presented. the health department is in support of the legislation as written, and we'd fully be prepared to certify around that requirement. any questions? >> and if i could just, again, clarify for the public. so what is envisioned is for a tour bus to operate, an open-air bus that involves the amplification of sound, they would need to pay for a license fee. the department of public health would have staff that would do sound tests and make sure that the volume controls are such that maximum volume would not allow the projection of sound beyond 50 feet. the 50 feet measure is established by state law, and that is why that was selected. and any bus that is not permitted to that specification could be cite and pulled over by the san francisco police department and not allowed to operate here in the city. so that's really the structure

that we have suggested as a way to really get at this issue of open-air amplification. >> i just wanted to ask about the 50-foot requirement. so that helps me understand that it's a state requirement, but i'm just looking at this room. it might be about maybe 40 or 50 feet. so if the tour bus was near our clerk, ms. miller, you would still be able to hear amplified sound kind of on the other side of the room. i live off fulton street and i know a number of the neighbors are saying it's so loud you can hear it inside your place. so it sure sounds like 50 feet is a very lenient requirement. so i'm hoping that we could look at other ways to reduce the amplified sound so it's not disruptive around surrounding neighborhoods around golden gate park and other spots, too. but it sounds like 50 feet is a pretty large area, and that could allow noise and tour bus that's are way too loud, i think. >> and if i could respond to that, because i actually had

exactly the same reaction that supervisor mar did around the 50-foot requirement. and there are two things of note. first of all, there is a state law on this area. and for the local jurisdiction, like san francisco, to actually make it shorter than 50 feet could potentially create some issues. but just as importantly and perhaps, patrick, you could speak to this. i do understand that there were tests that were done by your department and tom, who manages this department, was present at the sound tests that essentially showed that this requirement, given the ambient noise of your typical tour bus and the sound of an engine, that the 50-foot requirement -- the sound of an engine is about equivalent to what one would hear at 50 feet. so the loudspeaker is not louder than what you would hear from the sound of an engine at 50 feet. are you able to elaborate on that? >> yeah. that's pretty much exactly it.

actually when we were kicking around the 50-foot rule -- and you're right, supervisor, the state has established that as part of the vehicle code, so that was kind of the starting point. but 50 feet is really not that far. 50 feet is not that far for sound to travel. so the tests were performed with the engines running, with the diesel engine running. and i think the initial concern was that at those levels, whether or not the people onboard would be able to hear what was being said if you couldn't hear it 50 feet away. but after performing the tests, we were able to work it out so that there's an adequate volume so that the people onboard the bus can hear, but at that volume you can't hear it 50 feet away. it's not audible. one of the beauties of the standard is that it doesn't require an instrument reading, like many of the other noise ordinance requirements are here

in the city. this is just an audible standard. so if you can hear it 50 feet away, it's too loud. >> and i think one other thing i'd just like to reiterate in my conversation with the tour bus operators. from my perspective, if we are able to move forward with this legislation and we don't see the type of impact that we're all hoping it's going to have on noise levels in our neighborhoods, i will look to the initial proposal that i had made and others to figure out how to really -- to really tighten down on this. but this would be the first time that noise from tour buses would be regulated here in san francisco. and i do think that the standard, given what was just said about the 50-foot level not being above the ambient noise of an engine, is worth us moving forward with and seeing how it is applied. and i do actually think and expect that this will address the situation. but if it doesn't, we will be back looking at other solutions.

>> yeah. i just also wanted to add that at least setting some kind of regulation is a way of placing the burden, really, on the tour bus operators as opposed to the residents, because at least they'll come into the city with expectations in terms of the noise and the impacts in that way. so i'm glad that we're starting the conversation certainly, but it may be eventually that if the noise impacts can't be mitigated, you know, with these laws in place, then we need to look at routes that would avoid impacting certain residential areas. that's the other option. certain hours, certain routes. so thank you. >> mr. chair, would it make sense to go to public comments?

