and high income folks but that's really what it's turning into, it really is turning into a tale of two cities. it is also the middle income folks, people being squeezed out, incomes are being raised, charges are being raised and that's what this is going to be. as much as i know folks in this room don't like to admit it, muni doesn't like for a lot of people with disabilities and we have no option but to drive and parking downtown costs $32 per day. imposing these charges is an undue financial hardship for people at a myriad of income levels. we have extended a hand to the mta and to the committee, we would love an opportunity to sit down and work with folks more extensively to come up with a third way. >> thank you, mr. lyons, next speaker, please. >> howard strassner. >> good afternoon, director

again. howard strassner. this kind of shows a reasonable committee got together and they came to realize you can't have enough of something that you give away free. so they agreed you give them some more parking, use it for stuff that they need and then you have to pay for parking and the chair -- and i thought this was enough of a solution many years ago, just have some people get a regular blue sticker and some people get a blue sticker that shows they are really, they don't have the income and they won't have to pay, but i think now hearing this twice, because i went to one of those meetings, that you have to do all of the things that they are recommending plus do something about giving some people a chance to pay less. i don't think you can really do it for less unless you can figure that out. that would be even greater and it would make one -- but it might have to be free. one comment about the time. if you are mostly charging for the parking, time takes care of

itself. i mean, professor shoop said that. you don't need time limits, all you do is have the appropriate charge. another thing, i hope you are not looking forward to making any money from this, adding charging, because you are not going to. a lot of people were parking free and they are going to figure out they can use muni, they can park less time, it's going to balance out. their magic number of 470, hope that's enough, not too much, whatever. let's start this thing going in california. >> thanks. >> herbert weiner. >> mr. weiner ?oo . >> herbert weiner. by and large i support the spirit of what is being done. i think you should crack down on people using them illegally and use

whatever methods you need to do this. but i have a problem with charging for parking. it will raise reverend gnaw for mta and maybe a political deal was struck where you would implement these changes you have parking. if you wanted to be equitable, you would go after the bicyclists which has president been done to date. why go after one group? i have the feeling you are going after disadvantaged people for money and this is a form of fiscal bullying and in the back of my mind i ask the question, will they be taking candy from babies next and possibly selling the candy for revenue? i don't know, but i hope this is not true. i also think that given physical impairments maybe 4 hours is not a realistic limitation because people have

medical procedures, they may have other pressing things. what if they go to school? that would be another thing and also be a physical hardship to run out and put money in the meter for parking. that would be stressful. so i i'm for some of it and i'm against some of it. i think it should be examined. >> good afternoon, mr. henderson. >> good afternoon, good afternoon, i'm with the black american congress of san francisco and i'm opposed to charging seniors and disabled people for parking that have the placard. since i retired and i'm on a fixed income now, it's hard to even try to drive in san francisco and park. you know, i get a roll of quarters

every month for my washing and now i have to get a roll of quarters to park and that roll of quarters, that $10 of quarters isn't going it last too long in san francisco. i've applied for my placard and i should be getting that. if i had to, with the placard and parking in san francisco and having to pay, i don't know if i could drive, which i don't draif a lot any way, i like using muni. it's cheaper and to me it's, since i'm on the green team now, i guess it would be correct to use muni. plus our city is so small and you can get anywhere on the bus in san francisco. it's one of the best transit systems in america. but when i do have to park, when i

do have to drive, spending those quarters like somebody said it's like $3 an hour now at some places to park. you know, that's -- when you are retired on a fixed income, that's lot of money. so i'm opposed to charging parking for people with placards. >> thank you, mr. hen derson, next speaker, please. >> edna james. >> good afternoon, miss jameses. >> my name is edna james and i'm president of a commission on aging and i'm president of african american partnership for the commission on aging. i'm here to petition against sfmta recommendation 4 to remove the meter payment

exemption for placard cards in the city and county of san francisco for the following reasons: no. 1, san francisco is different from other cities in many ways and in particular due to the high cost of living compared to the other cities that she mentioned. no. 2, the reduction of parking tame to 4 hours should be tried first before charging a fee. the idea of punishing seniors and disabled persons for those who really need this for medical and dental appointments for the few who are abusing the system is incomprehensible and should not be the way to solve a problem. no. 4, the sfmta should implement only a few of these recommendations in increments to evaluate which ones working and why. i don't think you should try to do all of this at one time, you probably should do it in implements and see that it works. i'm a veteran and this will be an unwelcome act to many

