those areas. and so, these in many ways are just following through the implementing what was called for, the issue of this process over the last decade. for those process, further parking management proposals, and we want to touch on the process, and obviously cause a lot of concern, and so those initial parking proposals were developed in 2011, on the basis of pretty significant data collection sxout reach. but as we move to the approval process in may of 2011 to early 2012, we heard loud and clear from the community, several concerns. and the response to those, we paused the projects to slow down the process and make sure that we could engage with each neighborhood. separately. rather than all at once, and gathering more data and another round of extensive out reach which we have been doing and starting in mission bay and are now in the mission.

and we also used that to improve the clarity and transparency, and many people commented that the process for making the decisions about how we use the parking especially where we use or not parking meters, or residential parking permits was not transparent. and so we documented those practices and had it and see a summary here of those rules. so as far as the status of those plans, we have finished the proposal for mission day and we are working closely, and after that we will move on to the trail dog patch. to wrap up, another important part of the parking management puzzle, and another reason that we do this is that the parking is a part of every project that the mta undertakes and the recent examples that you see

here, and parking changes will also be part of implementing it is transit effectiveness project and our main project to improve. it is created and used for parking and to be used to transit lanes, and the only way to carry the number of people to envision, but when we do that, and you do have to get the good parking management and it is critical and it is something that can insure, and a few percent of the spaces and better way to make it left and the people that drive they can find a space.. thank you.

>> my name is silvia ren olds, we are part of the sfmta that does the implementation of all pedestrians, traffic calming and bicycle projects. and once a project has gone. and the livable streets take over and i have a little over 15 years of experience, and two of it with the sfmta doing, planning and designing of projects throughout the u.s.. and the strategy as it relates to bicycling and those are the questions that we and the topics that we heard that you wanted to hear about, and i am going to talk a little bit about polk street at the end because we had a lot of ground to cover, and we are not going

to go into detail into all of the alternatives into the polk street and having said that, we will be more than happy to come back and give you a presentation if you are interested. and this is the right time to do that, and we are in the moment where we are taking input and getting ready to make a recommendation on that design. and so if that is something that would you like to hear in more detail, i would be happy to do that and i would be talking about the public out reach on polk street as the case study, for how we approach out reach and that is the area, where we really have a lot to learn and work to do and we we are hoping to get the input from you all about the ways to do that a little bit better. and so, the city has a bicycle master plan, and you probably heard, it was the subject of a lawsuit and it underwent an environmental review and so it came out that have process and went really into implementation pretty aggressively to the point where we have implemented

around, i would say, three quauters and maybe 80 percent of the projects that were envisioned in the master plan and so about a year ago, the agency decided to take a step back, and take a look at what our strategy would be for bicycling and going forward. and there aren't plans to put together a new proper bicycle master plan mainly because of the requirement to do that at the state level is no longer really there. we have what is called now a bicycle strategy which is different and hopefully different to understand than a bicycle master plan. >> so, david chiu and the board of supervisors passed in san francisco that we get to 20 percent of all trips being made by bicycle by the year 2020, that is an incredibly aggressive goal given that right now we are at 3 and a half to four percent. of all trips made by bikes, so we are trying to jump up to 20 percent. and the original intent of the bike strategy was to say what

is that going to take to get there? moufp will it cost? >> what do we need to build and where? >> what are the key parts of the strategy that will help us get to this goal set by the board of supervisor? s so the over all vision in the bike strategy is that bicycling is every day transportation and it is something that if you are in san francisco you can do it without thinking about it. you don't have to worry a lot about how aggressive you have to be when you are out there and feel worried for your safety and that it is something that is easy to do and our director of planning likes to say that you know, he wants to get to the place where you don't think of yourself as a flosser, or someone who is a toothbrusher although, you do the things as part of your normal routine, and the same way that you don't have to think of yourself as a bicyclist. it is just a way that one of many options that you have to get around town. so how do we get there? there are really four key goals

to getting us there. the first one is to improve the safety and connectivity for people traveling by bicycle. what are we building and where should we build it and we are talking about making our streets safer and we are providing that kind of connectivity and it is an important piece and i want to mention that because it is the macro view and there is really magic in creating a connective network and magic in creating corridors that are comfortable to walk and ride the bus, and to bike. there is some work coming out of new york city that we hope to replicate here, looking at about 9 different street scape projects that the city invested in over the last five years and the economic performance, of those commercial districts as compared to similar commercial districts that were adjacent, to what they were in and the district that they were in and in all cases that two, the