>> there are other presentations today from the -- we'll be hearing from the neighborhood as well as the industry members. so we'll go ahead and start with the industry members, including john ballasteros from san francisco travel and mr. oppenheim, and then we'll end with the alamo square association board members, and then we'll open it up for public comment. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm john with san francisco travel association. thanks for having us today. i was just asked to sort of begin by laying the framework on which tourism or the role tourism plays in san francisco. as you know, it's a vitally important driver of economic activity here in the city. last year 16.35 million visitors came to san francisco, and those visitors spent 8.5

billion dollars here, and that supported 71,400 jobs and at the same time contributed $526 million to the city budget. to put that in perspective, if tourism wasn't here, each tax-paying household would have to pay in excess of $1,500 more dollars a year in taxes to have the same level of services that we have in san francisco. now, going back to the $18.5 billion in spending from visitors, as we know, that includes hotels, that includes airfares and everything coming into the city. but at the same time, it includes small cafes in the neighborhoods, it includes florists and it includes the tour operators themselves. and part of our job is to get travelers here, but also, to have them come back and visit us again. and tourism -- the tour

operators help to do that in a number of ways. one is, first, that they cure rate the visitor's experience, and then they connect the visitor to the neighborhood. when people come, they see the big attractions and everything that we all know, but to get them back -- and i should point out that 97% of visitors who come to san francisco say they want to return. they want to return to visit those neighborhoods, to go out and learn more about the city. and the tour operators help that. so with that in mind, we really appreciate the leadership that you've shown supervisor chu and supervisor olague to try to find ways to workable solutions in a comprehensive citywide fashion that allow the tour operators to continue to enhance the visitor experience and at the same time, be respectful of the neighborhoods and protect what we really have here, and that's the charm of those neighborhoods and to educate around that. so with that, i'll turn it over

to my colleague. >> good afternoon. my name is daniel oppenheim and i wear three hats today. one is a citizen of san francisco for over 35 years. second is the owner of a tour company called the urban safari. but most importantly as the spokesperson for the san francisco tour operators association. president chu and chairman, i appreciate the opportunity. thank you very much for putting this forum together. we, too, feel that there is a more important dialogue to have at a citywide level. we can address noise in this neighborhood and tour routes in this neighborhood and parking in this neighborhood. but it's our suggestion, as the tour operators association, in conjunction with san francisco travel, to host what i would call a citywide summit, perhaps

hosted by san francisco travel, and we would like to invite the stakeholders, that is to say the m.t.a., the san francisco police department, the department of public health, the neighborhood associations, citizens, the tour operators themselves, as well as san francisco travel, the mayor's office of economic development, employment development department, the treasurer. because this is a multi-billion-dollar question that really need to be put on the table for the first time in the history of san francisco, and it would be a great honor to participate in that summit. in fact, not only would we like to participate in it, but we would like to precipitate it. we would like to actually host it or be a large part of it coming together, so supervisor olague, thank you so much for that perspective. there is the question of how do we, as tour operators, do our work in a tourist-based city and at the same time respect

the normal and rightful needs of its citizens, and that to me is the question that's never been asked, much less addressed. the san francisco tour operators association was formed within the last year, much with the encouragement of supervisor chu, and supervisor chu, i want to thank you so much for your willingness to be flexible in the sound ordinance and to move away from what we consider an environmental disaster, which was the use of plastic headsets. the quality of the tours would suffer dramatically, and in the cities in which they've been used, the guests onboard complained that the tour doesn't have any liveliness or any punch to it. in addition, there's tripping hazards that occur as people get on and off the bus with cords hanging down. lastly, we's talking about throwing over 2 million pieces of plastic into landfill. and in a city with environmental concerns like san francisco, we thought that that was a mess.