disabled veterans returning home and visiting this beautiful city. i have attended many meetings with the african american seniors in bayview hunters point in omi listening it complaints about the inadequate service from mta paratransit service for those who drive any more and depend on these services and pulling the death certificates monthly and comparing those to the placard cards up for renewal will remove fraud from the system. san francisco is a city of such resources that it does not need to impose hardship on the seniors and the disabled who are struggling to survive each day. with the bicycles taking up so much parking space and the busses we need to pay homage to those who have worked to make the city what it is today. therefore i submit the petition, i have some petitions, 5 pages of seniors who have signed saying -- and

this is miss terrence >> good afternoon, miss workman. >> i'm deedee with the chamber of commerce, representing over 1500 local businesses supports all the accessible policy recommendations that will increase parking availability for the disabled and everyone else. we commend the mayor's office of disability and the san francisco transportation agency for their leadership in convening a broad cross-section on this committee including the chamber impacted by the difficult decisions the committee successfully addressed. the committee's recommendations will increase parking resources for all motorists and help alleviate traffic congestion by reducing the number of cars circling

blocks searching for parking. it will provide services in san francisco as well as their customers and clients and will contribute to a healthier economic climate in this city. the san francisco chamber of commerce supports these policy recommendations and urges the committee to implement the policy changes including those at local and state level ?oo . >> next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, miss kelly. >> hithere, my name is henny kelly, you can thank my parents for the spelling. they weren't good spellers. you know, when i was a young person and i saw older people walking across the street taking so much time to do it, and grunting as they did it, i wondered what the hell was wrong with them. and now i

realize being that person that it hurts to walk. it is difficult to walk. my age is becoming a disability. i do not have a blue placard and i will fight getting a blue placard as long as i can walk, grunting though i may be. but i believe that people on a fixed income should not have to pay at the parking meter. and i want to thank you for the amendment. i think it's extremely important. you know, in some instances i had to park 5 blocks away from where i taught because people in the neighborhood had a little thing on their car that said they could park there but i could only park there for an hour. and maybe we could do that for seniors and give them a thing on their car that says it. it is hard growing old. it

is not your golden years. it is difficult being disabled. it is not a pleasant thing to have to walk back and have to put more money in the meter. i really appeal this fourth thing that they have put. i really thank you for it. i would like to see you expand it. thank you very much for giving me this time. >> thank you, miss kelly. next speaker, please. >> allen dowd, he is the last person who has turned in a speaker card. >> i tend to read a lot on transportation literature and it's very nice to see what you read actually coming to policy. this same topic seriously do we have to pay for parking, was actually an article in the atlantic cities in june and it was actually also in the uc -- university of california

transportation access magazine in june as well, parking without paying, so it looks like you are implementing it and i want to thank you for doing that. thank you. >> does anyone else care to address the board on this topic? >> we have one more person, peter men dosa >> mr. chairman, commissioners, my name is peter mendosa and i am with the independent living centers of california. i think the reason the committee came up with the recommendations is there's a significant problem in san francisco with parking. i myself am a person with a disability and a lot of times i use public transit but

occasionally i use a modified van to get to work and i can't find an accessible parking place most of the time. i have to use, go to a garage and private parking or private property, rather, i have to pay for parking. i do understand the issue brought up as far as the issues around the financial issues for those of low income and i think personally that should be explored, but i want to just done vai we're really in a crisis in san francisco with parking because there isn't enough accessible parking it really is a barrier to access for those of us who live or work or commute to san francisco and who travel or are tourists. there are many more

placards than places to park so thank you. >> thank you, mr. mendosa, anyone else wish to address the board? i would ask our colleague, director. >> thank you so much for everyone who participated in this process, lisa faus foster, you did an amazing job providing endless amounts for us to read. definitely tough issues and huge changes we are proposing with these recommendations but i want to focus on a few things. it's really a relatively narrow focus we're discussing here, we're only talking about metered spaces, we're not talking about unmetered spaces on the street, i think the last speaker mr. mendosa mentioned we do have other parking options. so a lot of people mentioned the idea of

