can all block pedestrian access. they can all reduce automobile and pedestrian visibility. and, so, it's essential that we promote access to our sidewalks and that we are very thoughtful and strategic in terms of what we place on our sidewalks and where exactly we place it. so, for example, and we'll show some pictures shortly. as i noted, newsracks are incredibly important. in my district at 18th and castro, one intersection, one of the most crowded intersections in the city, there are seven of the clearchannel newsrack pedi mounts with room for 50 newspapers at one intersection. majority of those are typically empty. the question is newsracks are a good thing. do we really need seven or space for 50 newspapers at one intersection?

similarly, there are bus shelters, because of our bus shelters are rather wide, there are some sidewalks where you almost have to walk single file to get past the bus shelter. so, one of my legislative aides is here and we have some photos we're going to show of some examples around the city in terms of our placement of street furniture. ~ andres powers is here >> is that andres power with supervisor squalor. i'll show a quick set of slides with some of the issues we've asked the department to speak about ~ and as the supervisor has mentioned in his introduction. so, here, we see sort of a large kiosk intersection crowding at one point a pedestrian crossing. we is see all kinds of random pieces of furniture on

sidewalks blocking pedestrian access. some of it, again, useful, some of it questionable. we have a large advertising kiosk and hidv that is you may or may not be able to see the pedestrian crosswalk, visibility obviously is quite obscured. we have portable -- we have toilets, public toilets on our sidewalks. we have set up obstacle courses between garbage cans, newsracks and muni shelters, limiting pedestrian pathway. >> that last you showed, that's at 24th and church, i believe? >> castro and 18th. >> that's castro and 18th, okay. >> and, again, sidewalkses that are quite cluttered with different types of furniture ~. wide muni shelters. no pedestrian pathway behind them. this continues throughout the city.

again, single file instead of -- one of the streets in soma, similar. we have here an example of a -- on the right there, a traffic control box. if you're a driver making a right turn here, the visibility of the crosswalk is quite constrained. so, if you take a look at the circle here, there are people waiting to cross. and as they get close to the intersection, they're completely blocked by the box. similarly here, an advertising kiosk completely object instructs the crosswalkses from vehicles perhaps making a right-hand turn. another example of a traffic control box, and they're everywhere. anywhere you go in the city -- an afternoon i walked around and took these photos. all parts of the city we see a similar swayctiontion.

~ situation. newsracks, here we have one cubicle occupied, the rest empty. similarly here. this here right in front of city hall, we have two empty -- two of them are broken and the rest are empty. another example. thank you. >> thank you very much. and we, because of -- for a variety of reasons, proposals to put even more street furniture on our sidewalks, again, often serving good purposes, but requiring us to be very strategic in terms of how we place that. for example, and i know this is a topic of conversation around the city, but the at&t plan to put utility boxes on the sidewalks, a recent proposal by the postal service to place some rather large receptacles on the sidewalks.

and a proposal by the mta which i'll be discussing today to place a number of large rest room facilities on sidewalks. so, the purpose of today's hearing is to make sure that we as a city are being strategic and thoughtful and coordinated in terms of how we use our sidewalks for what can often be very important street furniture. i think that there is a perception at times that there's not enough coordination, and that departments do things sometimes, you know, without taking a look at the whole better streets plan and just making sure that we are being fully coordinated, and that we are complying with our very thoughtful better streets plan. so, we have a few departments here who are going to talk about their strategies. and i first want to call up adam barrett from the planning department to talk about how this all fits together.

>> good afternoon, supervisors. adam barrett from the planning department. when i was the project manager for the better streets plan which was completed and adopted by the board in december of 2010, and the better streets plan was an effort to bring together all the different agencies that have jurisdiction over the public right of way, different aspects of the public right-of-way, to capotecreate a comprehensive set of design guidelines for how we design our pedestrian environment ~. so, i'm going to provide some context of what the better streets plan as sort of the city adopted shall guiding document on streetscape design has to say about the issue of streetscape clutter. and i'm also going to talk as a representative of the planning department some of the general plan and some of the policies there which are consistent with the better streets plan. and, in fact, the better

streets plan was adopted by reference into the general plan. so, to start with i thought i would propose sort of a definition by what we mean bestreetscape clutter. sorry for the overlap there. what it says is it's the collectv i have uncoordinated placement of various objects on the sidewalk. what i want to point out there is it is not about any one individual element, whether it's an attractive or purely functional element. and it also doesn't mean that we shouldn't have, you know, any type of street furniture or utility or whatnot in the public right-of-way. in fact, those are often necessary function ally at thexv and can be very activating item in the streetscape, too. but what it does mean is we're talking about the relationship of the different elements to one another and how they're located in the overall streetscape environment. and when we're talking about streetscape clutter we're talking about doing a poor job of that and we're talking about

