or there never able to bicycle, and that is ok. then we have the fast and fair with folks on the left. they're comfortable writing in any kind of traffic and are frankly, they would prefer that we do not give them a bike lane at all. then we have the enthusiast, those who are comfortable with the infrastructure we have. but there is a huge segment of people in the middle, people who love to get out on their bikes. we know that women are underrepresented in bicycling. we know that younger children, older adults, and folks to have a bike in their current -- in their garage and will elect a bicycle more often, because they remember that its offer is freedom from parental supervision and it brings them joy, so we're focused on these folks in the middle. we have already reached the folks on the left. we cannot get to the folks on the right, but there's a big potential to reach out to these people in the middle. we know that they are not riding right now because they're afraid

to ride in traffic. what can we do differently from an engineering perspective? on the left is a typical bike lane. there is really no buffering from traffic. furthermore, an urban environment, there is no buffer in from the doors zone. so when those parked cars of their doors, this is one of the most common types of bicycle crashes in the cities. you go helmet over handlebars. so these do not feel safe. they operate pretty well, and they do have a safety improvement. but they do not feel comfortable. on the right is really what we have been saying, sort of a sea change and bicycle engineering and design in the last three years. it is called a cycle track but you can see clearly that the bikeway is buffered from traffic, by a lane of parked cars, and there is an actual buffer zone between the bikeway in the parked cars. the bikeways wide enough for people to go comfortably from side to side and for people to pass each other.

this one is from chicago, illinois. here are some more photos of cycle tracks. they have been used in austin, texas and, a cambridge, massachusetts, portland, oregon, new york, brooklyn, and manhattan, and washington, d.c.. we know more about them. some have been in place since 2007, 2008. so we actually have information about how they operate. here are some of the advantages that i covered. and here is some hard data we have about the cycle tracks in prospect park in brooklyn. that is a similar design to what we're doing here the difference is that there's two-way by traffic on the cycle track. we're talking about 1-way bicycle traffic. there is the buffer zone, parked cars, and the bicycle trek. you can view these statistics. bikes on sidewalks decreased by about 46% with the overall number cyclists using the

corridor to about 3%. having been involved in education campaigns in berkeley and other places, trying to get bikes of sidewalks, the best we get is usually about a 10% reduction. until you give bicyclist a place where they feel more safe, they will continue to risk a ticket and right on the sidewalk, which is incredibly frustrating to me when i have my other hat on as a pedestrian planner. traffic's that involve injury decreased about 63%. injuries to all street users decreased about 20%. the federal highway administration actually put together an opinion on the prospect park bikeway, finding that it did not violate ada in any way and was not inherently unsafe. that gives us confidence. there are similar statistics for at least three other facilities that look like this, and then once that have 1-way on either side of the street. generally, a reduction of injuries of about 50%. a reduction in pedestrian

injuries of about 30%. and a reduction in injuries to cyclists down, cut in half. so the safety benefits are real. the benefits in terms of users are real. we see and hear in vancouver and portland, increases between 200 % and 300% of the number of people bicycling after they go in. we feel that that potential, but they are san francisco. we know that we need to evaluate this carefully. education enforcement needs to be a huge part of what we do to make sure that we find out whether or not this is going to be a successful tool here. with that, i will turn it over to antonio to talk more about the design details. >> good morning. as you can see on the bottom of this slide, we have actually done some outreach and research ourselves. we asked people, both with an online survey and with a survey

at one of our public meetings, what designed the preferred, two-way or 1-way? on the top, there's a much larger green bark, and those of the people that feel good about the 1-redesign. some people feel good about the two-redesign, but there's much more resistance to that. this is about 500 service, not a small group of people. we have met with park institutions, including museums. we have met with a different advocates, so we have kind of proceeded in a collaborative manner of trying to come up with the best design for everybody. do the design process, we look at three specific goals out of the meetings and discussions. first, we wanted to provide a continuous a buffer, not something that gave way at a certain point. we wanted to maintain all the blousons, which we are required to do by law. then we wanted to maintain as much parking near the

institutions as we possibly could. i will go into detail about each one of those. what you cannot see there is a cross section of what is out there right now on the top, you can see that there are travel lanes in the middle of the roadway. on the side, parking permit it. in the middle, a kind of an extra space. that is used as a de facto bike lane. but it does not get to the heart of the problem that we're seeing here, that people want separation. what we're proposing is a roadway here where you have a bicycle lanes, the cycle track, along the curb with a three to 6 foot buffer. the new have parked cars shielding that by plane from vehicle traffic in the middle of the roadway. specifically, that buffer is a minimum of 3 feet. but it is larger in certain places, especially where we have blue zones. in some places, the roadway narrows so that parking cannot be maintained on one side.