so we worked closely with supervisor chu in drafting this at tern national legislation and we're delighted to work in testing buses and absolutely wants to and will comply with existing ordinances regarding 50 feet. and in addition, there's additional language that also talks about the height, not just the distance away from the bus, but additionally a five-foot and i believe 20-foot limit that we met. there are noise-dampening systems that can be placed on the buses to be sure that we comply with that. also, i just want to take a moment and introduce the concept that for most citizens again -- and i am one -- it's very difficult to not throw everyone into the same pool of, geez, we live in a noisy city. there are muni buses and trans

buses and golden gate buses. they don't care whose buses or what agency they belong to, it's just noise to them. so some of our testing that we did found that muni buses, when they open the door to announce streets, were 10 times louder than our amplification systems. so i would invite muni to this summit. basically anybody that -- rental car companies should come. there's been suggestions to eliminate large buses in certain neighborhoods, and i just want to talk about how disastrous that could be to a city that focuses on tourism. if you put on average 40 to 50 persons on a bus and then suggest that we don't want large buses in our neighborhood, but rather limit the tour bus sizes to eight or less, and you know there's certain neighborhoods around the city where there's signs posted, you basically take one bus and suddenly introduce six

to eight tour advance, and then turn around and complain about traffic problems. so from strictly a movement of people standpoint, buses are the most effective way to do that. if you eliminate advance all together and put people in advance, you've gone from one 45-passenger bus to 20 cars. so we don't think that's the solution and that's why, again, i, for the third time -- and i'm sorry if i repeat myself -- really call for a summit in which we address this to a citywide basis. how is this zee going to address tourism? we as diplomats and emissaries of our city have an obligation to fulfill the needs and zirlse of our guests from around the world. 16.5 million visitors last year. anticipated 18 million this year with america's cup. we have an obligation to show them the city and do it in a respectful way. it's very much the mission of san francisco tour operators association to work with the citizens, to not jam our industry down your throat, but also to recognize that we do

serve an important function in our city. i also need to say for the record that there are many members of our association who have been in the transportation industry for over 25 years, and to everyone's recollection this is the first time that we, as a sight-seeing organization, have actually come together. so i'm very proud of the progress that we've made. perhaps jerry robbins can speak a little bit later, if there's anyone in the police department that can speak. we've had problems in union square in the past. in the last nine months it's a different picture there, with regard to the cooperation of the white zone, the use of ticket vendors, how long we use the white zone. it used to be that there was a permanent amount of time there. now it's in the active load are or unloading, it's get them in, get them out. so we've demonstrated, i think, to a number of different community districts that we can and continue to operate cooperatively as an

association. we have 18 current members, which represent over 90% of the bus companies in san francisco. and i want to just, if i may, supervisor olague, speak to the alamo square issue for just a moment. >> i know we're limiting the presentations from five to seven minutes. so if you can sort of -- >> i will summarize my remarks, thank you. m.t.a. did a study where they noticed the number of buses coming through alamo square and we found that roughly 20% of them were commute buses. another 20% were out-of-town buses, and 60% represented the association members. and we proactively, without ever having met with the association, determined that we would have alamo square be a silent zone, that is to say there would be no amplification whatsoever around the four blocks of alamo square. we did that proactively as an olive branch. we also completely understand

the need to not have buses stop on hayes street, to not have buses unload. so we have stopped unloading our buses. we do have a concern, however, for the safety of our passengers. san francisco travel has, as part of their traveling display around the world, a 10-foot poster of alamo square. so we invite people to san francisco and tell them this is a great neighborhood. naturally understandably for all of you in this room you're going to want to take a picture of the six sisters. how do we do that without jeb dyesing the safety of the passengers when -- jeopardizing the safety of the passengers when they stand up and impact the flow of traffic on hayes street. so we talked about the establishment of two white zones so that we can accomplish two things at once. we pull in for one to two minutes only. no unloading. take the pictures and move right out. we don't block driveways or impede traffic. we have changed the hours that we are in the neighborhood. well not arrive any before

