lands? my history of the area is i had a girlfriend lived in the area about 21 years ago. we used to take the 71 at page and laguna and they had a nice little coffee shop there, and i used to take her there, so you're so familiar with the area, more intimately than just being a cabdriver. the issue is that haight streak is a lot steeper than page. you are dealing with some steeper slope issues, if i'm not mistaken, right? the thing is that -- my question is why these people's concerns were not addressed or dealt with, or were they in your staffing reports, these concerns, about these issues when you've got this information -- why i did not hear about this? these are legitimate concerns that should have been dealt with in public comment.

i think you should go back to the drawing board and ask for your traffic engineers to give you responses to these people's questions or justifications for making these types of changes. yes, taxis should be able to use this. transit first. it will help get better cab service by having the ability to use these transit lanes as well. but at the same time, did somebody asked all these people? i support it because i got something that it would be a great project, but at the same time, you have to answer these people's questions. that is all i have to say. thank you. >> good afternoon, executive director of livable cities.

i want to speak on behalf of both our organizations and urge you to adopt this plan. we have been following this plan in its various iterations for a long time. it is been through a few iterations, and we think it is a real balanced, complete street project. we have a complete street campaign, and we want the balance tipped back towards walking, cycling, and transit in sustainable modes peart it will have the benefits to transit. it is very much in the benefit of the 20,000 riders who use this bus line every day. you will see it save time. you will see a trip that is shorter and more reliable. those ugly landing strips are that color that we want to see to really let people know. the transplants are not very visible, so this is a great pilot for that. there is a lot of pedestrian safety improvements that will go in. it is one of the most dangerous in the city, so there is a lot

of curved extensions to short crossing distances. there's a lot of crosswalk work, etc., that is going to happen as part of the proposal. we think it is a balanced proposal, a good proposal. i have to say, i always hate to see another lane added. what i would hope this that this project is evaluated, and if the buses are moving through, if everything is working, you can take away that extra lane. you can go back to two lanes. adding there has been an abundance of caution, and it is probably reasonable on the part of your staff. but if those lands are not necessary, they can always be removed. but we hope that you will go forward and approve this today and get this project moving. it has been a long time coming. >> good afternoon, directors.

i am executive director of walk san francisco. i echo a lot of the points made for a livable cities. it has got a lot of improvements for pedestrians to make the confluence of some very dangerous streets a lot safer, crossing distances shorter, sidewalks wider. i also agree that it is too bad that in the process of working with the community and dealing with a lot of the concerns that the street has effectively been widened by taking a parking lane and changing it into a traffic lane. but walk san francisco does support this because of all the pedestrian safety improvements, the walk ability improvements, and also the increase in

efficiency for muni, which will help a lot of people. i also just wanted to add that i wanted to thank you for all of the school zones, which just went in under the consent calendar. it has been a pleasure to institute this 15 mile an hour safety zones around 200 schools, and you're so glad that that is moving forward so quickly. so thank you. >> good afternoon. i speak on behalf of a group of residents and business owners. what i have on the projector is an illustration of what the residents are concerned about. this is the gulf and market junction that has nine separate traffic goes through it.

it is at the nexus of four major thoroughfares. as a result of that, the junction is one of the most dangerous in the cities. this is data from the mta website, from the planning department. it shows the accident rate at that juncture. it is one of the most traffic and most dangerous in the city. the statistics i think you guys all know that that junction was rated a few years ago the most dangerous in the city. it is today as of may 2011 raid of the most dangerous -- actually, both those judges of octavia and golf are rated the most dangerous bicycle junctions in the city -- both of those junctions. we have great concerns about what they are planning to do, which is essentially take those nine traffic flows and run a bus through that junction as an

additional flow. we think that is dangerous. it is going to attract more pedestrians and cyclists to the area, not less. they are going to meet that group of traffic coming into the city. we do think that also, this will create significant legal exposure for mta because you are proposing to move forward with a project despite very clear public objection on the basis of safety. this is the way the junction is measured. it is very dangerous, and it does not make sense to run a bus line through it. i have worked for planning before. very dense area. you do not run buses through a very busy area. last point i'll make is if you do the traffic calculations, which i have done and filed this with the board, you will find that because of the 18 bus crossings, it is assumptions from the mta, you will find that that dedicated bus line stops

traffic 18 times an hour. if you do the calculation, you realize that it creates an effective back up because you are clocking traffic on a very busy intersection. the length of the back up as 0.6 miles, which is roughly the equivalent down here at 10 city blocks, so that is not going to solve an improvement in rejecting the department has not considered the effect of order and you guys should take a look at the calculations and please, please, stop this madness. thanks. >> wanted to just follow up on my testimony from previous hearings that we did ask for a

few additions to the plan be made because of the concerns around the neighbors, which were around assurances and future evaluation of the safety and decongestant around the area if this plan moves forward. i do just want to thank mr. , ye-- ye who wrote a letter to us asking that we consider this and make for the considerations in the future. thank you.