in some places, it actually goes down to the point where you cannot maintain an on either side, especially near transverse, which is relatively far away from some of the high demand parking areas. this is for the existing blousons are. there are 20 full-time blue zones, in addition to the sixth weekend-only bloop zones. we wanted to see if we can move these to better accommodate people's needs. one of the things that came out is it was it clear that people wanted to change the blue zones around the concourse. most are across from the concourse. the destination being the museums. so people have to park and across the street. with the new reconfiguration, we can move things around a little bit. so we would leave about half of the blue zones on that side and

would move just over half to the other side. that would get people closer but still allow people for both directions to find spaces. there is a cross-section showing the proper. there would be an 8 foot buffer in some of the blue zones. there is an 8 foot buffer adjacent to a van. the ramp is about 52 inches long, and a wheelchair is about two and a half inches wide. they might slip into the biplane a little bit, but not especially. this is how some of the current blue zones would. there is no landing strip. there are about 11 spaces like this. what we're proposing would give people landing areas that they do not have currently. now we get to the, perhaps one of the controversial issues, which is over the parking situation overall. there are 1900 spaces in all of

the golden gate park, about 480 and jfk. 800 spaces exist underneath the surface. there are about 1400 spaces near the concourse. heuter about a half mile circle around the museum's, and that is all the area that is in red on this presentation. we look at some of the areas and attributed those as parking for other attractions. of the 460 regular, anyone can use those spaces. about -- we have gotten it down a little bit. in our last presentation, it was about 100 to be removed. but we're talking about gaining back some spaces elsewhere. specifically some on bowling green drive, mlk, and some on another story that would be nearby, and they're still attractive options for people

going to these destinations, does not specifically on jfk drive. this shows a slightly different number. that is because we have worked to lower the numbers since the last presentation. near the conservatory, there are approximately 300 spaces. near the concourse, approximately 590 free parking spaces. near the lake, about 540. we're losing a small amount. however, we want to know how well they are being utilized. if they're not being utilized, we can probably take out more. but they are being utilized in some form. near the music concourse, and a typical weekday, there typically 50 spaces available. we're talking about removing five. when you look at a regular saturday, we're talking about 80 spaces, a decent amount of space available. i think parking will get tight

no matter what happens. if you look in the overall eastern half of golden gate park, we're talking about removing 56 spaces. you can see that there are hundreds of spaces available. on healthy saturdays, there are the road closures. so the amount of parking spaces lost is different in the sense that some of those spaces are unavailable any health. the road is closed. about 27 spaces lost near stowe lake. we're talking about losing about 30 spaces on those saturdays. there is still about 210 spaces available. in addition, on saturdays and sundays, a shuttle runs from ocean beach over to the ucsf garage, connecting auxiliary parking spaces to these high demand areas. if you look at the red area along jfk, the western half,

710 spaces exist and450 are available on saturday. near the beach, about 760 spaces, of which 230 are available. so there is abundant parking in other parts of the park as well. we have to look good weekend time limits. this is it serving from 2009 that shows, in red, if more than half of the space is to not change from 10 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., they may be employees of the museum's. they may be employees elsewhere. but people are parking in is for a long time spans. one way to free up some parking in those areas would be to add parking limits on weekends as well. as i said, we have changed the numbers about how many parking spaces would be lost. when we started last year sometime and really got into the nuts and bolts earlier this year, we're talking about 155

spaces that would be removed, compared to what is out there now. we talked to rec and park to seek where red zones were that could be taken back. so we got the number down to about 85 in the whole park. the concourse authority asked us to continue looking for other spaces. in some key locations, we were looking at narrowing the second track a little bit. it would still be relatively wide enough for people to ride side-by-side. less comfortable, but it is possible. we could get it down to about 60 spaces lost in these areas, plus an additional 611 farther from the key destinations. we're talking about a loss of about 54 spaces in the entire park at this point. as part of our project, we're not talking about just putting down paint in being done with it.

