be some privacy concerns surrounding it. i'm just curious to know if that has come up in any of your conversations because it is certainly coming up in conversations with the people i represent. commissioner mirkarimi: i'm going to ask that you try to be passing this possible. >> i will be brief. on the issue of small business impacts, there is quite a body of analysis that has already been done in the study that shows that people that take transit or walk end up spending more per month and making more shopping trips than drivers. so there is evidence that the equation is not as intuitive as one might think. this is also from evidence in stockholm where sales have actually gone up in the quarter and areas rather than down, and that is because they have been facilitated and more people are able to access the downtown

areas. i'd also point out that at least in the feasibility study, and nobody knows how the final proposal might be, the price times r 6:00 to 9:00 a.m., which is when shops are not even open, and then 3:00 to 6:00 p.m., so people have the ability to miss both the access and the exit fee by simply working around those three hours. as far as the privacy concerns, there are technology solutions for that. commissioner alioto-pier: -- >> we would be looking at solutions like london which expunge is any records of the travel once there is evidence the fee has been paid. we would have no interest in keeping it beyond once the motors trip has been paid for. using either electronic or

traditional payment methods. we would have no need to maintain a record of that trip, and that could be deleted from the system. the database. commissioner alioto-pier: ok. thank you. thank you, commissioner. bad commissioner mirkarimi: thank you. commissioner elsbernd. commissioner elsbernd: you mentioned that san francisco and san mateo county used to be one county. that is why we are the only county in the state of california that has 11 members of the board of supervisors. when san mateo county was created, there county was only given five, but we were allowed to keep 11. if we pursued it, assemblymen hill might pick that up and put us back like every other county in the state. but a couple of things -- i'm not usually one who likes to do

things in san francisco simply because it has been successful in europe, but playing that the milan, london and stockholm, in those situations, where the entire cities put with holes around the entry, or was it just central corridor? >> it was the central corridor. >> there is no comparison to us, to san francisco putting tolls up on this entire border. is there any other city anywhere in the war that has put tolls up circling every entrance to the city? >> the stockholm case actually, even though the area that is quarter and that is the downtown area, on the -- i think west end, it involves the entire municipal limit. >> were -- commissioner elsbernd: with the golden gate bridge, the bay bridge, and the proposed tolls, there would be no way to get in without paying a toll. i do not think there is any other city in the world that

could claim that, right? >> i really could not tell you, but the point is there would not be a way to get in without paying a toll during six hours of the day. but there is plenty of opportunity to get in other than the commute time. >> or to get out eat you are a san franciscan who lives in the city and works outside of it. you would have to pay to go to work, whether you go north or south. if you have to be at work at 8:00, you will have to pay to go to work. >> not necessarily. one of the options in the feasibility study, the one that charges only the outbound, would miss that group of people because if you go to work in the morning, the outbound would be free, and in the evening, the inbound would be free. it really depends on how it is structured. >> the chart you gave on page 18 where it says 46% of the respondents support the pilot --

who was your class of respondents? >> this was a representative sample of all bay area folks. the summary of 400 people who participated in our most recent round of feedback. commissioner elsbernd: so these are people who knew about the issue and participated and gave feedback? in the past, we have done polls where we generally cold people. this was not a general poll. this was people who knew about the issue -- >> these are people who participated in our online sessions, but we have also conducted polls, and they have shown similar levels of response time. commissioner elsbernd: i would like to see those if i could. >> the information is available. commissioner mirkarimi: thank you. commissioner dufty. commissioner dufty: thank you. one point you made indicates --

it's sort of indicates that the interest is not going to go away near term. uncertainty about other forms of financing for federal transportation programs and unwillingness to pursue the gas tax increase, so for me, it feels that right now, the transportation authority has had an unprecedented level of attention and dialogue around the study, more than any i have seen in the eight years i have been a member of the authority. so i think part of having that engagement is for me, not supporting moving forward until we have more engagement. i think the attention of the public is there, and i think the opportunity -- we have a member of the state assembly waiting to testify before us today -- i think that individuals who often do not focus on the ta's work are really interested in this, and i do believe that long term, tools like congestion pricing

around climate change and government having to take leadership, that those are tools that we are going to see used around california and around the world. i just feel that at this stage, i did not think for me that there is enough by in an understanding. i think there's a lot of uncertainty. i think the situation is still precarious. we have not moved where we hope we would be at this stage, and while i think it would be different in 2015, for me, i would like to have a little more engagements around it and take advantage of the interest in the public and neighborhood organizations. i do not think there is a group that would turn you down right now. those are my concerns. we are not in a situation where we are with the central subway were if we do not move forward, those funds are going somewhere else, just like we saw with the governors of ohio and wisconsin opting not to pursue high-speed

