i think somebody said, you know, a community is defined by its heroes and who we choose as our heroes. i was part of renaming a chinese playground for a long time basketball coach at that facility. with the renaming of the chinese recreation center, these are our two most important recreational sites for the young people, for seniors in chinatown, and it really sends a message to the next generation of the values that we in chinatown hold high. i think this is a tremendous opportunity to educate not only

the chinatown community, but the entire country to the contributions of our community. i also went to dean parker and i grew up in chinatown, as well. i grew up playing at the chinese rec center. as chair of the capital committee, i can tell you that when we reopened, it will be on time next year. you will find the chinese recreation center is going to be a fabulous, brand new facility, built for the next 50 years. it is only fitting to have betty ann ong's name on this building. i hope you all will be there at the opening period when people come to that facility, and they ask, especially the younger people, the kids, ask, "who was betty ann ong?" we will have a story to tell.

thank you to you all for supporting this. president buell: thank you. commissioner martin? commissioner martin: this is great history to me. i've been in this town for a long time. great moments we did stop in chinatown and did stuff together. i love what she is doing. this is the greatest thing in the world that could happen. i'm with you. president buell: thank you. we are honored to have in the audience betty ann ong's mother, as well. thank you for coming and being with us today. [applause] with that, commissioner 1110, i will entertain a motion. >> i move that we name the chinese recreation center to betty ann ong. >> second. >> second. president buell: it is

unanimous. thank you. [applause] thank you. i'm going to recommend we take a three-minute recess to allow those that came for this to celebrate and moved out. thank you very much. commissioner lee: i just wanted to thank the commission's staff and supporters. we thank you for renaming the san francisco chinatown recreation center to the betty ann ong chinese recreation center. there have been so many ups and downs and struggles during the last 10 years. we deeply honored this renaming from the bottom of our hearts. the legacy of betty and all the 9/11 heroes will be remembered forever. members of this commission, thank you very much. president buell: thank you.

>> thanks, everyone. >> that may get a sense of how many people would like to testify on it this -- ok, seeing the large numbers that would like to testify, we're going to go down from three minutes to two minutes on public testimony in consideration of everybody. i think we will clearly get the message of what you want to say in two minutes. >> terrific. good morning. commissioner buell: you get more than two minutes. >> i will try to keep it to two. good morning, commissioners. general manager, dan mauer with the capital division.

i will be giving a brief introduction on the project, and i will basically turn it over to mta staff. i have the full confidence of the mta staff here today, most specifically salina and antonio will be giving the formal presentation. most of you have already seen this item. it has been before both the operations and capital committee. i believe you are familiar with the guts of this project. with that, i will move forward more quickly here. the public process on this one, over a year ago, and he approached the department to see if we could implement this bike cycle track program on mlk. we worked for six months on both sides of the table and tried to articulate issues and concerns of the could revise their project. middle of last year, mta hosted two public meetings at the county fair building two they also did two out reach efforts

of the city streets program. in addition to that, this item has been heard about capital and operations committee. it has also gone to the golden gate park concourse of 30 for their approval. prop j give jurisdiction over bicycle to performance and others as related to the garage project. this proposal went to them earlier this month, and their group voted in favor of moving forward with this, with a 6-0 vote. at that meeting, a representative from a yearly's office came forward and supported the project, as well as supervisor mar. what came of that meeting, the concourse of 30 mission came up with three recommendations. one is to lead to mta do an educational component as part of the rollout process, that they continue and increase the enforcement component of the project, and also work with rec and park staff to continue to try to find additional parking

spaces that will be lost as part of this program. general manager ginsberg, a year ago, started this, and we realize mta came forward and said there were 155 spaces. we took a couple steps back. at that phase, staff was instructed to go out and see if we could get some additional parking stalls as part of the project. through the last year, refining design concepts and talking with different agencies, we were able to basically reduce -- will allow antonio to dictate that, but we basically cut that by about 155 to about 60. but i will let him articulate that number. i think that is a tremendous strides to get to a point where we have compromise. obviously, the parking losses are impacting these. mta staff met with the institutions early on in the

