me counting, september 14th, that's the first page, okay? that's the second page, okay? same thing on sunday. these are all large tour busses from out of town that are multi million dollar companies from dubai, london and elsewhere. we're not going to take it any more. >> next speaker, please. >> option 1. >> john dallas, christine that odonnell >> good afternoon. >> thank you for hearing us, i'm john dallas with the alamo square neighborhood association. a couple, 4 years ago i kind of started this ball rolling because i was trying to have a conversation on my sidewalk and i couldn't hear the person i was talking to, it was a saturday morning and the busses were so loud and so

frequent i thought this was starting to be a problem. when we began, when alamo square originally contacted mta and asked about our options we asked for a ban. we didn't ask for option 1 and we didn't ask for option 2, we asked for a ban of the buses in our neighborhood just like the 52-odd other areas. i don't think we need to accommodate them with a parking area, i don't think we need to lose neighborhood parking. these guys don't belong here, they are too big, they are dangerous. the reason they are being blocked in all parts of the city is because they don't block, they are too big. they are bad neighbors, they don't belong, we don't need to make accommodations for them, i'd say option 3, ban the busses, no accommodations (applause) thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> christine that odonnel,

owen odonnell >> my name is owen odonnell and i'm going to speak for my wife, christine that. i've lived in al low square for 40 years. i really glae with virtually everything you've heard from the neighbors. one sunday morning about 10:00 my wife stood on the front porch and counted the busses. there were 11 in 10 minutes. factor that into trying to live in a residential neighborhood on a sunday morning. if you approve option 2 i suggest that you cancel the 21 hayes bus line. it won't work any longer. and your on-time performance will plummet because that will have an on-time performance below 50

percent. in the 60's for two summers i was a tourist guide in washington, dc. there were a lot of restrictions back then about where you could take the busses and it all worked. we were on arterials all the time and you think about it for a minute, if you've been there, if somebody had come to me and said, i want to see georgetown, so take a 60-foot bus and take it up wisconsin avenue and then turn into georgetown, that's what happens to us. busses that size don't fit on our residential streets. please stop it. the other thing is that if you put, i prefer option 1, but if you put the stop at pierce street and fell, with that number of busses it's never

going to work so just remove it and tell them they have to go someplace else and have the tourists walk to our community. thank you. >> thank you, sir. next speaker. >> good afternoon. >> hi, there, good afternoon, thank you commissioners and director riskin. i live on the third floor on a house on scout between fulton and mccallister who was not included on the map, thank you very much for the informative presentation with the kind of entrance ways to the park were not really featured. my block is one of those entrance ways. the folks on the bus are right below me from my window. as the presentation indicated there is the noise of the bus going uphill, the narrators, i have heard the same part of the same sentence hundreds of times,

it's terrifying to think of the same person saying the same sentence that number of times. we have heard you can't experience the real character of san francisco on those streets and i would counter you can't experience the real culture of san francisco on those busses. they are using muni and walking and loving it. the logistickal restrictions of our neighborhood had been followed we wouldn't have reached the point of needing this meeting. i would suggest option 1 with the addition of restricting employee busses as well. i'm wondering why google buses are a problem for cal hollow but alamo square should have both a

large number of google busses and tour busses. if large numbers of busses idling is a problem they are also a problem for employer busses. tour busses are not the only way to see the city. thank you very much. >> robert weiner followed by pete wilson and john billow. >> herbert weiner, resident of richmond. i thought the viking invasion was bad. in sea crest there's a prohibition on busses that are too big. that prohibition is in effect already, why doesn't it apply to neighborhoods throughout the city? this should be a protocol. the other thing is if busses

want to tour the neighborhoods, why can't they have small scale busses doing this? i mean, what's wrong with the small bus? and i think that basically what the tour busses do, they are in there and they are out of there and they get a bird's eye view and the neighborhood is virtually in a fish bowl and people are on display and what i really don't like is you buy a house in these residential areas and then you have a high noise level, you are virtually trapped with the tour bus it's the same load, if you don't like it, move. and i don't think that's fair. so this dilemma applies to apartment house dwellers as well. i think there has to be a restriction on the busses, i don't think they should have free swing of the neighborhood and i think there should be prescribed routes and, yes, what's wrong with walking on foot? if foreigners can make it to this country on the airplane and everything they

