be some intermittently in closures on first street -- intermittent rain closures on first street. then, on memorial day weekend, a prefabricated bridge will be set in place of first street over a closure for that three-day weekend. a lot of preparation goes into that, including completing the small pieces of the cds and shoring wall, as well as a structure that attaches to that area, and then the placement of the traffic bridge. then, the future traffic bridges are scheduled to go in on the long labor day weekend for fremont street and the veterans day in november. when the bridges are in place, this will be the access to the area. there will be three lanes of traffic on each of the bridges

and one pedestrian walkway on each bridge. to continue to keep you up-to- date, the construction budget remains the same. this comes out of the report that is provided to the board each month and, again, focus on the schedule right now, the critical passage running through the excavation and buttress work is indicated on the summary schedule. as i said, 210,000 kraft hours to date with about 139,000 of those or 66%, being part of the local area. here's the breakdown on that. it is pretty much continuing the trend along the same lines as we have seen before. i would be happy to answer any questions. director kim: directors, and the questions? i did have one question about first street. so there's going to be a bridge

that private vehicles can continue to use, or is this just for construction vehicles? >> in the east-west direction, there will be what they call the access trestle bridge about 30 feet wide, and it will go in in pieces. a crane and other equipment will be able to fit on it to continue the excavation because of the deaths and the number of cross braces making it impossible to drive the truck into the hole -- because of the debt -- because of the depth. the first street, fremont street, and beale street bridges are for the general public, for the traffic to keep those streets open throughout the remainder of the construction. director kim: so members of the public will be able to continue using the streets? >> absolutely, with the example -- with the exception of the

shutdowns. anything else? thank you very much. >> one other thing, directors, i did want to report that we are in the process of setting up our upjac meetings. i will be bringing the board the quarterly report, as promised, to let you know how we are doing. to date, we have been working closely with the carpenters on john o'connell. we are working on turner, and there's a donation as well for the school. we will be bringing a more full report after our first meeting in march next month. thank you. that concludes my report. director kim: thank you. could we please call item 6, public comment? >> yes, public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to address the authority on matters that are not on today's calendar. we do have a speaker card.

director kim: thank you. if there are other members of the public that want to speak, please line up. >> good morning, board. my name is gilbert. i work for the carpenters' union. but a carpenter for 33 years. i also went to john o'connell. you're sort a graduate -- i am a graduate of john o'connell. i want to let you know we're working very closely with john o'connell as far as keeping them in the loop in training their students to possibly come to the carpenters' union or some of the other unions that exists here in san francisco. we have been also working with dust. maria mentioned that we donated books to the class for the future, all donated by local 22, so we are very happy we are working together with john

o'connell, because as you know, it is a trade school. when they got rebuilt, they took all the trades out of it, and now, it is more of a technical school. it is good, but we see there is a need to train our kids for the future, to help the demand of all the work here in san francisco. i am very happy to say we donated the books. webcor also has donated some tools. i think we are waiting for turner and some other companies to donate tools, so that is a good thing. also, i volunteered as a teacher. anything we can do to help, we are happy to work with them on that. in ending, i just wanted to say that we look forward to working with john o'connell in the future and providing apprentices and carpenters for the future of san francisco. thank you very much. director kim: thank you. is there any other public comment? seeing none, public comment is

now closed. >> with that, we can go ahead and hear the regular calendar, which now only consists of the minutes of the january 12 meeting. director kim: thank you. is there a motion on item 8? we have a motion to approve the minutes for the january 12, 2012 meeting and a second. >> no members of the public have indicated they want to comment on that item. with that, all in favor? >> aye. >> any oppose? we will go ahead and reflect that the minutes have been approved. that does in your regular calendar. at this time, you are scheduled to go into closed session. i have not received any indication that any members of the public wish to address you on the items listed, but they have an opportunity to do so now. director kim: if any members of the public would like to speak on our close session item?

seeing none, we will now recessed into closed session. if we could just ask members of supervisor kim: we are now back in session. >> regarding the portion of parcels, the tpnja board unanimously authorized the agreement with hines. >> that does conclude your agenda for the day. supervisor kim: cnn, we are adjourned. -- seeing none.