process. as of earlier this week, we actually posted -- the academy hosted a meeting that we intended, and they gave the revised project to the epitasis that knows exactly where we are before today. i am sure i am missing something. commissioner buell, at previous meetings, the question was raised about how many staff members from both institutions park there. i wanted to report briefly some numbers here. again, in context of their staff levels changing throughout the year. this is kind of a general worst- case scenario. they anticipate that the have a full staff of approximately 200 people during weekdays, monday through friday. of that, 61% actually drive

their vehicles, which represents about 122 vehicles. of the 122, 30 of them have parking spaces in the garage. the delta on that is roughly about 90 staff members on an monday through friday would be parking on surface with in golden gate park. for the academy, they have about 100 additional employees during peak time. they have about 300 and police monday through friday. they have made tremendous strides. 71% of their septic alternative modes of traffic. that is quite a figure. that was terrific to hear. with that and do the calculations, it was estimated, with the folks actually parking in the garage, that 90 folks actually drive to the job, and approximately 30 to 40 people part in the garage. that leaves about 50 people parking on the surface in and

around the concourse. roughly with both institutions, we're looking at about 140 to 150 surface parker's from the employee side. commissioner buell: thank you for getting that. >> the other thing that i wanted to share, the commission chair for the concourse authority asked city park, who manages the parking garage, what the occupancy looks like overtime. as about two ago, they changed their ticketing system. so we can report the information on the cars that go in and out of this morning, i got a report from last week's parking counts. again, to the one week within the whole frame, but the garage at any one time was occupied at a 60% level at the 800 stalls in the garage. that peaked at about 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. monday afternoon. that is a small snapshot of how the garage operates, but we now have the ability to track of the

garage operates. commissioner buell: what is the capacity? >> we have 800 stalls in total. commissioner buell: so we're talking 500 stalls that are constantly occupied. >> yes, the 60's and figure -- actually, 62 with the remaining number of stalls around noontime, which was 300. obviously when you get into pcs in and the institutions are running at full rpm, the place is full. with that, i would like to turn the presentation over to salina. >> good morning commissioners. we appreciate the opportunity to come before you this morning and present this project. my name is salita reynolds, a

section leader for a livable streets at the mta. i spent my entire career, about 13 and a half years, planning and implementing bicycle and pedestrian improvements with the mta and throughout the u.s. peter i am on the pedestrian and bicycle committees of the national academy of sciences national transportation research board. hopefully i know what i am talking about. i am going to walk through the presentation here, and some of you have seen it a couple of times. but i am going to go ahead and walk you through it. it is a powerpoint. ok. and we are off. so the project location is here on jfk drive. it is shown in the red. what is important is that it is the most direct connection to the heart of golden gate park

and to all the institutions that people want to access and enjoy. so it is an important part of the spine that actually runs all the way from market street, which is one of the most popular bikeways in the city, through the panhandle, and directly into the park. right now, during the peak hour, we have about 150 cyclists on jfk drive. that represents about 10% of their role traffic during the peak. bicyclists are telling us that this is where they want to be. one of our first charges is to improve things for the users that we have. but there are other goals that play here. we're supporting the board of supervisors resolution passed in 2010 to get up to bicycling being 20% of all trips by 2020, which is an incredibly ambitious goal and one we have been working very hard to think about. the two barriers that people

cite most often when we asked what they do not bicycle more are the fear of traffic and not enough bikeways. we have about 4 son of trips right now being made by bicycling, so we have a ways to go. with no education, enforcement, and encouragement r.p. -- are key parts of the picture. but when we get down to it, engineering is the linchpin of the whole equation. this is the result of a survey done in portland asking who bicycles now and why, and what they found is about a third of the people that said no way, no how, they will never bicycle, 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