untenable impact. by contract we looked at the citywide corridor which would be a gateway. you are touching so many travelers, it does raise significant revenue. the congestion reduction benefits were not significant because potentially san franciscans would say there is more capacity on the streets, i'm going to begin to drive and erode some of those benefits. we really wanted to combine the performance of the system with the overall co-benefits of the system. commissioner kasselman: do you think the small business in this corridor and they have parks and employees who work 9:00 to 5:00 and they drive in from the richmond and now an hour of their pay almost goes to driving in and out, are they going to start looking for jobs outside of that area? it seems like you're going to lose jobs in that area because they're going to go elsewhere.

>> we did analyze that possibility. if we can go back to the presentation, i can put up another slide that might be helpful. thank you. what we found is because, again it's a peak period program and because people can take advantage of other modes of travel by again the improvement of those modes by the reinvestment revenue, what we're finding is that people would see a benefit of the program. it would be a benefit in terms of travel time improvements in terms of reliability of their travel. again with a 12% reduction in peak period trips, what we expect is that most people would continue to drive and reap the benefits of that program, but we also looked at implement impacts that are expected. we anticipate that it could be 1% and that we think can be mitigated or mitigation including things like an

infusion of external capital costs which in and of itself, the design, the construction of the program, the construction of the improvements that would accompany the program could be an influx of internal capital that could create jobs. and then also the enhancements that would accompany the program itself and not just travel enhancements but also streetscape enhancements or amenities in the downtown areas or the programmatic improvements. the other thing i should mention is that we want to understand the impacts on some of the retail businesses in the area. this is something that a lot of our members on the business advisory council wanted us to analyze and we wanted to understand it as well. one of the first things that we did was, again, look at the number of the trips that were changing over the course of the day and we didn't find a significant change. in fact, it's less than .5%

which is within the noise of our model. what we also looked at is with a shift in trips from auto to transit, how many more trips might we see, increase in foot traffic in the zone. we do expect to see additional foot traffic because people would shift from driving to transit or to walking or biking. the other thing that we looked at is a retail survey. we conducted a survey of a total of almost 1,400 visitors to our downtown retail areas and we supplemented that with what we would call sort of control areas and additional sites. within san francisco, regionally understand how often do people come to the downtown areas, what type of travel or what mode of travel do they use to get there. are they driving, transit riders, walking, biking and

then almost how much they spend on a typical trip, trying to understand what is the sort of on balance, how much are they spending on a typical trip. what we found is that drivers absolutely do come and load up their cars and spend a lot in an individual trip, but what we also found is they are doing that less frequently than transit riders and pedestrians. when you aggregate that or average that over a course of a month, transit riders or pedestrians are spending the same than slightly more. the foot traffic could mitigate some of the concern. one of the reasons that we want to do additional analysis is to understand it in greater detail and to conduct further detail on the economic evaluation. we recognize that it's a considerable concern. president yee riley: commissioner o'brien, do you have a question? commissioner o'brien: i have a

couple of concerns or questions and maybe comments. so if this was something that was going to see itself all the way through, what's the vision of the mechanism for collecting revenues of being inserted to the area? >> that would create more congestion. commissioner o'brien: there are multiple ways that are sort of barrier-free protection can be accomplished. we can certainly have transresponders and leverage our fast track system. one of the things we heard during feedback or outreach rather was to minimize the impacts on the urban factor so there can be camera-based technologies that can be mounted on our existing mast arms or on sign posts and stuff that would be essentially like a red light running camera to detect crossings across the

edge of the zone. then that can be tagged to your fast track account and dibted to your fast track account. commissioner o'brien: ok. they would have to be mounted on every single road then leading into a zone and out of every road leading out of the zone, right? >> depending on the scenario, that would have to change. so the southern gateway would be just at the major arterials and some of the minor arterials, the south gateway, the northeast coordinates, the obvious only would only be the obvious streets. we have several one-way streets in that area. commissioner o'brien: right, so bare with me a second then. so we have a segment that you said in the northeast corner, right, so and you're talking about one way so it would only track people leaving? >> exactly. commissioner o'brien: so every

single street that egresses out of the zone would have the mechanism for capturing the traffic through it, right? >> that's the way we analyzed it to be conservative. but the system design might identify some streets where there is a particular where the street sort of diverges so it would make more sense to have one detector. to be conservative, we did calculate each location at this point. commissioner o'brien: so it would have to be every street. i got to believe that every street has got to be monitored. word will get around pretty quick that, hey, this street is not open yet, it will be a disaster then. ok. when you're doing the outreach and yes, you were here before, i remember that you probably remember it better than i do because you got roasted that time as well. >> not at all. commissioner o'brien: so how many groups specifically did you reach to in terms of the outreach and which groups did