coordinated street design, then that's more consistent and coordinated. so, andres powers showed some examples of streetscape clutter. knees are just a couple that i'm showing. and one point i want to make here is if you look at the photo on the left there aren't actually any vertical elements in the streetscape there, but the placement of the underground utilities and water mains and driveways means that [speaker not understood] any opportunity to do street trees. i think streetscape clutter can also mean looking at what's happening underground as well. and the better streets plan, this is the cover, provides specific guidance on how we should be designing our streets too achieve the opposite of streetscape clutter, basically a coordinated approach to streetscape design. and here is a policy lifted directly from the better "street signs". minimize visual clutter in the streetscape environment. and there are a few strategies

that it discusses in order to achieve this. the first is to minimize unwanted or not unnecessary elements. so, think about what we're putting out on the streetscape, whether it's necessary, whether there are other places it could go like on private parcels, and really being conscious about what we put out there. the second would be to consolidate or share different elements as possible. this could mean utility [speaker not understood], it could mean street lights, it could mean street tree guards that double as bike racks or anything like that, sort of capote atev i have thinking about how elements can serve more than one purpose. and the last and perhaps most important is when placing the elements we should be considering the overall streetscape design including what's out there in the existing condition, but also what might be there in the future. for example, opportunities for planting street trees. and this is usually best, most achievable by when we do

comprehensive streetscape designs which we sometimes do for important streets, but we don't always do elsewhere. but this can be done through careful review and placement of individual elements in the streetscape as well. moving on to the next slide. so, better streets plan sort of has a framework for how we should be looking at laying out difficult entitle elements in the street sidewalk environment. the first sort of framing element is what we call the sidewalk zone and this is really thinking about a cross-section of the sidewalk from the edge of the building or the property line to the edge of the curb line where the roadway starts. and having adjacent to the building you would have what we call a frontage zone which might just be a little distance from the building or it might be a place where property owners can put out a table or chairs or displays or planters. and then we would have the pedestrian clear zone, which better streets plan says on

most streets should be a six-foot minimum width, can be less than that on sort of quiet residential streets or industrial streets. and then you have the zone where you have all of the street furnishings and plantings and that's where all the different elements should go. and final had i will we have something which we call the extension zone which is a concept ~ if you do a curb extension at a corner %backeror mid-block, that is an opportunity to move some of the elements that would otherwise be in a pedestrian travel onto an area that's not in the pedestrian area of travel. another sort of framing concept in the street scapes plan is the streetscape layout. this is sort of thinking lan yardly on the block about the rhythm of streetscape elements and their relationship to one another. and what the better streets plan says is that the streetscape layout should be primarily defined by a system of regular spacing of street trees and secondarily by street

lighting where it's present so that you have this sort of primary rhythm that as you go down the sidewalk you see this and other elements are placed within and among that overall rhythm that sort of gives you the overall esthetic of the street. so, that's sort of it for the better streets plan. and just to switch gears for a moment, planning department is also responsible for the development and maintenance of the general plan which is guiding policy for the city as a whole and this really means that it guides the actions of all the different city agencies and changes to the public right-of-way and other things as well. and as i mentioned, the better streets plan is referenced in it. here's just one policy from the general plan from the urban design element which says remove and obscure distracting and cluttering elements. and this is referring not just to the street environment, but the streetscape is clearly a key component of this policy

and one that the city has direct control over. so, we as a department will review various proposed projects that are called general plan referrals from other agencies and we'll be reviewing them against all the policies in the general plan of which this is one and determine whether they're consistent with the general plan or not. so, many times specific streetscape changes will come to us and we will review that based on -- based on the policies in the general plan including the better streets plan because that is referenced in the general plan. so, that concludes my presentation and i'm available for any questions. >> thank you, mr. barrett. i do have some questions. so, just following up on your last set of comments about the planning department's role, because i really believe the planning department has a significant role to play in working with the various departments whether it's mta or

dpw, including during their contracting process for some of the street furniture, to make sure that the contracts -- i mean, implement of those contracts are consistent with the better streets plan. and i guess my question is how involved is the planning department? and, so, for example, i know that we've -- my office has encouraged the planning department to become more involved with the process around siting the at&t utility boxes to work very closely with dpw, with neighbors to see if appropriate locations that can be found not just that work for the neighborhood, but that work for our planning goals and principles. i also wonder to what extent the planning department was involved in the design process of the -- for the mta bus stops and whether having bus shelters that allow for basically single-file access down a crowded sidewalk is consistent

with the better streets plan. and then similarly, the newsracks in terms of the placement and how many are in certain locations, whether planning department has had any involvement in saying, hey, there are just too many for this location. and i know the planning department is not the lord or overseer or micro manages other departments, but it seems to me the planning department has a significant role to play instersv of assuring the better streets plan is being complied with. >> yeah, and i think it does vary. typically, you know, for streetscape projects or major sort of systematic -- i'm not sure if that's the best word, but projects where there might be a number of the same type of element going in throughout the city, we would have some role [speaker not understood]. typically dpw will get sort of individual permits or proposals from departments about