places where the city made an investment in the protective bike way and plaza, and street scape and improvements, those streets out rformed, the partners and the district, immediately adjacent and with the two cases where they did not out perform them, they kept the pace and so the majority of the time, new york was seeing that the investments have importance to businesses and they really is a return on investment for the local businesses when you get them right and that is really the point is getting them right. so, what do we do on the street? this is sort of a set of images that describe our tool kit as far as capitol investments and so we have the traditional bike lanes and we have sharers, which you don't see a picture of here, but i am sure that you have seen on the streets some of them have green behind them and some of them don't and we have signs and you can see that we have the last and you have and then you have protected bike ways like the one that you see on market street.

and these are the kiens of things that we have been building in san francisco and the kinds of things that we see in our tool kids and why is getting the facility right important? >> this is an image that describes a spectrum of general population as it relates to bicycling and based on survey work that was done in portland and how are we doing with getting people to bike more? we have the fast and the fearless on the left, they are young and male and the ones that are out there now and they are the ones who i am sure you have all seen running stop signs and running smalls and being aggressive and they probably shared in creative hand guestures with you from time-to-time. those are the folks who are out there now and they are comfortable riding with traffic and the next category is enthused and confident and make-up about 7 percent of the

population and we are probably in san francisco, we are somewhere in the middle and so we have the fast and the fearless and we are attracting these in confidence, and then there is the people on the far right and the gentleman depicted above is not a san franciscoan, we don't have people like that here. but there is a no way no, how, so this goes for just a variety of reasons, are just not going to get on the bikes they may have disability, olders, a lot of reasons why people don't bike. and then in the middle are the interested but concerned. but women are under represented in the people out there buy celling now. there are a lot of adults who don't know how to ride a bike. and there are people who have not ridden a bike since they were kids. and this is our target market for the bike tratgy and when we asked the people why they are not out there bicycling. they are afraid of traffic and they tell us two things and afraid of traffic and other bicyclists and don't have a

safe and secure place to lock up their bike, so the strategies to deal with each of those issues and as far as people feeling unsafe when they are in traffic, that is where you see the emergence of, the facilities like the one on the right that is next to the prospect park in brooklyn and new york and in the lower right, and just something from san francisco, where there is an attempt to provide the protection from traffic. so that people feel more comfortable. and you know, so that is the type, that is the what. that is the thing that we have been thinking about building. and we are not alone, we are not really trying to be copenhagen or the netherlands, we are trying to keep up with cities in the u.s., like our peers in chicago, new york, seattle, austin, texas, memphis, tennessee, this is the result of a survey of 85 cities across the u.s., asking these folks what they are building

and then their municipalities and the protected bike lanes and really the majority of the respondents to the survey either have them on the ground and they are in the planning phase or they are talking about it. so this is really their over 100 of these kinds of protective bike ways that are either, designed or in the ground in north america right now and they are growing. so this is really becoming the state of a practice particularly for the urban environments. >> but, you know, having said all of that, there is no such thing as perfect separation, this is a picture from copenhagen and it is meant to illustrate that space in the environment as precious. we need to have breathing room in all of our designs, space needs to be flexible and the bus riders need to be dropped off and people need to have the space to unload their cars and we cannot design it down to an inch of their lives because the space needs to be flexible for people to use in different ways. and because we are not in the

business of widening streets. so, this is more about the where, and so these are the key travel patterns that we see for the short trips right now and really the trips from three to five miles an hour that are not made by the bicycle right now and so we are thinking about, you know, these trips and these corridors and trying to create this is sort of an illustration of how people, or how many people ride their bike as the main mode to get to work right now. and you will see in the mission, and some of those dark brown, poor areas, we are all, we already have over 15 percent of people who ride their bikes. and the 20 percent, by 2020 is not actually that far off. and some of these neighborhoods in the core. and so on the right, is showing

