question until you send your answer out for environmental review. >> one of the drivers of environmental review is transportation analysis. that is for any transportation development project. there are other things. there are historic issues that can sometimes drive, but transportation is probably the most significant driver, and as we have seen, somewhat ironically, that has created cost and schedule extensions for our own projects, even those that on the surface would appear to be very clearly and parting positive environmental impact to the city. the bike planne -- plan is perhs the poster child for that. we are starting an environmental impact report process for a project that is really about speeding up transit, a very clearly environmentally

beneficial initiative, but because we currently are under a level of service methodology for evaluating environmental impact, an initiative like the tep is subject to a full and requiring of a full environmental impact report. those kind of things would go up away under this major land development project that has transportation issues as a primary environmental impact. we certainly in this agency would see clear and direct benefit in time and cost and implementing big transportation projects. director brinkman: ok, thank you. that is good. questions from the directors? director heinicke: can we put you back on the spot? not that i have been doing this as long as some have, but there's always complains about

the ceqa process. there's always calls to reform it at the state level. those go not very far, so i commend you on what seems to be a sort of creative way to restructure here at the more local level to meet our goals and still satisfy the state act. the first question i had, and it may be from the timing that director reiskin just give us, but what implementation of the plan possibly affect the tep and expedite it? not the plan in our view, but maybe some of the revenue would be available? >> yes, the revenues were very much constrained in how we could use revenues to meet the mitigation fee at an environmental requirements. those constraints dovetail very well with the tep. it will let benefit in terms of its environmental review which

is basically the whole environment system, as everything will be for another year so, but the revenues generated from this may well be able to implement tep projects. director heinicke: getting to a specific issue that is of interest to me, once this is all past and assuming it goes according to plan, the deal would be that transportation enhancements, things that would promote our transit first policy, which generally fall under the plan and would not require specified review and the associated delay. you said there might be a line which would crossover, and you gave the example of a bicycle lane running 30 blocks somewhere. i realize that line is a little bit amorphous and it might be unwise to test it too much now, but we talked earlier about the fact that we're looking at a steady for tax expansion, and i wonder if we were to undergo a taxi expansion, with that fall

under the old system, or could that, for environmental review purposes, be expedited under this plan will not talking about? >> the current timeline we're looking at for taxi expansion would be ahead of the tsp, so we would be under the old system, but we have begun discussions with the planning department to do some preliminary review of what our environmental clearance might look like, and we think we have a path that will not be extraordinarily long or expensive. director heinicke: wonderful. ok. is there a point at which it is actually going to save us time to wait on projects for the new system rather than proceeding under the old system? >> i imagine we will come to a point in time where that is quite likely. director heinicke: ok, and it might be useful to keep that time points in mind.

>> i had not thought of that, but it might be a bit of a gamble because there is an approval process that it will have to go through. once the eir is certified, the legislation will have to go through the board of supervisors, but if we were starting a 21-month and run until 12 months after it this came into place, we might want to wait. director heinicke: ok, that is very interesting. my final question is more of a legal one, which is this is very creative and ensure steps have been taken to make sure what will be doing it this passes is sufficient under ceqa, but i know there's a fair number of folks in our legal community who consider themselves ceqa proponents and might be accused of using ceqa to stop developments they do not like for other reasons. how confident are we that this new plan would be able to withstand project-specific

attacks from proponents saying that they have not really satisfied ceqa and this is a gimmick to get around it? >> we have gone through every effort within our nexis study to insure that what we are proposing is very legally justifiable. we feel like the nexis can really stand on its own. we will now be going through a similar process with the environmental review, and the environmental review is not so much on the fee as much as it is on the change in methodology. we will go through a very complicated process to an extent with the impact would be with or without the program and the expenditure plan so that we have a big picture and the most indefensible product at the end of the day that we possibly can have -- the most defensible product at the end of the day that we possibly can. we have no guarantee that people will file against the program,

but we are investing everything we can up front to make sure that what we are putting up is truly legally defensible and sound director heinicke: not asking for a guarantee that people will not filed, but if we are saving a delay on the front and only to be delayed by losses on the back end, it makes it difficult. i appreciate the vesture focusing on the real world impacts of this, but i wish you the best of luck. this is a great reform and impressive in that someone is finally doing something about this rather than just throwing up their hands and saying, "ceqa screws up everything." >> i wanted to applaud staff for your creativity and all your camaraderie and everything you have done to come up with stuff like this. it is policies like this that really make me so proud and make me feel really good about being in this position, to be able to help you folks will want.