you reach to? did you reach to the neighborhood groups such as the merchants association or the ashbury merchants, you know, all of the different groups and the small business networks, san francisco apartment association? i know there is a huge number. i would love to know specifically what number, how many did you reach out to and i would like some statistical feedback from you on the consensus because i'm having a hard time being convinced that there was a general, even a midway point where people were supporting it. the quote that you have where somebody said i can't believe this hasn't happened before, i'm sure there is plenty of examples of that but i'm thinking the prevailing reaction would have been kind of a cold one at least.

a lot of people would just say this is another generate civil jobs, more bureaucracy and another tax fee making san francisco even more expensive >> that has certainly been one of the responses. again i think it's interesting to find that there are many people who are split on the issue. there are very few people who don't have an opinion on this and you can understand why. one of the things that we found is most people felt like everybody else thought the same that they do, but there are significant numbers of people who have thought we can't believe that you haven't done this yet and again others who can't believe that you're analyzing this to begin with. one of the things that i can share with you, the summary from our most recent round of outreach if you could go back to the presentation, although i think this should be in your packet, second to last slide. i will come to your question about who we spoke with.

we asked people to tell us what their opinion of potential implementation would be, not tomorrow, but in the next three to five years. we asked them to tell us if they supported a permanent program, a pilot, if they would support it if it were modified in some way, if they're just not sure yes or if they would prefer something else, in many cases it was anything else. there was somewhat of a split. there does seem to be some support for additional study. with that said, it really does vary depending on the type of group that you speak with. we try to reach out to a cross-section of people and conducted dozens of meetings. i can't tell you the number off the top of my head but i remember in preparing the report, it was more than 60 and multiple times with some groups. the groups that we spoke with ranged quite significantly. we spoke with community groups

who were just community groups but had others who had merchants organizations, hayes valley is one. we spoke with fresherman's wharf, union square, the small business network, council of district merchants and other types of groups. we wanted to get a cross-section. we also had multiple different types of stakeholders, but again we wanted to understand who might have an opinion on this and how the different types of opinions varied. again, some groups were concerned about their impact on the edge of the zone because their neighborhood is right on the edge of the zone. others were concerned about the sort of ramp-up of transit investments particularly and still more were concerned about the economic or business impacts. and we know that the report itself is intended to encapsulate not only the technical analysis but also the public feedback. chapter three of the report does describe that feedback and

the decision that the board will make will include not only the technical results, but also that feedback. our recommendation is the study does or if the concept discontinue for additional study is to do additional outreach and to do more outreach even than we did in this state. we know that people are in some cases just beginning to learn about the concept and to learn even about the study and while there are some things that we're concerned about, people are concerned this is something to be implemented tomorrow and a lot of is connected to the media buzz right now, it does raise awareness about the study and people are beginning to understand that there is this analysis going on. however, we would recommend additional outreach as part of the next technical analysis. commissioner o'brien: can i make a suggestion if it does go forward that the next report

would list the organizations that were spoken to. we would ask the organizations can it be recorded for the record what as a group their position was on it, whether they were yay or nay on their support for going forward with the project so we have a very real measure the support for it. because if i see a chart that says there is overwhelming support for this, you'll end up getting my support for it because i'm a great believer in the wisdom of the collective body than my individual whatever. but i would like to see that because it just leaves a little bit of doubt in my mind when i don't see it there, just a little bit more work on the specifics and the statistics and even though it involves a lot more work. so it's just a suggestion. >> i appreciate that feedback. one thing i would say is because it's a conceptual study, a feasibility study, we

were not necessarily as rigorous on that front, but we specifically ask people not necessarily to make a decision about what scenario they would support because the goal was simply to identify whether or not the concept as a whole is feasible and warrants further study. some people did tell us that they would prefer the southern gateway because it sort of deals with the geographic equity concerns, the north bay and the south bay -- i'm sorry, the south bay and the east bay have the golden gate bridge and the bay bridge. the southern gateway has no tolls. that's what people appreciate about the southern gateway. of course, if you're in the southern gateway or below the southern gateway, there is still some sort there is some opposition because it would be a new fee for a group that isn't currently charged. so it really has varied. as i mention there are some people that support the

