translators. okay, and then i guess i'll just share one other potentially request, vice chair kahina and i discussed last night again, the board on approving this item expressed a strong desire to identify a safe parking site. and we were pleased to be joined by someone from h'sh to support interagency
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coordination and information exchange. i think we would also be interested in learning in an update at some point. a deferred you how that's done. if it's through the h'sh staff to you and you share in the director's report, or we have someone from h'sh come to a future meeting, but we would like to have a status update on the status of a safe parking site. what are some of the barriers? i think the board is interested, very eager to understand where that where that lies. yeah, we can have h'sh see if they can come. okay. thank you. there are the leads. yep. okay. we will close the director's report, please. and call the next item. places you on on item number eight, the citizens advisory council report. no report. places you on item nine. general public comment. members of the public may address the board of directors on matters that are within the board's jurisdiction, but not on today's calendar. i do have several speaking cards. speaker cards. kyle grochmal,
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marcello franco, jess nguyen, carl macmurdo, mali hern. rocco, i'm the steward of the 20th slow street. i was here about a year ago when you guys made the slow street permanent and was very optimistic. it came after the initial set. as you all remember, you set very aggressive targets on what to hit for the slow streets. that was a thousand vehicles a day, at the time, 20th street had 2200 vehicles. it's now a year later, we have 2200 vehicles. still, staff has done nothing in the past year, and it has been incredibly frustrating this is not a controversial, slow street. you've never received any any opposition. we have wide support from neighbors, businesses, the supervisor's office supports this. we're told over and over again if a if a supervisor office supports that
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gives you cover, you can move quickly. yet your staff is pushed back. we do not have soft tip paddles. even even the most basic things off hit paddles at every intersection. i requested that six months ago and was told by staff that's not possible. it would take. we don't have, we don't have any staff to do it. we have to get fire department approval. and yet staff is being used to put 11 murals on slow streets throughout the city. 20th street is on the high injury network. it's in the equity priority community. and yet there has been no action taken. and we don't know what to do to get your your agency to act. i have to talk to the future supervisor. candidates for 2025, because maybe in 2025 you all will do something. and it is so frustrating to sit here and to see nothing happen. so we're requesting soft tip paddles at the busy intersections. that's alabama, florida, york, half of hampshire, and a timeline for hitting a thousand vehicles a day. not for when reach will
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start or when the process will start. i was able to get staff on the slow street yesterday, but that was to look at the mural location. nothing about the cars zooming by or the safety issues. so we want to see action now. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. again, for the record, marcello fonseca, i actually started driving a cab 35 years ago. i'm very proud of my long career, and i deeply care about the taxi industry and chair econ . you told me i spoke in the wrong spot, but if i could add a little bit to the legal dispute between this agency and the credit union, occasionally the taxi division will send us an email. but this appeal filed to the supreme court of california, that means we are medallion
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buyers are still in peril in the taxi industry, still is in limbo. so we'd like to know what's going on. we do understand it's a legal matter. you cannot discuss what you're going to argue in court, but i don't think we should open a pacer account and pay a lot of money to really understand what's going on. and again, we feel we are the real victims in this case, even though we are not the plaintiffs. and again, considering this is a fairly new board, i'd like to share with you that the taxi industry is not as complex as it sounds. i like to ask you or request kindly that before you vote on those very important matters related to the industry we care so much about, please learn a little bit about what it is to drive a cab, what we go through, and then i've had a very good relationship with everybody at
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the taxi division, but we don't agree their policies have failed . so please, before you rubber stamp everything from your taxi division, learn a little bit about our history and our struggles. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. hello. i'm flo kelly and i volunteer with the coalition on homelessness and i certainly work with in poverty toes coalition. so i'm here to support people who live in their vehicles. vehicles are people's homes. they provide shelter. they they provide security with a door that can actually be locked. and people who live in their vehicles are are san francisco neighbors. as i want to speak for people who live on
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winston street and on the lower great highway, in people who live in their vehicles. that used to be parked at bernal heights and, are no longer allowed to park there. and i can tell you bernal heights boulevard looks like a ghost town right now. mta is constantly taking away parking spaces with red curbs, metered parking, diagonal parking, four hour parking, no overnight parking, and many more. people who live in their vehicles are forced to move to other places. and the move is disorienting and solves really no problem at all. as jessica said earlier during item seven, homelessness is still with us even when people are being moved from one place to the next. homelessness is just moved to a different neighborhood. so i appreciate a
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lot of things that you have done already and i feel like your good listeners and i appreciate that very much. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. i'll read off a few more names. fred mülheim, michael adams, heather brandt, carl mcmorrow, the year 1932 city charter had a provision that all taxi permit holders and the public have the right to independent judicial review with the board of appeals and four of the five members right now of that board are attorneys, and they're very smart, and they listen to every case. unfortunately for us, one year ago, this board, your board voted to take away that, right? based on advice from the city attorney that you could if you wanted to. and you you did vote
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for that. it took director tomlin three tries to get four votes. two of the people, manny uchitel and gwen borden are gone. and i want to applaud, directors kahina and hemminger for voting against taking away these appeal rights. but the time has come to restore them, and i'm. what i'm asking today is that someone put it on an agenda and do that. i think the city is headed for a lot of trouble with federal investigations in the last starting in january, you've taken away five permits from people who were exonerated by the prior board of appeals by holding their disabilities against them, requiring under a new rule, that they have california driver's licenses to renew the medallion. we have one person, dirk nihart, who was stabbed with a butcher knife before he could get home from his shift, and so he can't read an eye chart at dmv. another guy, george horrible, worked 43 years and is in a wheelchair. these people can operate a
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business, so you're violating the law. on another subject, i've been a regular muni bus rider for five years, and i see very little premeditated fare evasion. what i see is that the clipper card readers are broken. you probably need a new vendor or better inspection, so i would suggest please try to fix that rather than hire a whole lot of new fare inspectors. and also, possibly soften the proposed fees as a result. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. good afternoon. i'm fred mülheim, lifelong learner at city college, and i'm here speaking in opposition to the frida kahlo quick build project as it is currently planned. it's time to stop rushing quick builds through the pipeline. your decisions affect more than the reconfiguration of streets. they affect the ability
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of san francisco's businesses and essential institutions to thrive or not. they also affect san francisco's economic vitality and its perception nationally and internationally, as people choose to visit it or not. the negative press, the valencia street bikeway has brought over the last week in places like new york and the uk, for example. recent quick builds show a pattern of plans developed without adequate consideration for the negative impacts to constituents alongside them. when the frida kahlo way quick build plan was presented to city college, san francisco, we were told that our inputs really wouldn't matter and that the sfmta would do what it wanted to do. that has been shown to be the case as the college community has repeatedly voiced its concerns about the
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plan with the sfmta project team , but subsequent project changes have not addressed those issues. once implementation implemented, san francisco's have seen that quick builds projects are not easily modified, but they continue to suffer negative consequences. pedestrian and cyclist safety and the health of our businesses and institutions should not be in conflict with each other. they should work together. please slow this project down. thank you, thank you. next speaker, please . hello, everyone. i'm here also
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with the group from city college, and i support what has just been said. i'd also like to thank the person from the bicycle coalition for daring to mention automobiles in her very even handed conversation with you. so, thanks to the thought process that is very inclusive. i'm also thankful to hear from members of this board that you drive cars and the, invitation here is for you to informally visit this event and just walk around. don't tell them who you are. just walk around and ask people how they got here to city college and what what goes on in their travels. and you will find, i believe, a very diverse population of folks, some of whom depend on cars, some of whom have the luxury of riding bikes, motorcycles, muni when
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it's available, and so on. we hear often at city college students saying to their professors to their to their teachers, i'm sorry i'm late, but it took me 15 minutes to find a parking place. that's right. now you take away, you know, ten, 20, 30, 40 parking places. that exacerbates the problem, we in the 15 minutes, it takes to drive around, i could be from ocean campus here. that's how much gas i would be burning in the in the virtual circle, circulating around through the narrow streets of the neighborhood. so please slow this quick build down so it doesn't mean thoughtless build. that that's that's what. excuse me. what? we're asking of you. thank you very much for your time. thank you for your comment
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. other speakers under item nine. hello, directors. my name is jess nguyen and i'm a student at city college, you may not get to see a lot of students make public comment because it's quite expensive on our schedules. i'm missing work in order to come here. i'm an untraditional student changing careers, and i'm very grateful for the education i can receive at city college. but many of my classmates are also taking night classes. we have problems with parking, and because of my studies, i do require a lot of equipment to carry 50 pounds at least, and i need my need. the parking closest to my building. especially when it's so dark at night and there's not that many safety lights on campus or the security can escort. i haven't been able to do that. so, many of my classmates have to walk
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with other classmates, and it's a shame to feel like as a woman, you need someone else to be with you in order to feel safe, unfortunately, public transportation is not an option for me because it's not the right itself. it's where i exit off my ride at 16th and mission bart station, and i would never carry anything expensive when i have to get home, like at 930 at night and walk by myself a few blocks away, it is not the most safest, option at all. and, a lot of people get dropped off at city college because of the trade classes, and we have to carry a lot of materials and horticulture, floristry, photography. it's very expensive , and we're trying to change our lives, and we should not be punching down. we should be helping the people who have been suffering the most during the pandemic, like myself, you know, go through economic poverty and trying to make all these choices and balancing work and other things in order to make my life
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better, just like everyone else, like the immigrants living in rvs, i think it's extremely important for us to uplift the people who are trying to get economic mobility in order to live more stably. here thank you. thank you for sharing your perspective. are there any other speakers for item nine? good afternoon, directors. i am from city college as well, we have an organization called higher education action team. we're here to support students. we're here to support our teachers at city college. we're here to support an institution that feeds san francisco. many of its workers who educates, which educates, gives a second chance to ahsha does incredibly
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important work. one of our goals is after especially after covid, is to grow the college, it's very important for us to do that in order to do that, we have to have access to the college, we have pointed out on several different, occasions that the frida kahlo quick fix or quick build won't work for us in terms of access. we need our students to get there and to be able to take their classes an intelligent approach by this agency would be to wait until the three buildings, which are now all, under development, have been completed, and that the new
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building for over a thousand people has been completed, so that you can see what the interaction, what the needs are going to be. so i would hope that we are in a position where you study valencia street and see what went wrong, understand the problems, fix those before you attempt to go on to any other project. thank you. thank you for your comment. any other speakers on item nine? afternoon. board members. my name is heather brandt. i'm a working student, parent, and mother of three, currently serving as a student trustee at city college of san francisco. i'm a transit writer and one less car on the road, but that's my reality. not everyone is. i deeply care about our community, and that extends beyond ccsf to include our broader community. these are not two separate
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things, as we too are part of the community. because of that, i would appreciate if this board could make a commitment to accessibility and equity just as you have to. ensuring safety. this includes for our duly enrolled students who age out of free transit are disabled, students are pregnant and parenting students. our veteran students, who may not be able to ride bikes and commute long distances, struggling to attend and access an education. i am asking you to work with us to secure transit passes for our students so that we can continue to be inclusive, helping to increase ridership and grow our enrollment and not place limits and restrictions to accessibility, which would have us become exclusive. i believe that we can accomplish this while we work to save the environment, protect lives we can and should also protect education and the opportunities it extends to our communities. understanding that education helps disrupt cycles of poverty. this should not be an either or, but a yes and please make space
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to listen to the needs of the community regarding the impacts. if we rush forward with the frida kahlo quick build. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. good afternoon, directors. my name is aaron connor and i'm the resident services coordinator for mercy housing at 55 and 95 laguna, we are home to 140 plus senior citizens who identify in the lgbt community, in addition to the hundreds of seniors that attend open house for social and housing services, as well as programing. ever since the light went up at the intersection of hermann and laguna, our folks, when running their errands, are going to the f line stop, are contending with constant traffic folks who cars who are running red lights from laguna onto hermann from laguna onto
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guerrero, going the opposite direction. even after speaking with mandelman office and the sfmta to put up a crosswalk sign, cars are still blowing through it. and in light of the fact that we have new traffic cams coming up in the city, it seems to me that this would be a prime area to help address that, because my fear is that one of our folks is going to get hit. who don't have the average reaction speeds or periphery visuals to navigate those normal things. thank you. thank you for bringing that to our attention. next speaker, please. good afternoon, directors. tom radulovich with livable city. i'm here today to actually talk about the quick build program, but just ask that all of the quick build projects be multimodal projects, you know, i was involved with the active communities plan. we were
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promised a bike plan update. hopefully that will be coming at some point. but we've been told by staff, well, you know, we do have these quick build projects going forward. and that's something, right? i mean, like actually building, improving infrastructure is important and you should keep doing that. however, i'm looking over some of these, projects and a lot of them aren't multimodal. so let me take you back quickly, a few years ago, when the south venice quick build was being considered, i said, well, why don't you put bike lanes on south venice? the response from staff is, is, oh, it's not in the bicycle network. even though the bicycle network was obsolete by that point and is more obsolete now, and you know, we don't really need it. so they did this road diet project, but that road diet project didn't really work, right? it left too much road. the lanes are 13ft wide. there's an 18 foot wide median. it looks more like a florida highway than a city street. so it's still a, you know, it's still a speed, trap. and it's actually one of the candidate streets, one of your road diet projects is one of the candidate streets for, the speed cameras. so the one i have in
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mind is clarendon. and clarendon is a huge gap between bicycle lanes. there is a quick build project going forward, but despite going from four lanes to two lanes, the idea is not put in a bike lane, not even put in a protected bike lane. and clarendon would be a great street for protected bike lanes because there's almost no driveways, very few cross streets, a bike lane or a protected bicycle path wasn't considered at all for clarendon. so the option is just, you know, one lane in each direction, then hatch all the space in the middle of the road, to kind of soak up that road space. but that's probably not going to slow traffic. right. as we learned from south venice. and it's leaving a huge gap in the bicycle network that could be fixed. laguna honda has bike lanes. it would connect to other streets. so please look at that. thank you, thank you. next speaker, please. hi. board members luke bornheimer, first, i just want to stand in solidarity with kyle and the
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other community advocates advocating for infrastructure improvements in the roadway on 20th street, as well as other slow streets, and just say that, you know, if sfmta a and mayor breed want the slow streets to be successful, the agency needs to install physical infrastructure in the roadway to eliminate cut through traffic and increase safety for all people on slow streets, which will help people shift trips away from cars, regarding no turn on red, i'm here representing the more than 1000 people who have urged you to approve a citywide, no turn on red policy at all signalized intersections in the city, data from around the world shows that implementing no turn on red increases safety for all people, especially people walking, biking and using mobility devices, and with a continuing roadway safety crisis here in the city, this is an easy and proven solution that can increase safety, i urge you to agendize an action on a citywide no turn on red policy and ask staff to present a citywide no turn on red policy at every for
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every signalized intersection, i briefly want to mention arguello boulevard and the fact that assembly member ting secured $1.2 million staff said that they would install either protected or fully separated bike lanes on arguello boulevard between fulton and the presidio during winter 2023. it's obviously past winter 2023, so it'd be great to see that prioritized and worked on and just installed in a quick build fashion, i will also encourage you all to approve the frida kahlo quick build project, as soon as possible, which will increase safety for all people and help more people shift trips away from cars, i will also just note through the chair to the general public that the design of our streets, is deadly, destructive, inequitable and unsustainable, and we need to take immediate action to make our streets safe, equitable and sustainable by approving quick build projects. and ironically, implementing those projects will help people shift trips away from cars, which will reduce car traffic and demand for parking.