>> good afternoon, commissioners. i am about a 20-year resident of the neighborhood. i live near page and octavia. every morning, when i walk my dog in the morning, about 8:30 in morning, i see the traffic backed up on page street. i see buses full of people writing that are waiting in line for minutes every single day. this is an improvement that is a long time coming. it was called for in the market octavia plan. it has been studied by the mta. i think it is a really good solution. i applaud staff for taking into consideration a lot of the neighbors' concerns, and i think the current plan addresses a lot of those concerns very creatively. i think it is time to move forward with the spirit the

20,000 passengers that ride this line every day are really waiting for some help. i appreciate your concern, and i hope that you support this. thank you. >> director, you want to talk about this? >> yes, let me just say that i appreciate all the commons. i want to just make sure that the board understands there has been quite a bit of public process, quite a bit of planning and analysis with regard to transit impact, traffic impact, safety. i think that some of the documentation we have provided and questions you have or answers we can provide to any questions you have can address that. i will ask the lead of the project to step forward. she will be happy to provide you with any information you need an answer any questions.

>> i am leading this project through the planning process. good afternoon. i would like to go over some of the primary aspects to explain how we are addressing some of the concerns of the community. the main objective is to improve transit reliability for the 20,000 customers riding the buses. but it is a complete project that does that benefits for all users and it is in line with the transit effective this project and the market octavia plan. the initial proposal was developed and shared a community meetings held in 2007 and 2008. in 2010, it was awarded a transportation for a livable cities grant. we then took the proposal as it

was shipped at that point to a public hearing in april. we heard about a number of concerns from the community. since then, we spent the summer reshaping the proposal. we had a community meeting in may and in june and some other smaller meetings with neighborhood groups to ensure that we were hearing the concerns of the community. i would like to use the overhead if i could. these are the existing routes. because the block that is circled in red is one way away from market street, we are unable to run transit, so we have the six and the 71 existing routes. as has been noted, there are traffic congestion is that occur daily on page street pier also,

there are two additional turns that would not be necessary if we were able to go directly down haight street. this is an existing proposal. there is one traffic lane in each direction. and what we are proposing to do is to add a landing strip, also known as a transit only lane, down the middle of the street. this would be used -- we are proposing to use a red-colored treatment on this lane as a pilot. it is used internationally on transit-only lands. london has had them for many years. new york city is certainly piloting it. we think that this treatment would emphasize that this is a facility that is only for

transit and would help us free the buses from the congested approaching a octavia boulevard. what i would like to know about this is that we did modify the proposal for the blog based on community concerns. originally, this was going to be a lame for me and left turns only. because of the concerns we have heard about the left turn adding more congested on the plot and resulting in extra delays, we removed that left turn as a response to the concerns we heard from the community. this is the existing configuration. this two traffic lanes, both going westbound. what is left turn lane. one is a thru lane. -- one is a left turn lane. what we are proposing to do is to continue that read transit only land on the south side of the street.

we are proposing to remove all of the parking on the south side of the street. i would note that that change was made in response to concerns from the community. when we went to the public hearing in april, we had maintained the parking on the south side of the street, but that meant we had to allow right turns off of northbound octavia. that was because we needed cars to be able to access those parking spaces that were there. through the community process, we determined that it was -- if we removed these parking spaces, we could make that really a muni-only lanes of the only traffic that would be allowed to travel east down would be those 10 to 12 buses currently scheduled per hour. it goes to 18 buses per hour if we have the proposed frequency increases. the only users of this lane would be those muni buses. there would be no additional traffic. parking is a major concern, and i will get to that in a moment.

we hear a lot of concerns about the intersection at market, golf, and haight streets. we have proposed many improvements. we are adding pedestrian signals for the two crosswalks. we are straitening two of the crosswalks that currently do not merely match with the pedestrian method of travel. additionally, we heard that this was a major intersection as far as traffic inclusions, and that is true. in the years previous to 2007, we had an average of eight collisions a year at this intersection. however, at that time, we were able to improve signal visibility, and since then,

while this only two years of data available, we were able to reduce that from eight to two per year. it is already significantly improving the safety of the intersection, but we think we can further improve signal visibility by adding an additional signal on this traffic island, and that would further improve safety in this intersection. we are proposing four bus stop changes. because we no longer have the route on the good or page street, we would remove the three inbounds stops and establish a new bus stop at the corner of market and golf -- and we are also proposing to remove one outbound stop because that would better match our stock guidelines. i would note that removing the bus allows us to remove the bus from a major downtown bike route.

removing all those bus rounds and residents required to make good sense allows us to create 20 new parking spaces. we are removing 14 parking spaces from the south side on the yen a block and two additional spaces, but there is a net gain of four parking spaces in the neighborhood, and we are adding an area of eligibility for residents of the south side to make sure they can take advantage of the new spaces we are creating. the reason why we are here is because we need your approval of these traffic regulations so we can move forward with the grant. we need to start our design phase and know that we have a project so that we can continue forward. at the benefits 20,000 riders by improving the travel time reliability. right now, our travel times can vary anywhere from one to eight minutes. that is a seven-minute variation, and you can understand that that would lead us to have a hard time.