streetscape design and make a determination about whether it warrants coming to the planning department or not and we're obviously not reviewing every parking meter or traffic pole or whatnot that comes. so, we're not seeing everything and dpw will sort of look at what types of things will rise to that level. sometimes, you know, we might, we might look at the overall program and say within these parameters it's okay, we don't need to review every single one. i know with the at&t boxes, there's sort of a need for an additional level of review and i know that my director and dpw director are going to be meeting about that i think next week to sort of figure out a more involved process for -- specifically further utility boxes. >> i'm glad to hear that. was the mta involved with the design decisions around the muni bus shelters, particularly, you know, given how narrow some of the walkways, some of the sidewalks are? >> yeah, i believe that's the

case where we did a sort of blanket general plan referral. i'm not exactly sure actually. [inaudible]. is that the review we did for -- >> yes, gail for the mta thev planning did both a c-e-q-a approval for the replacement shelters and for the new locations. ~ >> okay. i guess my question for mr. barrett goes beyond that. i mean, it would seem -- yeah, i'd like to understand because again, i just saw on some of the photos we saw earlier, it's in some situations it's very quite dramatic where literally people have to walk single file to get past these bus shelters because they're so wide.

advertising is a source of revenue for muni. these are complicated policy questions, but it would seem to me in that kind of situation the planning department should be involved in terms of ensuring that the better streets plan is being taken into account. and i guess the same with the decisions around where the newsracks are being placed in terms of just the sheer numbers. >> yeah, and i know we've also looked at some of the locations for the specific operator rest rooms, muni operator rest rooms and requested changes on certain ones of those as part of the general plan review. so, i can find out more about that in terms of shelters. >> okay, thank you, mr. barrett. okay. so, next we're going to have john kwong from the department of public works.

>> good afternoon, supervisors. john kwong from the department of public works street use and mapping. if you can go to the overhead. thank you. in many ways i'm going to repeat some of the exact verbiage that my can colleague mr. barrett from the planning department has stated. 9 department of public works processes and reviews a variety of requests to place facilities in the public right-of-way. ~ the specifically service facilities in these kind of cases. the department much like planning identify the sidewalk into three separate zones. the curb zone. as you can see where typically hydrants are placed, "street signs", parking meters, trees, bicycle racks, utility boxes including water meters and

sewer main covers to buildings in those cases. we have the pedestrian zone where majority of pedestrians will walk in that area and the building zone. the building zone typically is a location where property owners might have a step encroachment, they might have landscaping, you have commercial elements much like cafe tables and chairs, display merchandise variety of other uses along the public right-of-way. ~ under the three major categories as suggested by the supervisor here, the department also handles three major categories. one is -- two of them are contracts with [speaker not understood] for the operation of maintenance of both public toilets and kiosks. the second one is the clearchannel for the newsrack program. and those are both contract items, contracts with those companies that runs for many more years to come. the last one, the department

process is what we call service facilities, above ground facilities that we oversee and we manage review. we manage review regulating, we make approvals as appropriate. these are typically as described previously. yes, sir. >> on the jc de co kiosks which i think are part of the bathroom contracts, those kiosks, how tall are they, 20 feet tall or something like that? >> they vary i believe between 14 to 20 feet tile, somewhere in that neighborhood. >> why are they so tall? i mean, they're huge around the base, but they're also -- they go up very high and they have some visibility impacts and so, like, why are they so tall? >> one thing to recognize, at the time when the previous board approved the concept, what happened was these kiosks went through a review process, including the art commission for review and it was decided

that that was an appropriate size. >> my sense is that they're that tall because it makes it a bigger bill board for the advertising, which is huge ad. do you know if that was part of the decision-making process? >> actually, the contract was signed before i came on board with dpw. so, there was a policy question and concept behind it which i cannot speak to. >> okay. i know some of the kiosks are used in terms of whether it's newspaper sales or just -- i think it's a flower shop in it, but sometimes they just seem to be a little taller than necessary for those purposes. and i assume that's for the size of the advertising. that's a comment. >> that's not something i can speak to. >> and in terms of the clearchannel news racks, recognizing i think everyone

agrees they are -- first of all, let me say it's very important to have newsracks. i know there's been concern at this hearing, some folks in the newspaper industry were trying to get rid of newsracks. no one i know of is trying to get rid of newsracks and i personally think that these clearchannel newsrack pedi mounts are a huge improvement to the old kind of newsracks which were ugly, sometimes badly vandalized, fall over. some of them were just falling apart. so, these are -- i have some areas in my district where i would like to get the clearchannel pedi-mount to replace some of the old news racks. some term of the concentration i gave, because i know in my district, 18th and kass strobe, having 7 of them in one intersection with almost -- spaces for almost 50 newspapers when most of those are typically empty, what is the thinking in terms of how to