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thank you. next speaker, please. hi. i'd like to finish my comment on west portal, but first i want to respond to something that was just said the quick build projects are the projects that have really decimated our our commercial corridors. i would take a much slower approach to them. i would also suggest that this vision zero has gone quite terribly, and as a driver and a biker and a walker in san francisco, as well as a transit rider, i find the quick build projects to be wildly confusing. i know elderly people who can no longer drive because they are so confused by the way you have designed these roads. there's no other word for it than utterly bizarre. the elderly who are being forced out
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of their cars are then put on muni, and my father in law was beaten to a pulp on muni a few months ago. eight stitches had to have his jaw reconstructed. kid broke a rib, broke his wrist . so putting our elderly on muni isn't necessarily a great solution. unless you fix the safety issues with muni. now to quickly wrap up, my west portal comments, this has been going on five years. it was supposed to be finished years ago. if the family had been waiting inside for the train out to the zoo, they would have been fine. instead they were forced out onto the street and sidewalk where this driver. i don't even know what happened yet with the driver, but the horrible, horrific, horrific loss and tragic accident occurred. they would not have been out there if
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it weren't for sfmta's failure to execute on time, on budget, and to really have a thank you, thank you. that's your time. any other speakers on item nine? we do have one accommodation. speaker you've been unmuted. can you hear me? yes. go ahead. two minutes. thank you, my name is patricia. eric i'm a retired teacher from city college. i'm also a member of the mayor's disability council, and i'm calling in to oppose the quick build project on frieda calloway and judson, city college institution that has had difficulties in recent years.
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and this quick build project is going to further decimate enrollment at city college. i taught, esl in the esl faculty. taught immigrants from all over the world. and these were lovely, gracious, respectful, and hard working people bounce. they did not have time to ride the bus. they drove their cars because they had to fit in their english classes. between their family responsibilities and their working working schedule, all. when i was driving to city college, the original bike lane was put in and i never saw any bikes. anybody on a bike. it was very rare. maybe one bike rider
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occasionally, but usually the bike lane was empty. 30s closing frida kahlo way and judson will further decimate the enrollment at ccsf. we lost the reservoir for parking and now this will take a huge area of needed parking for these students. this is heartless for the residents who are low income and working hard to become citizens and productive members of the society. thank you. your time is up. thank you. your time is up. okay. thank you. no further callers. with that we can close public comment for item nine. and please call the consent calendar director. is that places you on item number ten your 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
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providing public comment, please identify which item number you're speaking to. item 10.1 approving various routine parking and traffic modifications and making environmental review findings for items a through g in the agenda item 10.2 approving a roadway, shared spaces street closure for gold street between montgomery and balanced streets from tuesday, april 23rd, 2024 through wednesday, 20 april 23rd, 2020 5:04 p.m. to midnight daily and making environmental review findings. item 10.3 approving the two way traffic conversion and parking changes on stewart street between mission street and howard street and speer street between mission street and harrison street. item 10.4 for adopting the muni service equity strategy report for fiscal year 2025 and 2026 that includes an evaluation of transit service for equity routes and equity neighborhoods, and establishes a framework for prioritizing service needs of equity routes in a cost neutral way for the next two year budget
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cycle. and item 10.5 approving the sfmta's title six service equity analysis of muni's current service as of january 2024, which includes all service changes since april 2022 that meet the sfmta's definition of a major service change. the service equity analysis analysis concluded that these changes do not result in a disparate impact on communities of color, or a disproportionate burden on low income communities. under title six of the civil rights act of 1964. that concludes your consent calendar. thank you, secretary silva. i will now open for public comment on item ten, a consent calendar. hello. good afternoon. my name is jaime. i'm co-chair for tenderloin traffic safety task force. i'm here in support for agenda item 10.1 from si to or d to g, so that corner is our office space over there at 210 golden gate, it is one of the high injury network,
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it was actually before we pushed for the scrambles on that intersection. there was a lot of people getting hit, right now, people are permanently parked on those corners, even though they're not supposed to be. it's supposed to be just a loading and unloading, so we'd like to have those corners to be painted red, to give, you know, folks, the signal that it can't park there at all, because, again, it's a high injury network. we need to make sure that people that are crossing the streets, especially for the residents of kcc who are in supportive housing, lots of them have mobility issues, they need to be seen as they're crossing the street. and there's also the problem of, drug dealing and cars going there and kind of parking there the whole day, we've experienced a lot of shootings, i witnessed one myself. and so this is another strategy for us to ensure that that corner is clear, there's a school around the corner, there's a lot of families there. so we'd like mta to approve
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this. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. hi. board members, luke bornheimer, i'm just speaking in support of item 10.3. the two way conversion, of a street in soma. and it's great to see this. we know that one way streets, especially multi lane, one way streets, are more dangerous for people. all people, including drivers and people in cars, and i just want to encourage the agency to take this energy and move it to historically marginalized and disadvantaged neighborhoods that have many one way streets and many people who don't own cars, notably the tenderloin and western addition, where there are lots of one way streets. i'm thinking of golden gate ave. it's a six lane, one way road that goes through public housing neighborhoods, and so i just want to encourage the agency to, to take this energy of converting one way streets to two way streets and putting that energy now in the tenderloin, in
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the western addition and in other neighborhoods where less people own cars and more people are injured and killed on our streets. thank you. thank you. any other speakers on the consent calendar today? okay. with that, we'll close public comment. colleagues, are there any questions or may i have a motion, please, on the consent calendar, move the items. second, please call the roll on the motion to approve. director heminger i emigre director henderson. hi henderson. i director hinsey i hinsey i director. so i so i director tarloff i tarlov i director kikina i chair ekin i egan i thank you. the consent calendar is approved. thank you. please call item 11. places you on item number 11 authorizing the director of transportation to seek approval from the board of supervisors for the speed safety system use policy and speed safety system impact report and approving the location of the 33 proposed speed safety camera systems. hi good afternoon,
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chair ekin and directors, i'm shannon hague. the speed safety camera program manager for sfmta, and i'm here today with a big step in the implementation of speed cameras in san francisco. so so there are two approval tracks that we're following to authorize the use of speed cameras here in san francisco for any new surveillance technology used in the city. administrative code 19 b requires that a surveillance technology policy and a surveillance impact report go through two regulatory groups, saab and coit and then go to the board of supervisors for their final approval for this state law that allows san francisco and five other cities to install speed cameras for a five year pilot period, a speed safety system use policy, and a speed safety system impact report must be approved before we enter into a contract with the vendor. lucky for us, the requirements of these documents are virtually identical. however,
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administrative code 19 b process does not include a list of the actual locations of the surveillance technology. so today we're here with two requested board actions advancing these documents to the board of supervisors for approval and approving the 33 locations for speed cameras. so first, we'll cover the two two documents that will be going to the board of supervisors for approval, the system use policy and the system impact report. the system use policy regulates how will use the data that the program generates, which is primarily rear license plate images. these cameras are not like other surveillance cameras, in that they're not always monitoring. they must be triggered by the internal radar system in the camera. so we can't just peek in to see what's happening on a street. if the radar system is not triggered, we have no visibility into what's happening at any given time on a corridor. we intend to keep this data internal to sfmta, and we do not plan to
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share it unless required by a court order. we worked with several advocacy organizations in drafting this policy, and some of the key feedback that we heard was that this data should not be shared with law enforcement agencies, particularly in a way that could harm undocumented san franciscans. the system impact report focuses on how this program could affect san francisco, so while this is a new surveillance technology in the city, it collects minimal personally identifiable information or pii. the system would only capture rear license plate images of speeding vehicles, so no photos of the driver or even the occupants of the vehicle are taken. and because these operate, or because these cameras operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week in known locations across the city, they will enforce traffic laws equitably to any speeding vehicle. they do so in a more private manner. you learn of the violation in your own home via a mailed notice, rather than on the side of the road. in a potentially escalating confrontation with another human
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. in a note on the impact of speed cameras in san francisco, we want to amplify the behavior change aspect of speed cameras. we'll do this through signs on the street, both at camera locations and at major city entrances, reminding drivers that we're enforcing speeds in san francisco with cameras. we also want to raise awareness about the potential devastation caused by the decision to speed, by including personal stories on warning violations for the first 60 days of program operations, we've been working with families for safe streets to learn about the people whose lives have been forever changed by a speeding vehicle here in san francisco, and will include their photos and stories in warning violations. we're also working to set up a coordinated regional campaign with our counterparts in oakland and san jose, focusing on the importance of slowing down something that will expand the awareness of all three of our automated enforcement pilots. so that
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brings us to today's first board action, approving the work we've done on the system use policy and the system impact report. and authorizing these documents to be sent to the board of supervisors for adoption in moving on to the second action before you approving camera locations. so as you remember, the state law laid out requirements for where we could install speed cameras as staff. we added additional specifications regarding where we should locate these cameras, because we know that speed cameras will save lives and we want them to be located on the san francisco streets, where they will have the greatest impact. so we created a data driven process that identified locations that met every one of these requirements, which allowed us to locate them where they'll be the most effective and where we can install them as quickly as possible. for this pilot program. in the march 19th board meeting, i described the process that led us to these 33
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camera locations. we started with our high injury network, the 12% of city streets that account for more than 68% of our serious injuries and fatalities. we overlaid speed related collisions, focusing on locations with vulnerable roadway users, and from there, we selected locations that were spread out in a variety of neighborhoods across the city. this process led us to 33 locations recommended for speed, safety cameras. the next few slides will highlight the why behind some of these locations. starting in the northwest corner of the city, we chose two locations on geary and two on fulton. both of these streets are notorious for speeding and we believe these camera locations will slow down vehicles on the street. we also evaluated several locations in the tenderloin for speed cameras, as it's home to many of the city's most vulnerable individuals. the data we collected show that showed that our 20 mile per hour speed limits in the tenderloin are generally effective. most of the streets we measured in the
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tenderloin had high and egregious speeding rates of 1% or less. the exception was turk street. we found that this segment immediately in front of tenderloin elementary school had significant rates of speeding. and we're proposing a speed camera here to better protect school children. moving on to the northwest corner of the city, where we've identified three park areas and two elementary school areas to install. install speed cameras, i'd like to call your attention to columbus avenue, which is a high frequency transit corridor with very complex intersections and a library and two playgrounds and many tourist destinations within a few blocks. despite the posted 20 mile per hour speed limit here, more than a 10th of all vehicles traveling along this stretch were in the high end egregious speeding range. and we believe that speed cameras will make these blocks much safer for the children, families and visitors on columbus. on the west side, there's a much smaller share of the high injury network, particularly when we can't
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install speed cameras on the state owned 19th avenue or on most of sloat boulevard. our recommended camera locations on lincoln way and on sloat near the zoo will protect will both protect streets with uncontrolled crosswalks where people walking or are at a greater risk of collisions, and where slowing down vehicles will improve visibility and reduce near misses. moving to soma, the home of the worst speeding in the city and also home to many schools and social service sites where some of our most vulnerable neighbors are. we've identified seven camera locations in soma that will slow speeds and make these streets safer for everyone, particularly the harrison street location outside of middle school, where 1 in 4 vehicles is traveling at a high end, egregious speed. this is the worst location that we measured for speeding in the city, and the fact that it this behavior is happening right outside of a location where children are going to school is unacceptable. moving south, we're recommending speed safety cameras on a variety of streets
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in districts eight, nine and ten, including two on cesar chavez, which is flat and well used by people biking. it can feel scary riding a bike next to a vehicle that's traveling faster than 35 miles an hour. and we believe that these speed cameras along with upcoming projects like the cesar chavez quick build project, will make this street a much more attractive option for people biking in the city. and finally coming to the southern border of san francisco, where cars are moving too fast. near playgrounds, schools and parks. we've identified several locations for speed cameras here that will better protect children going to school and playing outside. we learned that more than 1 in 10 vehicles traveling by cayuga playground and by crocker, amazon's purple park playground were traveling more or traveling faster than 45 miles an hour, which is a speed that would be fatal to a child crossing the street. these are two locations that are no brainers for speed cameras. going back to the guidance we
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used on where to locate these cameras, i'd like to highlight two factors that really drove this process. these are the geographic and socioeconomic distribution of speed cameras and the focus on neighborhoods with our most at risk san franciscans measuring how our locations lined up with these factors. we're pleased to share these metrics first, in blue, the proposed speed camera locations represent the broad diversity of the neighborhoods of san francisco. they're spread out in each corner of the city, and when looking at the quarter mile around each camera location , they're representative of citywide socioeconomic indicators. they're also in a wide variety of locations across the city in residential neighborhoods, commercial districts outside schools, outside businesses. secondly, in dark gray on this slide, we're protecting vulnerable road users with these proposed camera locations. when we look at the quarter mile around these locations, we're focusing this life saving technology near 48 schools and 41 senior service sites, making the streets safer
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for our most at risk neighbors. as a quick note on the outreach and engagement conducted so far. we're in the second of three phases of outreach for this program. the first phase, completed this past winter, focused on stakeholder groups representing privacy protection, racial equity, economic justice, and transportation safety to inform the system use policy and system impact report before you today. in our current phase, we're meeting with the communities around our 33 camera locations to share information on how we chose those locations and what our program will look like going forward. and starting this fall, we'll shift to a more broad public education campaign that will highlight the importance of slowing down. as i mentioned earlier, we want the impact of this program to expand far beyond the 33 locations you're approving today. and that brings us to today's second board action, adopting the list of 33 recommended locations for automated speed enforcement.
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this list of locations, along with the speed and traffic data shared in the previous slides, will be attached as an appendix to the system impact report. as required by law. one note here you're approving the street segments, but not necessarily the speed limit that will be enforced. that's because beginning in july, a new state law provision will allow the sfmta to reduce speed limits on some high injury network streets. because these locations are all on the high injury network, we intend to assess the appropriate speed limit for each street, according to what the california vehicle code allows at the time. this may mean a reduction in the posted speed limit on some of these segments. we'll come back to the sfmta board with an item with any speed limit reductions by the end of this summer, and will make sure that new speed limits are in place well before the end of 2024. and finally, back to the slide that shows where we are in the process. these blue boxes show the eight legislative approvals required before installing cameras for legislative approval. processes
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have been completed and today would be our fifth. so we're more than halfway there. we are very thankful to the mayor's office for sponsoring legislation and the board of supervisors that has fast tracked several of these processes. we're on track to release an rfp next month. get a camera camera vendor on board this fall and turn cameras on in early 2025. that concludes my presentation, and my colleagues and i are happy to answer any questions you have. thank you so much, miss hake. i see director henry has her hand raised. why don't you go ahead, director henry? sure. only the thov. and as always, shannon, thank you for taking. taking on yet another different job. i think this is your third job in the agency since i've been a part of this board. so kudos for that, and thank you for your work with the tenderloin group. i know that this is a priority for the task force, so they're very happy. and i appreciate your work and diligence elected to
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that location, i think as presented at the meeting with them, i think it makes sense. and i know that they want to be involved in the, the, the outreach, the education campaign, when the time comes, i was just curious. now, i'm not one to question each of your, specific locations, but i was just curious if after, the, the list of the initial 33 was released, i was just curious if you've received any feedback focused, let's say, hey, i would it would be good to see if a camera here instead of here or any of that, any of the, any of that feedback. or are people mostly happy with the selections of the other of your streets? i, i'm in support of all of them and i and i think it's method a
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logically sound, but i was just curious. yeah we did have a lot of feedback after the list of 33 locations was released, and most of that feedback has been remarkably positive. we have heard from some communities that they wish they had a speed camera or wish, you know, that it was maybe located in a different location, but we've been able to point back to all of the data that we collected over our data collection process, the methodology that we used, and, and generally most of the feedback has been remarkably supportive of our camera locations. and then if you could remind us, how frequently you plan to collect data and kind of monitor, monitor these locations to sort of see if our pilot selections were effective or not, could you remind us of that? yes. we will be collecting data from the first day that we
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turn cameras on. we're very, very interested in seeing how they change behavior, we can commit to doing so, every six months for the beginning of the program, we also will be publishing regular reports on the number of citations issued, where each camera is releasing or is generating different notices of violation, how many time of day different, different metrics like that on a regular basis, we're also planning on releasing a more comprehensive report at the 18 month period, and then at the five year period, as required by law. excellent, thank you, madam chair. i'll be happy to put a motion on the floor for after public comment to approve both actions for us. thank you. i will accept your motion. director henderson, please. thank you, thank you. chair, i have a couple of questions on
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the speed part and then on the cameras. so my. i was hoping you could just help me understand the analysis that you'll do of the speed. i understand that you'll you're able to reduce the limits, and then you'll bring it back to us in the future. does the public have an opportunity to provide some input in those before it gets here? if you do end up reduce some of the speed limits. yes, absolutely. so that is a process that's essentially governed by the california vehicle code. how we set speed limits for different corridors. but our plan for that is to do a speed study at each of these 33 locations and make sure that we have the best data available, and then use the applicable provisions in the california vehicle code. at the time to set the speed limit. and then it would be brought back to the board for approval. at that point, we can also work with the neighborhoods that we're starting to talk to now, to, to make sure that they're fully informed in that process. okay.
