emergency, even stay late because you have an impending deadline, that the city will reimburse you for that taxi ride home if your employer is participating. all county employees are in that program, just so you know. transportation system management, managing our streets as a multi modal network, making sure we are providing lots of options. one of these is bike share. land use options, probably one of the most overlooked elements of tdm project, but a very important one. how did we supply and manage parking at the land use approval level and how do we continue to monitor and enforce requirements that are put on new land uses when it comes to parking. finally, continuing to push the envelope, doing sector research, doing research whether it's about congestion management, trying out new

partnerships with city partners and private partners. a key element of this project is convening a trio of transportation working groups with interested employers and institutions across the city. this tiers off a model used in other jurisdictions, including ours, which is known as a transportation management association. in san francisco we have two tma's, one in downtown which was established as part of the downtown plan, second in mission bay which was established as part of the mission bay land use plan. tma's are a required membership base organization of either buildings or employers that provide a certain number of services whether it's shuttle services, whether it's information, with you they tend to be somewhat inflexible in that they are established at the time of land use approval and they don't respond well to

employee needs that are in the area in which the tma resides. so our model is what's called a flexible tma or even a virtual tma where the city has a firm set of guidelines for what we will provide to employers but we let them self-organize so they can be more flexible over a period of time. this may even take a model like business improvement districts, done at the ll and end user level. we're working with folks in the 19th avenue corridor in the medical and institutional sector, whether it's laguna hondo or kaiser cmpc or some of the areas in town that fall outside the boundaries of the existing tma, growing

employment sectors. before i move on from this topic i will say we have convened this project and have started talking about some pilot projects and i'll come back to that in a moment. there is a lot of interest and press coverage recently, which is great, of the growth of the employer and commute shuttle sector here in san francisco. a year ago the authority board approved the authority's strategic analysis report on shuttles, which took a first look at this sector and since then it's grown even more. one of the recommendations of the sar was to develop community partners program at the mta and with the help of this grant we're doing that, although we're learning new things and the exact character of that program is still evolving, as i'll get into. as part of our initial data collection through the current effort we see there are about 27 operators but actually there's a few more. rarely a week goes by that carly or one

of our other colleagues is not emailing us with news of a new employer entering this market or a new shuttle being operated in some fashion. in the past conflicts and needs associated with this sector have been addressed on a very ad hoc basis. so a neighbor calls up or a meeting service planner will realize there's an issue at a certain stop and a traffic engineer will develop a solution or carly and her colleagues at mta will develop one. part of the impetus of this project is to develop more clear and transparent policies about the sector. within the concept of the muni partners program, we are focusing more on institutional shuttles whether it's ucsf connecting campuses or google

ferrying employees generally to the silicon valley. the sectors, although the vehicles look very similar, have very different issues, needs and challenges. these employer shuttles are really tcm measures, they are taking cars off the road. they have a strong commitment to being involved in this process and recognize the need to make sure everyone on the street is safe and muni isn't delayed. some of the lessons how this is managed, the policy level aspects are going to be somewhat different and important to be weighed separately. >> can i ask a quick question? >> commissioner olague.

>> a question about the timing of that. when i hear working groups or people hear working groups and we're talking about it during that time period, i certainly in my neighborhood have people frustrated, a lot of people take the shuttles, they are great for a lot of reasons but they are also jamming up traffic and all i can tell them is we're looking into it, we're collecting data. but i've been saying that for quite a while. do we have a time frame when that will be resolved or show residents we're working on it. >> all the information we've been collecting this summer, also sharing with you the timeline and policy considerations we've been considering, which will be coming back to you and other member s of the public and other partners it refine and

move forward. we're focused and are on the hook of an mtv project. >> so the tail end of that is? >> we're looking for pilot implementation of policies in the earlier part of 2013. >> okay. >> and then evaluating and refining in the later parts of 2013. >> commissioner olague. >> kind of along the lines of commissioner farrell's questions, i think, but we get a lot of complaints about the shuttles and definitely about the tour busses and we're working on the, we have a conversation going now in our office with the tour bus operators and neighbors and the mta on the issue of the tour busses and the impact that they have. i know supervisor chiu has been working on some letion