rail, but i think it is important to build more constituents to support in and around san francisco, in and around the businesses that are in our city to understand if it is not going to be a negative to understand that and accept it. >> if i may, i understand what you're saying. we do have a deadline to apply for the funds. when is that? january 18. we have to be able to apply for federal funds for the value pricing program, which means that if we do not apply, that we would have to wait a year. the fear i have, and i will give you the full strategy, even though the federal government may be watching, is that when we get through this year in washington and it becomes clear that there will not be or will not likely be a significant increase in revenue for transportation and this program is still alive, the value pricing program that i'm talking about, there will be renewed interest in applying for that

money, and we will then be competing with 15 or 20 cities that want to get their hands on that money. if we apply now, we have a better chance of getting a significant amount of funding, especially after just having completed a feasibility study that shows that the concept is feasible and was done with a great deal of professional care. i think that creating a hiatus of a year between now and when we apply for funding is going to be an advantage for us. the other reality is that although i agree with you that it would be great to have a lot more engagement and a lot more public discourse, we do not have the budget to do that. that is why we are pursuing the federal funding. this would give us a 521 leverage on leverageprop k we have -- on whatever prop k we have. if we do not do this right, we have to do with the design of some kind of alternative that i

-- that addresses what i believe will be assemblyman hill's concerns and so on. we cannot do that without money, and it will not be my recommendation, and it would not be prudent on my part to recommend that we move forward on this sort of casual engagement effort with the public because it will cost money. this is essentially just providing the opportunity to capture the federal money and a real job of educating people and educating ourselves to what their concerns are so we get to a place where we have real information to make a decision. commissioner mirkarimi: commissioner dufty, are you through? commissioner maxwell. commissioner maxwell: i think those are exactly the arguments for me as the reason we need to move forward. i think it is extremely important we go forward with this at this particular time because we do have people's eyes and ears. and it is not comfortable for them and there are questions that need to be asked, but while

we're talking about it and while those questions are being asked, people are really thinking about their travel. with this congested pricing, if we were to implement it, there's a lot of things that happen with that. we have money that goes directly into transportation, not into the dark hole of the general fund, but they go directly to transportation. they go to pedestrian safety. they go to more buses. there is a lot of things that come with this money, and i think it is important that people understand that. if we look at what happened in sweden, they implemented it, and folks complained of it, and after awhile, they said they would let them vote on it, and they took it away, and the vote came, and people voted on it because what they saw was what it gave them initially and up front. they saw better transportation, safer streets, less crowds, so i think, yes, it is uncomfortable.

it is different, but if you go to new jersey, and if you go from washington, d.c., to new york, you are paying tolls all the way, and you do not see a whole lot for it, but here, you have options, and the options would be better. yes, it is uncomfortable, but let's go forward. let's think ahead of the game. commissioner mirkarimi: thank you. commissioner alioto-pier. commissioner alioto-pier: thank you. one real quick question. commissioner maxwell is correct in that this would give funds to the transportation system here in san francisco. the question that needs to be asked is where is the mta on this? how would they combine their resources to figure out what is best for san francisco? do they have an official stand on congestion pricing?

$60 million to $80 million for one area is a lot of money. >> commissioner, what we are proposing would certainly dedicate a nice amount of money to the mta and transit in general. i guess the caveat is it would not be just the mta for the reasons i explained earlier. we are at a stage where we are bringing this to you. we have had mta, or participate in the study, but again, we are talking about a feasibility study. we have not sat down to design a particular transit line, but let me give you a sense as to how that might happen. they put on 17 new bus routes. that is the kind of message ultimately we want to give the

general public, of course, and the operators themselves, that this is not about a promise. this is about to the producing an improvement in the transit service before you start charging people, so when they get hit with the charge, they know they have a real option, not an imagined option. i do not think that the m.t.a. has taken a policy position on this, but there might be somewhat -- commissioner alioto-pier: if it is so wonderful, why have they not come out on it? >> it is a very innovative things. it is still controversial. i do not know that they have taken a position on it. >> the city in its 2004 climate action plan -- [no audio] the city of san francisco's a climate action plan did call for congested pricing to be explored, and we are also looking into the update to the climate action plan. congestion pricing is one of the main strategies to achieve our