you really where the destinations are. so that is kind of how the strategy looks like where we ought. it is showing you the concentration of the bike crashes happening and so all of this is pointing us in sort of to look at the core and sort of the place to want to charge the improvements. the second goal is to increase the convenience for trips made by bike. if this is by bike support and it is about having a safe place to lock your bike and being easy to link your transit trip with your trip by bike and it is also about things like bike sharing which is coming to, san francisco this summer, and it does seem like this. and we did deliver them a year and all tf is request driven and the majority comes from the requests of the customer and managers of the small businesses and so the black is a sidewalk rack is the bike

corral and we convert it to bike parking. and this is just a snapshot of where we have current bike parking requests. we give the stuff for free to the businesses and commercial areas that are interested in it and so there is a tremendous amount of backlog for those requests. and the third goal is to normalize, riding bikes and so really to make the bikes seem like something that anybody can do and also to broaden, the population of the folks out there riding now and so that you do get, you get the people who are a little bit more likely to stop, at red lights and the people who are, you know. mothers with their family and those kinds of things and to make it seem like it is not just something for just folks in licra or in skinny jeans, and on the upper left, is a

picture of a bike barometer and this thursday is bike to work thursday and we will be unveiling one of these in san francisco on market street and it counts the bicyclists as they ride by. the streets you will make it and you are walking and the charge of the awards give out things like bike cells and lights and we give out the bike seat covers and cards and maps and trying to get the people to bike more safely. and the upper right is a picture of bike to work, day. and we also deliver bike education courses and dozens of them throughout city. and the final goal is to deliver the streets project and i did get a question about funding and just a word about funding, the five year revenue, for bicycle projects in san francisco, is about 37 and a half million dollars, that is compared to the over all agency

budget of close to 3 billion for that same time period, of that 37 million, 98 percent comes from outside sources. 2 or 3 percent is actual agency operating dollars. the rest of is it through grants, and the state, federal and local grants.

when the trade off come home and the trade off and pay attention and that is not a recipe for good planning, because then you have people who feel like they were left out and people who feel like they were not heard and they did not understand what was going on and then we get eyerselfs into a place where we are not giving a project to a community that really is excited by it and supports it. so just to give you an idea, this is a list of all of the meetings that we have had around the polk street project. to start from the beginning, the first thing that we do when we kick off of a project, we do a tour of 8 or 9 advisory commits and groups and introduce them to the project team and introduce them to project and so you see, the district, association and the team on their agenda and back in august, to talk to them. and at that time, we also went to a bicycle advisory committee

and the pedestrian advisory committee. and our the goals

and visions are for the street. so after that, we do a design workshop where we have the people come in and do the little sort of street scape paper dolls and allow them to play with the different on figure rations on the street. and at the same time we get seven walking audits around that time period. and we had 10 people all times of day, weekdays and middle of the day to walk down the street to tell us what they are seeing and that their issues were. and then around, december, we had our open house meeting to present some of the options and collect feedback. and at this point we are in listening mode and we are showing people what we heard from the workshops and the walking audits and the discussions with you and here are the alternatives that came out or are coming out of that. and so this project in particular, i think that is the

moment when we realize that we had really not been engaging people to the level that we should have and so we met with the association a few times and we went back a few times with the design workshop series and we had a series of four meetings and two of them were 3 and a half workshops with this group to do that more focused work. and what alternatives make sense to you and what are your priorities and then, we just had our last round of open houses on the 27th and the 30th of april, and we had over 600 people, come through, and those two meetings, and at this point, four out of our 6 alternatives, include, the minimal amount of parking removal that we think would work. and the parking removal that is on the table is purely for the pedestrian safety. and so it is purely to polk

street in particular is one of the streets in the city where the largest percentage of the most severe pet crashes occur. and so we felt like particularly at intersections we needed to do, or leave the street in a state that we felt like would address some of those crashes, that we were seeing, so, it is not that they are just crashes, it is that they have happen to be very severe and fatal crashes on polk street. so this is kind of our approach and we start out listening and going to meet to the meetings as they occur and we really try to build the relationships and network to get to have those folks tell their friends and neighbors to come to the larger public meetings. for polk street in particular we tried this walking tour idea. and then, we get into presenting alternatives. and the next step going forward are that we come out with a recommendation at a final public workshop and then we go