northeast cordon because they see that the fee is in the obvious direction, it would not have as great an impact as a morning and evening pay. commissioner o'brien: one more question, if i may, president. when you looked at the cases where other cities have implemented this i guess around the world, has it been successful? it seems the goal here is controling people's patterns to a certain degree tore trying to encourage them to travel off-peek times or find alternatives ways. maybe it's not fair, but i think one way to describe this, trying to control a pattern or human behavior it's in the way they travel. assuming that kind of way of a target, has this been successful in your personal opinion from what you have looked at where it was implemented in other cities? has it been seen to be

successful or did it change people's patterns? >> i don't know that i can say that it's been successful in changing people's patterns as a whole. i don't know that in each case the goal to change people's patterns as a whole. i think maybe what you are inferring, there is sort of social engineering that goes along with that. commissioner o'brien: that's the term that i'm looking for. >> the goal is not to change people's patterns every single day or for the rest of their lives what have you, but on a particular day at this particular time, can you make a different decision or do you have a better option available to you? one thing that we noticed on the outset of the study is that 80% of people do feel they have a viable transit option available to them. one of the things we asked is what can we do to improve that option and how can this program improve that option for you. but again, the different

programs have had different goals in mind. in the case of both london and stockholm and reeven rome and milan -- even rome and lillian. they have found -- milan. they have found that after the program is implemented, there are tweaks along the way, but there has been support for it. in stockholm, they ran a trial. they had a demonstration project after seven months. after seven months, they held a referendum. at the end of the referendum, the vote was to bring it back and make it permanent. they implement every single case according to the local conditions and the program we analyzed here is not the same as any of those because we also wanted to look at the local conditions. commissioner o'brien: thank you. president yee riley: commissioner clyde. vice president clyde: thank you for the presentation.

>> thank you for having me back. vice president clyde: i admire your work in this. it's a big project. just i guess i'll talk about the small business concern because there are several discreet neighborhoods within the northeast cordon which seems to be the preferred option at this moment for further study for different reasons. >> can i clarify one thing there? although it is the best performer, we would recommend all of the scenarios move forward for additional analysis. vice president clyde: that's what you're looking at different analysis of this study of congestion pricing. i'm a big fan of using our existing infrastructure like the tolls or the parking system in order to reduce congestion and reduce trips. i know that you have a discreet time of day entering and leaving. there are people who out of economic necessity will adjust

their hours. i mean just out of economic, even at a 50% discount. i have got kind of multiple concerns. i have the concern that wealthy people are going to buy faster, easier trips for themselves at the expense of working class people. it's just is the way it is. if you can afford to pay, you just do what you have to do. if not, you will change your patterns and we saw that in the, when the bridge went down in the earthquake, people shopped more locally and our neighborhoods, chinatown in particular and north beach suffered a great deal with the loss of that freeway because found other patterns so they found alternatives in their neighborhoods for shopping and different trips. i mean, our city is already very expensive even at not congested times.

so i have an economic balance issue with pricing and again the wealthy, it's not going to matter to them. but to a lot of other people, it will. and of course you're dealing in these larger groups and say it's only a 1% or .5% stating that they won't change or they will change, but for a small business struggling to survive, that 1% might be $300 and that $300 might be what you needed between success and failure. i mean people little on very slim margins. i'm not sure that any part of the analysis really captures how tenous business can be and any change can be very, very difficult to absorb. that is one of my concerns about this report. going forward, you know, i'm

not sure putting in an expensive infrastructure that manages this at this time is wise when we have toll collections and when we have parking mechanisms and when we may have other options. the other thing i would say is as a small business person who takes public transportation all the time, i'm either on a bicycle, on bart, or on muni, they are very crowded. it is extremely difficult to shop or do more than a little bit at a time and honestly, if you wanted to stop significant travel in and out of the city at the peak, bart would reduce the cost of bart because bart is not inexpensive from the east bay. it's extremely expensive. that, again, i'm a little concerned about this option going forward at this point when i believe our existing infrastructure is what really needs to be studied and not a

new one imposed on top of it. >> so we would agree with you on that front. we would simply say that the reason there is a consideration for additional study is the long period of time that it might take and that we want to evaluate how the sort of long-term growth can be achieved and what the long-term growth impacts might be. we -- on page 15 of your presentation packet, one of the things that we talk about is a need to evaluate those existing mechanisms. is s.f. park and the evaluation will be available next fall from what i understand. that is something that we do strongly believe needs to happen so we understand what are the potential impacts for parking availability, for congestion management, the peak period toll on the bay bridge

