of the last 5 year prioritization program. this isn't to say that we don't have other funding that goes toward schools and arterials, of course, but if there's specific traffic calming, that's what we're spending it on. that results in a program that looks like the map at the left. just as an example i've shown on the right a map of pedestrian volume so the darker areas are where there's a higher concentration of pedestrian street crossings. you can just see that it's a very different focus. if the map on the right had been collisions, it would be similar. and most of those higher density corridors for pedestrians or for collisions tend to be on streets that are arterials and commercial streets and therefore wouldn't really be represented in our traffic calming application-based residential program that's shown on the left. so we recognize that there's a need to have a way for residents to be able to apply for traffic calming and

participate in their streets and we want to be able to be more responsive to them than we have been in the past, but we also know that we need to be balancing priorities with broader needs throughout the city. so that's where that balancing priorities piece comes in. in terms of process efficiency, we know our program right now has some issues we need to address. it takes a really long time to get traffic calming in your neighborhood and there's a lot of confusion for residents where they stand, whether there's going to be something coming soon. also we have, the way our project currently works we end up promising more than we can deliver in a reasonable time frame so we wanted to look at those few things. so i'm going it talk a little bit about our area-wide approach to traffic calming and as an example, i have the

silver terrace area. by doing an area-wide approach what we do is take several different applications and group them together and we want to look at those applications in the context of the whole neighborhood and make sure when we implement traffic calming we're not pushing problems from one straet to the next within a neighborhood. so we define the borders of an area-wide application based on where we think that diversion might take place and usually the edges are more arterial streets where we think traffic might reasonably be moved off to. one of the issues with doing it this way is that if we had enough resources to do the planning process as soon as we started getting applications and then implement all the projects right away, this could be a really great way to look at things, but it doesn't quite look out that way. in silver terrace we had 4 applications that met our thresholds between 2002 and 2006, then we weren't able to start doing that planning process until 2010

because we have such a backlog of interest in this process. the community process we have is very open-ended. right now we include speed humps, traffic islands, end corner bulb-outs and other things. a speed bump, which is one of the most vehiclive ways of slowing down speeds whereas a curb extension or bulb costs about 10 times that much. so we have community meetings talking about the tools and what they would like to see most. the other aspect of this open-ended process is that we have residents from the entire area-wide area is invited. in the case of silver terrace we

defined an area-wide based on 4 applications and by the end of the process we were proposing 20 different installations and the plan we came up with was $500,000 worth of projects once you included all the different types of traffic-calming devices. having that open-ended process creates a backlog because we don't have enough resources to implement all the devices as soon as we propose them. in the case of silver terrace, we were able to implement the first speed humps this past year in 2012 and we put in 4 speed humps. the backlog also extends to when we are able to process those projects and even start the community planning. so again in this case it was 10 years from when we first received an application in this area until we were able to implement the speed humps. 10 years is too long.

>> commissioner cohen. >> 10 years is such a long time. can you give me a little insight as to why? two years i could get. 10, really? >> it's 10 years from when we received our first application and two years from the community planning process. but basically it's because of this, because we get so many applications throughout the city and for every application we get we turn it into this big process. so when we receive applications we put them in a ranked list of priorities. you have it meet a certain base threshold of speeding and collisions to be what's called accepted as a traffic calming application, yeah, we think a traffic calming measure would be appropriate to address that issue. but then we get so many that we have to prioritize them, so there's some locations that may meet that minimum threshold but there's other locations that

rank more highly and it's an on-going process so as we keep getting new applications if it ranks more highly than one from a few years ago, it will keep sifting out to the bottom of the list. >> so what is the method that you use to keep track of the accidents or the collisions? >> well, the collision data comes in from police records. so we have that sort of. >> is that a data base, the information when pd enters it into its data base, it automatically populates your data base? what exactly --. >> oh, you are saying in terms of reranking and collision data? no, it doesn't automatically populate. >> so you have an intern --. >> we have staff that update the rankings over time as we get new applications. we recognize this is a problem, that's why we're --. >> so if i have constituents