can certainly walk on foot. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> pete wilson followed by john billow and then berry toronto is the last person who's turned in a speaker card. >> my name is pete wilson, i used to drive tour busses, i no longer do, but i live on alamo square, i live half a block from owen on scott and grove. i live on alamo square and support the tour busses coming as somebody who has worked in the industry. i was a tour guide when i say, i'm sorry, i can't show you alamo square. restrictions are not nice. so i'd like to support no. 2 other than i don't like the davies shuttle -- i am a parent of a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old and having been through hundreds of

hours of bus driving training, knowing that if i -- hopefully i will some day -- drive the 21, if i was driving the 21 i would not want the little shuttle vans, they are famous for parking in the muni bus zones. the big busses, a lot of those drivers have been through training and i think the problem is actually the davies shuttle bus which comes through picks up people who are parking in our neighborhood, people park in our neighborhood, the davies bus picks their people up and keep going. my children love the tour busses. i don't think the tour busses are dangerous as a former tour bus driver. and my last name is wilson, it's the no. 1 scotish name in the united states of america and if it was president for the vikings invading england i would not be here. thank you.

>> next speaker, please. >> john billow, berry toronto, espinola jackson. >> my name is john billow, i'm a local tour operator. if there are so many tour busses going it alamo square then it's reasonable to believe that customers want to go to alamo square. so if you are going to restrict them via option 1 then you will need to create an anti-alamo square as part of that roll jot. i see the 7-sisters image as often as any other being used to bait people to come to san francisco. please remember san francisco and los angeles have the second highest tax percentage behind san antonio. san antonio gives 6 percent of their 15 percent to the arts. san francisco does not, the city just keeps it. if we are going to

continue to fleece the people, we should be honest with them how anti-tourist the city has become. option 2 is obvious. none of the people i've heard from alamo square have moved out of alamo square. there was a school, the principal changed his pa system, it was so loud within 3 months we moved. if it was that bad you would just move and i don't think it's that bad. >> berry toronto followed by espinola jackson. >> berry toronto. i first wanted to say thanks for reminding me where full house was filmed. but i want to say whatever option you pick, you should require that the tourists see a few episodes of tales of the city so they can appreciate what it looked like

years ago and why it needs to be preserved in that state and you continue to allow the enormous amount of busses to go there you are going to ruin the image that we have seen in tales of the city and i don't think we want to do that. i consider that just historical as coit tower, i think it's better, this is the answer. i want to first say that we're not taking tourists, maybe you think they should take taxis. make the day drivers busier, they get a better view, you are going to protect the value of the medallion. the next issue is the -- oh,

shoot -- i wanted to say i think it's important -- the last issue is the person assigned to look at this, jerry robins, i am part of his fan club. i want to say that the people who are concerned about this a getting this improved, the best person to look at this and solve the problem is jerry robins so i think the fact that he did the research on this, he is probably the most underpaid city employee because of the amount of effort he picks in trying to solve this problem. so i hope you will take his advice and the fact he likes to compromise. thank you ?oo smoo next speaker. >> espinola jackson and chris (inaudible) those are the last two speakers on this item. >> good afternoon, miss jackson. >> good afternoon, i didn't come here to speak on this item

but after hearing so many speakers, i would like to say 70 years ago my mother came to san francisco and i went to school at hayes school across the street from alamo park is. listening to many of the speakers it's interesting it me because i have the same way. we have the home owners and we are the taxpayers of this city and if one community said no, why can't other communities say no and you do the same thing for them as you did for the others. i feel that it's unfair that you do not listen to all of the constituents of san francisco and not just a few because when i heard someone say up on the hill where the rich folks are, they can't go. where the crooked street is, they can't go. they are saying don't come into my neighborhood. we are the taxpayers. we are the ones that pay the salaries for everybody in this city and we don't get what we are asking for. i just

wanted to say that and thank you so very much and you all have a blessed day. >> next speaker, please. >> christopher folkerson, he's the last speaker. >> i am able to say i've been driving 23 years. one year was busses and taxi have ans, i drove double decker busses and i gave tours along those various corridors. i really think that just as the stretch of scott street near debose used to be known to people and get a lot of attention and no longer is remembered, i think we should just let the whole steiner street thing pass, there are better places to view painted ladies, they are not the best painted ladies, the ladies have an ability whether you glimpse the magic and you don't want them to be disappointed with you, if you

have something maybe as large as a maxi van, my experience is either you let them see the bishop mansion, steiner street or steiner street for a bus driver making a turn is a very big deal. any time those busses are making a turn in those neighborhoods you should think of that as approximately the same thing as an aircraft carrier coming through the golden gate bridge and that's about how it feels to do one of those, that's about the kind of attention it draws on the neighborhood. i really think that you could tell people there are better painted ladies on golden gate or any number of thousands of places in san francisco. thank you. >> anyone else care to address the board on this issue? seeing none, the public hearing is closed. members of the board, what's your pleasure.

