talking about? >> correct. supervisor mirkarimi: very good. thank you. supervisor kim: thank you. next we have at sfmta. i also want to recognize for my colleagues, we have ed riskin from dpw. raymond smith from district pedestrian safety advisory committee. questions if there are. we also have here ed, the director of department of public works, courtney from redevelopment, elizabeth from what san francisco, and raymond smith, to insert questions as well. -- to answer questions as well.

>> i want to thank you for having this hearing. it is really important to listen to what we just heard and get the feedback. i want to recognize, i have two staffers with me here. we have heard a lot of testimony and information from the speakers. some of this might be repetitive. i will focus on the areas we were asked to present today. the key area i would like to talk about is the current pedestrian program we have in our perfume in the city and drill down to specifics of what is going on in district 6 and what opportunities there are coming down the pipe. before we begin, i'd like to

mention that, as the mta is in to greet two different modes, we see walking as fundamental to our vision. we are one of the few agencies that has the purview of almost all the modes under one agency. we have growing and strong partnerships with other transportation providers. this slide is important to show you who is in charge of what. there has been some confusion recently about how much the mta has responsibility, the public utilities commission, etcetera. this came out of the work we did with our partners, led primarily by the planning department, who has jurisdiction over what. it is complex. it is one of the discussions we will have in the near future on how we can simplify this.

this makes sense for building streetscapes, but pedestrian safety is all around these issues. there really is room for improvement. i want to move your attention to the overhead projector. [inaudible] a sheet actually shows who is responsible for which segment of the pedestrian safety directive and what each department has to contribute. it was a long list of different agencies and what they can contribute. "back toward the power point. what it comes to go to his

design. if we engineer it well and we have a good education, good encouragement, enforcement, evaluation, it is positive. in addition, it is important to note that the public realm, the space pedestrian's occupy, really has two key elements. pedestrian safety is about engineering, how the physical street works and operates, whereas public safety and what is going around in the area, how the buildings, land use, all those different elements, and both of these two factors really determine the quality of the public realm. we really have to pay attention. we have also looked at using the data that we have to start doing some modeling of estimated pedestrian trips throughout the city. you really see the area of

district 6 and the financial district has the lion's share of estimated pedestrian crossing. some of the areas around market street have about 200,000-plus crossings per day. that is not a small amount. it is comparable to some european cities. you have the level of intensity of pedestrian crossing. also important to note is the yellow corridor that runs to the south and west, michigan corridor, that is a heavy transit line. transit and pedestrian crossings are actually very close as well. we are a walking city. we have voted many times. we are the most walkable city. that comes with some other increases in various exposure to

pedestrian, bicycle, and motors crossings as well. we have been looking at what we can do within our current toolkit of resources and allowable measures. best practices were mentioned that we are not able to utilize. of the things we can utilize, like red zones, where we advance the packing further back so the pedestrians have greater visibility as the cross, and especially for seniors, senior visibility is really critical to be able to gauge whether or not the sidewalk is crossable. we have looked at continental crosswalks. these are the yellow letter crosswalks. it makes pedestrians more

visible. we were talking about audible signals and countdown signals, to name a few. some of the physical engineering toolkit pieces are advancing aligns with the crosswalks, center median improvements, where we create a pedestrian refuge as across the street, improved lighting, and looking at race crosswalks in some areas. these are more capital-intensive than the previous list. i will talk about those in a moment. the one measure that i think has been most successful and one of the best practices that san francisco pioneered in the u.s. was the countdown signal. these signals, immediately after their installed, showing 22% reduction in collisions. we put them throughout the city. we are continuing to put as many

as we can in the city where we have signals at intersections. when we're looking at what toolkit we have and what we can do, the information that has been brought before us by the department of public health shows you that the cross we put in for the infrastructure improvement pales to the cost of the people who were injured. that being said, there are some costs that we are held to. it is a challenge for us to streamline the timeline down to o. we must prioritize where the signals go and how many go in. two is the process of educating the community, the approvals

process -- process, and doing environmental analysis. these are things that are not negotiable in the time line. we're looking closely at internal practices and our partner decisionmaking processes to streamline as best we can. we feel we could probably bring these down some. there are specifics that we must go through. i want to point about the cost of bulbouts. one of the cost determinants is moving fire hydrants. we have been working closely with the department of public works and the fire department and planning department to figure out ways to look at how we can reduce these costs. ed will speak in a little bit about how we have managed to

work with the fire department to reduce the need to relocate the fire hydrants with future projects. line removal, some can be done for $100,000 per mile. a complete street is all of the pieces. a recent example is a street that has some in district 6. we're looking at how we can reduce the cross -- the cost. the timeline, four years to do it. the pavement to parks project are are around -- projects are around to honor to be thousand

dollars. -- $200,000. striping can be quick to implement. we have gone through these. looking at pedestrian incident locations in the last five years, the tenderloin area, south of market area, is the hot spot, in particular, six straight. it is showing up as a problematic location. when we look of the analysis of what is happening, there was a really good point that there's no point in blaming the driver or the pedestrian. both are at fault, neither our -- neither are at fault. it is about our streets and how

we have designed them. injuries have been coming down. this trend is very positive, but it is still there. it needs to come down further and more. with pedestrian collisions, we really are not able to say there's a trend. it is very erratic year by year. we only know what his report. in terms of pedestrian safety, when you are looking at exposure, we have some exposure maps we're looking at. what is the likelihood based on the data of interacting with a vehicle? what is the likelihood of having an injury? the tender linaria, the market financial district, the north end of the south of market area, is where it with pop up in the data.