climate goals. commissioner alioto-pier: but they have not officially endorsed this particular study? >> not that i know of. we have not asked anyone to endorse or not endorse pricing at this point. commissioner alioto-pier: does it concern you at all that we are talking about putting his money into san francisco's public transportation system? >> they have been for dissipating fully in our process. all the various transit operators are actually quite interested in the opportunity to put transit on a more stable footing and to increase frequencies and service and deal with the various challenges. commissioner alioto-pier: i'm sure that they would be, but our own municipal transportation agency. >> they are doing their own congestion pricing pilot of a different flavor. that is dealing with localized ingestion and localized opportunities associated with parking management. i would say that the agencies are similarly -- commissioner alioto-pier: those are different things.

>> yes, but they are in the family of congestion pricing to manage scarce resources. commissioner alioto-pier: yes, they both deal with digestion, but they do it in very different ways. ok, thank you. commissioner chu: just a question for the staff. with regards to congestion management, we have heard a lot about how if we do not apply for federal money, we will lose it potentially to deal with the issue of congested management. what have been some of the other reproaches that other jurisdictions have taken in terms of projects they have proposed? i imagine not everything has gone forward with that pot of money for decongestant toll proposal. >> it is an interesting question. several jurisdictions have applied for high occupancy toll lanes. there is an example of that already implemented in the bay

area. it is a lane where you paid to be on that plane. there are some interesting ideas around that. it has been probably the most popular program in terms of the congestion pricing suite of opportunities that exist, but it is a very suburban-based kind of solution. not the sort of thing that we could very easily applied in san francisco. we have a very constrained system already. in some places, we only have three lanes. reserving a lane for something like that would be very hard to implement. the other flavor we have seen is parking. but parking is a very interesting phenomenon. just to give you a very quick sort of logical helper here, there's 24,000 parking meters in

san francisco, and we have several million trips a day. more than half of those are taken with cars. so it is not a one-to-one correspondence between what you can do with curbside parking and how you can affect meaningfully travel behavior of people who are driving. so what we are looking at is what we think would be most effective and most appropriate to the environment we have. the flavor that it takes, the hours that it happens, the amount of money charge, who is exempted from it, and a host of other things, and especially how the money is used that is collected from the fee, those are all things that are up in the air. what we have done in the feasibility study is just posed one set of potential ideas and how it works for those. the conclusion is it can work. the next stage would be to apply it to something there is consensus about in terms of what services would be improved, who would get what money, what hours

and so on and see if it really still works. increasingly believe that that is the way to solve these problems, to really know the details. commissioner chu: thank you very much. i just want to make a quick comment, with regards to the potential losing federal funding if we do not apply for it, i appreciate that comment. i think that the supervisor and commissioner pointed out earlier, it really is dependent on funding cycles. if we do not have a shot at it this time, we might be able to go forward again at another time, but on another note, it indicates to me that there are potential other approaches to dealing with congestion in the city as opposed to congestion that we are seeing today. there are alternatives with regards to parking. maybe hov lanes if applicable, and maybe something we have not thought of yet. there are potentially other

approaches towards dealing with congested management in the city. the other thing that i would say in terms of my concern about the proposal is the lack of regional support for it. i know that we have received some letters of support, and we have gone and received bay area transportation authority support for it previously, but from some of the comments we have seen from neighboring counties, it is a concern. in particular if we decide this is something we want to move forward with, we would still need state approval for that, and that cannot be done without support of our regional partners, so being able to have a proposal is something that is most important. being able to move forward, it is not just san francisco driving this, but having a regional approach is something

that will probably be better. i want to speak in terms of the local impact to the southern gateway approach. district four would be severely impacted, i think, just thinking from a local district supervisor point of view from the southern gate way. so many parents, families have relatives right across the border, and they do not think about the san francisco/san mateo border. so many citizens just go down there to visit their relatives. their normal course taking kids to and from school, is really all along that corridor. without really understanding that and also understanding that in our district, the outreach has not been as thorough as it should have been, i have some significant concerns with the southern gateway approach. i appreciate the work we have here today. i appreciate the information given, but given all these factors, i would not be supportive of moving forward just yet. commissioner avalos: i'm