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that that sounds good. i think that there is obviously the you know, the data is very important. i think that there's some value to anecdotal data, especially for high speed areas that i would just hope could get incorporated into that analysis, because it may be that, the data doesn't necessarily show that the limit is too fast, but because the cameras require the speeds to be at a certain level, i just want to make sure that we're able to capture that. and it seems like maybe the data might miss it, that whereas the neighbors and the community might be able to give some additional feedback, that would help reduce that speed limit so that the cameras are capturing a , you know, a lower level. so thank you for that. and then, i had a question on the camera. so, so i know with the automatic license plate readers that have been authorized under other state legislation, they say that
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they don't just read license plates, but they can see other defining characteristics or special characteristics of the vehicles to be able to find them. and i understand that this is limited in scope, but if you have a car that is receiving violations but they don't have up to date registration or whatever it may be, is there a way to identify that vehicle, so that it can be pursued by law enforcement? because i would want, you know, i think that if we have a car or any, you know, whatever vehicle that is repeatedly getting violations or even gets a violation, but we realize we can't actually address them because the, the registration is not current or it's not. or maybe it's a stolen vehicle or something like that. like how do you make up for that? and is there a way to be able to say, well, it was a black toyota, whatever, but it had a dent in it so that you can
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identify that car. later and find a way to get to the owner and get it off the, the street. i think i understand what you're saying. so the license plate is really the key point of information that we're using. if a license plate isn't available or if it's not visible in the camera, for example, if there was a blurred lens or if there was, an obstruction in front of the camera, we can make a note of that, kind of put it into a, a side pile to say like these require a little bit of, like, special, special attention, the tricky part here is that assembly bill 645, the state legislation that enables this program says that we can't share our data with the police. so it would be tricky, i think, for us under the state legislation to say, for example, it was this type of car in this type of location, just because that's that is forbidden by the state legislation. okay okay. i think
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that that just okay, i, i'm concerned that they're not as impactful if we don't have, enforcement in the ways that we have in the past on the corridors. and then we also are not able to, use the video footage that we have to pursue people who are constant, you know, breakers of the law, you know? so i would hope that we can i don't know if we can advocate or find some way to be able to, have a little bit more enforcement teeth, especially because you have to travel so, so fast in order to trigger the camera. and for vehicles that are just under that limit, they would they're still traveling at a high rate of speed, but they're they're not going to get captured by this. and i just want to make sure that, what we're doing really does have the
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ability to slow down traffic and protect the, the pedestrians and , and everybody else who is traveling along those corridors. so i'm hopeful that we can find a way to advocate for some, you know, just a little bit more of a, stick. you know, along with the, the warnings and the, you know, the encouragement that we're giving people up front. i think that we do need some a little bit more enforcement ability. and so maybe that's something that the state will consider. we'll see, and then i think my last question on this is that i saw that the costs for the we are not looking at the cost right now for the cameras when they, when, when they do come up. is that on the operating side or is that in the capital budget. there's a little bit of both. okay. the capital budget includes things like the installation of signs and some of the associated infrastructure. but generally this this program would be
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funded from the operating budget going forward. okay. all right. thank you. thank you chair. thank you. director henderson. director hemminger, please. thank you, madam chair, you know the numbers you showed us for soma are shocking. i mean, they're shocking bad, and what i wonder is we're still several months away from the starting line on this, right? and i believe the mayor, when she issued her transportation vision , i did endorse this camera approach. but she also indicated support for targeted enforcement. and it seems to me soma is a very good candidate for that target of enforcement, so i'm certainly hoping we can finally make the connection between the pd and the mta and agree on that's a problem. and we've got to do something about it now. not, you know, two years
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after we install the cameras, the other question. i'm sorry, jeff, did you want to. if you want to say yes, go right ahead, yes. we are in complete agreement and we're increasingly doing that work with sfpd and in collaboration with the mayor and the board of supervisors as well. there's citywide agreement , and that's good to hear. the other question you may have answered already, but i want to make sure you did. and it's about the pictures of the traffic victims, the crash victims that we would be putting on the warning notices. and you indicated you're working with the family biz, so are you getting their permission to put their faces on these tickets? yes, absolutely. so this would just be opt in, we mentioned this idea to, to the families of, for safe streets earlier in
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the outreach process, they were enthusiastically supportive of the idea of including both pictures and stories of their loved ones. wow. i mean, that's it's more courageous than it even used to be, because with social media, i mean, there are so many creeps out there, i guess i just my hats off to them, and i certainly agree with your strategy of doing a saturation campaign where you try to get this message across in multiple ways. thank you, madam chair. thank you, director kahina. please thank you, madam chair. thank you so much for your presentation. it was incredibly thorough and it walked us through every, you know, process that you've gone through with this, with this whole initiative, i, i really admire the strategy that you created in terms of how to connect with different community members and get that initial buy in of let's talk to the community groups who have a vested interest in
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understanding, if we're doing this in a way that's equitable, in a way that is not really, you know, exacerbating enforcement issues. and so i just wanted to give you props on that. and also, your next phase of the strategy of, you know, speaking to community groups, i had a few questions, let's start with, sharing the footage with the police. is that something that we, just want to make sure if you could walk me through that a little bit more like, are we is that a commitment we can actually make? and is there any way that say, and perhaps susan, you can answer this too, if somebody requests a subpoena right there requesting the footage, is that an avenue somebody can take to get access to that footage? my understanding is that a court order would be required to actually get the specific images, and i did want to clarify something that director henderson asked about earlier and that you just referenced as well, when we say that we can't share the data with the police
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department, that means we can't share license plate numbers. we can't share, specific descriptions of, of, like, one particular vehicle. but we can share the work that we've done, and we've done a lot of work to figure out where speeding is happening. when it's happening, how many people are speeding? and we have been working with the police department on sharing the data that we've collected. we continue to share that data with them. and if that can help them with targeted enforcement, i think that's that's absolutely something that, you know, they could do with, with our publicly accessible data, i think we also, if we are getting into issues where, for example, if there's a location that has a high proportion of vehicles that are captured by the cameras speeding, but either don't have a visible license plate or don't have a, like there's an issue at that location, then that could also be somewhere where we, we
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share with the police, like, hey, this is a location where we need a little bit more support. so i think there's kind of a partnership there. and while we can't share the actual data, we can't say this license plate, this vehicle, we can say these are the trends that we're seeing. can we work together to work on this. and as we work with, would it be a third party vendor that we would use to manage this? that's right, are we going to have any parameters that they may, you know, about sharing information with them and how they store it? and, you know, i worry about any sort of security implications that there might be with a third party vendor if we're engaging with one. can you speak a little bit more about that? absolutely, the speed safety system use policy and impact report specific outline, what we need a vendor to do. so how we want this, the data to be kept secure, how it's disposed of, how it's shared, how it's stored, who has access to it, specific job
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classifications at mta that would be able to see it, and the required, provisions for anonymizing it as, as we're sharing it out, so all of that is outlined specifically in the system use policy, specifically saying what we're doing with the data, how it's being stored and what regulations our vendor must comply with. and the other question i had was about limiting our ability to install cameras on streets owned by caltrans. can you speak a little bit more about that? because it occurs to me that perhaps those streets are on our high injury corridor and we would want to target those streets, but i just wanted to get a better sense from you, if that's you see that as an issue and just why that that piece of the policy exists. absolutely. there are many parts of our high injury network that are not, in fact, our streets. they are the property of caltrans, the state law that allows this program to exist, this pilot program, ab 645,
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specifically says that this six participating cities can only install speed cameras on their own streets. they cannot be on the california state highway network. so that means that that subsection of our high injury network, like 19th avenue, for example, or most of sloat, those are streets that we cannot install speed cameras on, even though we would imagine that if we were to collect data on them, they would probably perform quite highly in our in our overall evaluation. it could be good locations. jeff, do you have some more insights on this? like why? why is that the case? i don't know if that was a sticky situation and it was a compromise that was made to push this legislation forward or just curious around the conversation around around that particular topic. as you've seen, there's been a lot of compromises that were necessary in order to get this legislation passed. you know, obviously, we would have preferred more cameras and more cities, quicker process to get it implemented, while we had
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tremendous support from local law enforcement who saw speed safety cameras as a force multiplier, we did not have support from state law enforcement. so in order to help make sure that we could get this through, the decision was made by the bill sponsor to simply omit inclusion of state highway corridors. got it. okay. thank you for that, and the last thing i would, just encourage, we do have a small business working group with sfmta's. i would encourage, as you're doing your outreach with corridor leaders, that's a great, you know, nexus of folks that that talk about these things that might have opinions, in addition to community benefits, district leaders and other folks there. but i'm sure that those are on your list. so absolutely, we would love to meet with them. thank you. thank you. director. so i thank you for the presentation. i am really excited and we are going to be
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just in full force as and launch this as quick as we can. wish it was done yesterday. so, pretty excited about it. i want to know when is the ribbon cutting day one third. i know it's okay. i mean, it's not about me, i just. yes, you will still be invited. yes that's not my point. i just want to. i'm saying it for all the public want to hear. because they are. i'm pretty sure my fellow parents are so excited that there are so many and the district of soma, which is where my child goes to school, which is director hemminger saying that i mean, we have been really just overjoyed about the possibility of like, we don't feel like we are endangering. we're being in danger, we're endangering each other. so just genuinely want the public to understand, like we pass the expedite the contracting, combination of rfq and rfi. rfi
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like a couple weeks ago. and so now you're quickly show us that you have worked with so many stakeholders to identify these 33 cama locations. so the next natural question is when are they coming out? yes so just to kind of frame where we are in the overall process, so the biggest issue we're working through right now is our procurement process. that is typically a process that takes between 6 and 9 months for a contract like this, we started the work back in january. so we are ready to go, earlier this afternoon, i got word that the board of supervisors has just finally approved for their second reading, the project specific legislation that we introduced here, originally back on march 19th, so what needs to happen next is it needs to be signed by the mayor, and then we start a 30 day waiting period.
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and on day 31, we will be getting our rfp out. we are we are ready the moment we can do it, we will be putting we will be advertising our rfp. we'll be working through the process to find a vendor throughout the summer. we hope to come back with the selected vendor after we go through the contract negotiation for approval by this board by the end of the summer, and as soon as we get a vendor on board, that's when things start happening really quickly. that's when we'll be looking at installing cameras. that's when we'll be really kicking off the public education campaign, that's when we will be installing the actual camera equipment as well. and testing it, calibrating it. we are aiming to get these in as soon as we possibly can. i too want them in yesterday, and everything i am doing is trying to speed up this process. i think realistically it's going to be the beginning of 2025, when we can get them up and
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running, but my understanding, we've been working very closely with the five other cities who are authorized under this pilot. i think we're going to be the first in the state to have our our cameras up and running. very nice, in understanding, i've been listening to all of my fellow directors asking these questions about accountability and how we can use this data or actually, basically, we can't share it with the, our friendly agency that actually enforce moving violations. so so, we have they seen our presentation to see where these locations are , are. yes, yes, yes. we've shared with them not only these locations that were recommended, but all of the locations that we took a look at, throughout the entire process. so would it be really helpful for the citizens of san francisco to understand how to prioritize with sfpd on
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these major locations of really put people out there to really enforce the accountability component? because data can only look so good if only sits in that little piece of paper or computer. but the premise of this is really to save lives and we are an agency where we cannot actually give moving violations, right. so i really want to make sure that every everybody here at the public understand that we have these camera, but these camera cannot send a ticket, right? to give people they can be they do. it's not it's not a moving violation in the same way okay. so it's a speeding ticket. yeah. it's a it's technically a civil penalty rather than a moving violation. and it's a sent to the owner of the vehicle rather than the person who was
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driving at the driving the vehicle at the time. oh that's great. so okay. that's that's better then i'm really more excited, you know, because then there's actually people do really do not, do not ignore our camera because you do get a ticket, so if there are situations where people this is i think we're all experienced that either in action or as a observant on the street, is someone who drives diligently following the speed. usually it's appear to be the slowest car in that street, and then people will be so annoyed and they started to like, speed up and cut in front of them and do all kinds of really dangerous stuff about the only car that is driving, according to the law and regulations. so what happened then in our camera scenario? what is it capturing? so if the driver of the vehicle
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who's getting frustrated because a car in front of them is moving too slowly for their, by their assessment, if they're, if they're speeding to go around that vehicle, and it's within the view of our camera, the camera would be triggered. so essentially it needs to it has a little radar system within the camera. and as soon as that radar system is triggered, it takes a photograph of the rear license plate of that vehicle. so if a vehicle is traveling at 11 miles an hour over the posted speed limit at that location, that would be a violation. the, license plate number would be recorded. we'd look it up, we'd look up the address, and we'd send a notice of violation to that. that vehicle's registered owner. okay. thank you. i do hope that i don't want to get into the very weeds of the engineering and technicality of the radar and the latency of the radar and the amount it took to speed up the to that 11 speed. in that short, like few feet.