when we're looking at st. design, we're looking at how to reduce exposure. this is a typical south of market street. this is the legacy street from 30 or 40 years ago. when we're looking at a complete street, we are talking about reducing vehicle exposure. there are trade-offs that are contentious, depending where we try to put these. they're removing a traveling. supervisor kim: sorry to interrupt. it is great to see a lot of this, but i'm wondering if you can skip ahead to the timeline for the mta in terms of pedestrian safety, what is in the works, when we can expect to see the improvements we have been talking about. >> sure.

so the products that are going in the ground, on the ground since january of this year, we have seven signals that have gone in. harrison, folsom and russell goal in this year. -- go in this year. there is a parkway going in, and i think this is going in before the summer. we're looking at 50 m.p.h. and home zones. a home zone is a product that has come out of best practices

in europe. it is a few blocks around the school. it is part of the pedestrian safety directive as well. marshall elementary would most likely be the first one to see this treatment. we are exploring the 50 m.p.h. signs around specific schools. carmichael would be a candidate for that. supervisor kim: can i ask why it is still being explored, not implemented? >> we're trying to get funding. supervisor kim: how much? what we're looking at? >> it is actually not much cost. it is a matter of physically doing the work to get them in the ground. doing the analysis of the area, there are steps we have to go through. these will go in. and they are not very expensive.

there are about 280 schools we would look at for doing this at a half million dollar cost for every school. i pulled out two examples of where we would look at it. supervisor kim: what is the timeline? this request came a year ago. >> it came out in december, the end of december. supervisor kim: december of 2010. a year later, we have done 0. >> we have a task force in march. we have another meeting this month. we would like to see this in the next six months. supervisor kim: how many schools will be able to have it this year? >> i don't have an answer. supervisor kim: when will you be able to commit to a number of schools this year? >> i will have to get back to you on that. we have to get the funding. supervisor kim: i just really have to emphasize, this was the

top directive a year ago. we really want to see a commitment to a number of schools this year. >> i am bridget smith. my group will be working on the zones. the issue's finding the funding. we're looking for opportunities. we're working with staff. it takes four months to get funding from the moment we apply. we applied in one category and we were told that would not work. we are trying to identify where we can get the funding we need. one important point to know is that it does not apply to every single street. there are certain criteria in legislation. we have to look at each location and figure out what streets it applies to and which it doesn't before we can apply it. it is not just a matter of applying it to every school

uniformly. supervisor kim: i am surprised that analysis has not been done yet. >> we don't have the funding. it is about the funding. when we have that, we will do the analysis. we have done quick sketches of how much it will be and what our approach will be. it will take us four months of least to get the funding. it is because of the way my group is funded and it is the way our resources are. supervisor kim: thank you. >> other projects that are going in include the triple a pedestrian signals for third and came -- king. we are on track to have the two- way this year. there will be going in this year. right now, we're looking at reducing the speed limits on howard and fulsomef andolsom --

and folsom. we're doing a speed survey to see how we can reduce it 25 miles an hour. the south of market streets really need a lot of work. we are committed to those. the question is, when you do beyond timing more signals, -- , or signals, if you're looking at doing road diet, it can take millions of dollars and years. we're focusing this presentation on what can happen in 2011 and 2012. there are other opportunities we believe we would like to see in businesses in the times best -- district 6. we had a pilot round and we

believe there are businesses that could benefit from partner in with the plan department and mta to do work in the district and also on corrals. it helps to produce pedestrian safety. what else could we do with we had funding in hand to prioritize in district 6? we could look at doing a new pavement to park in district 6. additional signals at the intersection, potential pilots could include 6th street. westbound market's streak restrictions -- market street restrictions were put in.

there is a list of additional pedestrian safety projects that we could put in the ground. the challenge has been for us, there really isn't funding for pedestrian project. there is transportation funding, but it is in specific categories. it is difficult for us to make the case that it could draw from those existing funds for pedestrians a project. the smarter way for us to do this is to actually require that safety is accounted for in the design in these projects. you are really talking about decimal points. every time there repaving opportunities -- there are repaving opportunities, we have to look at safety treatment.

there are larger corridor projects. 4th street subway corridor. it has in design guidelines for pedestrian safety. it will come down the pike a few years from now. that is what we have at the moment. we thank you for having us and i am so glad we were talking with you. the more attention you give us, the bigger the chance we will have these projects in the ground must -- much faster. supervisor mirkarimi: supervisor kim, we will have to take a three-minute recess. thank you, everybody. we know you have been very patient and very focused on this, but we need to entertain a three-minute recess. ok.