that have ideas on where stop signs or some of these traffic calming measures, where they should be placed, i always encourage them to fill out a petition to mta, but should i also encourage them -- i wouldn't encourage them to submit false documents but any and every single time instead of just kind of turning a blind eye or thinking government is not paying attention, but every application, everything counts i guess is basically what i'm trying to say here. >> well, the next thing i'm going to talk about after i talk about our program for the last 10 years is a couple proposals how we can change it. maybe i can address that question. so it's confusing and it takes a long time and these are the reasons we're trying to change the process. so we also looked more broadly at our program over the years just to see what kind of interest we have had. we get

on average 50 applications a year, that's what this bar is showing, and the green ones are the ones we accept. that's on average 20 a year, although there's a lot of fluctuation from year to year. we looked at how many devices we're actually putting in the ground every year and it ranges from 20 to 35, with an average of 26. all of these projects that we're implementing are chipping away at that backlog, those stacks of completed plans that we have had from all our community meetings over the years. each year within our budget for that year we're picking projects from each of those different plans and implementing them over time. so it's taking a while. we have a $9 million backlog of proposed devices right now and this is the rate that we're able to implement them. based on those things we recognize there's got to be a better way to do this. we're going from

about 20 applications to year to 26 devices per year, but we're taking 10 years in the meantime and a lot of confusion in community process involved. >> there seems to be a lot of fluctuation. could you explain what that might be related to? i know the theme of what you're talking about, you see speed bumps are really high in 2005, next year really low. just how -- i don't want to spend a lot of time on it, if you could quickly say. >> i don't know the details of that. >> mike salsbury with the local street section of mta on this particular question you can see, like, last year we installed a lot of speed humps. we had an allocation for more or less $2 million and speed humps are quicker to turn around. with that particular application we were able to

turn around the speed humps. if you look next year you will see a lot of bulb outs, more islands being built. in the nature of the work they need more coordination with dpw we are trying to be efficient and turn around projects and speed humps are quick to turn around. it depends on when we get allocations and how we work with dpw and how we prioritize the work within our group. >> when are circles used most? i mean i upd the bulb outs and the speed bumps but i have been receiving some requests for circles in certain parts of the hayes valley area. there's a lot of impact that the octavia boulevard is having, the freeway entrance is having on the surrounding areas,

obviously. at some point i think i would like to see some analysis given to that. i don't know if it's your department or planning but i think it's kind of overdue. but circles is an issue that comes up around paved streets. when is that applied, what is your criteria for the application of these different calming measures, traffic calming measures, traffic pars3 calming measures . >> traffic circles reduce the number of points where people can collide with each other. in the case of a paved street, we would use a traffic circle which was smaller and you may be familiar with roundabouts like at 8th and townsend. a traffic circle would be good

for slowing speeds at an intersection. we did try putting a traffic circle in the process and we were moving stop signs to put in the circles. you didn't necessarily need stop signs at traffic circles but as you might realize taking out stop signs can be very controversial, so we've learned from that experience. they are a great tool and we're going to put in a couple in the richmond and sunset. >> this is something people have raised the issue that it was, i guess it wasn't very successful when it was attempted the first time. but apparently i guess the think bike document really advocated in this and there has been a renewed interest in seeing this tried again at that location. so it's something that i hope we can discuss at least maybe with the neighbors and others but i think people are at a place where they want to

revisit it. >> sure, that's something we can do. >> okay. >> thank you. >> i'm going to move on to our proposal for a new program. and basically we want to find a way to be able to deliver things much more quickly and one of the trade-offs is that we'll have to constrain some of the other aspects of the program. so we want to be able to do one year from application to construction and we think that it's possible. we would be accepting 20 to 25 applications per year, which is similar to what we're doing now, but we would have a much more constrained community process. first of all, we wouldn't be able to go and look at the entire area-wide location, we would just look at where the application comes in and then the second thing is that we would, instead of being more open-ended about asking

residents what kinds of devices they would be interested in, we would first offer a speed hump if a speed hump made sense in that location. a speed hump is the most cost efficient and effective way it reduce speed. based on the geometry of the street, if it's too steep or something, we would offer traffic islands. generally we would not go through the entire process but go it a balloting process. in the case of a traffic island where we would need to remove some parking or make bigger changes to the feature, we would have a smaller meeting where we take resident questions but we think people have a pretty good idea what a speed hump is and wouldn't necessarily do a community meeting for that. by

