project scheduled for 2015. we heard loud and consistent message from the community and we are actually getting a lot of feedback both in sup -- support of some of the proposals and a lot of back and forth for some of the proposals. i think everybody is on board for improved bike safety and i'm hoping we'll be able to identify a solution that achieves the goals that will work for the community. that's an update on polk street and speaking of pedestrian safety, on friday, april 12, san francisco will be the nation's first city to officially launch walk to workday. this is an event sponsored by walk ff and there will be stations in san

francisco that where you can stop for coffee and healthy treats and a free clipper card, a free ride home if you are not up to walking home. there is a lot of good info on the walk sf website. i encourage people to participate. i will be participate wth mayor. we are doing walking up market street. obviously an important part of our pedestrian network and so far we have more than nearly 1400 walker's and 115 -- i'm sorry, this is happening in conjunction with the sf 2013 walking challenge, the shape up sf that happens every year. it kicked off yesterday in earnest, our very own board secretary is one of the lead champions in the office and this is very encourage ing to

get san francisco residents to get out and walk more as a health initiative and transit first initiative demand that regard there is nearly 1400 people signed up on more than a hundred teams. the mta has 3 teams that we'll be competing vigorously against one another and as it shows we talk the pedestrian talk, but also that we walk the walk. so, a lot of walking happening this month. next up, the central subway, just a few updates. we did have, we talked about the naming of the machines which are scheduled to arrive in san francisco this month or next month. i'm not sure if it's april or may. but it's named

mon chung after the first medical physician who practiced in san francisco. she was known for mentoring and caring for thousands of service men during world war ii and advocated for women in the navy. it will be launched on the 80 over pass and it will begin work on the southbound tunnel within about 6 weeks after she arrives. the other biggelma is named after a philanthropist. good news on the advance of tunnels of the

central subway and we had a public naming contest that those two were the winners. in terms of north beach which has been the subject of a lot of discussion, we continue to move forward with the plan to relocate for the machines from the center of columbus avenue to the pagoda theatre site. we advancing the new design engineering to redesign the tunnel and we'll be going out to a meeting on april 17th to update neighbors on the detail plan and hear any remaining outstanding conscientious. -- concerns. we do have quite a bit of info on the central subway website which is central subway sf.com. few more things, sorry for the

long report. i wanted to give you a little bit of update. i think i mentioned this before. we convened something we call the policy advisory committee meeting and something i cochaired with the director of the mayor's office and carly johnson. we just complete our final meeting. director ruf key served as your representative on the board and we completed 6 months of deliberation and debate on the parking policy. the majority of the community was comprised of advocates representing business and medical and regional transportation interest. there were many hours of work that this committee put in and we'll probably want to recognize them at some point. i want to acknowledge them and thank them for a lot of work and effort on

this process. which will increase parking access for people with disabilities and a placard access that makes that challenging and so going forward after that first process is complete we are going to work with the mayor's office on disabilities to meet with various stakeholder groups and such as the disabilities counsel can ill -- council and senior actions and others and come back later in the year to make recommendations to the board and we'll meet with the committee this month or next to give an update of where that is. it was a very active participation by everybody in the room. very challenging issues, but we were able to come to a good point to advance the discussion. so good work there. >> before you leave that item,

i would like to invite members of the community to comment. >> it was a very well staffed. the people who did work on it did an amazing job of bringing back tons of data and information and really being thorough in the responses to the really tough questions of the community. >> are we likely to see something in governing committee first? >> yes. there is a lot of vetting that needs to be done. we'll bring it soon but may not bring to the full board until late summer or early fall once we have an opportunity to gather feedback and recommendation that reflect that feedback. >> couple other quick things. the director ramos also mentioned the church street pilot. this is a pilot of the t

e p and over i guess was the weekend before last we put in the colored transit only lanes on church street between 16th. we began planning an outreach for this back in august for a community meeting and public hearing and sent mailers to the residents in addition to posting on the website presenting to rcac and mac committee in the area and whom were engaged in the project that we somewhat piggy backed this on and the weather cooperated to enable to us get it in pretty efficiently over the course of the weekend. the lanes are for transit and taxis only throughout the day. left turns are restricted at 15th and 16th street at the busiest

hours. we wanted to keep private vehicles out of those left turn lanes. this project didn't create any major parking impacts along the corridor. the 22 film more which has been operating at the bus stop at 22, for the time being can continue to use the side lane until we make an adjustment in the overhead wires and during the process we are collecting data for transit as well as private cars as well as looking at the paint itself and testing the durability. the main thing for piloting is to see what transit speeds and also make sure we monitor any impacts on