[gavel] supervisor mar: the meeting will come to order. this is the land-use and economic development committee meeting for this february 6, 2012. with me is supervisor cohen and supervisor wiener. ms. miller, please read the

instructions. clerk miller: items will appear as on the agenda unless otherwise unnoticed. please turn off all cell phones. supervisor mar: ann i want to thank sfgtv. please read item number one. clerk miller: item number one, public infrastructure improvements, mission bay south. supervisor mar: thank you. and we have barbara from the department of public works. >> thank you. this is for public infrastructure improvements of mission bay. those blocks include portions of four streets, mission rock street, china basin street,

mission bay boulevard north, and mission bay boulevard south. as you can see, there are streets that have now been redone. fourth street years ago did not go all of the way through. it went on a diagonal. fawhat you have is mission bay n a new grid pattern. fourth street now formally over there. what we are asking the board to do is to accept public infrastructure that includes sidewalks, other things. the department of public works has determined that the project has been completed and was done in accordance with the city standard and is ready for its intended use. the director of the planning

department has determined, and his staff has determined, that it is in conformity with the general plan, and the agency has determined that it is in compliance with the mission bay south plan. if you have any questions, i am here. supervisor mar: seeing there are no questions, let's open it up to public comment. seeing that there is no public comment, colleagues, can we move this without objection? thank you. [gavel] ms. miller, could you please read items number two and three together? i believe that mr. chiu is on his way. there he is. clerk miller: item number two, the planning code for the chinatown transit station, and item number three, the zoning map amendment. supervisor mar: thank you.

president chiu? president chiu: thank you. i would like to ask to have a continuance. i would like to ask that this item be continued until next week and that we have it listed next week as a committee report so it can come out to the full board on tuesday. we do have a tight time frame for that, but i want to make sure that we got our eyes -- we dot our i's and cross our t's. if you would like to make any presentations at this time, it is up to you? >> thank you, supervisor mar, president chiu. i think if we are going to be coming back, we might as well

just wait until next week. we will be working with staff to make sure we have any unanswered questions answered that we are able to present and move things forward next week. if that is ok, we will do that. supervisor mar: if i can just add for some other residents from chinatown that have raised issues, i hope that we threw mou's -- through mou's we can address the people being displaced. >> that is the intent, but and we will perhaps be able to confirm more clearly for those who have those concerns, but that is our intent. we are working with the mayor's office on housing to make sure that that happens. supervisor mar: great. set to continue for one week. president chiu: to do public comment? supervisor mar: yes.

is there any public comment? seeing none, president chiu, to continue this. president chiu: and to have as a committee report. supervisor mar: as a committee report to go the following tuesday. [gavel] thank you. and that was for items two and three to be continued. ms. miller, could you please call item number for? clerk miller: a hearing on improving the taxi service. supervisor mar: thank you, and i think this one is sponsored by supervisor wiener. supervisor wiener: thank you, mr. chair. but think our goal is to have a city where not everyone wants

to have their own automobile. we have prioritized giving people other viable options for getting around the city. of course, muni is a key part of that, and many of us were very, very hard to make sure that muni is as good as it can be. but regardless of how excellent we make muni, regardless of how much bicycling and walking we have, there will always be situations where people need to get somewhere quickly or need to go somewhere where muni does not go as regularly as they need. in other words, we need a compliment to the muni system. taxicabs, in addition to car sharing, or a critical component for having a true transit first city. people need to know that they can get a taxi cab when they need it and that the cap is going to get them where they need to in an efficient and safe

manner. we have many, many great taxicabs and a cab drivers in the city, but we need it to be better. taxicab service is not adequate to meet demand, and, in fact, i believe there is a hidden demand of people that if they believed they could get a taxi cab when they needed it would probably get rid of their car tomorrow. people actually do not believe that now, and too many people have had too many terrible experiences when they simply cannot get a taxi cab when they need it, and they do not think of doing it anymore. last year, i submitted a resolution that the board passed unanimously that indicated that the board has a unanimous belief that the taxicab service is inadequate. i believe that when the taxi cabs were merged into the mta,