first i'd like to say i found this by and large a very thoughtful issue this afternoon. i'd like to thank jerry for the work he did, the outreach that went into it, it's a difficult issue but i appreciate the thoughtfulness i heard this afternoon. is there a motion? >> first question, is the staff, jerry, is the staff recommendation for option 1 or option 2? it's for option 1, okay, i'm sorry, tom just answered that for me in my left ear. >> actually, just to clarify, the staff wasn't necessarily making a recommendation, the staff was putting forward two options. i think jerry gave you a sense of what we heard at the public hearing, there's been quite a bit of correspondence that's come in since, i don't think we tabulated it, i think it leans pretty heavily toward option 1. >> but since jerry has a fan club and we're trying to build

one for you, too, do you have a recommendation as between the two options or is it, as i read the report, you think both of those are viable and you want the board to decide? >> normally we don't do this where we bring forward multiple options without a recommendation because as the chair said, this has been a difficult issue and been the subject of a lot i think thoughtful discussion. i think it was our feeling that bringing both of these forward without recommendation would give the best i guess opportunity for a full hearing of both. i think option 2 was an attempt at a compromise as some speakers suggested, i think it's a good attempt. many of the concerns that we heard had to do with turning and stopping and parking and double parking which at least theoretically option 2 somewhat addresses. >> on page 14 of your staff

report however it reads sfmta transit service has reviewed the enclosed revisions and recommends option 1. >> the transit system is basically muni and as we heard from the public speakers the impact of vehicles on hayes street even if they were to be moving under option 2 still would likely have adverse impact on muni, but from the kind of larger mta perspective, understanding the value that tourism brings to the san francisco economy, trying to do what we thought was an accommodation, we left option 2 on the table. you know i think frankly the testimony was pretty compelling. i know the alamo square neighborhood association has been i would say a very thoughtful and deliberate community group working on issues of the public right of way and my experience both from

dpw and here, so i think i would give great weight to their thoughts on this, as well as the supervisor. jerry and i met with the supervisor who i think was frankly quite torn on this issue but i think he heard from valley brown after considering all the issues here, herself came down on the side of option 1. >> i suspect the entrepreneurial spirit will prevail here. i will move option 1. >> i have a few more questions, if i may. >> can we have a second first? then questions. >> so we've heard from some of the tour company operators, did the convention and visitor's bureau weigh in on this one or not? >> yes, they did. >> they don't mind option 1, they are in favor of option 2? they want option 2, okay. no wonder he's got a fan club,

he's so to the point. and then with option 1, one of the questions we had we are talking about changes to one of the major arterial routes in the street there which is fell street. i didn't hear anyone address that. in his presentation there was some talk about moving lanes and i have a concern while i'm right now in favor of option 1 i just want to make sure by putting the tour busses there on fell street we're not going to disrupt traffic on what is a very important arterial route east-west for the city there. >> yeah, well, and that's the issue exactly that we raised in the presentation. that's something that we, if we were to move forward with legislating that parking area for tour busses it's something we would need to watch very closely. we would adjust the striping so we would widen that right-hand lane but it's something that we will be monitoring closely and we might come back to you at some point and recommend a change in the

future if it's not working. >> so i guess that takes me to my position on this, which is we're really talking about signing and striping. this is not a major undertaking that can't be undone so my preference would be to proceed with option 1 and if we see either a traffic impact on fell street which would need to be addressed, which would affect the neighborhood as well as the more western neighborhoods, and if there's a serious backlash from the visitor's bureau we need to address that. but maybe as chair nolan suggests the entrepreneurial spirit will prevail. >> all those in favor? all those against. it's 4 to 5 with one abstention. we'll take a short break.

(recess).