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but but i do hope that trust that makes sure that when you're evaluating these technology on our vendors and make sure that they accommodate our unique behavior on our street in san francisco, that it does trigger, so i'm talking about like, latency on the radar system, on the speed and distance limitations and probably the camera view angle. so please understand it's getting a little nuts. so i am done with my comment. thank you. but i really that is actually the key part. i want to capture the people that actually are, infringing upon other good behavior citizens that we have in san francisco. absolutely. thank you, thank you director. so director tarlov. thank you. chair. ekin, so just a very few quick questions. one is just, but first of all, i just want to say that i'm, i'm 100% in favor of both pieces of
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action that we're going to take today. and, i, i just want to jump forward into the future. if we assume that the program is successful and there's future legislation at the state level, that would allow for more, cameras like this to be utilized, do you have any sense of what kind of timeline that might be? is it a decade? is it a few years? is it 50 years? i hope not 50, but, i'm not sure that i can speak on that quite as well as our, our legislative affairs team, but i would my understanding is that the data that's being collected through this five year pilot program for all of these six pilot cities is going to be very, very important in informing future legislative efforts at a state level, so at least five years i guess. i
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guess that's my assumption. but i'm not the subject matter expert on the legislative affairs side of things. thank you. i appreciate you entertaining the question anyway. and again, i'm probably going outside of your area, but i, i feel like and i, i don't feel confident enough in my, information that there, there are other cameras that are being deployed, by sfpd to identify license plates of, people coming in and out of the city. and, and is there any further information on, for me and other members of the public and my fellow directors about what those are? because i think that might, address some of the questions that have been coming about this . so, hill, do you want to address that? that is a little outside my realm, but luckily sohail is much more of an expert . hi. good afternoon. my name is
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darcy and along with my colleague, i'm managing the covid project where we get the policy in a impact approval. so other than what shannon has presented here, we also have alpr, which is automatic license plate reader that also does that. we have our toll transit only lane which functions similarly where it captures the license plate. someone comes into our red carpet lane, but it's only limited to that part. it's a pilot that we are working on. it's not really fully implemented. however, in the garages, for example, we have alpr there just collects and out of the vehicle just captures the license plate information. and our enforcement have similar alpr and that information can be shared with law enforcement, with the subpoena, of course, with the subpoena. so we have some, limitation imposed from the court side of it, how long
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we can retain the data, how we can use the data, who can share that data, things like that. so we just follow those instructions. and just so i'm sure i understand, this is an sfmta a project or it's a multi-agency project or sfpd or who, who, who owns this alpr lpr is owned by sfmta. so we have our contractor that also manage that. but again, we own that. and like i said, the toll is the pilot project. it's not fully implemented yet. so in addition, there's also a san francisco police department project that collects license plate data, some of those sfpd cameras are installed on sfmta facilities, this is a collaborative project across multiple agencies, is led by sfpd. so more cameras coming is the bottom line. that's right. and i should add that the
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city's committee on information technology, or coit, is an internationally recognized, way of making sure that we can protect personally identifiable information. the data security standards are among the best in the world, and a model for other cities. we do want to make sure that to the extent that we're collecting data that we are doing so with integrity and with adequate protection standards. thank you very much. the only other thing that i, i wanted to just note, amplify is, is the, the use of education, to help change behavior and, and i can only share that, you know, in the few months that i've been on this board and the, the, the experiences i've had listening to people who have lost, loved ones in traffic accidents,
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reading about this subject matter, it has, i don't drive a lot, actually. but when i do drive, i'm so much more careful than i was a few months ago. and i've always considered myself a pretty considerate driver. but, every, every little bit of behavior change, i think really helps. and i know it's very hard to measure, things that haven't happened, but, i, i, i appreciate that that part of the, the program. i think that's very smart idea. your comments. thank you. chair. okay. thank you so much. i will just say it. it seems to me that if there was ever a time that this city needed to have some hope in our ability to dramatically improve street safety, it is right now,
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and i just wanted to thank you for giving us hope. thank you for giving us a reason to believe that we can be optimistic about street safety. i feel you are doing heroic work and we are all rooting for you. so thank you so much. i wanted to uplift a comment that i heard at the last hearing that that felt to me, just a very sort of natural and logical line of thinking from several commenters, which was, you've now done extraordinary cutting edge work identifying the most dangerous parts of the high injury network. as director hemminger commented. and some people said, okay, 33 is not enough. we know the dangerous places. are you all considering? and maybe this is really a question for, streets director or someone else. are you all considering in the vision 02.0 sort of strategy that of course we're kicking off that process after the mayor's press conference, other treatments on those sections of the streets for which we cannot deploy a camera because of that limitation. we talked about additional enforcement in those
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sections. and i think that's a logical intervention. but are we considering using that data to sort of further refine our approach and i don't know if you want to share any reflections on that. sure. ted graf, acting streets director, the answer is very simply yes, i mean, this this information we're receiving and we will receive during this pilot, will obviously provide the most current information we have to make data driven decisions. so as we look at the high injury network and apply this information, it will absolutely inform our work plan. okay. thank you. i mean, i've just i've heard through these comments through my office hours just people asking for road diets, lane reductions, anything we can do to slow the traffic if we cannot do the speed camera and also comments around, please don't assume that we've solved the problem entirely by simply adding one camera that we need to also look at other ways to slow traffic. okay. thank you. and in my last comment is just,
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reflecting on so many of the comments i heard from colleagues here today, a little theme of sort of unfinished business in sacramento around 33 is you have you have demonstrated already that that's not going to be enough. the limitation on state owned corridors that are clearly some of the most dangerous hot spots. and i guess i'm just reflecting, i hope one that we have like written thank you notes to every person who voted yes on ab 645 and tell them that they're heroes, and also that we just continue to share information not just with our, like, san francisco legislative leaders, but all of them. what we are learning, because this is really cutting edge work that like that color of that, you are getting so many positive comments from the public. i'm quite honestly surprised how positive the feedback has been that we are getting more demand than we have supply for, and that we are just sort of continuing to have a conversation about the fact that
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this we may need to revisit, we may need to revisit this topic, hopefully to director karloff's point, maybe sooner than even than even five years. absolutely okay. thank you so much. okay. we have, director henry had a motion on the table. is there a second? okay. please call the roll. i do. i don't believe you took public comment yet. you are correct. yep. very good. thank you. we will open public comment tonight on 11. thank you so much. we do have a couple of speaker cards. milena cabada and susan george. so public comment. accept. hello hi, can you hear me? yes. okay good afternoon, director tomlin. chair ekin and the directors. my name is susan george. i live and i work in district nine. i walk and take transit daily. i do not own a car. and as a pedestrian, i am grateful that you've chosen to place speed cameras at folsom and cesar chavez and bryant and
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16th. unless those have changed, i believe those were the two in my district. both are very frightening intersections to cross, and i hope, as i just learned, that they will be placed as quickly as possible, and that the cameras are really just the tip of the iceberg with respect to safety features in our on our streets, as you just mentioned. and i hope your board continues to implement the other recommendations that are going to be mentioned here today. and thank you for your time and your work. i appreciate it. thank you. and it is. it was. i'm so happy that that ab 645 was passed. i visited sacramento a couple of times for that. so thank you. thank you, thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. thank you, director tomlin and chair ekin and all of you directors and chair ekin, thank you so much for what you just said to about our many
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years of work trying to get to 645, my name is ali geller. i work for the national organization of families for safe streets and previously for walk san francisco. i live here in the richmond neighborhood. i'm a transit writer, a cyclist, and a walker. i'm relieved and so grateful that california has passed speed camera legislation and that san francisco is a pilot city. and thank you so much for leading the charge with getting those cameras implemented. it's amazing, and with this crucial tool, we must keep going. as we've been talking about, to people who argue that vision zero has failed or is failing, it's because that is not true. but it needs to be a layered, comprehensive approach every step of the way, speed is the number one cause of fatal and severe injury crashes like the tragedies we saw at 44th in king and in west portal and in lake merced and on franklin, and on and on and on. and speed cameras
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are critical, but just one tool in our toolbox that we need to use, so san francisco must keep fast tracking. the work that that you guys have already started to do, our we must implement proven, accessible, affordable solutions like left turn calming and speed cushions and light timing, we know that in new york city, where where families for safe streets started. it left turn calming was added to 931 intersections and their crashes really plummeted. and in san francisco, we're at just 35. we need to keep going, yes, it is hard. it is hard. change is hard. it is also hard to see children in entire families, devastated and killed on our streets. so i personally am, so supportive of the work you're doing and so grateful. i am frustrated and tired of how long it's taken and encourage us all to keep going together. thank you so much. thank you. next speaker, please.
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good afternoon, director tomlyn chehregan and directors. my name is melina mackey kabata, and i'm representing walk san francisco. we all know that with every mile faster driver goes the risk goes up exponentially for all of us walking and with bigger vehicles and heavier, the risk to you and me is even greater. we are so glad that finally speed cameras are coming to san francisco. walk sf is deeply grateful to how sfmta pushed hard with us for speed camera legislation, and is working hard to get cameras on the ground as soon as possible. walk san francisco strongly supports the data based approach that sfmta has taken in speed, camera placement, and urges you to approve these today. we also urge the sfmta to not just launch these 33 speed cameras, but to take key actions at the same time to slow down drivers on many more streets.
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that includes lowering speed limits everywhere possible, putting an end to any 35 mile per hour plus streets, bringing left turn calming to all eligible high injury streets, and using speed humps and traffic light timing and speed radar signs more comprehensively . nothing matters more than speed when it comes to safe streets. this is a chance to change driver norms and save lives. thank you all. next speaker, please. my name is renata markovich. i'm a taxi driver, and, the speed lights will be will be good. the cameras. but we have another issue. the bikes, scooters and skateboarders. they run all the red lights and stop signs in the city. i'm on the road ten hours a day, and i see it. they cut us all off. even they're riding on
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the sidewalks, too. it is really the. they're hurting some of the pedestrians. as a matter of fact, i was going out of a little store on drum street and i heard this and i was about to step out of the doorway and the scooter. i heard him coming from my right, and i stepped back. he came right up on the door and his backpack hit me in the face. so and how many other people are getting hurt? i don't know, i've heard a couple from a couple of customers that they got hit by scooters and bicyclists, that everyone talks about the safety for the bikes, but they're not driving safely on the streets. they're on the sidewalks, and they go fast on the on the lanes to in their bike lanes. they're speeding. what about them and the pedestrians? and one of our, one of my friends, a taxi driver , he was standing on the curb and the bus turned and knocked him out. he was in the hospital
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for over a month, in and out of comas. so the sidewalks not very safe for pedestrians and the bikes and scooters and skateboard are really fast. they just cut everybody off constantly all day long. i try to watch them in my mirror, in my back, in the front, but they come whizzing out of nowhere, cutting us off and cutting pedestrians off. so this is something that i wish somebody would figure the something out because they're not careful. not not what? i see it all day long when i'm driving. thank you. thank you for thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. good afternoon, tom radulovic with livable city. and yeah, we're very glad this, pilot is going forward. hopefully we'll learn something for it. i mean, you all probably know this, but there's the three e's of traffic safety. there's engineering, education and enforcement education is the cheapest thing. so people tend to lean in on
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that, but it tends not to be very effective. and give you an example, i live actually on one of the streets that was chosen between two of the streets, one that was a first runner up and then one what was chosen. so guerrero street, you know, a few years ago, mta is like, oh, well, we'll hang banners, you know, it says slow down. you know, those didn't work because everything else about the design of that street tells you to drive 40mph, right? it's designed like a highway through the city. it's a totally inappropriate street design. so, we're happy to see this go forward, because this actually gives you an enforcement tool that's useful enforcement can work, but it needs to happen all the time. and in our city, the police unfortunately, have stepped away from enforcement entirely. and that's that's appalling, but this will allow you to at least at 33 locations, enforce all the time, and send people these notes. but we definitely think that the engineering which is expensive and takes time, is the most effective. if you really look at the cities that are making progress on this, they're leaning into phasing out the most dangerous and inappropriate street designs and sticking
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with, proven street designs that work. so we hope that vision 02.0 will really lean into street design, street type and not, you know, kind of palliative. but really, what are these streets like? guerrero street, like all of these soma streets, you know, this very, very dense neighborhood, very mixed use with these very long blocks, multi-lane one way streets that's a terrible mismatch between land use and street use and street design. so we hope that as this moves forward, that you will really look at the engineering tools that you have available, what's working in other cities, and kind of fundamentally redesign the streets that are the least safe and that cause the most injuries. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon, rachel card from the san francisco bicycle coalition. and i'm here representing thousands of our members in support of the automated speed enforcement pilot project. as
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has already been shared, this technology will have a huge impact on our entire city and prevent many unnecessary deaths and injuries, no one wants to attend any more vigils or rallies or protests. no one wants to mourn any more fallen friends, family and peers due to traffic violence. and we look forward to the day when those things no longer no longer exist in our city. and we believe that these locations chosen for the pilot project can help take us there. we graciously appreciate shannon and the dedicated staff working on this project to make it happen as efficiently and effectively as possible, and we will continue to participate in the outreach process and encourage our members to do the same. the san francisco bicycle coalition asks that the board approves the locations proposed today and advance it to the board of supervisors, so we can move forward with the next steps. thank you, thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon. my name is matt sutter. i own a taxi medallion here in san francisco. i'm in favor of the cameras, i'm old
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and slow. so 20, 30 years ago, when i started, i might not have wanted them. you also have to look at the intersections prior to these incidents, you guys are focusing on turk and venice. the light at polk and turk enable people to speed up, to make that light. so that's why we're having problems, i've always been in favor of putting license plates on bicycles, because they also should be getting speeding tickets and running red lights, and that's something that you guys should really. you know, i think we should all look at that for san francisco. and the other thing is, i do notice that some of these intersections, i mean, it went fast for me, but some of these are intersections around the schools, around senior citizens. i understand there is a couple of them in there that it's almost impossible to speed. so, but i definitely am in favor of this, but we should look at the lights before these
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incidents are happening. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. good afternoon. my name is nnamdi sharma. i'm a taxi driver. basically, i'm a civil engineer. so i think first thing is you should visit my city, chandigarh. it's capital of two states, two states share my city. it designed by american architect albert meyer and swiss french architect leo corbusier. it's very modern city. our traffic rules, regulations. perfect. they install the camera. police officers don't have to give a ticket to anybody . cameras cap. they started in covid time. no one was wearing masks. they were giving tickets to people with the cameras and no one wearing helmet stick. they sent by mail. so other thing is, in this city, it's not well designed. intersections, traffic light timing don't match
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and drivers cannot make right turn or left turn because pedestrian never stopped. they never look at the with their phone. another thing is scooters. those skateboard bicyclists, they use taxi bus lane. they torture us. they just use basically the torture. believe me, they traumatize us. we cannot tolerate it. we cannot go around them. other side, other vehicles. when we use bus taxi lane and sometime bus has like a 60 passengers. but bus driver cannot do something. we have to go around the bus to hong kong. the bicycle or scooters. so move away. we have to go and busses behind. so bus has to go on time. we have to go on time with the passenger. we are losing business. we don't have much business if someone is sitting in a cab. if we don't go on time, we'll lose it. i think you specifically have to work on those taxi bus lanes. thank you. thank you for your comment. oh,
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i have one minute. oh, is that correct? it's up to your discretion. okay. go ahead. the other question i do have is we do lease out our taxis, so i receive a civil ticket because another driver is speeding. and what about the taxi companies? what are we going to do about them with multiple drivers? thank you. okay thank you very much. any other speakers on this item? hey, it's me and my co chair for traffic safety task force, we are in support of this , agenda item, as it meets one of our priorities, which is to prioritize the tl to receive a speed camera as part of the pilot program, so it's nice to have, one of our lists crossed out at this point, certainly this year, and also, i just want to express my gratitude to sfmta for really working with us on this, i came in as a co-chair, and a lot of the work has already been done. so it's nice
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to be on the other side of it where everything is actually happening, but i also do want to emphasize, especially with a lot of reports this week around enforcement, it is a piece to the whole puzzle, but i don't want a lot of focus on it, as it was mentioned before for, the most expensive but the most effective is around, infrastructure. and so i just want to mention that so that we don't lose sight that that is really where we need to be, because infrastructure will always be there, well, the cameras will always be there as well, but again, thank you so much for this. and yeah, that's it. your comment. next speaker, please. hi, board members, luke bornheimer, first and foremost, i want to thank shannon and the team for their, their detailed, thoughtful and really quick work to move this project forward, yeah. so thank you to them. i support the 33 locations and urge you to approve the items before you today. i do want to note a few things. so one, i