private vehicle circulation. as director ramos is suggesting, there is signage and striping already in place. there may be more that we need to company and we'll look into that. because this is a new device in san francisco, there will be some learning curve for drivers and everybody else using the road. so we are out there with police department monitoring compliance reminding people or help educate people so they can be in the right place and be safe and we'll continue to monitor and make adjustments as needed and will look at the signage again as you suggested. two more things. this one is maybe a little bit in the technical or bureaucratic but it's important and we don't, aside from our employee awards, we don't talk about goal 4 of

the plans, goal 3 is the environment and economy but goal 4 is about what we need to be doing to strengthen the organization and you heard about this when i was introducing salida and her award. we are working in the past few months to speed up our hiring process. you approved in the last budget a number of additional positions that we made the case we really needed particularly within munis maintenance and the strength and reliability of the system but even with the funds and position in places it's hard to get people hired expeditiously. we used something called position base testing adopted by the civil service commission about seven years ago that

establishes procedures in hiring practice while staying through troou to the merit system of the system. but, for some reason when the civil service commission adopted this mechanism, they didn't make it available to the mta and we have our own hr authority but still subject to the city's civil service rules. what we found basically is that using this position base testing process, it can be much more efficient and effective than the city's hr department has done research to repair time lines in the conventional way than the base testing way and found it to be more efficient. we were able to go to the service commission to secure their approval for a pilot. we identified 12 classifications where we have a hired need with candidates for position base testing and we got their

approval to do that. we'll report back to them to make sure that we are following all the rules and maintaining the integrity of the rules system so it was a rule of confidence from the mta to manage a tool like this effectively. so a little bit bureaucratic and technical but very important to us in terms of trying to get people into the door and on the street to where we need them to make the agency run. the last thing i just wanted to note, in the past 2 days there have been 2 very disturbing incidents that have happened on and around munis, incidents of violent crime in the mission district. one is a shooting perpetrated by someone on the bus and got off the bus and fired 2 shots wounding 2 people, one of which he was in

an allegedly an altercation with and another one was bystander. that was two days ago and yesterday we had a group of folks who came on the but and assaulted someone on the bus. the good news is that we have video in one of the buses one of the newer video systems that provides much better range and higher resolution. so we have very good visual identification of the suspect on sunday and we also have video from the incidents yesterday. we are working very closely with the police department and because of your support for that kind of on board surveillance we have more confidence that that information will help lead to an arrest. the allegations are that these are both gang related activities. our main

focus in working very closely with the police department is toen insuring the safety of our riders and our employees. we are communicating with our employees and coordinating with the police department and they have an enhanced presence in the area and we want to ensure that everybody knows we find these incidents very troubling. we do think that they are basing on some focused activity and we'll work with the police department to ensure that we do whatever we can to keep our riders and employees safe. that's the end of my long report. >> thank you, director. >> members of the boards do you have questions or comments oovment could we have public comment. >> we will. yes, three people have turned in speaker cards. good afternoon. my name is

frank patterson, a member of the bike coalition. supervisor london breed neighborhood panel and -- a matter of public safety and emphasized that everyday that passes without it imposes people walking to undue danger. i'm speaking regarding the oak street bike lane. so in regards to that, i would like to paint a brief picture of what it's like for someone coming eastbound on the panhandle headed towards downtown, the mission, etc. so you come to the end of the panhandle and you can go north and you have to go over some hills and ride to a small

block south to oak street which is where the bike lane would be. the speed limit is 30 miles per hour, but i would say it's more of a suggestion than what actual occurs on oak street. furthermore with the timing of the lights, essentially once the cyclist has completed the turn, there is a path of vehicles that are just about to come through that intersection. when they do, there is this, you hear a 4 lanes of traffic barreling towards you just after you turn into the street and you have about three blocks to go. i understand there is private construction. anything that would speed this along would dramatically improve the safety of the cyclist. >> next speaker? herbert

weiner and winston. >> herbert weiner, in respect to the polk street problem. it's not secret that it was handed 2 weeks ago. 400 outraged people at least. it's a culmination of proposals such as to decrease bus service during spring break, parking meters on sunday and it's reached a near breaking point. when will this stop. this is basically austerity for budget. this disaster cannot be fulfilled. there is this task force proposals for investigating munis and why it's breaking down. presently it's a question of mta versus

the people of san francisco, senior citizens, taxi drivers, motorist, businessmen. it's all targets for mta because they are trying to balance a budget, they are trying to get money and it won't stop and it won't improve service. so, sure, we are going to have a walk to workday. but what if this occurs everyday because there won't be any public transportation left. with the deletion of bus jobs, with the deletion of bus routes. presently public transportation is in the process of being dismantled and destroyed. it's pretty awful. >> nick kas ner, parson and jessica. >> good afternoon, directors. i