this is the exact kind of creative approach we need to be able to pursue the bolstering of our transit system, so i applaud you for efforts so far. i'd love to see more of this, and i heard the word fast-track, and it got my attention. i understand you are probably going as fast as possible on this, but i wonder if it is not possible to go even faster, if we were to address more resources toward this particular project in the interest of time and striking when the iron is hot, and talking about a cool market right now. maybe it is striking when the iron is cool. i'm wondering if there's anything we can do to expedite this because every month we do not have a policy like this in place, we stand to lose -- who knows? millions of dollars. >> thank you, director, for your words of support.

the 18 months that i referenced is in comparison to an average of 24 months, so we already feel like we had taken six months off of it by being as creative as we can in terms of how we apply our resources. when it comes to environmental review, it is often not a question of having more people involved but simply grappling with the complexity of the issues at hand. we have brought to bear as as w necessary, and 18 months is our best time frame we can offer. >> thank you. one more question i had about the waiver of the affordable housing. is the affordable housing requirement one-to-one still? in this city for parking? no? >> i'm sorry, i don't know. >> ok. so i guess -- >> i don't think so, though.

my question is if we're waiving that fee, i'm wondering if there's not a more creative approach we can take in terms of creating management alternatives for affordable housing, so that we don't make -- i understand that the waiver, the intent to get away from charging fees for affordable housing is the hope or the intent to keep affordable housing from becoming more expensive than it already is to develop in this city. but i think that we might even be able to find more creative solutions to even reduce the cost even more through creative transportation demand management alternatives and thereby riri duesing the overallrequirement by reducing the overall amount of parking that's required or working to find some sort of alternative instead of just saying you're affordable housing, you've got one-to-one at least, maybe more ratio of parking, whatever it might be.

i'm hoping that you're taking some kind of creative approach to that as well. thank you. >> director lee? >> i just want to thank you for a great presentation. real informative. love seeing that creativity. thank you very much. >> director oka, anything? >> yes. the amount of thought that went into the development of this, i'm looking forward to having it as quickly implemented as possible. i don't know how fast we can go, but the faster the better for me. >> and i just have two questions. i want to acknowledge the fact that our c.a.c. did recommend that there would be no 100% discounts. based on what i know so far, i'm tending to agree with that, because i don't agree with the graduated fee discount for projects that build less than the maximum allowed parking. if they're in an area allowing

one-to-one and they choose to build.5, that's ignoring the fact -- correct me if i'm totally misunderstanding this -- if they're still building .5, they're still having an impact on everything in that area that's having an area on the transit service. and the 100% fee waivers for affordable housing, again, i'd like to know more about that before we kind of move forward with the 100% fee. i would prefer that it be tied to the number of parking spots that are going in as a way to make it a bit more equitable. on the funding slide, the funds that we collect -- and i see it's broken down on where they will be spent -- does it change the local mitigation impacts? for example, when a project goes in, such as the new whole foods proposed on market, they're going to make a better pedestrians environment, is

that still part of this somehow, maybe in the -- where is it, in the bike and pedestrians programs under d? i'm looking at slide -- i think i'm on 18, down on slide 18. i'm just concerned that if all of this -- if this expenditure plan is like this, where is the help for the residents in that neighborhood impacted by that and maybe that's a question that can't be answered off the bat, but maybe it can. >> there's a variety of ways in which that's still addressed. one is through the site design requirement. no matter what happens, the project is still going to have to be designed for its site impact design, so there will be a back-and-forth conversation about the specific impact to the neighbors, for example. we also have the planning department consist lie applies conditions of approval, and those often include things like planting street trees or providing other pedestrians