we're looking at education enforcement evaluation. there is an affirmation that portland put out when they did their cycle track. on the laugh, you see a website that shows how it is supposed to work, and we could also hand out a pamphlet which discusses how people are supposed to use the facility. and with that, a timeline generally of what we have been doing, when we have been doing it, and when we plan to implement it. we have now gone through multiple -- and abundant public process, and we're starting to look at education and outreach opportunities. >> just to add one thing about evaluation, some of the specific things we will be evaluating our driver behavior and parking behavior, conflicts of all kinds. bicycle-pedestrian, bicycle-a vehicle. bicycle speeds in the second track to see if there's anything we need to do to slow down

bicyclists. if we have a bicycle is going 20 miles per hour, we will have failed, because those are not going to be comfortable for the cyclists that we're really trying to attract, the casual sort of cyclists who are not out there right now. in addition, we're interested in finding out how the blue zones are operating and interested to see how the shuttle is operating. we're interested to see whether or not there are any impact in terms of the types of people better visiting, the numbers of people visiting the institution. those are some specific components of our evaluation plan, and we're happy to bring back that information to the commission or one of the committees is that is of interest. probably immediately after it goes in, but then around six months or so after words is one we would do kind of the more substantive evaluation. commissioner buell: thank you. does that conclude the presentation from staff?

in the last 48 hours, the commission has received a number of letters from the disability community. is susan or a representative of the mayor's office of disability here? >> good morning, commissioners. susan, director of the mayor's office on disability. do you have questions? commissioner buell: we have gotten a number of letters concerned about the safety for disabled in terms of crossing and then access, so i would like to see if you could comment on this or if you have a look at the scheme and have any comments on it. >> let me give you a little bit of context. the mayor's office on disability

is the office in san francisco that is the ada compliance office. our job is to make sure that the city is in compliance with the americans with disability act and other disability rights laws. we work with 88 coordinators in departments around the city. we absolutely consult on projects like this. in this case, we were approached a few months ago, and my e-mail say in june, to look at the cycle tracks as they were becoming more defined. we focused on the accessible parking spaces in those discussions. because in the past when we have had issues with jfk and the disability community, the placement and a number of accessible parking spaces were the primary issues for the disability community. we have not had discussions about the actual design of the

cycle track, whether having a 1- way on each side, whether having two-way on one side, whether having something straight down the middle, having something with parking on one side and the cycle track on the other side -- we have not engaged in those discussions. what we have engaged in in a larger sense is it to talk about the importance of dedicated bike lanes for everyone. in the city service, we asked for the first time this past year, do you bike? how often? why, why not? if there's something that would help you bike more frequently, what would it be? the most popular response was a bicycle lane that was separate from traffic. protected from the vehicular traffic. this is an issue for the disability community as well.

there is often the misperception that the disability community only six -- consist of people who use wheelchairs are used canes because they had envisioned disabilities. the disability community is a very broad. it is about 20% of our population here in san francisco. it includes people who have chronic illnesses, orthopedic problems -- of back pain, lead paint, new problems, heart disease, lung problems. the hidden disabilities, mental disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, are all included in this community. just as it is not a homogenous committee in terms of who we are, it is not a homogenous committee in terms of the perspectives on various city projects. unfortunately, not prepared to speak to this specific design.

but i am prepared to say that saybike lanes are very important for people in the disability committee who do buy, because the safety would be more likely to bring them out to practice short trips and get the benefits of the exercise from the biking. that is the portion of the disability community that is important . isbike lanes -- dedicated bike lanes are also important the people in the disability community who do not bicycle. we will get enough people biking that it will reduce the pressure on our parking spaces and our public transit. i want to be very clear that this is not a conflict between the disability community and the banking community. we have many interests that are aligned. commissioner buell: thank you

very much. before we go to general public comment, i will like to ask the mayor's office in supervisor mar's office to weigh in on this issue. can we get someone from the mayor's office? >> good morning, commissioners. my name is johanna, the environmental policy advisor for mayor lee peter i am here to speak on behalf of mayor lee in strong support of this project to the mayor feels that golden gate park is a world-class park and deserves a world-class bicycling in facilities and opportunities for people to be active, get out, and be healthy. i live about three blocks from the institutions at golden gate park. i take my two sons bicycling every sunday in the park, but i only do when the street is closed to vehicles because that is the only time i feel safe bicycling with my two children. so personally i look forward to the opportunity to take the