am director ruskin. my name is nick kes or, a father of 2 who bikes on the sidewalks of san francisco. i want to talk to you briefly will what is important to me and that is about making the streets safe for kids. i work with the department of public health and mr. mta and one of the things we have in contradictory to the city is we have a crisis of lack of follow through. we have great vision and great plans as you referred to earlier, but unfortunately unlike new york, it takes a lot of time to get this done. when we talked about the bike plan which was held up for years and we talk about the

pedestrian safety strategy. for streets like polk street we know these safety improvements improve the economics. we know that on valencia street and most people that go to polk street are not driving there and people in rich communities theshgs -- they spend more than dollars. they are not able to go target. so there are many reasons to support this project and i would encourage to ask your staff to move forward with the utmost urgency and to fund the bicycle infrastructure as your staff has identified. >> winston parsons. >> good afternoon. my name is winston parsons. i'm a lifetime

san francisco born here. i want to talk about polk. the infrastructure needs to be completed as soon as possible. i want to talk about polk street. i have attended the of the meetings and 2 other once including the middle polk association and community leadership alliance associations meetings. i have to say, the tone taken at the meeting was really accurate and while it probably shouldn't have been it was really surprising. as someone who walks and takes transit to polk street, the mind presence against the improvement takes the assumption that bicycling and pedestrian improvement are at odds. parking is hard to

find on the street. parking represents 6 percent of available parking within a 1 block radius. that's what's recently presented. particularly in light of the mta shows that 85 percent of people arrive on car. the proposal at it's most, half of the on street parking at polk street, that is 3 percent of on park nth area. i think it's a small price to pay for all the improvement and business will improve for that area as visibility improves. your goal 1 is safety and goal 2 is transit. those represent those two, safety and transit first. thank you. >> jessica and perry.

>> hi. my name is jessica, i'm a mother of 2 and cyclist in the city. i live in the mission with my family and my son goes to school at new traditions elementary north of the panhandle. i'm biking my 2 small children through the corridor everyday. the new bike lane on one of those streets have been a great improvement but we are waiting and waiting for the other street to materialize. i'm too nervous to actually bike on the street without the bike lane so i go on the sidewalk which also isn't really safe for me or the pedestrians on that sidewalk. i try to go carefully but we are waiting for you guys to take the steps necessary to make that bike lane a reality and, you know, they are getting

older and they need the safety that you can provide on those lanes. so i hope that you can find a way to expedited the full implementation of those bike lanes and also consider all the families that are biking in the city and make our safety and priority and not to let voices of people advocating take that away from us. >> next speaker. >> don turner, mitchell berry. >> good afternoon. good to see you again. my name is don turner and i'm with the association and also working with the neighboring merchants in our safe street coalition. on the 18th we did have mr.

ruskin come to our meeting and being very concerned about the plans of polk street and that would be a drastic reduction in parking on polk street which would change the quality of life for both the merchants and residents there. parking is not a wonderful thing. it's not a fun thing to talk about, but it is essential and it's essential for the health of our neighborhood. what we are asking for is that yes, we do have safety and we do have pedestrian safety. we do have bicycle safety. all of those things are important to us as well. but it's also important to us to keep the quality of our neighborhood and keep our neighborhood together and unfortunately, the plans that we've seen so far do not provide nearly adequate parking in order to support the neighborhood. i have every hope that we'll once again work with

mr. ruskin and have another successful plan and we have worked together in the past on difficult issues and i welcome that again. >> thank you, next speaker. >> mr. berry. >> hi. i'm her to talk for some of the merchants on 4th street who feel the plan is going to be incredibly damaging and changing the neighborhood. we support safety for cyclist and pedestrians and feel the focus for that should be at the intersections. removing park willing not meet the goals that are set out. the statistics we've seen like in intersections and not in between intersections. so we are happy to go back and be part of the discussion on how

to come up with an alternate plan that will leave the neighborhood intact. the plans as they are would probably create more traffic, people spending more time in their cars thus creating more danger. businesses closing would send people further in their cars or transit or the neighborhoods being service by others. other options would be beneficial for everything. we would support more safety, but we feel there needs to be other things taken into account. >> thank you, sir. next speaker, please. >> peter, the last person to address the board today. >> good afternoon. this is general public comment on matters raised by mr. ruskin.

>> good afternoon, directors, director ruskin. my name is peter born, mission distribution -- district and to talk about the project. it's been wonderful to see the leaders pushing these projects along. we saw how phenomenal an impact of what that did to rider ship. this is as crucial as an area as that for those both coming from the rich mond, from the sunset. we hope this moves along knowing there is a lot of legitimate reasons why that is being held up and hope the department can and it would be greatly appreciated by everyone. >> if you care to speak about