punishment and obviously that was not our intent when we convened the committee. i think what we are really aiming for is some revolutionary ideas to create better equality overall in our transportation and parbing management here and it feels like punishment because some of us with blue placards have been parking for free but if we're aiming for equality we should be paying the equal amount as everybody else. we may not be there yet but i think this is a great step in the right direction and i appreciate the thautdful comments from everyone and the thoughtful amendment in light of the low income considerations. i think it's a challenging thing to address because of the administrative feasibility but we're looking to staff to help us out with that and i appreciate the help of staff with that. >> thank you, director. the last point you made and mr. hale made easier, it is not

an easy thing to do, to determine who is a low income person with disabilities. i understand that but i still think it's a worthwhile goal and i think since we have time to do that, i guess the rest of the amendment i would offer is that we direct staff to develop some kind, develop options for us to consider about how to make it more equitable for the low income persons with disability. so that's an amendment, julie can come up with better legal language i'm sure, but is there a second on that? >> second. >> all those in favor? the ayes have it. talk on the amended resolution. >> i just had a question. first of all the presentation was excellent, thank you both for that , that was very eye-opening and i appreciated mr. planthold's about this was a dialogue that enabled people

to change their mind and figure things out. one of the comments that struck me is the comment that there's uncertainty that any one of these would work in isolation, it's really a package deal and the idea is to get all these working together which makes an awful lot of sense on that but on that it seems we are able to do some of these things ourselves but we are not able to do others and have to wait for the state and i wonder about the timing of that. i realize there's a desire to move more quickly so it seemed to me we were doing some of these things like expanding the number of parking spots without doing on the things that we would have to wait until state approval to do but at the same time there was a suggestion that some of the things that were going to be done locally we had already committed to doing. i wondered how that all worked together, whether it made sense to wait on the expansion of blue zone spots for the whole picture to be complete with the state approval or whether these were things that we were already starting. i hope you see the nature of the question,

director riskin and what is the timing of the package and the various components to it. >> that's a good question. one thing we learned in looking at some of the other jurisdictions that tried just pieces of this such as very aggressive enforcement only or very strict tightening of placard issuance criteria or process really were not effective, really didn't move the needle on increasing parking access for people with disabilities and hence the committee's recommendation that we look at all of these, advance all of these as a body. that said, there is value in enforcement and to that end we did already shift a little bit more resource into the placard detail.. with regard to -- and that's something we'll monitor the effectiveness of, as carla suggested, it is very time consuming and labor intensive,

but feedback we heard from people concerned about these recommendations is that you really should try to increase enforcement, to educate people about enforcement, before you do some of these other things. so i think it's a reasonable step forward. with regard to increased blue zones, two things. one is what we committed to doing is creating the equivalent to what we have for the public right of way in terms of an ad a transmission plan, a path for how we would get to an increased number of blue zones, how we would prioritize them, define them. the committee recommended we work with the mayor's office on disability on looking at how we restrict locations for blue zones which were quite restrictive now as a

city, maybe loosening that restriction. also i don't think we mentioned in the presentation that we're going to change the requirements to 4 percent. we're starting to prepare for new requirements we believe to be coming to us any way. we have heard some concern in the feedback if we increase blue zones but can't implement the rest of these recommendations then instead of effectively increasing the general parking supply, we're decreasing it. >> correct. >> that's something that we'll be cautious of as we develop the transmission plan for increasing the number of blue zones and as we implement it. >> it's not an overnight thing, we are not issuing all

these new spots as of this vote, it's something you are anticipating doing and as you are doing that you will also be working with the state so we will have this multi pronged approach when the new things come in. >> and we will continue to bring new legislation on the board. >> other communities around california, moving in this direction? so when we go to the legislation, others are supporting this? >> i'll let bob take a crack at this one. >> there's a lot of interest in what we're doing and local governments tend to always support local control, right? >> on november 8, lisa foster and myself gave a presentation to the california public parking association. we were the last session on the last day and we had the place pretty much filled, that's how much interest there was.

