cars parked at a curb. the cars all have parking placards. why this is relevant is because we learned in our research as the committee met over six months that in san francisco there are 29,000 metered parking spaces and 60 thousand placard holders. at any given time on the street what you might find is as many as one out of four parking spaces is occupied by a placard holder and in some neighborhoods that is going up to as much as 50 percent. so who are all these people? >> i'm bob, also a member of

this group. so, even though the slide isn't up and nobody can see it. it shows a placard in the window and this is showing areas for much of the day there may be cars parked there with placards. based on some of the thoughts we heard we heard 3 major challenges with this issue. we can't find parking spaces available when we need them, where we need them. secondly because so many vehicles do stay for so long, 8, 10, 12 hours or longer, there isn't turnover so nobody can go to that store, office, entertainment, shopping place. there isn't enough parking

turnover and 3rd, unfortunately related to that, because people feel there is this abuse, misuse of placards. it spills over to those who don't have a viewable disability. it spills to, oh, you are walking okay. there is a hidden perception that people with hidden disabilities don't deserve placards that also impairs the ability of people with placards and how they are used. >> our next item is bringing the stake holders and all of the stake holders who participate in the committee. you heard from jessie lorenz

and bob and we also have smith who is on the according council, or office and mayor's office on disability. berry hill from the san francisco aging adult division and from bonnie lee from california and the department of motor vehicles andrew conway. the merchants and business owners were also represented in the chamber of commerce to give their perspective on the issue. >> so as with any large group it took time to work out issues. we met as a large group for 6 months but even with that, 1/3 of our group met

additionally each month and a steering committee. we do a lot of work and ask a lot of questions and did research and got back to what we've heard about the membership i want to stress is that many of us were people with disability or disability rights advocates and the point is it was not a slam dunk from vested agencies. they talked to people, a variety of backgrounds, constituents, and interest and if you take the name out you will see the names related to all those areas. the representative from dmv came from sacramento and he provided a lot of history that is relevant to some of our

recommendations. after six months we came to a broad consensus, i'm saying consensus, not unanimity that will increase parking spaces. some of this can be done within the city but much is going to require state action by dmv, getting more funding and legislation and different in policy. you are at the beginning. >> our next slide is a map of the united states. it's shown in blue. there are 11 darker dots scattered around that map. what this represents is the extensive research, the

extensive policy review that committee went through to look at best practices that have been put into place by other cities nationwide. there were 11 cities in particular that included philadelphia, houston, new york, chicago and arlington virginia. this problem of having access to parking where you need it, when you need it is not something that is unique just to san francisco. it's something that has been faced nationwide and also faces problems all over california. these 11 cities are ones that have put in place a policy in the last few years to address issues of parking. as part of our review of the information we were given access to interviews that have been held with disability advocates who remember what it was like in

the city before their policy changes and were able to comment on how those changes actually affected their ability to find parking they needed. it was important to reach out to the disability access. but it quickly became clear when we talked to these advocates that all of the successful programs in these 11 cities had taken the approach of enter grated three key elements. provide more blue zones, conducting sufficient enforcement on placard use and blue zones and charging for placards at meters. what we also found in looking at different policy was any cities trying to roll out one of those key policies is it wasn't enforceable. what we learned is that the just

focusing on enforce ment whether that is of the person using the placard or the person issuing the note that allows somebody to get a placard, that in itself won't affect enough change. and, we are not necessarily assume that people have placards improperly. i think what we are talking about is how people use those placards. i will give you my own family example. my mother has a parking placard and when we go out to dinner, i drive her. we bring her placard. it happenings in -- hangs in the mirror so we can park closely. if i was not a responsible person and i used the placard to park in front of these meters that would be misuse which is a common problem. so

we need some goals for recommendation. we niece to reduce placard misuse. making those goals will have to set some criteria to determine if any of these recommendations are going to meet those goals. we developed a criteria, no. 1, will the policy make it easier to park in those zones and will the policy make it easier to find park ing in those general spaces. and will the placard develop misuse. we wanted to make sure the ideas worked