doing this we would be able to implement about 25 devices in the following year and the cost would be $25,000 and what's available is 2.5 million so that frees up a lot of funding for the schools and other areas we have been missing and other more proactive programs in the neighborhoods in addition to the applications we get from residents. some of the trade-off is the community process is very condensed. by looking at the applicant streets only we recognize that one of the reasons we do the area-wides right now is in hopes of capturing the possibility of diversion from one street to another. we would want to continue to be cog any sapblt of that especially in areas where diversion is more common compared to other more meandering kinds of neighborhoods, but basically with our current timeline by doing our project the way we're

doing it, it takes so long to get something in your neighborhood and we're using traffic engineering judgment in terms of where we think the diversion would go. by having a much more accelerated time frame it might be if a neighborhood feels a speed bump on a neighboring street has caused too much traffic, they would be able to apply in the next year and wae would be able to get more done in that 10-year time frame than we have been seeing. >> would you typically measure where a change in volume on a straet adjacent to a newly installed speed bump. >> we do measure on some streets in the area, but we don't do every single street and we don't do it every year so we don't have the data where we can say 100 percent how much that diversion has been. so anecdotally we know there haven't been too many cases

with full closures or even partial closures, things like traffic circles are very low and speed humps can have some. we know there can be some and we want to be sure we continue to be aware of that, but by making the area-wides be the basis of our entire program we're just creating this process that's so challenging for people to understand and for us to implement and we're resulting in promising so many more devices than we can reasonably implement in a time frame that residents can find reasonable. so that is a trade-off that we would be making. >> thank you. >> as i said, the process is much faster, there's no longer that waiting list. we would, right now we evaluate applications on an on-going

basis so when one comes in we insert it into that ranking but we would do it once a year. instead of saying you are accepted because you made the threshold but we don't know when we can get to you, we would only tell someone they are accepted if we can work on their area during the following year. if someone is accepted but doesn't make the ranking we would keep it for another year, but we could tell them you are at the bottom, you are unable to be considered as part of the program. that's something we've learned from, we've done a lot of research what other cities are doing for traffic calming and that's been very successful. we think this year-long process will be easier to understand and we also have plans to be a lot more transparent in terms of what we have on our web site and what our outreach materials have and letting them know what's going on in the process and a big piece of it is for the whole balancing priorities thing we talked about at the beginning, there would be more

funding available for arterials and schools. in terms of the time lane for this project, as mentioned we will be coming back to you with more proposals in terms of exactly how we're going to break down the remaining funding among arterial and schools and potentially some other pieces of traffic calming that wouldn't be based on applications. we also in the next few months want to incorporate your feedback on the methodology that we have just presented so that we can move forward with producing rollout materials and hopefully open applications up in spring of 2013 and then the recommendations from the changes to the, you know, how the 3 traffic approaches is addressed would be incorporated into the next 5ypp with that, i'll take any other questions you have. >> okay, colleagues, thank you

for your presentation. we're looking more toward speed humps at the main mode in one way we're making a modification that way. >> yeah, that uld be our first, the first thing we would consider for most of these locations. a lot of the applications we receive or in the inquiries people say, oh, i want a speed hump on our street. we know it's popular, people know how it works and it's really effective. things like bulb outs, corner bulb outs, they add greenery, they do a lot of great things and we want to keep using them in a lot of places in the city but in a lot of places they make less sense in residential streets where there's less volume, they are more appropriate to arterial compared to a slower residential street where a bulb

out doesn't do as much as a speed hump. it's not that we're removing from our toolbox, it just would go in a different area. >> i hear we also have a process, lets me driving and a speed hump, i was in the excelsior and people were asking for speed bumps and stop signs where they don't exist. there's real concerns in places like excelsior or silver terrace where you have a high density of cars and pedestrians but residential area, you know, presents these challenges. do we ever look at maybe over the next 5 years where we actually could, you know, put places the mta made analysis like at a neighborhood level where you can design in a given geographic area where it makes the most strategic sense to put in the bulb outs so it's not necessarily driven by residents

