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 the directors report only, please let us know. >> good afternoon, directors, thank you very much for this

opportunity to speak. i am a member of the bicycle coalition as well. i have lived here since 1999. i'm will is a car owner and pedestrian. i'm very mindful of the conflict between cars and bikes in this city and that no one form of transportation is perfect for all instances. i would definitely like to speak enthusiastically for both the projects towards the oak project, i would say the private construction that exist at the paint store only in fact probably makes things less safe and that that should not be a means or reason to put off the remainder of the improvement but more of the reason to get the project done so as soon as that is rolled down that everyone can be completed. i

second everything that everyone has said before about how terrifying it's been to bike on this street. if folks were to die on that intersection and changes would have to be made because of that, i think we would all agree that preemptive changes make a lot more sense. as far as polk street is concerned, unfortunately because of tip graphical realities that is the way to go north and south. it's a difficult corridor with pedestrian and cars. the neighborhood says it supports pedestrian safety but i'm not sure about how that is without less vehicles. having biked up those street, between a very narrow corridor and people waiting to shop. thank you very

much. >> anyone else cares to discuss on the board of directors report. >> i'm, colleagues. members of the board do you have any questions or comments on the report? >> thank you for the update. i 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