into design, and environmental review. and then, legislation, in the fall. and i will say that this is just about the out reach, the sort of external face of the project, internally we are doing a lot of data collection and studies and analysis and coordinating with other projects in the area to see if tests all of these alternative to see which ones are fatally flawed and take them off the table if they don't work. >> this is the similar approach to the one that we took on the open felt street but i think that this is where we like to find out, how can we meet people where they are. how can get people's attention and how can we get their time and what is the best way for us to use it because it is incredibly valuable and precious, so that we don't ends up with a a lot of bitterness or confusion about the projects because we want to be going on to the next one and doing it

better. so with that, i think that concludes our presentation and we are happy to take questions. >> okay, commissioners questions? >> commissioner o'brien? >> i will start the ball rolling. this is an auful lot to take in, but first of all i want to thank each and every one of you for the presentation, it was delivered very thoroughly and tried to give as much information as possible. i think that it is a possibility of doing some exclusive propositions. that are butting heads. but start to start the ball rolling to go back to the parking issue. one that come up when we decided last month, this is probably not the obvious

starting point for this discussion, but i am not sure where that is, so i will just start where i want to ask my question. that came up last month. has, or one of the solutions to the parking problem been proposed as we go forward, the addition of new parking garages in the city? it is just one simple question. >> commissioner, thank you for the question. so, i think that our main focus is on managing demand of parking, being smarter about how we manage it, rather than increasing the supply, i think that the way that parking works is the way that freeways work as the more capacity build, the more automobile traffic you will invite, this city policy from the general plan, from the transit first policy, there is adopted by the board of supervisors and then in it is the charter that pretty

significantly the amount of new parking capacity that we are creating. in short, we do something that 40 off street parking facilities around the city, but generally, speaking, we don't see building significant increased amount of parking supply to be viable solution, for the city. i take that to mean then that the answer is no, you have ruled out one of the tools to manage parking for the next 50 years? and you have ruled out the possibility of adding capacity to the parking situation. >> i think that for the most part, yes. the planning department, is reviewing and approving private development projects and it has certain parking requirements and minimums in some cases and maximums in most cases which is unlike what many cities have. so there are many parking that is constructed and new development projects that

happened. but in accord with the general plan and other city policy, that creation of the additional parking capacity is pretty significantly limited and not a primary tool of how we would manage the transportation in the city. >> is it a possible to reconsider that or do you personally and the people in charge here, have concluded, yeah, we don't want to add more parking capacity as one of the tools. it is just your own good instinct would that, we don't want to do that? or would you be willing to you know, consider that as one possibility too? going forward? >> you see, i just... there is going to be a whole lot of charged atmosphere with this discussion and i watched your presentation to the board of supervisors and i don't want to rerun that whole thing exactly as it was.

that sounds very... i am impressed with those messages and i got one today. but i want to ask a question later about the metrics of when you started doing some of this stuff because personally i feel that parking has gotten better for me just as an observation and in case wheres it never existed before, it seems to have gotten better, downtown is a disaster and another question that i like to bring up. it just feels that when you have this blanket policy that is a tool that off the table gives rise to this feeling of an imposition being put and an ideology or the way of life being imposed, you know, some people may say, i love cars. and i love getting into my car and driving to the city. i don't want anybody telling me how to live my life or removing the tools from the solutions that could continue allowing for people to park.

even though i got to agree with you, you know you build more capacity to people, and people generally use it. that is why i asked the question, it is a good question, but ultimately, you know, the public rights of way are the means by which people would access the parking. and the public rights of way, in san francisco, are fixed. and they are not growing, with the population and the streets are not getting wider and we are not building, new streets. so, i think, for us to build, more supply of parking, that would enable more people to drive, it would ultimately have the impact of crowding the streets of really hampering the ability of people to get around, whether on transit, or in their own car. so, i don't think that we want to diskaurage that, you know, what jay was talking about is trying to manage the much smarter about how we manage the parking so that when people do want to or choose to drive a

car they can do so in a way to find and more easily pay for parking. i think this year or maybe next year the city planning department will do a general plan update including a element of the general plan and i think that is really the point in time in which the city policy with regard to parking, would be revisited. so, i guess that it is possible that coming out that have process, this the city will decide that we should build more parking capacity or we should build a lot more. i think that based on what we know, technically, and to really make a whole lot of other policies, work, i doubt that would be the out come. but that is what i would say is the process under which that city policy change could happen. >> commissioner dooley? >> i think that an issue that