think it's incredibly helpful for people. i ride there and i'm looking ford -- riding on oak street. i think it's an example of being able to communicate with people and people understanding what the delays are an i know since i have joined the board and learned what it takes to coordinate the implementation of the project like this, you have a much better understand of the challenges especially the challenges of oak street. thank you for the update on that and i know we are looking forward to that. the polk street, i also went to the mid polk street meeting and i didn't consider that constructive at all. i took offense at the behavior of a lot of the participants there. i feel that booing and jooering is not constructive at all and anyone who showed up to that

meeting and supportive of anyone of those plans would have been intimidated to speak up because that was probably within of the worst public meetings i have been to and i feel like i have been to some bad ones. what i would like to see for polk street is the best one move forward, not one that minimizes parking spots. we can't be frightened of it. this is a chance to change this street in ways that are going to have impacts for decades to come and we need to look forward and plan our streets how we want them to be used and i think this board and the work of mr. ruskin and staff has done a great job on our strategies to keep moving the city forward and without grid look with too many cars. having said that, i know we've done amazing things with parking

management and certain areas. what level of certainty to we have with proper parking management we were able to pretty much always have a parking spot available so that people will know they will be able to park in the polk street corridor and i'm thinking of 85 percent occupancy of parking spots. >> so, i think, parking management, no matter when we end upcoming to a conclusion with on polk, parking management is part of the strategy. you heard at that meeting not only were many people saying we don't want to lose a lot of parking, people were saying we need a lot more. i think regardless of what we do, we need to figure out how to be smart about addressing the parking challenge and the area. there are many times of day where parking is not so much of an issue, but there are other times of day and times of

the week where there is a lot more demand for parking spaces than there is supply. so, i think regardless of the approach we take, we need to be smart about managing that. there are some challenges there and while there may be some parking off of polk that is available, there is concerned about the access ability of those spaces. people choose to cycle there is because it's flat. for a lot of people parking half a block away for whether people have to carry large objects, that's part of what we have to weigh. i think what any of these projects involve tradeoffs. and it's always going to be our task to

bring you what we think is the optimal balance of those tradeoffs. what i don't think is a trade off is cycling versus small business or versus the health of the neighborhood. i don't think those are inherent tradeoffs. the trade off is how we allocate space in the public right of way. this maybe ways that we can achieve a great park of the safety goals and not have with less parking loss and parking, although it may only account for 15 percent of the trips to the retail establishments based on some is survey work we've done, that is still a significant portion of businesses who have a relative small profit margin. i think we have to be sensitive to the needs of each community as we go in. each streets are different. polk is a different street than others as an

example. we need to keep that in mind. there will be tradeoffs but there is opportunity here with some parking management to both achieve the safety goals but do it in a way that strength ens the quality and character of the neighborhood. i think it's possible and it doesn't have to be kind of a zero sum trade off. >> is polk street and sf park area? i don't think it is? >> it is. at least parts of it might be. >> we will have good data to show. >> we have done some occupancy, i think manually. we have some -- we've done some manual data collection and as i have said it's quite variable depending on the time of day. you are going through polk mid modern

and it's -- morning and later in the afternoon where it's crowded. that's a dynamic position for the area. >> thank you. i got incredibly positive feedback and felt people were in very constructive and really in informative. it was really distressing to go to that polk meeting and hearing from the audience where our staff is working incredibly hard at this. i appreciate the work that you and the staff have done on this and expect to hear more. >> mr. ramos. >> i was going to say the only thing i can add to the conversation is thank you for your comments. the only thing that i would also leave that i

didn't mention is that polk street is also a street that is not just less vertically challenging but is also less volumes of car traffic. so, as a cyclist who spent many days, that was the only street i'm navigate comfortably without feeling i was going to get run over by other vehicles there as well. the traffic calming as well as the fact that there is a vertical challenge is also something that we have to take into consideration as well. if anybody wants to see how it feels, go to polk or to oak street sensation that was spoken of earlier which is

terrifying and not a healthy way to run our city for sustainability. >> i appreciate director ruskin talking about the solution and really meet the needs of the business community. i wouldn't say it's one or the other and jam the process through. i appreciate the community that we have to listen to this community and putting together in terms of what's best for the cyclist and best for the business community. we have to say this is a transit first policy but we don't have a transit only policy. i don't like this adversarial relationship we create and i'm glad to see you take that position. >> thank you very much. call the next item. >> with no report we'll move to public comment. this is an opportunity to address matters on the board and not on the