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think, and i brought this up before at vision zero subcommittee meetings, that there is potential unintended consequences of installing automated speed enforcement cameras, notably that we might stop redesigning streets that have a lot of speeding because there's an automated speed enforcement camera there. so there's like an unintended consequence and maybe we want to keep issuing tickets there and maybe not redesign the street or redesign a different street that doesn't have an automated speed enforcement camera, on that note, many of the streets with cameras are multi-lane one way streets and all of the streets with cameras have two or more travel lanes in one or both directions, to director hemings's comment five of the seven cameras in soma are multi-lane one way streets, and the one street in the tenderloin. turk street is a multi lane, one way street. i will also note that the block of turk street where the where the camera is between polk and van ness is the first block after the turk street separated bike lane ends. so i'll just point
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that out, also, franklin street, where community members have called for a road diet and a protected bike lane, and where the agency went back on a commitment to implement a road diet, multiple streets are nearby highway on ramps or off ramps. so further reason to, you know, redesign those streets. and i just want to flag this concern and urge you all to take action to ensure the streets division will redesign streets with speeding issues, to eliminate speeding, for example, by converting one way streets to two way streets and installing protected bike lanes and physically separated transit only lanes, i also just want to note that we should learn from new york city specifically around illegal behavior with license plates both obscuring or using illegal license plates, also including police officers. where in new york city their personal vehicles they use illegal plates. thank you, thank you. any other speakers on item 11? okay. we'll close public comment. we had a motion and a second. i think we can call the roll, please. very good on the motion to approve. director heminger heminger. director henderson i henderson i director
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kinsey i kinsey i director. so i so i director tarloff i tarlov i director kikina i can i can i thank you. that item is approved. thank you. please call the next item. item 12 discussion and vote. pursuant to government code section 54957.6 and admin code section 67. 10e as to whether to invoke the attorney client privilege to conduct a closed session conference with designated representatives julie kirschbaum and shayna dines. we will open public comment for our decision to go into closed session. is there any comment on that decision? okay. seeing none, we'll close public comment. we will take a break shortly, may i please have the motion to go into closed session? so moved second. second. thank you. please call the roll. yay i on that motion to go into closed session. director heminger heminger i director henderson
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henderson i director kinsey i kinsey i director. so i so i director tarlov i tarlov i director katina i chair eakin thank you i and i thank you. the board will now go into closed session. we will need to clear the room for this item. we will open the doors back to open session. after we conclude the closed session, we're going to take a brief recess. v. 13. we're back in open session. very good. directors. that places you on item 13. announcement of closed session. the board met in closed session to discuss item three and took no action on places. you on item 14. motion to disclose or not disclose the information discussed in closed session. so moved motion not to disclose. thank you. i'll take that as a motion and a second. please call the roll on that motion. director heminger heminger i, director henderson i henderson i director kinsey i kinsey i
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director so i so i director tarloff i tarlov i director kikina i kikina i chair ekin i can i thank you. the motion passes in place is you on items 15 a and 15 b all together. thank you. item 15 b a 15 a approving the sfmta's fiscal year 2025 to 2029 capital improvement program cip of $2.559 billion in fiscal year 24 and 25, and fiscal year 2526. capital budget in the amounts of $423.3 million in fiscal 24 and 25 fiscal year, and $586.3 million in fiscal year, 2526, including 180 recommended projects within ten capital programs and agency wide initiatives. fleet transit fixed guideway transit optimization facility, streets, signals, communications, and it security, parking, taxi and accessible services, and agency wide initiative. item 15 b approving
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the sfmta fiscal year 24 and 25 and fiscal year 2526. operating budget in the amounts of $1.445 billion and $1.489 billion, respectively, for operating expenditures, 76.5 million and $78 million, respectively, for capital expenditures, was inclusive of a transfer from operating funds of $5.3 million in fiscal year 24, 25 and $6.7 million in fiscal year 2526, for a combined total appropriation of $1.516 billion and $1.561 billion, respectively, and the capital budget in the amounts of $423.3 million in $586.3 million, respectively, and taking related actions as listed under items a through g in the agenda. that's it. good afternoon, directors. my name is brenda horta. i'm the cfo and i'm here to present to you the
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operating in the capital budget. and if you would just indulge me for a quick minute before we begin, the for those of you who don't know the entire operating budget capital or the entire budget team, both an operating and capital, with the exception of one person on the capital budget, turned over around christmas. and so i just really want to thank, i thanked the capital analyst when i presented the capital budget for the first time, but i really want to thank the operating budget analyst today because these guys were like little birds in the nest who got zero hours. they just instantly were like, well, i hope you fly so. and they really, truly have they have learned so much and i'm so proud of them. and i would say the thing i'm most proud of is that they got shushed at the morning meeting the other day. they were having too much fun doing the operating budget, which i think is like truly a testament to the team, right? when you're response to pressure is to laugh together and work together, then
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you're in a pretty a pretty good place. so to gabe carcamo, karen carrasco, ellen hoffler, christina yu, daisy hernandez, and alvin lang, all of us who have joined us in 2024, thank you very much for your very. oh, they didn't make it. oh, there they are. there, there they are, and to also two very special people who in december when i was like, wow, what am i going to do here, victoria very generously offered and fritzlar and andrea buffa to support and they have been invaluable in their support. so i think they're not here, but i'm sure they'll they'll hear about it later. so ladies, thank you very much. so with that, here we go. so today's presentation is going to cover everything that's changed since we last spoke on april 2nd. we'll be talking about obviously the operating in the capital budget in response to director eakins question last
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time, we'll do a little bit more focused. look at how the priorities expressed at the workshop have been met in this budget. and then we'll talk about next steps. today's ask is that you vote on the operating and capital budget or provide very, very, very, very, very specific direction about what you would like to see differently in order for the last chance opportunity to vote next tuesday on the 23rd. so, we have heard we heard a lot of things in the budget process, both from you all and from members of the public, and here in the room, as well as in our many, many community meetings, we heard people say that they wanted transit fare increases to be limited. people were interested in having fare compliance improved and expanded and improved muni service focusing on street safety and preparing to initiate parking reform in the next budget cycle, making agency operations more efficient, and then also supporting taxi drivers. since
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april 2nd, there have been a number of technical changes that have happened. we updated our general fund revenues consistent with the joint report that was issued two weeks ago. unfortunately, that did result in a revenue reduction, we incorporated the revenue assumptions associated with the balancing revenue and ridership option, colloquially known as option seven, which we heard about from the board last week. we added both positions and revenue related to enforcing traffic operations, enforcing parking regulations, tied to which is the treasure island development authority. we added the access for all grant and associated positions and costs, which is a grant that the taxi unit is using to or. i'm sorry, thames is using to increase access for paratransit riders, part of the, loss of general
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fund revenue would have resulted in a loss to the capital budget. we used fund balance to backfill that loss, protecting both the streets and the capital budgets. we have updated our labor costs consistent with the tentative agreements. we have updated all of our work orders, consistent with ongoing city negotiations, which will continue through the june budget cycle for general fund departments. and we also incorporated one time equipment costs, moving them from where they used to be shown in the agency wide division to all of their respective divisions. for more transparent budgeting, i will remind you that even though it's been a long journey, we're not all the way there yet. in may, what the state budget revise could claw back some of the state budget revenue, which would could impact up to $99 million in year one and $209 million in year two. the if that were to happen we would have to
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manage that through a managing to actuals during fiscal year 2425 and 2526, as we've noted many times, labor accounts for 63% of our budget and our ten. our labor agreements expire in june 24, and we're still in negotiations. and then other city departments who introduce their budgets at the june 1st budget, in the june 1st budget cycle, may have impacts to our budget, that which will require rebalancing. and so i've, putting on the advanced calendar a final informational update to update you on all of those changes that happen, when we when we have a final, final budget in july. so the operating budget, as christine said, at the top, all in our budget is about $1.4 billion. that's 2.7% growth in year one and 3.1%
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growth in year two. and though that growth is actually less than what is assumed for cola and for cpi inflation, and so what that really shows is how hard the mta is working to build a budget that is really efficient and put prioritizes all of our resource sources to their highest and best use, essentially, we are growing. the total of the budget is growing less than what was required to grow with cola and cpi, and we're making all of our investments with the existing envelope. so it just shows that we're really working hard to be more efficient. but, lest there be concern, there is enough money, we are projected to expend about $1.35 billion in this current fiscal year, so that $1.4 billion envelope does leave us enough room to do all of the things that we are doing today, both next year and the year after. on the revenue side side, everything is pretty much
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the same as you saw april 2nd, our increases in operating grants and federal and state relief offset decreases in parking and transit revenue. and i do want to be clear that these decreases are budget over, budget decreases. so what we're essentially doing is now that we are in a kind of a post covid world and we have entered this place where we where we're seeing transit and parking revenue be a little bit more consistent. we are resetting the budget down to a level that is consistent with the actuals that we are seeing now in the current year, there is the there is a large age, growth in other revenue in year one and then a correction in year two. and what that reflects is the use of fund balance to make some one time investments in year one of the budget and then a return to normal in year two. on the expenditure side. and you can
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see that growth in materials and supplies and services of other departments is partially offset by reduction in labor cost. and again, most of that, that reduction in labor costs is reflective of and includes cola increases. and so that the reason we were able to have labor go down was the impact of putting over 400 positions on budget hold. so increases in wages were offset by putting positions on budget hold, when you look at expenditure by function, you can see that there was a decrease in taxi. but i want to clarify that that is the impact of a right sizing of the pair paratransit contract, which had been budgeted over the levels at which it was expended. and because that required an operating fund match, it was tying up a lot of cash and budget authority that couldn't
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be expended elsewhere. so this was a correction to allow for more efficient expenditure. and then the increase in administrative support is the reflection of some costs moving from the agency wide division to the administrative division and the consolidation of workers comp and rent, which are both very, expensive costs for the agency. having those consolidated into our administrative function as opposed to having them live in the divisions, you can also see the small amount of growth in streets, which is reflective of the 36 transit fare inspectors, 35 inspectors and one supervisor, as well as some pcos and a supervisor to enforce parking on treasure island. looking at our ftes, you can see that our ftes remain pretty steady throughout the next two years. again, that's part of our cost control measures. and recognizing that year three challenge and trying to keep our
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expenditure consistent with what we can afford, the growth in streets, again, is reflective of the 36 and then pcos and a supervisor for enforcement at tida. there is, some an increase in administrative support, and that's reflected of a number of positions coming over from dr. to consolidate eeo functions within mta, as well as a number of contracting staff moving from other divisions into the administrative support division to make our contracting more efficient and use agency resources more efficiently, to as we've all been over in painstaking detail, this budget reflects some fairfield fee and fine increases will be reducing our transit fares by 20, but reducing the clipper discount for transit fares in year one with no change to cash fare indexing the cable car and
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reducing the multiplier from 32 to 31, which relatively decreases the cost of the monthly pass, as well as keeps the cost of the lifeline pass for our low income residents. low in year two, we achieve a board priority of returning to indexing and again offset the cost of that to our monthly riders by reducing the multiplier one more time from 30 to 31 to pay for these, low lower transit fare increases, we increase parking fines by 8% each year, 16% total. we bring the cost of rpp permits up to full cost recovery, and we reinstate an index. taxi fees, excluding those fees for drivers . there are some other fare changes that we should pause for a minute and talk about. we implemented two pilot passes during the budget cycle. one was a cable car ticket for california to help drive traffic to the california line, and that not only increased ridership on
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that line, it also generated an additional $77,000 in revenue. so we are proposing to make that change permanent. and in addition, we did a pilot to, reduce the difference between a multi-day visitor pass that was purchased on muni mobile with one that was purchased in person. because it's it is the same pass. and so we wanted the prices to be equivalent. and we wanted to reduce some of the friction that that was creating when people realized that they if they had bought their pass in a different way, they could have paid a different price, which was really challenging for the staff selling those passes to handle. and we found that sales increased three months, 30% in the first three months of the pilot. so again, we feel like this was a really effective fare change and we'd like to make it permanent, as required by title six, we did an analysis of both of these fare changes, and there were no findings related to any of the transit fare increases
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that we discussed with regard to regular riders. however there was a disparate impact found for the multi-day visitor pass. but because that population is constantly changing, because who visits today is different than who visits tomorrow, we're not able to mitigate that change. and there is an option, if you even if you have a disparate impact with a fare change to acknowledge the disparate impact, acknowledge there's no way to mitigate and continue to move forward, which is what we are recommending that we do, and on the capital budget, as christine mentioned, the capital budget is or the cip, rather is $2.5 billion and the largest funding source, just as a reminder, is federal formula funds. that makes up 48% of our capital budget, which is significant because federal formula funds come with a lot of
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rules and are mostly directed at transit and within transit, are mostly directed to fleet. and so that makes a lot of sense that when you look at our capital expenditure, that fleet is our largest cost center, making up 41% of the budget, i think there's a really strong connection between what funding sources and their funding rules are and what we choose to fund. and sometimes that makes it challenging for us to achieve all of our policy hopes and dreams. but i do want to point out that the cip is just a snapshot. our capital program is evolving all the time, what's happening today is just a reflection of our current state of affairs. and as grant awards come in, as we do project close outs, that might leave some unexpended funds as funds that we have on hand, particularly bond funds, earn interest or their schedule changes in
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projects that require a change in sequencing. these are all opportunities to shift our capital budget around, and i do want to assure you that we have heard the board's priority that, that you would like to see more invested in our safe streets. and that's certainly something that we will keep in mind as new funding opportunities and changes to the capital program come up during the next two years. so in response to director ekin's question last week, how does this budget meet the priorities the board expressed at the workshop, we're going to go through each of those priorities one by one. so on the subject of muni service, the muni service takes up 54% of our operating budget. so we are investing a lot in providing muni service. it costs a lot of money to fund 72 lines and to pay for approximate only 2500 transit operators, all the maintenance staff and the car cleaners that make the system work, as well as all the fuels
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and materials and supplies that are required for service and maintenance. but i don't want you to think that just because we're doing all the standard things, we're not going above and beyond to do more, to places where we made investments in the transit system, there is an elevator attendant program that makes sure that elevators are safe for riders and civic center that we run in conjunction with bart. in the past, this was a little bit of a turnover. the couch and see if you can pay for this program, but we recognize how important safety, security, cleanliness are to our riders and how important that is to muni service. so we've made that a budgeted expense for the next two years to make sure that we have the funds to invest it, in addition, we're making two large investments in our cad, avl system, which is our dispatch system, as well as maintenance of our radio system. both of those systems came off warranty this year. and so, we need to invest in their overall maintenance. and even though a
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radio system does not sound that exciting, just to point out how critical it is, if the radio system goes out for more than 20 minutes, we have to call 100% of the vehicles back to the depot. so that would be a catastrophic failure. so even things that sometimes aren't the most glamorous are really important to keeping the system reliable, on the capital side, we continue to innovate through our transit optimization program to make muni fast, frequent, and reliable. we are a part of doing that is replacing our entire lrv fleet, which makes the rider enhances the rider experience. they're new, they're efficient, they're pleasant, we keep our maintenance program running smoothly by doing our state of good repair system and the tunnels, and i am very excited to join the maintenance staff someday soon. i know, director so went to walk around the
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tunnels and see what's in there, and then we'll also be working on the geary boulevard improvement project, which, you know, if it's if the success of venice is any indicator of how important these projects can be with making transit faster, you know, i think this is exactly the kind of investment that we need to be making to make our service better on the street safety side, 15% of our operating budget goes to support street safety. as per usual, we're funding the salaries and benefits of sign workers and painters, but we're also doing some new and innovative things. and i think this is a reflection of something that i said earlier in the budget cycle, which is doing things better and differently, doesn't always require more money or more of something. it can also mean existing your, shifting your existing resources. so so one thing we're doing is we're taking three existing engineering positions and we're creating a safe system team that is going to focus engineering resources on the work of vision
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zero, and then coordinating with our shops on the implementation of the vision zero projects that they design. we're also devoting additional communications resources to build a really robust communication program, so that is that it matches our transit communication program to make sure that the community knows all the important work we're doing around vision zero. as director tumlin has mentioned, we are retooling our approach to our muni forward projects to make sure that when we touch a transit project, we're also making the streets safe, safer, and then we're doing lots of little things around the margin. like, for example, we are buying a specialty street sweeper that will, do special street sweeping in bike lanes and painted safety zones. we are making the first budget investment in many years in vehicles for the paint and signal shop. i think sometimes, it non-revenue vehicles seem like a very boring. like what