legislation but we're hoping to come up with some legislation to address some of the impacts they have had on the city. so the tour busses specifically, right? so with the shuttles it seems it me that on the down side i guess is a whole idea that it just kind of strengthens the whole bedroom community thinking around san francisco. i've heard some criticism in that sense, but that aside, the shuttles, it seems it me, are causing certain impacts in terms of the things that commissioner farrell mentioned which have to do with using, you know, with, like, slowing down traffic. i don't know if they've interrupted muni service or not but they usually use them, our muni stops and so, yeah, i would like to be part of this conversation if you can track and update me on

how it evolves. because it seems to me that they are causing, that maybe we need to start looking at mitigations or, i don't know if fees is the way to go or what, but it seems it me they are using public, you know, they are benefiting from -- anyway, that's enough said. >> sure. it's a great question and i'm going to get into some of those issues very briefly and quickly here in a minute then we can have more of a conversation. we want to have all of your office involved in that but certainly the question of what are the benefits and impacts of them presently, that was our first call of action. further policy considerations about what the management or potential regulatory approach is, is the next step. >> i guess where they are, where they go. there's a sense they just impact the entire city but they probably are really concentrated in some neighborhoods more than others. >> i'm going to skip a slide, skip two slides just to get

right to the heart of that question which does show they are pretty widespread through the city with certain concentrations on corridors such as van ness, market street, noe valley but they are widespread. i'm going to back up to answer other questions you have raised. there are 200 loading and unloading zones in the city. the bulk of them are using curb zones, usually muni stops. we did an analysis through data collection to see where this is most common. we found that shuttle dwell time is on average about one minute. this compares on a city-wide average to muni's dwell time of about 30 seconds but that's

highly vary iable, on busy locations it's going to be much longer. it's much shorter in the afternoon, they are only alighting passengers and not trying to hit a precise schedule as they are in the morning. observed conflicts with muni is not very frequent, only about one every 3 hours, there may be some that are difficult to observe such as a muni vehicle waiting upstream for a shuttle to clear the stop. traffic blocking, however, is more common than the actual impact to muni, which are probably some of the issues you are facing in your district. >> can i ask you a quick question there? when you talk about the impacts, is this literally someone sitting on a corner and observing every single one of these dots on a

map? >> yes, it was about a dozen very brave authority sfmta interns who went out at 5.45 in the morning under the supervisor of staff and consultant staff to do observations when is a shuttle coming, is it blocking, et cetera. >> i had someone come out to one intersection at fillmore and jackson and they were terrific, actually we know that intersection, but it is, i mean it's one thing to say, oh, a muni conflict, but just the magnitude of a muni conflict sounds a little benign. muni conflict in that intersection means, i think there are 40 schools within an 8-block radius here. one muni getting backed up and jackknifing in front of the travel lane, it just, it really makes it a challenging atmosphere in the

morning. anyways, i just want to get is more detail on that. this is, again, i totally agree these are great things for us and they allow people not only from a environmental perspective but people to live in san francisco and commute to these places where before a lot of the young people would have been down in the valley and not happy about it. at the same point in time in our neighborhoods they are, i maepb to manage it is i think a real real big issue for me. obviously commissioner olague --. >> (inaudible). >> it sounds almost cute when it says a muni conflict, but it's really awful, road rage. it's a big deal. >> thank you for that, raising that issue and reinforcing, we as planners don't necessarily, when we hear muni conflict we know instantly it's a very bad thing. we don't want to trivialize that as an issue, if

you are delaying one bus, two busses, also causing those back-ups to traffic. fillmore and jackson, you need to have real good design or potentially alternate locations. potentially we want to talk with all of your offices to know where the hot spots are so specific designs moved forward are responsive to those needs. >> can i ask also a question? as you've been doing this have you been getting good coordination, speaking a lot with both the companies chartering these busses as well as the bus companies themselves? >> yes. there's actually a, not to bring up another working group, but there is a provider working group of both the shuttle sponsors so the companies that are either in some cases directly operating the service as well as paying