together in practice as well as theory. the following are our recommendations: at this point i would like to ask jessie lorentz to come up and talk to us during the recommendations. i will talk the next area which targets the blue zone. carla, i hope you will describe the other 6 slides. >> council i have been before you on many issues. i hope you can pay close attention to this one t committee recognizes that there isn't enough blue zone passionating for people with disabilities. our

recommendation is to increase blue zone park negative -- parking in san francisco by 70 percent. we've also recommended that sf mta work with the office on disability to reassess local on ordinance around the blue zones. >> i would like to add one more comment to the blue zones too that blue zones are the most accessible parking space that is out there because they come with all of those important features like the level space, the clear space on the sidewalk if you are deploying a lift and

so increasing blue zones will increase accessibility in a great manner. and also, this is one of those items that doesn't actually require a change in state law and in the course of our community work, we got the commitment from the mta that they would move forward on this recommendation even without changing state law. this should be one of the things we first work on. our next recommendation in our slide is called increase enforcement on placard issues. what we see on the screen is a car parked there is nobody in this car but there is a placard hanging off the rear view mirror and this is important from the enforcement perspective because the parking control officer has to be able to match the person

to the placard and the person is not always there. >> the disabled parking placard program was designed for persons with disabilities would have the ability to readily access programs and services and more freely move about the environment. that is somewhat contingent on the availability of blue parking zones. unfortunately many of you are familiar with the 215 medical marijuana program where it's fairly easy to obtain medical documents that one has a disability. we are seeing similar parallels in the parking placard program. some in the community regarding enforcement are increasing sting activities. those individuals watching tv right now who ar, watch out because

the presentes is the press is going to be watching for you and the other things is parking control officers. increasing amount of parking control officers, increasing stings, using the press and making it known to general public that this is reprehensible and not be tolerated. >> also as a tool to help the officers in the enforce ment, we made a recommendation to make the placard available with a photo that is accessed by the pco while they are out on the streets or some other cities put the photo on the placard,

but the photo is concealed like a sleeve. it's not actually there visible for people to walk by. only when the parking control officer needs to see that. >> our next slide recommendation is increased plaque approval. the photo we have is of the department of motor vehicle who is a very big player in this. they are the people who issue placards and they issue placards for if -- life if you have a permanent disability. >> we also believe they should

update their data base. some examples of states include not being able to walk 200 feet or being dependent on oxygen. it is worth note that this program was never intended a free parking pass for someone who has a temporary or short-term knee injury. unfortunately if you look at some of this data which the committee looked at for six months, the program isn't necessarily serving the people it was intended to serve. >> our mechanic -- next slide on the screen is gray and blue. there are 50 states shown in gray and california is one of them. california is one of only 15 states that requires a meter payment exemption for placard

holders. the other 35 states allow local cities to put that in place if they feel that is necessary and appropriate to increase access to parking. it's also worth noting looking at this map that looking at states that some of the states represented have very high numbers with people with disabilities. we have arizona which is a retirement destination and florida as well as well as our dense eastern sea board states like new york, pennsylvania and massachusetts. >> the committee and i say this knowing that it's the hardest

for people and i ask everyone in this room to come to the table with an open mind. what the committee has recommended that sf mta in collaboration with the community come up with a payment structure for disabled placards for people who need it. bear in mind this doesn't prohibit particularly human services for people with parking vouchers. the sfmta took into consideration some of the challenges and those economic challenges were never meant to be addressed through the disabled parking placard. as we see from the data to other cities is the best way to

increase public parking is to charge the fees at meters. it takes the incentives away for misusing placards. in pittsburgh for example, the available of parking downtown increasing by over 500 percent. >> one of the things that we learned from the department of motor vehicles was that the application was something to consider in the time. parking accessible themselves wasn't available. you had to turn it with your thumbs and for finger and we didn't have curb ramps in the 1970s to get up on the sidewalks to pay the meter.