but by some analysis combined with what residents have to say? >> i think that's sort of the next piece we're going it look at in terms of arterial and commercial streets, the bulb outs would be less likely to appear on streets that are residential. for instance, we will look at the results of the walk first study and the results of the pedestrian safety strategy and task force which have highlighted streets throughout the city that are, where more of the collisions take place. that level of proactive looking at the whole city it find the areas of most need, that's something that is separate from this application-driven program. that's something we're going to be doing a little more work on to bring back to you in the next few months, how exactly that would work. and i think that for the school track as well, it might be more proactive looking, lacking at the worst locations city-wide and how can we address those. whereas this program is mostly

for people who, we know that any time you go out you hear constituents asking you about things like traffic calming and speed humps and we need to have a program to address those, but we know an application-driven process doesn't reach all the locations, it reaches the locations where somebody has made a decision to apply. >> what's the average speed limit in most of these areas? >> usually 25 miles per hour. >> 25 miles, okay. i know when, i'm going to guess a lot of us went to the bike coalition celebration this year and the mayor of bogota spoke and mentioned the speed limit issue. i guess he mentioned slowing down, i guess he meant in general, not just in issues like traffic calming and that

sort of thing. >> using physical devices to slow speeds versus using -- can be more effective than using just changes in the speed limit. that's why our traffic calming program is more about physical devices. we are looking into other cities, like london has a big campaign called 20's plenty and they are trying to get speeds down to 20 miles per hour on the residential streets through marketing in addition to these physical changes and new york is doing something similar creating these home zones and we've been following along seeing what results they have. we are going to do analysis on that, but one thing they have been finding in the new york city home zone is that they have a lot of speed humps and they have a lot of signs saying the speed limit is slower and they are seeing changes on the streets that have the speed humps and not so many changes on the streets that just have

the changed signage. so it's something we are deficient in thely cognizant of and are keeping our eyes open about. >> thank you. >> great, thank you for your presentation. we can open this item up for public comment. and seeing no one come forward, we will close public comment. we can file that and go on to our next item, please. >> no. 6, updates on the trapbts pouration demand public private partnership project. this is an information item. >> good morning, mr. chairman and commissioners, jesse keller with the authority. i'm here to give a brief update on a project the department is leading, the san francisco integrated transportation demand management public private partnership. my eyes are already glazed over. a little about background and goals, go through the several subprojects, i'm really going

to focus primarily on the community project at sfmta and then we'll talk a little bit about upcoming milestones. before i start, i just want to give a bit of a definition of what do we mean when we say transportation demand management. in san francisco we consider it policies and programs that respond to real and perceived barriers to taking trips by modes other than single occupancy vehicles. and these strategies use market signals to reduce that drive alone travel. tm strategies include information and education, incentives, physical changes, technology and pricing.

you may remember from some board actions last year that this project is primarily funded by a large grant from the metropolitan transportation commission's climate initiative program and there are matching funds provided by prop k and the fund for clean air and some of our private partners. the project has 3 primary components. first is to look at tdm as a sector across the city and do a policy review so we can begin to work in a more integrated fashion. secondly is to really build more effective partnerships not only across the city family but also with private sector partners who are really stepping up and providing alternatives for their employees or for their clients or for visitors and strengthening (inaudible) where the city can step back and let

those partnerships take place in a more effective way where we're setting up a clear playing field, providing technical support by encouraging them to provide those services in new and innovative fashion. as part of that we're developing some pilot projects including the mini partners program including shuttle opportunities, parking management, commute opportunities, ride share, et cetera. one of the first things we did was do a bit of conceptualizing about the tdm sector as a whole. in many metropolitan areas tdm is seen as, oh, well, we have a carpool program so we're doing tdm san francisco has long been ahead of the curve on recognizing both on a policy and programmatic program in recognizing policy choices whether you live in a

neighborhood, whether you are a student, whether you are a patient in a hospital, so we have developed a way to think about this in 5 parts. first is really that policy framework at its top with the transit first policy that sets goals and priorities and responsibilities across the departments. this also includes such documents as the transportation element of the general plan. secondly our project activities. the san francisco department of the environment, who is one of our project partners, is the delegated county manager. also such things as emergency ride home has really been eliminating to see how many employers really get turned on by the idea of a simple program such as knowing if you are not driving your personal vehicle to work and you need to go home to pick up your child from school