is something we are tracking closely to see what are the benefits and impacts. we understand that those things need to be evaluated. we would also say that a parking scenario more robust than what we realized in this phase could also be and should also be considered in the next phase of analysis. vice president clyde: for clarification, on page 10, you have a regional opinion, nonsan francisco and then regional. so it's my understanding that these were people outside of the city who were given a presentation, asked for their opinion before and after they were presented with this information. >> that particular one because we needed both, prepoll question and a post-poll question. we had enough regional folks that did answer that both questions, if you'll switch once again, i'm so sorry. vice president clyde: that's all right. >> to the presentation, i have a slide that shows how it

breaks out by different markets in the region. san francisco is the first one. i'm not sure if that one is included. if it isn't, i can certainly send it to you. you can see that the opinion is more consistent across markets and again this is just people who responded to our feedback during outreach which is about 400. vice president clyde: right. i just want to point out that anything that makes life easier for me i'm in favor. so if it means that it's easier for me to drive in and out, i'll go for everybody paying for this. so i just want to caution you about these polls because i'm entering san francisco three times a year and it's easier those three times -- >> we always caution by this is a summary of people who participated in our feedback. we have also conducted regional polls that are statistically significant that show the polls for congestion pricing. i want to come back to low

income concerns and shopping locally. the equity issue on low income has been an issue, but it hasn't been as significant because in the bay area, a lot of low income travelers are already on transit. what we found is particularly during the peak period, not all times of day, but particularly during the peak period and particularly to the most congested in downtown focused areas, a lot of low income travelers are on transit. 5% of peak travelers are low income drivers. it's certainly a concern. one of the things that we looked at is a discount for low income travelers as well that would be considered part of the program. vice president clyde: that i think would get back to why i would advocate for looking at our existing structures of revenue collection. again, thank you, it's a thorough presentation, so thank you very much. >> thank you. commissioner o'conner: point of clarification.

on this pie chart here, nons.f. regional opinions, what does that mean? does it mean tourists were interviewed at union square or something? >> this is from our electronic town hall where we invited people to participate in a web march and it's from a -- webinar and it's from a panel what is random digit selection. we wanted to know more about the regional opinion. most of the outreach has been san francisco-based and we wanted to know the benefits and impacts in san francisco obviously. because it's a regional market, if you go towards the downtown, we wanted to hear from regional travelers as well. they are not tourists. they are folks who work in san francisco or come to san francisco a couple of times a month. we did want to at least get people who come to san francisco. commissioner o'conner: got you. president yee riley: director. >> so you had mentioned that it is the state that is the authorizing agent for trolling

vehicular movement so disprove 26 affect the c. -- does prop 26 affect the c.t.a.'s inability to act? >> we are getting an opinion on that and other people are getting an opinion about prop 26. from what we understand today, if there is a vote when the implement takes decision comes and and that point the threshold if prop 26 applies. at this point there is no decision so it wouldn't apply at this particular point. it is something that we need to get clarity on and it sounds like through the legislative analyst's office it's going to take months if not over a year to find out how prop 26 impacts multiple different things, not

just this potential program. vice president clyde: so if prop 26 does affect this, i guess, has there been any discussion at the transportation authority about how the transportation authority will deal with this particular report in moving ahead in relationship to prop 26? >> again, because there is no implementation decision at this point of user fees of any kind, it's simply adoption of the report and a decision as to whether or not to continue study, it's my understanding it wouldn't apply. there is no mechanism there. if it does move to further study, that is something that would have to be incorporated into that study and we're obviously tracking the decision from the legislative analyst's office to understand. vice president clyde: i understand doing a report, that prop 26 doesn't affect doing a report.

it's about who is implementing the fee and who is the decision-making body for implementing the fee. >> yes. commissioner dooley: you're saying then that the estimates are that you won't know for another year whether prop 26 will effect who makes the decision on implementing such a fee? >> we won't know until the legislative analyst's office makes a decision on it. i can't say right now. again if the study moves or if the concept moves to the next phase of study, that is something that needs to be addressed. if there is an action and prop 26 applies, the threshold would be higher. it would be a supermajority. but i can't say at this point. commissioner dooley: and then i wanted to make a note when you were here before the commission, the commission had made a specific request to reach out to all of the merchants associations and provide a presentation on this that are i