mother days of the week when there is a bike lane. last year when the board voted unanimously to adopt a city-wide goal of 20% of bike trips by 2020, and this is a goal that we strongly support. the mayor is a strong supporter of san francisco's bicycle transit-first policy in the city's action goals. increasing bicycling with an increase in protected bike lanes would further the city's goal of cleaner air, more people taking public transit or other alternative modes of transportation. we have seen a lot of other cities around the country that have been increasing their biking infrastructure. and we have also seen it that bicycling is not only good for the environment and for help, but is actually good for business. i believe you have seen the letter of support that the mayor submitted. he points out a couple of examples where we have seen increased activity in the areas

where we have calmed traffic and installed new bike lanes. we put in a parklet on divisadero that didn't -- that removed two parking spaces. we day and evening activity, by 37%. on in valencia street, where we have put in a number of new bike lanes, 65% of the merchants have said they had a positive impact on their business. we do expect that there will be an increase in activity in the park as a result of the bike lanes. i have been working closely with the mta, rec and park, on the plans for the jfk protected bike lane. we have looked at the concerns about parking removal. the mayor shares those concerns, so the asked the mta to do everything they could to minimize the parking losses. we feel very comfortable, though it is not desirable to lose those 55 spaces would tend near

the institutions, we feel that the pros outweighed the cons on the parking site in terms of increasing activity to the institutions and the park. the mayor shares the concerns about possible impact on pedestrians and disabled park users. the mayor's office on disability has been working with the mta on the project generally. but as susan mentioned, not this specific design. but we feel the current design minimizes in the expected negative impact. as the mta pointed out, we have seen cases in other cities around the country where they have seen a decrease in pedestrian and bicycle conflicts. i know that mta commissioner or the board member who is a wheelchair-user is also a very strong supporter of this project. we fell that jfk protected by way would be a tremendous benefit to the park and the community, and we urge your support today. thank you. commissioner buell: thank you very much.

>> good morning, commissioners. i am from the office of supervisor mar. i believe that you have already received this letter from supervisor mar. it is to reiterate his suppor he is also a regular bicycle commuter, rides jfk frequently. personally, i am also a bicycle commuter in san francisco and often ride that route. i have had the unpleasant experience of riding in the gap right now that is between the parked cars, and i have had the experience of a car driving behind me and honking at me while i was not in the roadway. we think this project would be a tremendous benefit. it would really promote cycling as a way to commute. thank you. commissioner buell: thank you. commissioner lee, did you have a

question? >> yes -- commissioner lee: yes, for the mta. there was a driver accident where a pedestrian was hit. i wonder if there is some out region can be doing? i think it is really important to educate drivers and bicyclist that they have to slow down. i was wondering if you have reached out to two other surrounding areas, like our group, and there's also one in the sunset, to educate drivers? as they go through the park, as they go through north and south, to educate and to get traffic to slow down. what kind of resources are you planning to put into addressing that issue? >> i think i can speak to that. next week is a bicycle safety

week, and there are a lot of bicycle safety classes being offered around the city but in this project offers an excellent opportunity to do the kind of outreach that you're talking about, where we can really get into how to share the road and how to interact and get the message out about everybody needing to proceed slowly so that we can actually shared the space. we talked with the institutions, san francisco bike coalition, about creative ways to get information out to people. for instance, at the point of sell when they buy a ticket, for the sf bike coalition to help us with have taught to officers fm the traffic company about being there during the transition and also leveraging that as an opportunity to talk about safety for all users. we certainly love to sort of broaden our reach out to some of the neighborhood organization

that you're talking about. i think this is a great opportunity to do that. commissioner lee: great, thank you. >> public comment. i haven't zachary, a just and, of commack and -- zachary, justin, bob, and ike. you can come forward, please. two minutes. >> that is all i need. ok. my name is ed zachary. i hope it is not obvious this is my first public comment. i am days student at sfsu. i would like to say that i am not a huge bicyclist. i do enjoy it. i grew up in los angeles, know the value of a car. but a buffer zone is a wonderful idea. it would make me feel more comfortable bicycling in the city. i always they want to bicycle

more, but it is difficult to start. i also have a bike. but as an environmental fights later, it is a great idea. it will help with reducing traffic. it will increase at people going outside and enjoying the park in general. also, i feel like the parking issue is a little bit trivial. the whole point is to reduce people from using their cars in the first place. it is great to keep as many spaces as possible because everyone still drive their cars. i feel like it is not as important when the purpose is to get people on the bike, like do not worry about the spot because it will work itself out one way or another. people will not be driving as much. one more thing, i was reading