amenities, and that's part of the normal process. actually lives outside of the environmental review process. that's stell a mechanism that's available. some of it is addressed through that. there is a shift, though -- i think you've accurately captured it conceptually. there is a shift away from localized specific mitigation programs to the city-wide program, because d what we've been able to see is by providing this city-wide set of example peend tours, we have a much greater impact on the actual -- expenditures, we have a much greater impact on the actual system. thank you. no other questions? thank you very much, that was a great presentation and we all look forward to that one. that's very important to us. and i think -- oh, public comment, sorry. >> public comment. >> good afternoon again, andy thornley with the san francisco bicycle coalition. very pleased to see this come to you.

the coalition is very supportive of this. as you heard, this is the latest in a long-running conversation about reconciling our practice of ceqa with our city's wonderful adopted policies, and let's stop confounding those policies with a crazy practice of ceqa. we decided as a city quite a long time ago that we didn't want to use l.o.s. and ceqa. you saw that transportation authority in 2003 initiate an s.a.r. a couple of years ago later the board of supervisors unanimously resolved to ask the planning commission to stop using l.o.s. in its practice of ceqa. so that has been decided. it's taken a long time to figure out how to get out from under ceqa and it looks like this is at last going to be the way. when next fall we, if all goes well, we bring an ordinance to the board of supervisors and adopt it, it will have been 10 years. so it's kinds of nice that this item follows the california high speed rail item. makes it seem like this is moving very quickly.

and all things considered, it may be. as someone who professionally promotes the bicycle for everyday transportation for everybody, obviously this is a good thing. in my opinion it's good for pedestrians safety. it's going to make transit projects cheaper and come to the ground sooner. but you saw it's also going to generate some revenue. not a tremendous amount, all things considered, but not an insignificant amount and it's going to bring it irrationally to improving the transportation system and really begin to, in a meaningful way, tie transportation and land use together. we have not done that well as a city. we're starting to do that better. here is a case of transportation and land use moving together in harmony. so be patient, but be diligent. this will get done. and the s.f. bicycle coalition is very pleased and proud to be part of it, thank you. >> thank you. >> sue vaughan, and then david. >> oh, good afternoon again.

so i am a member of the mtmac, and when we had our meeting there was another motion that we had that did not pass an four of us voted for it. six voted against it. the mpcac urges the board of directors and the board of supervisors to ensure that imp honored by having the t.s.p., this presentation, provide for mitigating projects -- mitigated transit projections where they occur and not rely on a fee alone to mitigate aggregate delay impacts. i think i got that right. so what that means is that we're saying, the four of us -- this is what it means for me, is that i don't think the e.i.r., the transit analysis of the e.i.r. should be eliminated. i do not think that's a good tradeoff. i think that needs to be kept in. ceqa is a good law and i don't want to see this gutted. i don't want to see members of

the public lose an opportunity to weigh in on the transit impact of a project to their particular neighborhood, and that's what this project is doing. this is a good idea if you include the -- if you bring back the transit impact analysis and require developers to do that. and if you don't, you are throwing the baby out with the bath water. ceqa is a good law, and it needs to be respected. thank you. >> david, an he's the last person who turned in a speaker card. >> i suspect we'll hear from mark solomon after me. david again. the good news is that we have alicia beck with us. the last time she was here was as acting c.f.o. after being budget director for some period of time and an analyst before that. so she continues to work over at the planning department.

that's the good news. the bad news is i have huge concerns about this proposed program and fee. i think the important thing that i want to start with is about fee-based mitigation. my understanding is that the overall purpose of ceqa is to both analyze environmental impacts of a project and mitigate them, and to the extent that they cannot be or are not mitigated to adopt a statement of overriding consideration, as you did in the last item with respect to the people plan. but in this case, i think it's important that fee-based mitigation tie very closely to the project and the impact created and the fee and the mitigation program to address those impacts. the farther you get from a specific project and its impacts created, the more you get to an area program.