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does that do to support vision zero? but all of these people who paint the crosswalk and who install the bollards and do the carry heavy equipment out to the streets to implement the designs, they have to get there somewhere and they have to carry their equipment and they need vehicles to do that, and then we're also, as you recently heard in the presentation before me, we're making a significant investment in the poles and cameras for automated speed enforcement. as well as professional services to do the monitoring of those cameras and bringing down our speeds is a really important way that we make our streets safer. on the capital side, we will be continuing to implement vision zero through our quick build program and we're really excited to be making two really significant investments in signals, both in western addition and the tenderloin, showing our commitment to both equity and street safety on the side of personal safety and security. we know that's
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something that's really important to the board, as well as to members of the public. we'll be adding 36 transit fare inspectors, 35 inspectors and one supervisor. this will restore staffing to 2019 levels and encourage fare compliance. and, having more mta staff in the system also increases the feeling of security overall and provides another resource that people can ask questions to for wayfinding. and we're incorporating information about our discount program aims into the work of the transit fare inspectors. so if you're writing and you don't have a ticket and it's for a reason of income, we can point you towards our discount programs. and we do also have a capital program for security. we are making some significant investments in the next two years into rekeying our facilities to make sure that our employees are safe, and we also harden the system against external threats on the side of innovation and efficiency. we
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are constantly looking at our subway performance and identifying ways to improve our efficiency and reliability. the thames division is doing the taxi up front fare pilot, which is where people can use an app to book a taxi fare for a fixed price and pay that price up front, supporting both the taxi industry and people who need to use taxis to get around, we are very excited to be participating in clipper 2.0, which will make credit onboard credit card payment possible in the system, and also automating inventory control and in the capital side. two particular capital projects, the electrification of kirkland and presidio demonstrates our commitment to being more efficient through our transit transition to electrification. we also know that communications and building trust are really important to the board. so we are relaunch ing the community equity group. the community equity group brings together a
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variety of staff and members of the community from equity neighborhoods, and they are actually going to be reviewing the metrics against which we measure our service. and so that is going to be a really important way that we make sure that the service that we're providing is not only reliable, but also equitable. we are continuing to work on our community liaison liaison program, which includes four language specific staff, two to focus on outreach in the spanish speaking and cantonese communities, and then two staff who will be focusing specifically on language translation and as i mentioned at one of our previous presentations, we'll be using one of our mayor's fellows to focus on our discount programs and how we increase our touch points with existing city programs and make sure that we are helping people who are already accessing many of the programs that the city offers for low income residents, making sure that we are on our discount programs are on the menu of
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things that they are presented with. when they are accessing the system and on the capital side, even the capital budget, influences how we communicate with our customers. we're making significant investments, investments in our customer information system, which tells people when their next bus or their next vehicle will arrive, another direction that the board gave at the workshop was to work on the year three deficit problem, the proposed budget does decrease the budget from 244 million to 227 million. it's a decrease of 16.6 million, or 7, which is not a lot i acknowledge in the face of 220 million. but given that we did so while supporting well deserved employee raises and allowing materials and supplies, professional services and capital equipment to grow the price of those things to grow with inflation, i think that even holding steady and even a
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slight reduction in is a success in the face of upward cost pressure. so where are we today, we are at our either our final or second to final budget hearing, where you will either vote today on the budget or give very, very specific directions on what you would like to see differently. we will present the budget to the mayor on may 1st, and then the board will have until july to take an action on that, on the budget to take an action would mean to reject the budget in its entirety, at which point we would begin again on a on a very tight timeline, so as i mentioned, today is your opportunity to vote for the budget or ask for very, very specific changes. and i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. thank you so much, colleagues, i'd like to go to public comment before we have our final discussion on on the budget. i'm going to open up
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public comment and let you take a break. miss mulhauser, i do have several speaker cards marcelo fonseca, evelyn engel, ali ashgar, namdev sharma. hello again. my name is marcel fonseca. as i mentioned before, i started driving a cab 35 years ago. very proud of my long career and always deeply concerned about what's going on with the taxi industry. when this agency was faced with a major budget deficit back in 2010, it turned the taxi industry into a cash cow, bringing forward the medallion sales program, this agency made a lot of money monetizing the medallion system. it actually balanced its budget on the backs
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of hard working cab drivers. but as i said before, the medallion sales program has failed. the last medallion sold was in april of 2016. that was eight years ago, and almost half of those medallions have been foreclosed on. we, as an industry, we have never recovered from the adverse effect it has had on us today. yet again, you're faced with another budget deficit and your cfo and your taxi division yet again suggests using the taxi industry as a cash cow. i beg you to learn from the past. i beg you to veer off the wrong path of your predecessors. i beg you not to squeeze more money out of a broken industry. clearly, the medallion sales program is broken. i beg you not
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to reinstate any taxi fees until there is a political will from the mayor's office, the board of supervisors, and from the mta to fix it. please do not. do not hammer the final nail in our coffins, please. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. hello. my name is evelyn engel. i'm with the taxi workers alliance. i'm here to talk about taxi fees, and make a very, very specific request. so so, as you know, we have not recovered ridership from the pandemic, and we are still suffering from the blow dealt by this industry to the industry when the city allowed the unregulated entry of uber and lyft. the taxi industry has been resilient, but it is also fragile. we don't believe the
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fees are viable. we are asking you at the very least, to reduce, to waive completely or reduce the medallion holder fees, you have very wisely chosen not to reinstate driver fees, so it's important to remember that the prop k medallion holders are drivers to our taxi drivers to. most of them have driven a taxi for at least 25 years, and they invested years of their lives in in keeping their names on the waiting list to get a medallion back when it was issued based on seniority. this medallion was a ticket to a better life. in two, it could be leased to a color scheme. in 2010. it could bring in $2,000 a month. you didn't get rich, but it was good. and that value, that least value of medallion, has plummeted. most drivers are getting one tenth of that 200 a month. some i know are getting 100 a month. some are getting nothing. this $685 fee for a prop k medallion holder could be 28.5% of the
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income it brings in, and it's even worse for the pre-k medallions. who are value get the same low lease value, but their renewal fee is double. it's likely the fee will exceed the income the medallion will bring in. so we're we're we're concerned that medallion holders , a portion of them will return their medallions to the city. you won't get the money. each medallion turned in is a cab off the street, a taxi driver out of work. the loss of the potential to grow the industry. if we could rebound. so please don't take away our hope to grow and rebound. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. good afternoon, board of supervisor. as you guys know, we've been coming for many, many years to solve a problem, but this is the season now. but we don't have the business. seven eight. our tax to get in. somebody's in our cab from the
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airport. so it's very struggling 15, 16 hours. so please be serious and think about the taxi driver where they're going to go. because we have the family. we have the same expenses as everybody else. we pay everything. so we need to figure it out. we're confused. we are stressed. we're depressed. our families are depressed. so please help us out if you will be positive to us. i swear and witness in front of you guys from the god will bring you the good happiness to the city and to your families. but do not leave us alone. we are part of you. we're helping and serving your city because, as you said, but we're hoping every day when we get up, we say, today we'll see some news. but we are getting darker and darker and dark. we need to get out of that. and you will get serious and help us out. please do not mean to be us. we're helping you
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guys. we're serving 16 to 18 hours a day with families. so please help us out, get serious and just do something. believe me, trust me. god is going to do something better for you. believe me. that's why i'm. that's my belief. so thank you so much. thank you for your comment. are there any other speakers on the budget? i have more speaker cards. matthew sutter, hector cho, pd, brant johnson, barry toronto, spanky reinhardt, waimea kuwait's. i'm still here. hi i'll read some notes. my name is brant johnson. i'm a taxi driver since 94. i'm also a p medallion holder. i know that what's being proposed is, annual fee return for k medallion holders, but
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that is affecting me as well. i don't like coming here. it's really difficult for me. i have a family. i'm off today. it makes me anxious to have to come and say something and i feel like it's a dog and pony show that's already been rubber stamped. and we're here just to let our voices be heard. that's how it feels in the past to me, is that i come in and say what i need to say and leave. and then it's already it's already been decided on. so we know that you've likely made your decision, and our voices are irrelevant to you. and we see the mta going after us, the most vulnerable, to attempt to balance the mismanaged budget. wondering what happened to the 700 plus million dollars from covid relief that was given. gifted that we didn't see any of the cab drivers didn't see any relief from that. the new york city cab drivers have some relief of their medallion
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program. we still have nothing here, how was bilking our industry of the taxis with the failed medallion program? not enough for your budget? wondering about the $250,000 per medallion that was charged for that didn't wasn't enough. we see the outrageous corruption and shady backdoor deals with taxis and driverless car companies. here's a simple idea how about you require a $250,000 medallions and yearly registration fees for every lyft, uber and driverless car that works in san francisco? to figure out a way to do that. that will help the budget. the bing was my time. i have a few seconds, i guess i would say shame on the sfmta, but i honestly don't think they have the human capacity for shame. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. hi. good evening. this is i'm
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barry toronto. i want to welcome , director tarlov to the board, we've met her online, but not in person. so it's great to have you and welcome to see, commissioner kahina back, director kenya, i want to say i came here and i've been here in a while because it's expensive for me to come here because i'm not making money as a cab driver , i work at night, and i serve a certain clientele that needs cabs at night. most of the cavs have now worked during the day because most of the money is available during the day. you sit at a nightclub for a half hour to 45 minutes. you leave empty. so what you're doing is, is you're is you ask the question, director tarlov, about the who's paying the fees. well the companies and the medallion holders and the dispatch companies. where's the money coming from? it's coming from the taxi drivers. and how are the taxi drivers going to pay it? by increasing the fees i have to pay every day or every week, depending on my arrangement with the company.
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and if it goes up, i don't drive anymore. and, and you need drivers out there when it's really busy because otherwise i bet you're in the pockets of uber and lyft because you're helping the surge pricing, the outrageous pricing for the customer is ridiculous for uber and lyft during busy times and after baseball and basketball games and major concerts. so if that's what you want to continue to do, put me out of work and let them pay an exorbitant amount of money. i don't think that's what you really want to do. there's so much money out there and enforcing cap stands and wide zones and double parking the transit lanes. look at the transit lane violations on mission street. you could make $1 million a day just on mission street by the illegal parking in the special zones and in the transit lanes. i'm telling you, there's so much money out there. by by improving your enforcement. or how about just take away five, five
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inspectors and not put me out of work? thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. i'm renata markovic. i've been driving for 31 years, the taxi. and i love the job and the thing is, the business is not back to normal yet. there's so many closed shops. we don't have people coming downtown to shop like they used to. and half the office buildings are closed. you know, they're they're empty. the people are working remote. i suppose. and to get a few conventions and get a few tourists, and we hope, you know, lots of times the only place to go is, is pier 39. now they've blocked it off. we only five cabs and they keep shushing everybody out and we paying fees
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and they, they don't care, you know. and we try to we sit at the hotel at the taxi stands sometimes we get some people and sometimes no, i have a couple of ladies that i drive that call me, you know, a few times a week i got that, but great. but the business is just not back yet. when we see all the empty stores downtown town, it's really like a ghost town. even around union square. so many are empty. mission street, they're still fixing it. and it's an empty store. just a few stores on it. and it's not how it used to be. it used to be everything full and busy, and it's really suffering. and then when you got uber, uber and lyft, they don't pay fees, they pay nothing. they just get in the car and drive. and now we have this driverless car. why do we have to have driverless cars on the street?
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that doesn't make sense. you know, i don't know google. they they don't want to have to pay a driver. but i know they have some guys monitoring sometimes. but those drive those driverless cars are scary. and my customers tell me that all the time. they don't want to get in them. and i did have some customers tell me that when they tried it, the cars didn't let them out, drove them around for hours. that is your time. that was. thanks for your comment. yeah. could we have the next speaker, please? good afternoon. my name is spanky and i'm a k medallion holder. five six, one. back in the 90s, there was a time for a couple of years when i drove airport shuttle and. and if any
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of you lived in san francisco ten years ago or even before the pandemic, you will remember seeing super shuttles you couldn't stand in front of city hall without seeing a super shuttle going by within 5 to 10 minutes. most of them were big blue ones called super shuttles. there was lorries, there was yellow. there were a bunch of. there was bay porter express, there were a bunch of different super shuttles. they don't exist anymore. that's a whole industry that's been decimated that i'm sure some of you literally have seen it, or some of you have probably taken super shuttles to the airport and you can't do it anymore. and what i'm saying, that is what's happening to the taxi cab industry right now, because not here, just here in san francisco, in los angeles, they're putting driverless vehicle cars on the road. and what's to stop the owners from cab companies putting driverless cars on the road? we talk about
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computers taking away the jobs of people, and you see it happening to us right here at the forefront of that. the cab drivers, we're the first ones that you see computers taking the place of. so whatever you can do to help us, please do that. thank you. thank you, thank you for your comment. other speakers on the budget. hey, good afternoon. my name is amy. i'm organizing tenderloin. i'm probably not surprised about my comment, but i still prefer to have no fare increases or getting rid of the clipper discount, indexing is okay, but it should not increase fares that it becomes unaffordable, the lifeline program is okay, but it's not the most equitable program. doing paperwork and having to pay 50% is not really, helpful to a lot of folks with a lot of the cost that's going up, people can't still afford it, i
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thought increasing parking fines to 10% was the most reasonable proposal, that we heard, but it's disappointing that it's not on the table anymore. more, we can find a funding through parking fees. and that meets the transit first policy. more than increasing fares. what worries me about increasing fares now, without including parking fees might set a precedent where we prioritize car users over public transit users. what happens in a couple of years? are we going to start charging people $10 or more to avoid service cuts? i understand that people like fast and reliable, but it's not always guaranteed affordability. you can't guarantee i might be okay if fares are high. if i can get a refund if my bus is late, are we ever going to bring down fares in the future? this is what worries me with the focus on fare increases. again, thank you for your time. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. good afternoon, directors. dylan favors from san
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francisco transit riders. i'm here today to urge you to reject the clipper fare increase in today's proposed budget. for transit riders, the budget is not equitable, nor is it a good compromise. over the past few meetings, you've heard from transit transit riders like myself talk about why the steep fare increase being proposed today is a bad idea. it discourages transit ridership, which goes against our mode shift climate and vision zero goals. it hurts seniors, paratransit users and clipper pass users who will all see fares go up between 12 to 14. it makes it less likely that transit riders will enthusiastically support the many transit funding measures currently in the works for the next few years, and it hurts the majority of muni's low income riders, most of whom have already shifted to paying with clipper by. by the way, 70% of low income clipper, 70% of low income muni riders are paying with clipper, which means the clipper discount program is actually a more successful discount program for low income riders than the lifeline pass,
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the good news is that sfmta can avoid these steep fare increases today by increasing parking fines by 9, instead of the 8% that's currently on the table. for drivers. that's only a matter of a few extra bucks per parking ticket, but all told, enough to keep the clipper discount intact and save the riders and save riders potentially hundreds of dollars each year, for a rider who takes muni to work each day, that's $175 per year, to put that into perspective, a driver would have to rack up $36, increased parking tickets. so 30 parking tickets a year to see the same, increase, it shouldn't be sfmta's policy to fill its deficit by placing a larger financial burden on its most transit dependent riders than its worst serial parking offenders. for specific changes, the agency should reject or amend today's proposed budget and instead support last meeting's option eight. raise clipper fares by indexing only and increased parking fines by 9. instead of 8. that's a
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compromise that transit riders can get behind. thank you, thank you. are there any additional comments on the budget? any remote accommodation requests. okay. we'll close public comment on this item. and the item is before you colleagues is knowing. we have had many, many conversations over the last several months. i would love to know if there are any remaining questions or comments anyone would like before we call for a vote. okay nope. director tarloff, are you? no, i was just saying if anybody okay, i didn't i didn't see your name showing. okay, if there's no comment, i will ask for a motion on both 15 a and 15 b. the operating and capital budgets. is there motion
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and a second. i'll move it. thank you. is there a second? okay. please call the roll on the motion to approve items 15 a and 15 b. director heminger heminger i, director henderson henderson. i director hinsey i. i director. so i so i director tarloff i tarlov i director kehena i kehena i can i can i thank you those items are approved. thank you thank you everyone. thank you so much. please go ahead and call the next item. next item. item 16. approve class four protected bikeway a class four protected bikeway on howard street between the embarcadero and fourth street and approving various traffic and parking modifications between the embarcadero and fourth street to improve bike and pedestrian safety. as part of the trans bay howard streetscape improvement project. okay staff is probably running from the back. okay, go.
