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 performed, 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 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 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 has been coming up is when mta has long term projects that they are starting to plan, and also, a large infrastructure projects that take many years to complete, is that we know that the small businesses, the people, the owners don't have that kind of attention span, and i know what happened in my

neighborhood of north beach, all of a sudden it is going to start and you are like oh, my gosh, what, what, what? and everyone goes crazy. i am wondering if mta to consider having someone on their staff that was a well respected small business leader that could have a role of sort of being the out reach on a longer term basis? you know that would meet with different neighborhoods, their merchants and say, we are starting planning now, and it is going to take us four years, or whatever to get to a point of implementation. but that there would be some kind of a regular out reach to those businesses. even if it was just via e-mail updates, so that it would not come as a big surprise. and i think that would be really helpful. and you know, i know that you do out reach, but, folks are just busy and they don't have

time to remember something that was sent out two or three years ago. >> yeah. commissioner, that is a great question. and suggestion as well. i think that it is exactly at least part of what happened in north beach, we were out there four or five or six years ago. and that is the gestation period of some of it, or the bigger projects and then, in the meantime, you know people have changed or people have forgotten, and you know, different things happen, and we did not have, you know, we were gone from that neighborhood for a project for years. and you know i think that is happening elsewhere. and part of what i referenced in terms of rethinking how we do out reach and i think that what could and needs to include the components like that for the bigger projects it is happening in the framework of developing a whole different strategic communications approach or a communication approach for the agency.

including having better ongoing relationships, with our stake holders. and whether that will be manifested in hiring a staff person that comes as a small business or business community and i think that remains to be seen, but that need we certainly recognize is there and kind of ongoing continual communication with different stake holders and particularly small business folks who are not going to be transportation advocates following this stuff and we are just trying to go about their daily business. i think that is a really critical stake holder for us and we are absolutely committed to finding ways of how we maintain that ongoing communication, whether it is an individual, or whether it is better liaison with the officer of small business and the office of development and investing in strategy ands that i think that is a need that you point out is very much needed and we are very committed to

getting there. >> commissioner ortiz? >> i want to first thank you for your presentation, and i mean that it was so clear and precise, i just really enjoyed it. i also want to highlight this off street parking and he has amazing people and i know that i am the park thanksgiving year was previously and i know that some of the behind the scene changes are where you made the transient big, big, key part of it to get the people and the commuters and one of my questions is what is maybe, the partnership with the planning department? so to offset the private sector community and some of those, and you need such and i know that there was a continual use for a parking garage around that area. and maybe it would have been like, hey you guys. like this may be a good idea. >> yeah, so, thank you, commissioner, another great question, so on the very, very

large projects we have a person that serves in a permanent liaison role for the really big stuff, the hunter park shipyard and treasure island and the water front project and so we are very much engaged in the front end of that and whatvy been talking about the planning direction about is since i came in slow about a year and a half ago, it had a strength in it for the day-to-day planning department. i think that the planning department, is operating under the guidance of the transportation plan. different situations call for different solutions and i think that we have not been this consistent as the two agencies working together to make sure that we are there and kind of at the front end and kind of like, you know we need small businesses to be at the front end of our process, we need to be in the front end of those process to work from the muni

perspective and the parking perspective and how can we inform the recommendations that the planning staff makes to the commission. so it does happen, sometimes it happens a little late. but remember that there is the over arching city policy that is captured in the transportation of the general plan that kind of airs towards an over supply of parking and very different from the way that many cities do that. it is another opportunity area that we recognized and about to go through a formalized process to clarify the roles and responsibilities around the transportation planning when it comes to these projects. but the planning department is approving on an ongoing basis, i think that we are missing some of those opportunities and maybe that one was an example. >> thank you. >> commissioner rilely? >> yes. commissioner ortiz answered my question, already. but i see quite a fe