what the or again of the payment exemption was really about trying to find a reasonable accommodation and inaccessible parking structure. if our recommendations do move forward, it has to move forward with the continue condition that it's required with accessible meters that accept multiple methods of payments. an example the mta is replacing it's meters so it allows you to use your smartphone or old fashion coins and the new meters will be subject to the ada height requirements as well. >> it's important that we emphasize that the recommendations are a package but the technology component which you just mentioned is a critical piece of this. we e not able to pay. ple to pay

the payment exemption initially came because back in the 70s people cooperate turf the knob and do the actual physical manipulation needed to operate the meter. technology has mitigated a lot of that and payments would only be something that we would find acceptable if that technology was in place. >> speaking of payment, our next slide is to direct ability to the use. the next one is our operating signal. that's one public feature in our public right of way that we need more of. that's one possible idea of revenue collection from blue zones can be collected.

>> the community was talking a lot about the historical oppression of people with disabilities and san francisco's commitment to make sure all people with disability have access to aspects of life and also like i spoke about earlier perhaps transportation vouchers to health and human service agencies. >> our last side is to establish reasonable time limits. what is pictured is an accessible parking sign, the blue person and the international symbol. to a limit of 4 hours on the disciple. the committee found

to make parking more available for people who need it, instituting time limits was an important piece of this puzzle. we focus in other communities for disabled parking placards what we found both when we talked to transportation providers and advocates with people with disabilities that time limits seem to have very little impact on the communities ability to move freely and travel about. >> the committee also looked at the local green zone paid by local merchants. what type of time limits exemption would be fair to people with

disabilities to enable folks using disabled parking placards access to the green zone but also so the merchants are not having their car stuck in the green zone all day. our method is to look at we modify the time limits around the green zones. >> our last slide is really the reason why we are here today. it's title accessible parking committee recommendation. we have a couple of places for to you go on our website to learn more and leave comments. the first website is sfmta.com/parking access. and then at the parking access at

sfmta, parkingaccess at sf mta.com and you can see all the research and documents and reports we reviewed. you can call for more information4155 701-5380. that concludes the formal presentation by the committee. i would ask the chair if you have the flexibility if any of other committee members want to make a brief comment before you open up to questions and comments? >> thank you. are there any community members present that would like to make a comment? >> it's back in your hands.

>> thank you very much. now we are going to part b. we will be having our report from councilmember wong. >> are you ready, mr. wong? >> okay. now i am. yes, may 16, the fiscal access committee had a joint meeting with the joint module accessibility advisory committee. we got to the same presentation that you just heard. one of the most important things for me as a member of the mayor's disability council, the mac and accessible parking advisory

committee and the mac is importance of hearing public comment. i also wanted to share with you a summary of the mac comments from yesterday. mac -- one member recommended that the sfmta convert a parking garage to disabled parking only and run para transitentrance service to this to deliver transportation services and discussed limited income individuals maybe negatively impacted by having to pay at the meter. a member committee member expressed that the dmv

should review all placards be certified that they are valid and continues to be. one member felt that time limits and payment are good ideas and be fairer. the members pointed out that many low income people ride the bus. a couple of members expressed concern, some areas do not have enough blue zones for people who need them. areas of judea and 23rd was specifically cited. a member expressed concern that red temporary placard are subject to a lot of abuse which should be dealt with. one member

expressed frustration over the implementation of street fares often which block blue spaces and replace them with temporary spaces which are often occupied by vehicles of fair merchants or have their access impacted by bicycles parked at meters. a committee member suggested that bicycles should pay for parking before disabled parking placards owners should. a committee member raised ideas that all taxis should be given placards so they can use these at blue zone parking and drop

off an every bus zone should have it. a member specified that placards often park everyday and changing this practice would solve the problem. that concludes my report as chair of the access committee meeting. our next meeting is friday june 14, 130 to 2:30 at market street on the first floor. we hope you will join us then. thank you. >> thank you, again thank you for the presentation and now we are going to open it up for public comment from the council first, please. and we have chip? >> yes. a