actually supportive of the study, but i have some concerns, concerns that i have brought out. the core part of the city close to downtown and the central part of the city drives our trends a policy more than the areas that are more far-flung -- the sunset, excelsior, lake view neighborhoods, and i really think that we're going to look at the study and how that makes congestion pricing feasible if we are going to implement that. it really has to be meaningful to people. a case in point, they have been turning around before getting down to ocean beach. the mission bustline as well. hast 280 going south towards daly city has stopped and turned around. people are not able to get to their final destinations as a

common occurrence. if you want to be able to encourage people to get out of their cars and use more transit, we have to make sure that the transit options are being enhanced in those parts of town, and you really have to make sure that there is going to be a shift, not just in attitude, but in behavior of the mta and the transportation authority that is going to result in real resources going out to those neighborhoods. i want to make sure that is being covered as we're moving forward and looking at how we would make congestion pricing work. commissioner mar: i wanted to also just thank you for your hard work on this and the important findings and the analysis from the study. i'm going to be supportive of the study. i also wanted to say that besides the 63-page report, there are important fact sheets, and the video is useful, especially in breaking down the misinformation about what the study represents. i also understand concerns from

residents about potential congestion pricing to be implemented, but it is many years down the road, and my understanding is that the next process is a careful one with the environmental review. i just wanted to add that commissioner daly and i serve on the bay area air quality management district, and we just wanted to highlight that the air pollution district's 2010 -- clean air, since that in many ways, programs like this are important in helping us achieve goals of clean air. the director makes a point that benefits from a potential congestion pricing program could include reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reduce traffic and tailpipe emissions that cause serious illness such as asthma, bronchitis, and heart attacks, and increased revenue to the tune of $60 million to $80 million per year to fund improvements directly to the public transportation system, so i think the study is important and moving forward with the

second phase, very careful environmental review, is good for the city. commissioner chiu: i want to address what i know is real confusion among the public, and i know none of my colleagues and i did not think anyone here is confused, but we are not making the decision today to move forward with congested pricing. for all of us here, my guess is none of us would be prepared to do that because of the fact that we are in the economic recession we are in and, frankly, because of the fact that we do not have enough information. but i, like a number of colleagues here, and supportive of moving forward with the study. anyone who travels through the downtown area during rush our experiences serious gridlock, and projections for what will happen are severe, and i do not think anyone here once san francisco to follow in the path of other cities that have been traffic disasters. i'm not just talking about los angeles. the good of bangkok, paulo,

mexico city, moscow -- cities around the world that should be great cities see incredible negative impact because of lack of planning that occurred at the wrong time -- if you go to bangkok, sao paulo, mexico city, moscow. there are cities that have figured out traffic entrance of policies that work, and it is our responsibility to at least to study what these options are, to figure out how we can move beyond what will be inevitable gridlock, how we can move to become a 21st century livable city that is environmentally health care, that has decent traffic circulation, and will be economically competitive. there are two points i want to make suggestions. first of all, the small business commission had a number of questions when they reviewed this policy, and i think those are questions that need to be explored about the impact of various options on local businesses. i think, though, that there will

be some surprises in some of this data. what we found in other cities -- when you free of traffic, more people go to downtown areas to shop, to spend their money, to work, because it is easier to get into those areas, and i asked staff to focus on that. in response to a point that commissioner chu may, i think there may be other approaches to dealing with congestion that we have not yet considered. i think it is entirely appropriate that we consider them. it is our responsibility, every single one of us, that of the options we are looking at now may not be acceptable to you, each of us has the responsibility for figuring out an option or policy as a body, hopefully we can move in the direction that we can turn this into a truly 21st century city. commissioner chiu: bank -- commissioner campos: thank you.

following up, just a question to the chair, to transportation authority staff, because i do think that it is important to underscore that we are not actually voting today on congestion pricing. how does that work? if we were to go forward with the study, what would be the process that will be followed by which a decision on the actual proposal of doing congested pricing worked? would there be an opportunity for us to get feedback from the public? a lot of interesting points were raised about the impact on small businesses and the local economy. if you could just say a little bit about that because i think it would be good to put that in context in terms of what this vote would mean today. >> what we were suggesting is a follow the rigorous environmental impact reports process and also in process so

that we have qualifications for federal funding, not just for the study, but eventually if the board decides, for implementation, which is really where the big prize is. you heard earlier the comments about the federal government offering new york well over $300 million in funding for transit improvements and so on as part of the condition pricing program. the process is essentially the ceqa process that goes through the definition of alternatives that are prepared through a public participation process with inclusion of the impact that would include not just san mateo, but others, with all of the different sorts of users of the system, diverse and