distribute them so you have enough for what the newspaper needs are, but not dramatically more than you need, recognizing that they do take up quite a bit of sidewalk space? >> thank you, supervisors. john kwong once again. we have to recognize first the clearchannel contract program initiated back in 2002, okay. so, that was pretty much before really the advent of a lot of the digital press that came along. so, at that point there was a lot of newspapers buying a whole lot of spaces. what happens is as we establish corridors, if you don't have a box, you're if you're not occupying a space, you're not allowed. there were a lot of people that wanted a lot of boxes. over time business plans change. as we progress, people using [speaker not understood] to get the information, newspaper agencies and delete the newspaper starts to decreasing. under the contract, the

departments are allow today remove 2% of the total news racks out there at any one year. so, it translates to approximately six racks, yeah, six free-standing racks, sick standing racks a year. so, we're looking at in order to remove that number, evaluate [speaker not understood] everything else. as we continue to move forward today, however, okay, we do evaluate because right now we have three zones -- two zones in the sunset, one in richmond as we continue to move forward to install these newsrack zones, we continue to evaluate and reevaluate to make sure we don't put an excessive number of these newsracks in there. >> in addition to the annual reduction of up to 2%, how about a redistribution? in other words, does the space over here in the sunset or different part of my district, supervisor kim's district, that

maybe could use one and there are too many in this other area, so, not eliminating, but redistributing it. does the department have the flexibility to do that? >> the department -- the department can reallocate -- you know, again, knowing with all the green boxes available, we can't reallocate, but we cannot literally take one newsrack from one location and move this newsrack to another area. >> why not? >> that's not allowed under the contract. >> so if there are too many in one area and nothing under another area, under the contract you can't say we're going to take-two of these and move them over to this other area? >> what happens is the department needs to create a new pedestrian zone in these kind of cases. with the creative zone so we can put these freestanding newsracks there and direct newspapers to remove the free standing ones. so, there's a process that we're obligated to follow by law. >> i'm sorry. >> supervisor kim. >> i'm sorry. i didn't hear the word, what kind of zone?

>> pedestrian mount zones. where we put up these freestanding from clearchannel, we establish the zone. ~ ped zone >> all the freestanding newsracks must be removed in that area. ~ >> similar to [speaker not understood] kiosk, my sense is that because there's advertise iting on these newsracks that sometimes there is an incentive to want to have more in a certain area. so, going back to 18th and castro, it's a very, very, very high pedestrian and muni traffic zone. and, so, even though 7 newsracks, 7pedi-mounts is highly excessive for that intersection, creates a lot of advertising space. so, i would really encourage dpw to be proactive about trying to do redistribution when there is over concentration in certain areas.

>> obviously, commissioner -- supervisor. it's working within the confines. we have to work dill gently to make sure we work appropriately to have these newsracks removed accordingly. [speaker not understood]. the third item again is the surface mounted facilities. these are typically facilities installed by mta for the traffic controller boxes. at&t for the [speaker not understood] they put in. puc have at various times controller boxes being put in the public right-of-way. and finally pg&e is [speaker not understood] programmed to put certain above ground facilities to monitor the essential equipment as they continue to move forward. >> supervisor kim. >> thank you. and i had a question on these. i just want to rejog my memory on this. i remember with at&t boxes there was a discussion about which public sidewalks. is it the case there were a number of these companies that

they have to privately negotiate with private landlords versus the city for the use of that right-of-way? >> under the director's order that was signed by then director of public works ed lee who is now the mayor, the requirement is very specific that first every agency that wants to place these facilities must first see whether it can be put on private property. obviously they have to reach out to make a determination or provide information to the department of [speaker not understood] intent. once that happens, then there is a process they need to follow to answer the department's requirement as established under the order. >> so, they first -- the first request is that they look at private properties and then when they can't do that, they come to the city with a list of the sites that they're looking for on our public right-of-way? >> the first request -- i

should say you are correct, they have to look at -- try to find at least three property owners in the immediate area to see if they can put on private property. and once that -- you know, [speaker not understood]. once that happens, then they could evaluate and determine where they would like to place it in the public right of way. >> okay, thank you. >> regarding the at&t boxes, you know, at the time that we environmentally cleared the project, i and i know president chiu's office was involved to -- we worked with dpw and with at&t to come up with sort of an understanding about the process for siting the boxes in terms of working with neighbors, trying -- attempting to find locations that were workable for the neighborhood and working with the planning department to make sure that we are taking into account the better streets plan. i was glad to hear from mr.