and this really is kind of building on the m.o. and eastern neighborhoods concept that is working and with other things that the t.a. is up to, to more of a city-wide program. you lose that connection such that you're creating impacts that you're not necessarily mitigating. and some examples of those impacts are the additional delay and crowding to transit, but also the additional riders with the need for vehicle operators' facilities to provide the same level of service. so i'm very interested in the details of this and how it plays out. i suspect it would not be either as good as staff is suggesting, or necessarily as bad as perhaps i'm fearing. >> thank you. edward mason. >> i'm glad to see that there is some type of fee mitigation. i'll give you specific examples. in our neighborhood, within a block and a half of 24th and

church street, within about the last five years. there have been a net increase of about 15 units that have been shoehorned into the neighborhood. some of these either through depligs and suddenly a single-family residence is now five units, or there's an illegal garage that was for storage on a commercial basis that was demolished and therapy a residence was established in that, on the same unit, even though it required a variance, because it didn't have sufficient room to meet the planning code requirement. and the zoning administrator, in two cases, came back to me basically saying even though these were on variances for them to be constructed -- they were good for increasing the housing stock and people can take muni. and, of course, then the logical question is, well, if it's -- what's the cumulative effect in the neighborhood on

taking muni? so we had the old prop m that contributed muni, and now this is a way of doing it. but, again, i think there needs to be a little bit of ceqa involvement in this to make sure that we don't go overboard on all the larger project. but i'm just giving you an example of a small project within a block and a half of 15 additional housing units, which multiplied by 2.1 or whatever, are additional people on muni that require services. and they're not paying the freight and the price of admission to sustain themselves in the neighborhood and impacting us all, so we wind up subsidizing it, thank you. >> thank you, mr. says son. -- mason. >> good afternoon, directors, mark solomon yet again. fee is a good idea. getting rid of l.o.s. is a good idea. but tying the fee to mitigation has some problems. here's why. we did the bike plan. the bike plan said certain segments delayed transit.

so the bike plan was a good idea. p the bike plan mitigating transit was not a good idea. we managed to use the ceqa process to make that work. we were wrong 10 years ago when we started this out saying that l.o.s. and the bike plan had no impact. it was wrong. we had to learn from that. the idea of point source impacts has got to be mitigated or else you will end up in court and you will lose, because we have to be sure you do not delay transit. this agency has to be the guardian of speedy transit and the guardian against delays. the other issue is h.e.g., which is the auto trip generation component, which ties to the parking charge. per capita impacts on muni are crunched together. they have to be separated out. if you have a building that happens to have 300 resident, those residents are going to be an impact on transit. that's got to be accounted for in some way. does this take into account air quality? the original point of l.o.s. was not as a social impact, but

it was that the land yachts burning leded fuel when this was done under reagan actually generated air quality approximate. if you take a 20-year project with all of this new development, i'll bet you'll find air quality impact there as well, greenhouse gas gases and particulate. does this new measure address this? i do not think. the ceqa part needs work. the planning department is regulatory, captured by developers, ammed they could change the way they do e.i.r.'s to do it in-house, but it's all a consulting operation. that's why it takes 24 months. they could have a project together like the champ model and figure out what the transit delay was, but we need to know on complex systems what minor changes would have major impacts on, because no one can know that going into it, and a fee cannot predict it, thank you. >> thank up. no more public comment? thank you very much. that was a very good presentation. we look forward to hearing more about this. i think this is going to be a really positive change. i believe our closed session has been removed.

>> madam chairman, closed session has been cancelled. so you've completed the business before you today. >> thanks, we are adjourned. thank you. >> do you have a sister in the audience? >> no, my parents. [meeting adjourned at 7:15 p.m. eastern standard time.]