calendar. the first speaker is mel and herbert weiner. >> good afternoon, my name is mel louis and i'm concerned about munis policy. i became familiar with the policy when on tv 3 weeks ago they announced that munis was voluntarily carrying -- adds in exchange for money from a well-known hate group. i want to point out that none of these adds that munis is carrying has ever been reviewed by a court and not approved by a court and i would speculate that in the ift of the united states of america that no court has have required a city agency to run

racist and inflammatory materials. as annoy there was a case -- as you know there is a case in new york and new york had some -- i would say questionable legal advice and went to court with a policy that the judge could not uphold and i would say should you learn from their example because it looks to me like you are falling into the same trap here. i want to address 2 points about the legalities of your policy. no. 1, your policy as it exist and been in existence since 2007 says that you don't accept defamatory adds and you have accepted them which invalidates your policy. it's your policy. you wrote it and chose the words. i suppose

you can make some argument that you meant to say that you wouldn't accept this material. but that's not the word you chose. >> can you summarize, sir? >> yes, one more quick point. the second pro be is that for the definition of defamatory, munis has decide to rely on a certain legal term. the problem there is that the two definitions result in separate policies which are in fact diametrically opposed by giving you the opportunity to create multiple policies and pick and choose from which one you happen to like at the time and the judge will tell you that an

ambiguous policy is no policy at all. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, members of the board and first of all i would like to thank you for honoring or transit workers. the taxi industry gave the city over 22-and-a-half million in surrender fees. the city stands to make over $30 million in the next 10 years in medal lon at -- who pay nothing to the city, who do not follow the law and have little or no insurance

and an abate all rules. the well-connected people in the city does it make sense to them to ruin the taxi industry so few can benefit while a taxi cab company goes broke. median will not be able to make their payments anymore and taxi drivers will be forced out of driving taxis because they can no longer make a living. this force will save it's taxi and drivers by stopping the ads. there is other cities that have done this. i would like to let you know how dangerous it is to have all these people running around with no insurance, no rules and it is not fair to the taxi industry that follows the rules and has regulations while

these people are running rampid. from all the drivers that told me, it's like an old western town out there. please do something about it and i thank you for your time and i want to say one other thing, on insurance, you can call. he does all the insurance for the taxi cab companies and he'll give you the information because these people are not paying insurance. thank you. >> herbert weiner. >> a few comments. during the curtailing of services during spring break last week i'm really surprised that the deputy directors didn't go on furlough because there is less demand on service. we made the sacrifice of bean an -- being

an inconvenience for the bus. it's time you reciprocallyalso, taxi drivers, i think they are given great remarks for service but in respect for the shadow taxi cab companies. in recent visits to new york in january, there was a warning only to go with legitimate means of public transportation which include taxi drivers who are not supposed to be solicited by illegitimate drivers. this is very important because it is endangering the public. we don't know if people can be robbed in these taxi cabs and we don't know about the natures of these companies. the thing is how do we expand taxi

services through legitimate taxi agencies at the same time benefit the drooirs who have sacrificed a lot especially to the mta through appropriation of their med yons. >> good afternoon, directors. we had a meeting with mr. ruskin about some issues and addressed our problems during the last meeting. so what was the last meeting issues? there were roughly close to 300 taxi drivers here. we were not provided down stair arrangements which were prearranged until 1:45. we

didn't have speaker cards. the speaker cards were mr. speaker managed here and item no. 9 which are the general public comment and item 11 which is electronic -- we were mislead by informing us we could not speak on electronic. it's only for taxi access. but if it's taxi access, electronic were part of it. 300 people were denied their rights to speak on that item. they came to tell you what's bothering them. they are your -- they gave you all the money. munis don't make money. taxis make money for you. they were treated so badly. we expressed all the

details and we could not reach you. the method is the biggest threat to this industry, first of all institute to the taxi driver. we gave it to you in your hand. if you want to do something with it and save yourself please get the electronic bill out first and we'll talk further on. thank you. >> mark herbert. >> good afternoon, chairman, board members. may i have the overhead projector please. i see my time is going. so while that's happening, there it is.