separate from that, we had the director of parking enforcement from the city of richmond come up, give us a card. people from los angeles, the point is -- and the city of sacramento also has done a parking study for all major cities in california a, that recognize the problem and, c, want to find out what they can do. we are not alone. >> increases the likelihood that something could happen if it's going on all over the state. anyone else care to talk on this. >> thank you, chairman nolan, i wanted to express my gratitude to see this kind of coming together of the community, your leadership from the committee, staff i know worked really hard on this. it's been a long time coming and i think it's a great comprehensive approach to a very serious problem that's affecting all of us. the other night i was trying to do a little early christmas shopping, was driving and wanted to stop at the gain

skate store on divisadero hp drove around the block 3 times and finally just gave up, took my money home. my wife is saying look on the internet and i'm going but the sales tax. what we should be thinking about making our parking available is making it work for the city. it's not for the mta, it's so people can get to work, people can get to their hospital appointments, people can do business relatively easy. i think this is a step in that direction and i'm very grateful to be able to support it. >> we have a motion and a second on the resolution as amended. all in favor say aye. opposed? the ayes have it, so ordered. >> authorizing the director to execute a software license to collect manage and abl liez

taxi data for regulatory purposes and to support the electronic taxi access system and to lease on board devices not to exceed $6 million and a contract term of 5 years. >> good afternoon, director. >> let me start, i know you had a very long, maybe record longest staff report on this. we're not going to go all the way through the report. i just want to quickly introduce this and ask the director to hit some highlights but just to remind you of the context for this, one of the most significant challenges that we have had with the taxi industry, with taxi service in san francisco, is the difficulty people have accessing a taxi. and while

there are many things that we've been doing over the years that you have authorized over the years to help reform and improve taxi service in san francisco, there are really two core things that we've i think agreed that we need to do, have been striving to do. one is to increase the number of taxis in san francisco which thanks to your authorization we are in the process of doing, and, second, is to make it easier for people in san francisco to connect to those taxis to get into those taxis which because of the way that we're structured here because there are 8 to 10 different places where you can call to get a taxi, it's not an efficient system. you might be calling for a taxi, you might be waiting for a taxi that's coming from across town when there's one empty half a block away from you and that's part of what has led to people feeling that it's difficult to get a taxi in san francisco. i

think it's part of what's led to people seeking other ways to get around san francisco. this item is a milestone in advancing our move towards virtual centralized dispatch, something you directed us to do earlier this calendar year, something that's been discussed in san francisco for at least 15 years. it also importantly provides a whole host of other regulatory benefits but i wanted to frame the issue here because i know we're going to hear a lot of public comment about this, but really one of the singularly most important things we need to do to improve taxi service in san francisco. >> before the director begins let's say on advice of counsel we have received the possibility of litigation. what we will do is hear the testimony, the presentation, our discussion, then at the end of the meeting we will go into

closed session and make our decision then. >> thank you, directors, it's been a long meeting and there are still many items to go and i will try to be braef and leave a more detailed discussion to answer your questions or respond to comment. as director riskin indicated the path to this contract began with our attempt to implement what's been called the eta system which is a method of getting all taxis to hail through smart phone platform as many of their competitive transportation services are available. this contract actually provides two principal benefits. one is we think it will give us a method to use pleat -- fleet management software, this provides a

software platform that would really revolutionize my staff's ability to be effective in the functions that it has to do every day as the staff report referenced, it would eliminate a lot of the paper-based work we do including faxes and data entry. it would make our multiple spreadsheets and data bases with permit holder information actually talk to each other in a useful way, create online reporting opportunities for companies and i think relieve the administrative burden for what a lot of companies go through in order to provide weekly reports to us. it would also give us some tremendous analytical capacity with respect to the taxi fleet and it would make our field enforcement more effective so we hope to enjoy many of the benefits of this software. as you are likely to hear during comment on this item, the on board devices may not be required for the purpose of implementing the eta system, which is why we have structured the agreement to make the on board devices an option with

the hope the data can be provided through the existing in-taxi equipment as was the original intention. as you are likely to glean from the discussion today this contract is somewhat controversial and in developing it i want to make sure the board is aware we have listened to the industry's comments on the issues and done our best to accommodate those concerns which i think you are about to hear so if you have particular questions i'm happy to answer them or --. >> i suggest we hear from the public at this point then go to the closed session after the next item then come back. thank you. >> charles rotter, tim santos, steven humphries. >> good afternoon. >> board mb