for it, as well as the bus companies contracted for that service. they have been very active in the process which is good to see. >> hot off the press. okay. hold on, mr. muscovitch is there a list? >> there is a list. >> i have it sitting on my chair. >> you want the whole list? >> maybe the executive director can make his comments while i find that? >> commissioner. >> commissioners, as usual, i'm fascinated by your discussion of this topic. there are some parameters that are inescapable when you talk about fillmore and jackson. a

city street like jackson can accommodate maybe 15 cars, 16 cars, one after another, in an entire block. if you go beyond that you are affecting the next intersection and the next block and so on. it's a grid. and practically every street in the grid has a bus line of some sort or another. there's limited capacity. there's only so much you can do on surface transit, you know. we are not, this is a town that has a controversial relationship with density but density is indispensable if we want to increase the tax base or build subways or things that are more expensive than just running bus service. here is an opportunity to bring in the private sector in a way that is environmentally responsible and to do exactly the things that commissioner farrell was mentioning before, it allow people who actually want to live here to live here

and work wherever they have to work and not be on the road on city streets and on the freeway in their own cars. and so the real struggle is how to reach some kind of accommodation for that. remember that when you inconvenience those 15 people that are driving on jackson street behind either a muni bus or a shuttle like this, that is six times better than delaying a bus because on a bus there would be 90 people. so what i'm trying to point out is that when you start reaching the limits of the capacity of the road way system in a town like this, you start having these choices between bad things or substandard things like who are we going to inconvenience and what is the optimization that we can reach and it's an optimization problem, really, because we don't have the

parking that we need, we don't have the road way capacity that we need and we definitely need more people to be on the bus, whether it's the muni bus or the shuttle. and reaching that accommodation and that optimization is really the challenge that we're looking at with this study. there are no perfect solutions for any of this. we have to try to do the best we can with the resources we have or we have to accept a model of density that i don't think anybody is ready to embrace lock stock and barrel today. maybe that's in the distant future for the city but i don't think from my observation we're ready for that. so it's really marginal optimization. >> all right, mr. jesse, field data collection, 15 sites. not just for me. >> no, it's a great question. lombard and fillmore. 4 *rgt

and town send, 8th and market, cave and steiner, van ness and market, van ness and greenwich, columbus and union, castro and 18th, castro and 24th, balboa bar and market between 8th and 5th. these were selected carefully to represent types of streets, types of neighborhoods and places where we've received complaints and also places after we had done our mapping of routes and stops we might have expected conflicts and xlaipblts but we vice president so we could get a sense of what is happening. >> so, jesse, let me stop you there, i'm going to have to take issue with these sites, none of which are in district 10. none. i certainly get the complaints. what i shi about

showplace square, the design center, there's mission bay ucsf and their busses, there's the rebuild happening over at general hospital, they've got their little shuttle busses running around here and that's just the potrero hill design center. that excludes what happens on game days when i think about bay vau and the busses riding along third street getting on (inaudible) and gooing down to the south bay. i'm really really disappointed with the sites that were selected. once again, i feel left out, the representative of district 10, there's been no -- certainly i wasn't consulted. i don't know if any of you guys were consulted on your sites in your districts, but what this is a message that tells me is that we are again not being, no

one is paying attention to us and paying attention to where our needs are in the southeast. we deal with it with taxis, we deal with it in the pilot programs when we talk about car sharing and again now we're talking about shuttle busses. i mean, come on, when are you guys going to get it? if you are going to be studying something, you need to study all of it, certainly while i'm on the board. i'm always looking it see who's representing, the study that's happening in the southeast neighborhoods, i think i heard balboa on your end of town, supervisor avalos, i don't know if there was anything else, but i can think of something else --. >> one lonely site. >> i can think of a couple spots we both share. >> i think it's concentrations where people that are actually doing the commutes are concentrated. in my district we don't have a lot of folks who are there who are doing that commute down to places outside of san francisco, genet

tech even. >> i have a caltrain station. people are commuting left and right. and i hear from the little shuttle busses that xenga runs up and down the northern side of potrero hill, i will gladly pass on to you the kupb constituent comments if you need data, i can circulate a petition and have people signing so quick it would inundate you. i believe your field data collection is short sighted and hasn't taken into effect the southeast side of the city. thank you. >> there will be opportunities for further data collection analysis one focused on the medical sector which i think is