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they thought they had a little more time. okay, okay, so we have mr. stannis to present. okay okay. hello? okay. there you go. okay good afternoon. chair. you can and directors. my name is elizabeth chen, and i am a transportation engineer in livable streets. and i'm representing the trans bay howard streetscape project, which is seeking your consideration and approval. today we'll be looking at howard street between the embarcadero and fourth street. this section of howard street is within the
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boundaries of the south downtown. design and activation plan, also known as the sota plan, my colleague trent tiger from public works as he's the project manager there, will speak a little bit later about how the sota plan has helped shape projects like the transbay howard streetscape project at. this project is in support of vision zero, the city's commitment to eliminate injury collisions and prioritize traffic safety in the project area. howard street between beale and second streets is on the high injury network, or the 12% of streets that disproportionately account for 68% of severe and fatal traffic collisions. the transbay howard streetscape project would build upon our recent work over the past few years to implement a protected bikeway network in soma. in 2020, the howard quick build project converted the class two bikeway to a parking protected class four bikeway using paint and posts on howard street between the embarcadero and third street. this project
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today improves upon the quick build project by providing a two way bikeway that will be protected by concrete medians along the corridor and bike signals at the intersections. on this map, you will see the existing network of protected bikeways in soma. in the past few years, we have improved the soma bike facilities, especially the east west connections, via quick build treatments such as striping and safe hit posts. the next phase is including permanent infrastructure like concrete protected bikeways into the streetscape improvements. the board approved the folsom streetscape project and the howard streetscape project in 2019, and a two way bikeway on each respective street was included in those improvements. the howard streetscape project spans from 11th street to fourth street, and is anticipated to start construction in 2026. the transbay howard project the project before you today would extend the design of the two way bikeway from fourth street all the way to the embarcadero with the approval and implementation
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of the transbay howard streetscape project, cyclists will be able to travel nearly two miles on a continuous concrete protected two way bikeway on howard street from the embarcadero all the way to 11th street. these photos here showcase what howard street looks like today. following previous quick build projects. the howard quick build project that was installed in 2020 between the embarcadero and third street, included the removal of one lane of traffic to accommodate a parking protected bike lane, daylighting intersections and driveways to improve visibility and signal separating pedestrians and cyclists from right turning traffic at third street. so considering that howard street between second and beale is on high injury network and the board has approved similar improvements on howard street west of these project limits, the goals of this project include improving safety for all who travel on howard street, improving bike and pedestrian comfort and facilities, and providing space for commercial
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and passenger loading. so in a recent five year period, there were 70 reported injury collisions along the project corridor. in july 2019, one collision resulted in a fatality when a driver making a left turn hit a pedestrian crossing the street at first and howard streets. our collision analysis showed that 32% of reported collisions occurred between vehicles, making it the most common collision type. we saw 23% of collisions involved vehicles and pedestrians, and 14% of collisions involved vehicles and cyclists. this throughout the outreach process, the project team engaged with the community and stakeholders both virtually and in person. staff went door to door with kirby surveys to better understand loading needs of the businesses, staff also tabled at soma community events and held an infield office hour on howard street. additionally, we held a virtual open house and survey
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that was advertised using social media, our mailers and our project listserv. a prominent stakeholder on this project is the moscone center between third and fourth streets. this block of howard between third and fourth was originally part of the howard streetscape project, and staff discussed the proposed design with moscone leadership as early as 2016. between 2016 and 2019, the planning and design process included multiple meetings between project staff and moscone leadership to revise the proposed design for the block based off of moscone's operations. their concerns with loading practices and truck movements, and potential conflicts between vehicles and cyclists at the for egress and ingress points. a design was then agreed upon between the project staff and moscone leadership. in 2019, however, moscone at the time requested that legislation for this. block between third and fourth be delayed and included in the transbay howard streetscape
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project, which mta has honored over the past eight years. the project team has worked closely with moscone center leadership to understand their concerns, including eight meetings between 2019 and 2023. we revised designs based on their input and understanding of moscone operations, and we've delayed bringing the block between third and fourth for approval by five years. so over the two week open house and survey period in october 2022, we received 26 total responses and 77% of them said that they approve of the project. 80% of respondents identified as residents or business operators in the project area, and all but one respondent typically uses a form of transportation other than driving, with the largest share being people who walk on the corridor. even though the project is generally supported, open cabins called for expanding protected bike lanes and slowing down speeds in the area. we also heard concerns such as parking and loading capacity, increasing traffic in the area and a desire
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for signal timing changes that would prioritize pedestrians and cyclists. additionally, we heard that the construction phase should minimize disruption to businesses. so considering the existing conditions of howard street, the collision history, and what we heard from outreach, the project team proposes signal timing changes to reduce conflicts for pedestrian and cyclists from vehicle traffic. a two way protected bikeway on the south side of howard street, which conforms with the already approved bikeway design west of fourth street, moving parking and loading spaces into a floating configuration on the south side of the street and rebalancing the colored curb mix based on merchant feedback, removing one travel lane to promote slower vehicle speeds, and reallocating the space for active transportation and streetscape elements such as greening bulb outs and concrete islands. as we have been improving, howard street in the soma neighborhood over the past
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few years through a series of quick build phases, and this project will implement permanent streetscape changes that support a pedestrian and bike friendly corridor. if approved, the next steps would be completing the detailed design phase and having the project go out to bid in 2025, and with construction between 2025 and 2027. and with that, thank you for your time and consideration of the transbay howard streetscape project. and me and my colleagues are here for any discussion or questions you may have. thank you so much. i'd like to open it for any public comment before we go to board. questions. is there any public left? we all mta staff? we had one speaker card for steve dizon, but i believe he left. okay, no remote requests. okay. we'll close public comment. colleagues what questions or comments do you have on this project? go ahead. director shaw
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. i have a very general question . so, how do you go about with like, why this project is needs to happen? because we already have bike lane on howard street. we have already have both direction bike lane on folsom street. yes. yeah. and also mission street is identified for transit vehicles. so private cars cannot use it. and market street is closed for, for, private vehicles. and i think the. situation we're seeing is just like you know, traffic transportation is kind of like streams of water when you block somewhere, they just water, just find another streams to go. so so how do you see how is the primary objective is this is to,
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to do what and then what you propose can actually solve what conditions do you mind just enlighten me and the public for a little bit. yes. okay. so there's a few questions there. i think we'll start with having trent tiger. the public works pm give a little bit of context of how this project came to be, and then i can then continue and answer some of those questions more directed towards the bikeway elements. hey, good afternoon everyone, my name is trent tiger. the san francisco public works project manager for the trans bay howard project. as lizzie kind of indicated, i think she did a great job kind of running through the transit specific elements for the project. but overall, i'll talk from a little bit more of a general, project plan idea. and i think that's a little bit part of your question, so the project comes from public realm plan that was developed as a framework for designing and implementing projects in the transbay terminal area, as many of you may know, the plan was developed collaboratively between the city and a number of
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groups, including the east coast cbd, to develop a vision for this space as it has evolved over the years in skyline and usage. so the original plan was the tcp, part of the trans bay area plan. and kind of the additional plan that came on top of that was the soda plan. the south of downtown market, public works and mta have been working to implement a number of projects in the trans bay area, including the second street project that was completed in 2020. as well as we have a number, including of upcoming projects including beal transit, u main street and the min and natoma projects, as lizzie indicated, there's a number of improvements that we're doing, including street trees, landscaping, pedestrian scale lighting. sidewalk, curb ramp, ada improvements. so that's kind of the general case for our streetscape projects. they touch a lot of different elements. they kind of cover a lot of different aspects. so i think the specific question that you had was a little bit more related to the bike lane. why
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are we implementing a bike lane on howard street when you have a number of different bike lanes on different areas, the one thing that i could speak towards is specifically on howard, as lizzie indicated, and we've been implementing in different areas through mta's quick build project, is we do a lot of these projects where we install a bike lane or kind of some improvement , quick build, meaning we do it as fast as we can through paint and soft hit posts. we then come through with these streetscape projects to do an actual permanent installation, which includes a lot of concrete where doing these new parking islands that make it much more safe and is a little bit more of a robust and kind of a permanent solution to these problems. i'll turn it back to lizzie to specifically talk about kind of why why, you know, mission street, folsom and howard street need their bike lanes. and if you have any other questions, kind of on a general aspect, please let me know. thanks. thank you for your, explanation. but i think my point is maybe you actually should be. the one answer to this question is i am not
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against bike lane. i love them, you know, but i'm just wondering. we're solving a problem of what it by what? i'm just wondering. yeah. maybe i can take this just up a slightly higher level. so historically, the streets in the south of market district were designed with really one purpose, which was to speed cars to and from the freeway and other neighborhoods, after the embarcadero freeway was removed, the city made a commitment to turn south of market into a real neighborhood. it's been where the bulk of the city's housing growth has occurred. and so with that has come the need to reinvent the streets, to continue to serve the automobile traffic, but to also, at the same time be neighborhood streets, something that we've learned from other cities around the world is that, you know, bikeways are important part of that, particularly protected bikeways on the kinds of streets that we have in south of market.
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but because the blocks in south of market are so big that cyclists will use one way cycle tracks as a two way facility, because the distance from howard to folsom is pretty significant. but more importantly, the distance between the numbered blocks to be able to get back around the corner, you know, you've got to go huge long distance to go from a to b, in a car or on a bike in soma. so what what cities have found is that converting those one way facilities into, into two way bike facilities actually makes things better for everyone, including the motorists and pedestrians as well. so we're trying really to learn from cities around the world about not a radical transformation of saying no cars, but an adjustment to make this more welcoming for people on foot and for people on bikes. i should add as well, that if we don't provide a bike facility that is safe and comfortable in the street, people using bikes will
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ride on the sidewalk, which is the which is not where we want them to ride, i should also add, just to just a point of correction, cars are absolutely allowed on mission street. we did put in transit only lanes on mission, but that's only in two of the four lanes. so half of the street is still available for car traffic, and again, that adjustment that we made to mission street was about accommodating the growth in the neighborhood by making transit fast, frequent, and reliable, while at the same time recognizing that people still need to drive but no longer prioritizing driving to the degree that we have historically . okay thank you. okay. was that me, yeah. director henry? yes. okay. sorry about that. perfect so if you could. i sort of need some help placing this project
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in context. is this part of a howard street? is this part of the howard street scape project? i mean, i was assuming it is. yes. that's a really good question, howard. the word howard street was thrown around a lot in the last five minutes, but howard street, this is not part of the howard street scape project, that is that is that was kind of like phase one of legislation which was the western portion of howard streetscape improvements. and we're talking about transbay howard street scape today, which is phase two of legislation of streetscape improvements on the east side of howard street. okay. so is this not this is part of the federally funded capital project or it's not or it's not the one we the one we have the big grant, the one we have the big federal grant for is as part of that one. it is it is not part of the one that had the big federal grant that we saw earlier. yeah. okay. and then the, the, the, the, the,
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the 1 to 2 way conversion that we did earlier on consent calendar. that's also not associated with with these items , the sorry the one way to two way conversion of that with development consent that we voted for on the consent calendar. okay so on stewart and spears street, the proposal that was approved of the two way traffic conversion. and so because because, on stewart and spears streets, there was just one final block between mission and howard street on both of those corridors that had not been legislated for two way. and this big streetscape project is coming through, and it intersects at howard street for both of those, we're kind of coordinating the two efforts. so then when streetscape within this big streetscape project goes through, then there will be two way traffic intersecting howard street at those at stewart and spear. got it. okay,
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okay. thank you for thank you for the context setting. yeah of course. you know, my office is in the project area. i can vote on this. i'm cool, but i'm support. i'm supportive of the project. i'm supportive of the project, we we've done better bike infrastructure in the area. we need to do, i think. i think there's even more we could do to make it comfortable. comfortable biking experience down there, yeah, in full support of this project now that i have the context. so they. thank you. director henry. director tarloff, please. thank you. chair, thank you so much for your presentation. and i just have a couple of questions or, and we did get a letter from the from one of the leaders at moscone, detailing some of their
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concerns, and, many of them were, you're probably much more familiar with what the specifics are that drive those. but one thing that that caught my eye was the, the, the flexibility of the streetscape design for when there are special events, and i, i don't know if you're familiar with what the what the letter writer was talking about, but i wonder if i could hear a little bit more about, you know what? what are the plans around around , for example, i believe he was talking about removing, barriers if there was a special event, and how that was going to work. sure, paul stanley's team leader and a lot of history and knowledge of howard street, so,
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yeah, so we have spent a lot of time working with moscone center over the past eight years, understanding their operations, understanding how their their new building was working or was working a few years when it, when it opened, and their concern with, the design of the project was how how could it, how could the street adapt to whatever event they're having at moscone. and there are many different types of events there. so we were able to really understand and work closely with them for some of those bigger events, what they would need. and one of the things that they mentioned is, the ability to take down railing that may separate bikes from vehicles so that design flexibility is part of what trent and his team have been working on. that ability to provide a little bit of flexibility in the roadway so you can pull that. you would be able to pull that railing out, take it away, and then you would have a surface that you could deck over and still hold,
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various events at moscone center . and so it would be up to, the moscone center staff to resolve, you know, where it's stored and inventorying it while it's stored and making sure it. yes, that was back to where it's supposed to be. that would be part of their setup. and take down, depending on what they're hosting at the time. right right. and then just wanted to note that, to my knowledge, moscone center has some of the most same safe pedestrian, ways in terms of their underground passage between the north and south hall. and it just made me wonder, you know, if that does exist anywhere else in san francisco. so if that is something to consider as we look at, you know, venues where there are, you know, large numbers of people for events and i know that there are, you know, talk of, you know, in the, in the
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medium tum future of more large event, facilities and underground passageways to get people from one side of the street to the other as is a real benefit and there's probably no good time to talk about that. but since it's funny you should ask that because we're working very closely with moscone center and salesforce right now on the next dreamforce events at moscone, and what's i mean, while there are, there's both an underground and above ground, passageway between moscone north and south. there is not a grade separated connection to moscone west. but one of the things that salesforce has been telling us is how important it is, is to have outdoor programing in a city like san francisco. and so they, in fact, have been very interested in not only continuing to use the outdoor
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space on the howard street right of way, but are also asking us some very interesting questions about fourth street as well. so i think the answer is probably a little bit of a yes. you know, you know. yes. and thank you. and finally, i just since we approved, two way vehicular traffic on stewart and, the other one today, is there any thought in the future of, having howard be a two way street, or is the freeway access the main barrier to that? so we did look at certain segments of howard that we could consider, converting to two way operations and, and the off ramp from the bridge is a major factor in that. so getting people off of the bridge and filtered into san francisco is very important, especially in the morning. so even though we looked at it, we
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realized very quickly that it was going to be very challenging to convert convert more blocks of howard to two way operation. yeah. thank you for entertaining my questions. of course. thank you. chair okay. no problem. any any other commenters, i also want to ask any questions on this okay. okay i just had a question about the phasing of this. i was like, kind of struggling reviewing the materials, given that i think, like, the cfo and i biked home on this, howard bike lane from the board workshop. so i like i know it's on the north side of the street. and then we're talking about putting this new two way on the south side of the street. and i was just going like, what? what? like, how does that transition, how's that transition going to work? you know, when are the different given? there's the segment from fourth west and then there's this segment and you know like the awkward movement of getting across fell street right now.