this is what you are looking at here. i don't know if you are familiar with the gold berg machines the local official machine. rue gold berg was a cartoonist going back to the 20th century, a native sfrans san franciscans. he moved on to new york and became a very famous cartoonist. i bring this here because it reminds me of the policy you have adopted for the use of taxi apps. instead of giving us one simple app that every driver can use. this is a contract with free as a technology of a contraption of some sort where all the

information is collected and all the information is uploaded and all the information is spewed out to as many apps that are in san francisco. in the meantime we are getting crushed, destroyed, man handled by these other forms of transportation which most of are illegal unless we have simple ways of dealing with it. simple ways of telling people this is a way you can get a taxi. we are lost. it's like the credit cards where you put the credit cards on the drivers backs and we told you it would be a disaster and it was. >> you did have a few seconds left. did you want to add

anything. >> that's okay. >> it's hard to follow that cartoon. it's pretty good. i did want to speak on the polk thing but i came on a more pressing issue. on van ness avenue and union they just painted a white zone a week ago. i read in the paper a month ago that they proposed they were going to do something from 6-9:00. they painted this white zone and they painted tow away. it's going unparked in 24/7. there is supposed to be a notice given 10 days before a public hearing and at that point they are deciding if they are going to do that it was never on your agenda. so you are not following your own

rules which is quite a bit disturbing and also disturbing is the prop b thing. you didn't state when you were asking for public funds. you said you were going to fill the pot holes but you didn't say anything about removing parking. i ride a bike more than anything. i have a lot of dogs in this fight. i appreciate you all trying to keep a balance, but you do have to keep a balance. my constructive thing is you have these 6 proposals, if you make polk street more of a runway for a longer period, you can keep your bike lanes and keep your parking. it's already one way down this lane. there is no good way. it's a compromise, i understand, but it's something you may want to consider. the garage, it was just torn away. it used to fit 40-50 cars.

california and polk there is a good area where you can replicate like the one on bush and polk perhaps where the shop is. you can still keep downstairs businesses and if they would look good, but that would take a lot of the heat off. i do appreciate what you are doing but you have to kind of follow your own rules. >> thank you. anyone else care for public comment. seeing none. >> directors moving on. these items are considered to be routine unless a member of the board would like to be considered separately. no. 4 has been considered separately. could we have a brief staff comment on o and p which is revoke right turn only broader street bound and broader stop

sign. to highlight that why we are doing this in light of the fact that it's going to affect the 71 and the 6. >> mr. ruskin? >> yes. i have the same question when i saw this come through because it is adding a stop sign which is in the opposite direction we are generally going. but, i think you will hear from mr. yee, there is some specific safety issues with this intersection and after discussions with the munis folks we felt that these changes were the right approach. >> good afternoon, members of the board. if i can have the

overhead projector. this is the intersection of hate and broderick. hate street is a the way stop now. north and southbound broderick. hate is coming over 12 percent and after the intersection it goes up another 7 percent. on broderick. goes up 4 percent and goes a little bit over 14 percent. the only flat area in the area is within the intersection. we've had pretty serious documented safety issues up until now. this in the last 5 years it's been 9 reported collisions at the intersection. 8 of them involve, 7 of them involve injuries and 8 of them are the type that would normally be minimized with the insulation

of all these stops. 2 involve pedestrians and 2 involve bicycles. over the course of 7 years we have put in measures to obviate the need for stops because we understand the impact it will have in the 71 lines and these including right turn over and broderick. we installed traffic mirror so you can see as we approach and we have stons -- stop signs that say traffic will not stop and we added pedestrian crossing warning signs as well as clearance of red zones in both corners to improve visibility.

here is coming up the hill. you can see that you do not see the area within the intersection. here is a picture, if you are standing as a pedestrian on the west side of the crosswalk, you cannot see traffic coming up the hill approaching. after all of these measures, we don't feel the safety issue has been completely addressed. and working very closely with the transit division, at the agency, we as a staff came to the conclusion and always stop, although not the desirable treatment is the way to go at this particular location. the good news that head street is a good opportunity at that time where this location maybe a location with a transit priority feature built in. so i

would consider the always stop an is the interim treatment until further improvements are contemplated. >> thank you very much. i think it's important to call this out because the transit riders are going to notice an additional stop and it just highlights the challenges we face with keeping pedestrians safe and sometimes we have to sacrifice a little bit more transit efficiency. thank you. that's my only question other than that, i will move the calendar. is there a second? >> all in favor, say aye. >> aye. >> directors, at this point it would be moving on to item 11 discuss and to discussion a closed section.

>> item 11, vote to invoke the attorney-client privilege. >> is there a second? >> all in favor, say >> item 12, announcement of closed session. the board voted unanimously to settle the matter and took no actions. directors would you have a motion to discuss or not discuss? >> all in favor, say aye.o directors moving to to item 10, pending the abandoning vehicle abatement to 23, contingent upon the board of