9:00. we will not be in the neighborhood after 6:00. and we are working diligently within our organization to do outreach to the out-of-town buses. ryan's example tres, siegel and others have been contacted in the last week to explain the situation, so we're acting as only budsmen for the city, for tour companies that may not know. we've been in touch with google andrea who as a number of those -- and yahoo. also, i want to say that we want to work closely with the neighborhood and the board of supervisors and all the other departments in the city that are impacted by this. and i would ask this body to take these concerns into account and to recommend and support a citywide summit to address them. thank you for holding today's meeting. >> thank you. >> supervisor olague, can i

just ask mr. oppenheim a question? >> of course. >> i'm at your website for the urban safari. you make it seem so fun and not just a typical tour. i see that some of the vehicles are big, like zebra-type cages, open to the air. >> yes, sir. >> for your company. but for the total s.f. tour operators association, i'm just curious how many enclosed tour buses there are and how many unenclosed tour buses. because some of the main concerns, at least from my resident, have been the unenclosed tour buses that are open to the air that you can hear as they drive by, not so much the enclosed ones. and you made the reference to the mune yi buses, which i don't think -- muni buses, which i don't think are open to the air at all. >> supervisor, of course the concerns are much more addressed with the open. and i would say on the lift of 18 companies here, -- list of 18 companies here, a little less than half have open-sided

buses and both operate within the city. i'd be happy to get specific numbers and get back to you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> at this time we'll hear from the alamo square neighborhood association board members, aaron morris and bess hernandez. >> i actually want to make a comment following up on the presentation that was just made by the industry. >> sure. >> first of all, i certainly -- and i think we all appreciate the importance of tourism in our local economy. i think what this hearing is about, though, is the fact that when you bring in 16 million people a year, it is unfortunately only impacting not the entire city, but a number of neighborhoods that are bearing a disproportionate brunt of dealing with that. that's why supervisor olague and i wanted to team up and hold this hearing. so what i do hope the travel industry and the tour operators understand is what can we do together to make sure that tourism can peacefully co-exist

with our residential neighborhoods. secondly i want to mention that i appreciate the fact that there is now an association of tour bus operators. i think one of the problems that we've seen, though, is that the association represents local tour bus operators, and we still have dozens and dozens of buses coming in less frequently that are not part of your association that don't understand the local rules and are creating issues for our neighborhoods. i had heard that in alamo square, for example, that the local tour bus folks had imposed a silence zone. but i could tell from the nodding or the lack of nodding in the room, i don't think every alamo resident believes that there is -- we can see it right now -- believes that there is this quiet zone that has been well enforced. and one thing i would ask the industry folks to think about is how you can get out the word and really regulate that across all the tour bus operators that come into our neighborhoods. the third thing i want to say is i know my initial proposal

was initially derided by the industry as plastic headsets with wires. and that is not at all what i was proposing. i want to make it very clear. in an era of wireless technologies, we can have headsets that don't have wires. and in an era of re-usable technologies, we can also have re-usable headsets. so i want to make it clear with technologies, this is a viable solution that exists in other cities and one that i am still willing to consider. that being said, i do want to see perhaps for the next year or so how this works, and if supervisor olague and supervisor mar, all of us who are here don't hear continued complaints from our neighborhoods, i don't think we'd have any reason to move forward. but obviously this is a work in progress. the last thing i want to say is i appreciate the invitation for a summit, and i think that would be a good thing. but the one thing i do hope is that we need to move forward in getting some of these solutions done, and i don't want the planning of a summit to otherwise delay the implementation of policies that

can provide some more immediate relief to our neighborhoods. >> thank you. good afternoon, supervisors. my name is gus hernandez and i'm the vice president ped -- of the association. i brought some photographs. i was wondering if i could use the overhead projector. anyway, the increase of tour buses in our neighborhood has happened relatively recently. we have heard critics say, what do you expect you live next to one of the most photographed views in san francisco. but actually, tour bus activity was relatively minor and tolerable until about four or five years ago. i still don't have the overhead.