at least for a while, taxicab's overshadowed muni, and muni is the 800 pound gorilla in the agency, but recently, i believe the staff at the mta have refocused and are working very, very hard to try to improve service in the city, and in my personal view, improving service means two things. primarily, 1, increasing supply of taxicabs. we do not have enough in my view in the city to adequately serve our residents, our visitors, and our businesses, and number two, improving our dispatch system, either by a centralized dispatch or a coordinated dispatch to make sure that taxicab's can officially be sent where they need to go, including to the parts of the sitting that are not saturated, whether it is parts on the west side or the

southeastern part of the city where it is extremely hard, even harder to get a taxi cab than in some of the more central geographic areas. so as part of the resolution last year, we requested quarterly updates from the mta on where we are with the taxicab system, what progress we have seen, what the plans are to increase service, and this is the first of those quarterly hearings, so i want to welcome the mta. i look forward to the presentation, and i know you have been focused on this a lot, full time, for a while, and i want to thank you for your work in helping to improve our system, so mta, and, colleagues, i am sorry. were there any introductory comments? no proof of thank you. -- no?

thank you. >> good afternoon. i just want to introduce the item here. i want to thank the supervisor for is leadership for bringing forth the resolution in the first place. i know it is one that is felt by all of the members of the board and really anybody that was elected by people of san francisco, because i think as a unanimous vote by the board indicated, while there may be a lot of different ideas of what needs to happen in the taxi industry, i think one area of not just consensus but unanimity is that it needs to be a lot better, and from our position, the agency that is charged with implementing and realizing the city transit first policy, i think supervisor stated very well -- i think supervisor wiener stated very well, having

a good tax in service. we should have a good tourist destination based on the geography and density of our city. we should have excellent, world- class tax and service anyway, but the fact that we are endeavoring to be a transit first city where people do not feel the need to or desire to use or own their own cars, we need to have the transit, and cycling and walking rethink can cover a significant number of trips in san francisco, but there will always be a place for an automobile, times where the other modes of transportation will not meet the needs, and taxing services is one of the main ways we can fill that gap, so while there are many both perhaps inside and outside the mta that might prefer that taxing services were not brought into the mta a few years back, i

think it makes all of the sense in the world that it is there because it is absolutely part of realizing transit first, and it completes this as a full- service transportation agency, so as supervisor wiener said, we are an approved budget we are working on improving the tax and service and improving this in san francisco. it is extremely complex. there are often diverging viewpoints, and you may hear some of them today in terms of what will make the tax and service work better, and one of the things i found during my short time at the mta is not only are there very strong but often diverging opinions on what will improve the tax and service or what needs to change in the taxi industry, often the voice of the taxicab user is absent in that conversation, and you will hear in the presentation a few

ways how we are trying to address that. so i guess what i would say, finally, is that the request for the score with reports was made quite some time ago, so i want to apologize we have not got years sooner, and we look forward to starting a regularly -- a regular quarterly reporting. it is not -- there is the complexity of the industry and the limits of our staff and resources to be addressing it that we have not been able to come sooner, and the first thing you will find it is about baselines, because there was the quantitative reporting, and an order for us to do quantitative reporting, we need to establish a baseline of data from which we can compare and report out on, so that is the first thing that you are going to hear about, and then we are going to walk through a sampling of the highlights of the various

things that our tax and services provision is working on, focused on those that are directly related to taxi service. there is a whole host of other things that this unit is doing to deal with other aspects of tax and service and regulating and providing for tax the service, but we are really just focusing on those with the most direct service in packs that we are working on, and i will say that despite the divisiveness within the industry and the overall consensus throughout the city that tax and service needs to be improved, it is, from what i have heard in talking to many inside and outside the industry that under the leadership of chris hiachi, we are starting to make progress for the first time in decades.

the progress is not as fast as any of us would like, given the limits on resources and the complexity of the issues. i think we are moving in as good a direction and as quickly as we possibly can, so we recognize the issue. we feel it will grow with the work that we do at the mta, and we feel we are at the verge of turning the corner and having a good story to tell in terms of taxi service here in san francisco, so with that, i am going to turn this over to our director, and i look forward to any public comments and questions you may have. supervisor wiener: thank you. i just want to know that we of public comment cards.