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and you're on the bike lane path on the south side. and then you got to get over to the north side. it's like it's pretty awkward. so just curious like how the phasing is going to work. and if we have a concern about just sort of the confusion of getting people across a wide. yeah, okay. i'm going to i'm going to flip to a, so on the screen right now it's, it doesn't show the, the interim design, but this does show the final the connection where we're talking about where we have a transition point at fourth street, this shows what the final, streetscape, the connection of the two streetscape project phases. this is what how seamless the transition would be. everyone stays on the south side, two way bikeway all the way through, and we're talking about i think probably, maybe two years of an interim design between, the eastern side, trans bay howard versus the western side howard streetscape. so there is this
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diagram which is our drawing of what the interim design at the intersection of fourth street is. and so this intersection is a really great point for us to transition the bikes really safely from the south side of the street to the north side of the street. we just have a lot more, roadway space over here. we're able to utilize the signal timing in this at this intersection, and there's a lot less driveways and just confusion and conflict points. so, you can see that from at this intersection, the bikes would be able to transition from the south side just all the way to the north side of the, existing the one that's on howard street right now, that you see the protected with the paint in the post on the north side of the street. and so we're really using fourth street as a great point to safely move everybody, westward and get bikes to where they need to go and vehicles to continue west, where they need to go. i was just going to add, so as lizzie
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was explaining, we have the trans bay howard project on the east side and then the howard streetscape project, kind of on the west side, with the fourth street being the kind of intersection point between these. and that's why we were she was just showing kind of these interim design situation. we were actually just discussing this earlier this week. but my colleague who is running the howard streetscape project, depending on the construction schedules and things like that, you know, we may phase the project in such a way that there may be a we'll try to shorten the amount of time that you have this interim condition. obviously, it's a, you know, most people aren't going to want to have to stop, you know, make this 90 degree turn and then continue on on the north side. so the idea is, you know, it's really going to depend on how the design schedules run and, you know, getting ready, going out to bid and things like that. but we could potentially phase it in such a way that, you know, we both start at one side and then slowly work this way. but it just kind of kind of depends on the construction schedules and how we're able to get
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everything running. director. so did you want to comment? i'm so sorry. i felt like i, i just really care about our city and i really care about the safety of everyone. and i love how our street is actually my favorite street to go from. like all my work in the financial district and get to pick up my child and then get home and i'm just, you know, i love walking there and sometimes i'll take the number 12 to go around anyway. but i just like, this is like really great, you know, like i don't see any car zooming, zipping off. and it's really clear to me that there's always that green bike lanes on my right side. right. and then you can rely on that just to keep i can get on that well with my scooter and just go all the way from the embarcadero all the way to, where my child's school is. so now i don't really see there's why we need to do this and how much this, this whole thing
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going to cost us. i just, i wonder, like, i'm just starting to worry about, when we identify a problem about that, like, high injury, corridor data back when, when the, soda plan created, and then now we. what we do right now is we are untangling our very clean bike lane that basically everybody's wayfinding. it's like to the point of chair egan is like, it's just it's really nice. it's flat and it's nicely paved. and now i have to start to worry about what the intersection of fourth street and howard will become. our future high injury network corner intersections. because seeing that, i really appreciate those drawings, by the way. but i'm just starting really concerned. like, are we creating something that perhaps we have some unintended consequences down the road that,
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like ten years later, a different version of us sitting here will be trying to solve a new high injury network called the intersection of fourth street and howard? like, we already have something pretty nice here. i don't see any. i mean, i just look at him like, oh, this is awesome. you know, the cars here, and then the bike lanes, they're kind of protected . you know, everybody knows where they're supposed to go. get off the freeway. if you don't need to go through downtown, you just go up and down. howard. right. so i mean, are we just because we're doing this because a legislation that was created many years ago dictate that we have to do this, a legislation that is written based upon, like another 15 years ago data. is this a very fundamental question? i'm not disagreeing what you come up with. it's really impressive and really pretty, and i like that idea. but just looking at some of the questions that my fellow board of directors have raised and actually start to make me
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wonder here, if we do this today, are we stepping ourselves into another set of unintended consequences because of then fourth and howard will be another? like, why do we need to kind of i mean, we already have something so amazing. why do we have to move it? i'm just curious. i'm looking at the google map here. it's like one of the cleanest, unobstructed green lane all the way from embarcadero row. all the way, all the way through, wherever it ends. right? like, i can't even. i'm just, like, wondering, you know, i actually go all the way. yeah, all the way over to where my child's school is. all the way into central market. like it's pretty nice. so. so, director. so thank you for calling our quick build project very nice. yeah, i love i am a regular user as well, it is,
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however, it is, however, a project in pain and plastic straws and those won't last. as we've described before, one of our strategies with our quick build program is to experiment with pain and plastic straws, mainly because that's the resource that we have now. and to use our quick build projects, both to finalize design, to tweak the design details, but also, very importantly, in order to attract real funding, to be able to build it out correctly in concrete and real infrastructure. in this case, we have succeeded in doing that. so one of the ways in which, you know, this whole strategy is built is including together outside sources of funding to allow us to keep doing the work. and sometimes that means splitting things into multiple phases because of the limitations in different funding sources. so while you know, as liz and the team described, there'll be this split at fourth street, but that is just temporary until we're able to complete the other funded
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project. but that's on a different timeline for completing the rest of howard street. and when, when are we expecting when john howard okay, sorry. could you repeat the last question. when are we expecting to be able to move forward on the western part of howard street, i believe that they're intending to start construction in 2026. yeah, and it would probably be a roughly two year time frame for their construction period, similar to transbay howard, but it would be shifted off by about a year with all the all the way to the 11th street. yeah. that's right. so the goal is to do the whole thing, shift it all over and yeah. so, so exactly what, director tomlin was just saying. is that right now, with the quick build version of the green lane on the north side, it's just everything's going to be switched to the south side. it's just phased into two portions of it. so the transbay howard is just from embarcadero to fourth and then howard streetscape from fourth to 11th. and so the fourth to 11, fourth portion is just going to be shifted in time by about a year. so that's that
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diagram that lizzie was showing earlier with the transition at fourth street is just going to be a temporary condition that will be fixed. and at that point you'll have the a more beautiful hopefully green bike lane, but just on the south side that will actually be safer and more permanent. i just love the idea. like you just keep looking like this is the best genius way to have parking right there and protecting the bike lane. and the pedestrian. so when you do the flip, will you still have the same kind of, sequence or the, parking space will be replaced by the concrete barrier, i'll let lizzie kind of go through the diagram specifically, but to answer it more on a quick basis, yes, you'll still have you'll still have parking. you'll still have loading. you'll just have a more protected space because you'll have the concrete island, which is a more robust than paint. and then you'll have the two way cycle track. okay. thank you. i would say trent covered that beautifully. so it's okay. i
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just like, why are you taking all my favorite street in south of market? okay now i have a better understanding of like, what is coming afterwards, and they make a lot more sense to see a much bigger picture of like a ten year or five year plan. thank you, thank you. director. so, director tarloff, was your comment addressed? no no no. yes. thank you. okay great. oh, director karina yes, i just want to make sure i'm tracking correctly. so is the vision to have a two week bike, a protected bike lane, throughout howard and throughout folsom. are those two, like, in the future? right. those are those part of the vision. and this is just kicking us off into that vision, by implementing a project that is now funded, from fourth, all the way to embarcadero. is that my tracking correctly? yes. there, there, the vision is definitely that we
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have a really high quality two way bikeway on howard street, as well as folsom street, and it would be protected by concrete and correct. yes. yeah. got it. okay, yeah, i just wanted to make sure i understood that piece of it, because it does seem like we have infrastructure right now. that is just one way on one direction on both respective streets, and it seems like it's working well. but i can definitely see how there's a conflict between, you know, folks that how a two way lane would probably be best, and, and how this is helping us mitigate that. but i do think that there has to be very careful attention on how we're, transitioning the street and how we're working with our partners there, because it can be very tricky as folks are transitioning from a two lane, bike lane into a one way again. and it it needs to be choreographed quite like, beautifully as well. not just designed beautifully, but
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choreographed beautifully. and the design needs to meet that standard. and so i just, very curious to see how that's going to occur. and would love once you guys are at that stage where that gets a little bit more finessed. i would love a briefing on that, too, just to understand how that's going. and what adjustments we're making to the plan on that, on the phasing part of it. yes, we can. we can definitely do that. thank you. okay. and then i just i'm sort of curious that we just didn't really hear from any stakeholders on this one, we heard from the mosconi, but we didn't really hear any of the traditional sort of street safety advocates weigh in any way or another here or in writing. so just curious what you've heard and if you could help us understand. yeah, we've we've really done outreach. it's lasted for this portion of it really has lasted over two years. and we've spoken to a lot of stakeholders and including like local business owners, walk sf bike coalition, what we heard is that people are definitely
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interested in very happy that we're, installing much more robust, concrete protected bikeways to really help the flow of traffic in this area. these east west connections in soma, from local business owners. we heard that they're just, they're excited for they are excited for protection for bikes. they always are concerned about people riding on their corridor, but they are concerned about, say, color curbs on their block or blocks around them. so we've been working with them over the last couple years to make sure that, how the color curbs work in front of them, really serve their businesses or may serve like a passenger. loading for, you know, a large apartment building or something like that, so yeah, we've heard we've heard a lot of positive things, but there is, of course, being a connection to the bay bridge both on and off. we do always hear that there is concern about congestion on these streets, but that's why it's really important that we're coming in today with such a high standard of, of a project that would really promote sustainable modes of transportation, as well as still making sure that we're really
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we're really concerned and looking at how these connections , especially on to say, first street, for example, that directly goes onto the bay bridge. we've made sure that the design really considers all the needs that are at these intersections and within the blocks. i know there's like realities on the ground of why there's bits and pieces, but i mean, i think you can understand from our perspective why it would just seem to be the most sensible thing to make the transition to the two way on one side of the street, all at once, rather than create this sort of awkward need to cross the street, which, as we've seen, when you make people do things that are like slow and awkward, they sometimes just don't do them. and then we create. we get an unsafe situation. so i like i understand it's not that simple, but maybe you can just take that direction from this board to try to link up the phasing of those two as much as possible. and minimize the timeline where we're creating this awkward transition. yeah, that that makes sense. and, with although we are talking about a transition point, we have made sure as we like to discuss with
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in outreach and also internally, our design is very we can safely move everyone through that intersection, and we feel confident about all the elements that are in the roadway and what we can do to make sure that happens. okay. thank you. may i have a motion and a second to approve? sorry, i can make the motion. okay, i'll second. thank you. please call the roll on the motion to approve. director heminger heminger. director henderson henderson i director hinsey. i nz i director. so i so i director tarloff i tarlov i director katina i chair can i can i thank you. the item is approved and concludes the business before you today okay. thank you. we are adjourned. and next meeting is may 7th. thank you safety.
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at that particular time economic and residential and has more people walking and biking and taking public transit the folsom goals include improving safety and for walking new street trees and ailed street light. thank you very much. sass decorative crosswalks and part of vision zero high energy network part of the 12 period of time of streets in san francisco that gets 58 percent of cashes and industrial challengers pedestrians not sign by car vehicles and walk to block to block bicycle challenges the future bike lanes in full protection next to the moving vehicle and no way from
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vehicles to park in the bike lane and with the people thank you for the opportunity right creating unsafe actions at the folsom will include for a moment from 2 to 11th street two-way abag and medians and transit only lanes and street crossings and beverages and now street trees and landscaping the folsom street part of the greater effort to howard street and went there a three year public engagement set the record straight in 2016 improving traffic safety to people walk and biking and folsom street within second streets yerba buena benefit district is a
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significant tree place no our neighborhood home to the residents. it provides access to the gardens that includes children's facility and have a traffic hub and offers buildings and small businesses and a lot of excellent restaurants as well. so insuring that into it is safety for the variety of entertainment is important and the be available improvements insuring the safety for transportation and the measure to keep contract at a safe course for drivers as well as pedestrians who walk along the streets we the the hold outs an excellent amenity for our seniors and children for the streets and provide opportunities for businesses for
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amenities and beneficiaries to enjoy the neighborhood outside and, of course, the graphic crooks is exciting to us as we pride ourselves on the hub of san francisco and bringing in those additional artistic elements that safety officer as safety features for biking and some of the filing pens directors think that residents and community work in the south of market work with the sfmta to help with the straight projects and access to address pedestrian safety when it comes to biking and the transportation network and making changes that address the high speed of cars impacting some of the sidewalks. and she states we're excited please keeping and place making component like and some of the
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street signs and proposed giveaway will be bio street neighborhood improvements to the today's experience of residents and community members. and the sfmta is partnering with sf puc and a contracts engineering for improvement only folsom street and it is expected to begin in early 2024 the project team will work with the community and for outreach and businesses and openhouse in here stay tuned as we describe for watching. >> pay by mraft parking meter pay for parking in san francisco and the video/show you how to do that the first one is no
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traditionally parking instead of the pay by played has instructions and options to activate the screen press any bottom or press the language bottom and enter the license plate or the last 5 numbers of identification and press the great check about how many audible convicted is to be using to adjust the time and press the marx bottom to select the ma'am, time allowed and after you select the parking duration asked to pay pay users coins or smart phone or debt or credit card tap that on the reader or insert to the magnetic strip and if you're paying by smart phone
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with apple enter k once you pay the meter will send out a receipt and alert any control officer i have paid an ordinance to make a phone call cotton 866490 and enter the 10 digit forbes or press the star and enter the pin and at last four digits of the credit card and the number of the minutes and at the end of the call audible hear he payment successful. and finally, there are no refunds if you return to our car hsa and that's it you're all set the license plate will only be saved for the duration of our parking time check for the area and show you're parked legally and they're an easy way to pay for
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parking. >> we hope this video has been helpful thanks for good afternoon everyone, this meeting will come to order. welcome to the april 29th, 2024 regular meeting of the land use and transportation committee of the san francisco board of supervisors. i am supervisor myrna melgar, chair of the committee. joined by board of supervisors president aaron peskin and vice chair dean preston. the committee clerk today
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