relevant to general and ucsf and also the square, that's the focus of one of the greater down ton areas of work and the primary study there is traffic balance, whereas our primary focus in this data collection, i fully acknowledge your concerns, we should have done a better job outreaching to you, was on the muni zone issue particularly on arterial streets. >> i think some of the neighbors on 26 might argue that. there are some streets in potrero hill certainly that i consider to be arterial streets. one more thing, i am happy to hear about the breakout workout group that you just described that is promising. the other thing i think i would like to ask you to also begin to consider and this maybe speaks

to commissioner olague's desire to have a dashboard, but when we're talking about the southeastern neighborhood plan, the master plan, pay attention to those. we have kaiser who is looking to do a development deal also in the footprint not as far from ucsf mission bay. i would imagine kaiser would have some kind of shuttle for their employees and for their doctors getting them to and from campuses. these are the long-term plan that wae need to start thinking about because it's going to have an adverse effect on the neighborhood and of course when they are unhappy, i'm unhappy and you know i think staff becomes unhappy. so let's make ourselves happy and make sure we're doing forward thinking and we're lacking at this in a comprehensive way. >> great. real briefly, i'll touch on

some of the benefits from a kant at a timive point of view. from our study of the shuttles, the ones operating within san francisco, you see just the regional ones on the street presently but we're talking about 45 million vehicle miles traveled averted on an annual basis and about 13-plus thousand metric tons of green house gasses. if you want the specific numbers they are in the printout, i'm not going it belabor the point since we've run on a bit. what are the trip characteristics of these folks? we did a rider survey. 83 percent of the regional shuttle riders are walking to their stop, most of the rest are taking transit. if they did not have shuttles fully half of them would be driving to work. as far as neighborhood level effects, we asked them what does this availability have in

terms of impact of your household travel joyces more generally? two-thirds of them said they take alternatives for trips they wouldn't otherwise. this means on the weekend they are going to hop on muni or their bike to go on trips because they don't need their car and 60 percent have either gotten rid of a car or foregone a car purchase they would otherwise have had to make. >> don't want to take more time from the committee now, but i think there's something that's an extraordinary observation here in the pie charts. if you look at the pie charts on the right, if the shuttle was not available, 49 percent would drive. okay, that's sort of to be expected. but there's another piece that is even more shocking, which is that 31 percent would not make the trip. they would not make a public transportation choice,

just forego the trip. almost one-third of the people interviewed. that speaks of an attitude towards public transportation that we need to pay attention to because it speaks to what our market is for serving transportation needs in the city. fully 31 percent of people say they would rather not do the trip. that's something we need to be working on. i think it's one of the important things that are coming out of the studies, understanding what our market is and i hope we're going to be paying attention to that and tayloring service accordingly. >> thank you. >> final substantive slide, just to note, and i think we'll supplement this on the basis of commentary from the committee today and some briefings we will have with all of you. as we develop policies for the shuttle sector, first of all public safety being pair mount for all street users as the shuttles are operating in

neighborhoods. there's many cases where it's really not a matter of muni lazes where the shuttle wins, there can be places where it's good for both. minimizing the regulatory burden particularly so it's straightfrd and enforcible and making sure implementation and administrative burden are not so onerous as to create another program that is not transparent to the public and the operators who want to work on an on-going basis to make sure the policy is successful. we will be developing the policy over the next couple months and be returning to you with that ?oo ?a my office is very interested in seeing how we can go through the process, especially the muni space so we can look into that. today i'll be asking the city attorney to look into that for us. i want to work with you to make sure we're -- not stepping on toes. >> we would love to coordinate

on this specific case. carly from the mta has already been asking the city attorney some questions as we look through this issue. >> contact my office. >> final slide, just a few of our other upcoming activities that i've mentioned. >> just before we leave the last slide, as you think about considerations i'm sure it's come through, but just to reiterate, i hope that especially the arterials make a lot of sense, i understand why the big busses will go into neighborhoods and whether it be my district or mr. cohen's, anyone's, but just to focus on the impacts to the neighborhood residents as well and to traffic flows there. i'm sure that's inherent in this discussion, but i want to emphasize how important that is from our residents' view and all the districts. you talk about minimizing the