i just wanted to show some photographs of the impact on our neighborhood. in 2010 the alamo square board started hearing more complaints about tour buses in respect to traffic, noise, pedestrians, bicycle safety. and i want to stress the public safety issues, because it's very real in our neighborhood. we live on a hill. it's tricky enough driving in your vehicle, trying to maneuver around the tour buses. but anyway, we followed supervisor david chu's legislation last year to restrict tour buses in the north ridge neighborhood. that was implemented in march of last year. and in june, alamo square board met with the sfmta, and in october the m.t.a. did collective data for their draft alamo square tour bus study, which was presented to us in december, 2011. so i'm just going to talk about

the study here. 38 different tour bus companies were observed at alamo square. the findings were that alamo square received one tour bus every three minutes in october, which is not the height of the tourist season. m.t.a. observed 85 buses over 255 minutes. 40 were unenchoiced. 23 were fully enclosed. 20 were small enclosed buses and advance and two were employee shuttle buses. the primary impact of having so many tour buses in our neighborhood is that it congests our streets. there is no dedicated loading zone for tour buses at alamo square. so 22 of the 85 buses stopped in a muni bus zone. this prevents muni bus fress loading and unloading at the curb, which, in turn, causes traffic delays. the study offers several solutions, noting that the city and county of san francisco cannot regulate the number of tour buses, which is our primary concern.

the solutions offered by the m.t.a. include giving up muni bus zones to the tour buses, so they can have a dedicated loading zone. however, this solution does not address the main issue, which is the number of tour buses that run through the neighborhood, and there's nothing that guarantees that they won't continue to double park once they have these zones. the m.t.a. also proposes restriction of commercial vehicles with nine or more seats from some or all alamo square area streets. and i'm just going to flip through some photographs here of -- these were all taken within the last month, i believe. it's not just one street, it's all around the square at every intersection. and it's very dangerous. so after sharing the draft study with our neighbors and stakeholders, the board voted unanimously to support the solution proposed by the m.t.a. to restrict tour buses in the alamo square historic district of the we asked the m.t.a. to

exclude employee shuttle buses, since we value the benefit of giving our neighbors modes of transportation to and from work. and one more thing -- the study identifies major arterials around alamo square, south street and oak street. other commercial districts are also relatively close, like the lower hayes valley and lower fill more. we want to promote the use of major arterials that can support the frequency and size of the tour buses, while drawing visitors to our commercial districts. we are a transit-first city and we should also be supporting the muni bus system which surrounds our park. we should be encouraging visitors to use our public transit to reach destinations like alamo square. the real economic benefit from tourism comes from interaction between visitors and local businesses and neighborhoods. the tour bus companies are instead usurping our residential streets to meet the ends of our business model. thank you. >> thank you.

i'd like to open it up for public comment at this time. dean, followed by mali, jesus perez. >> and we'd like to -- let's limit the testimony to two minutes per person. there's a buzzer that goes off with 30 seconds to go. please try to keep comments brief, if you can, folks. >> mr. chairman, this is for all three items, both on the two pieces of legislation i'm sponsoring as well as the other hearing. >> ok. >> good afternoon. my name is deanne. i am a current intern for the community action network. i am concerned about the fact that tour buses are able to get around local regulation, because they sometimes cross the golden gate bridge. thus making them state regulated. these are large vehicles that stepped to load or unload

wherever they find a convenient spot for themselves to double park. they block our bus stops, they park in our crosswalks, and they tend to try and beat the red lights. we want to see more private companies sharing vehicles and promoting bicycles so that the four out of five new companies in the market don't all have their very own private shuttles. we also wants them to reduce the number of pick-up locations, especially in our residential neighborhoods. our public muni buses should be fine to use for commuting, and we should encourage the use of public transit and continue to invest in it. we want to see private companies that continue to use our bus stop areas as loading and unloading spots pay an investment fee that would go into improving maintenance and operations for our muni buses. thank you very much. >> thank you.