we do think it will say travel times -- reduce travel times by about 1 to 3 minutes. multiple surveys have indicated that the liability and travel time are the no. 1 concerns of many customers, but it is also a project that will benefit pedestrians. it is in line with our policy, and we are available if you have questions. >> thank you. members of the board? director brinkman: i will go ahead and start of and make a motion to pass. >> i will second. >> i would just state that i also ride the fulton, and i was writing that before two-way mcalester went in and was writing it after.

i approved of the project, but i'm skeptical there would be that much timesaving, but it really did make a difference to have it go all the way down straight instead of having to do -- it is a little curvy. i think this will be an overall improvement. i do agree that it would be nice if going forward with it take another look at the parking lane removal. i do understand the neighbors wanting to have -- if we can continue to have the bus moves through smoothly and we are not getting the overflow traffic using it as a cloverleaf to but that parking lane backed so pedestrians do have the buffer of the parked cars and people have the ability, although how often did any of us ever get to park in front of our house in the city? not very often, but at least there you have the possibility that it could happen. >> i also would like to echo the directors concern about the parking lane. i think it is important that they can park and conduct

business there, so if we could take a look at that, i think it would make it easier for everyone and feasible for the community. am i that we had the same view. many of us would support reviewing that. i am not saying we should commit to doing it, but i am is saying we should look at adopting it. it seems like this is a very good out which process. i know a lot of the neighbors may not like the results if we adopt this. any time you move a bus -- everyone always seems to be one block away. they want it real close, but they want to catch it. neighbors here certainly have my sympathy on this, and i appreciate their coming out. it obviously made an impact with respect to the parking lane. i am have two questions i will try to keep three. one is when we considered the

traffic impact of the project, where we factoring in the fact that the changes at hayes street but above would be made such that there would be more traffic? the explanation i got as to where the cars were going to go when we change the crossover was we are not really sure but we think they will go south and use alternate routes, so i am just wondering if that change was factored in to the traffic evaluation of this project. and if he says yes, that is all i need to hear. i just want to make sure. >> to be honest, i would have to double check. traffic volumes -- for the study, it was limited to this and a second, and it was clear that an addendum to the market/octavia plan. i would have to look at the volumes used, but i would note that when we did the clearance for this intersection, we have the assumption that there would be general traffic using this

approach, and you would have the signal coming up every cycle, whereas under this new plan, they only come up once every three to five minutes. that drastically reduces the amount of time, and we should be able to accommodate the traffic either way. >> ok. my second question -- you say opponents are concerned that the project does not address the congestion, which was created by the octavia project, and that became an artery to the freeway. i want to just make sure -- is there any concern, or did your studies or engineering report that this would make the congestion worse or that it simply would have no effect on the traffic congestion in that area? >> the project does not intend to address the digestion issues and should not create any additional digestion. all it does is add a transit- only lane. it does not restrict any current movements or add any additional movements except for an

eastbound left turn onto northbound octavia, and we have the traffic count or that intersection during the peak hour. >> is there a process for monitoring that after? i realize we do not make these changes willy-nilly and reverse them, but i think we are hearing from some residents a different view on that. at this level, i trust the traffic engineers first, and it turns out the traffic engineers are wrong and neighbors are right, we have created a whole congestion pattern here. is that something we are able to review, or how does that work? >> as you know -- as you note in the resolution, we are committed to formally do a before and after evaluation, and we will be monitoring the progress and conditions of the street during the implementation right after. if we were wrong, i think we would be first to admit it. >> very good.

>> does this in any way reduce the congestion around the area? are we dealing with congested in that area at all? >> directors, the answer is no because as ms. tanner mentioned earlier, this is a transit- enhancement project. it came in to take a couple of heavily used transit lines and move them over away from a congested corridor, which is a result of having the former central freeway torn down. we know before the freeway was torn down that there would be some extra level of congestion that would result because of the loss of congestion again, but it is something that we would be

prepared to live with. we are partnering with the d.a. to look at ways to try to smooth out the flow a little bit through the area, but it is a fact of life now because of the changes that have gone in, but this particular project is not intended to relieve congestion, but to enhance transit. >> i am frequently one of the writers -- riders. when it is working normally,

there's a mob of folks. even without it working, the 71 is still crowded any time of the day, and it is a long and painful ride. i take offense at people who guffaws at the three-minute savings. when you have a busload of people, that is 60 people. multiplied by three minutes each, that turns into our laws, which could turn into days of time of people that are late to work, away from their families, and people that are doing the right thing by not driving and getting out of our cars in this transit first city. i want to make sure that i echo the fact that i do believe that we really will be making things safer and better. i also ride a bicycle down that, and i frequently have to turn left coming in, and am looking very forward to being able to use that line instead of having to turn and use that. i look forward to seeing you folks move forward on this.

we also save money, and we know we are coming up short on funding, big time. i want to see more things like this that will actually increase our efficiency and translate to funding efficiencies can make our system more soluble and also, i love to see folks that are in the audience come up with better ideas to increase our efficiencies. these are the kind of choices we will have to be making not just in this street but on all of our streets in the near future to get a hold of our budget shortfalls and to really reach our client goals, our climate change goals we are trying to achieve by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, so thank you again, all of you, for all your great efforts. i look forward to seeing these things go through. >> we do have a