the tunnels [inaudible] extension at the central subway to north beach. this will turn north beach in noisy area [inaudible] and in the neighborhood across from washington square park, one of the prettiest parks in the city and cost 17 million in project funds and 9 million in local bus and transit funds. the central subway will work just as well without this useless extension and finally when it's completed there will be no north beach station. this is a lot to ask the neighborhood [inaudible] construction -- [inaudible] benefit. please remove the tunnels go to option from the central subway project. save

17 million and 9 million and let north beach enjoy its village and especially for the tourists. we live by the gateway and we had months and months of trucks and that i can tell you it's been awful and it's just going to ruin north beach. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> [inaudible] coalburn. lance karns. burt whiner. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. i am a resident of san francisco and a will -- a will you ever of north beach and this comes down to money and many think that the millions spent in north beach is free money so why not take the

gift? the central subway is projected to have 400 million over run by the time it's finished. this money would not come from federal funds but local funds. for example muni bus operations and repair, expanded parking, meter placement, taxi fees, additional city taxes, et cetera. the simple fact is we can't afford the tunnels in the face of such an huge over run and the damage it will do to the muni system overall. muni director ed reiskin said in his examiner op-ed in may "if we continue to not fund this it will go into more disrepair." solution, cut the tunnels in the subway project and chinatown will work just as well without them. the

project is much needed 17 million richer and that taken from the all already weaken muni and train systems. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker please. mr. karns i think. >> sorry. >> okay good afternoon. >> mr. karns and herbert wiener and nick camora. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. my name is is lance karns and a resident of north beach and here to talk about muni's poor communication and lack of communication with the people of north beach. beginning in late may we got notices start dates for demolition of the pagoda theater in north beach. demolition has not started. on july 1 with unannounced meeting with muni

engineers and offices and select residents it was revealed that the contractor has no plans and no demolition or possibility of starting construction. these possible illegal notices create uncertainty for those that live in the neighborhood and for merchants that depend on a hospitality business climate and further reduce the credibility for the muni agency and the person should be replaced by someone who can give us accurate information. further unlike the select meeting attendees mentioned before most residents and businesses in the vicinity have not met with muni or told of the impacts that the demolition and construgz will cause. muni owes north beach some hard facts. when the plans are available schedule a meeting with all concerned and explain what will happen during the construction. we understand

there are hazardous materials at the site and want to know how they're going to be disposed safely and which streets will be used and possibly block off. to keep us in the dark any longer shows muni's contempt for the wishes and welfare of the people of north beach. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> [calling speaker names] >> good afternoon mr. wiener. >> herb art wiener impauled stakeholder. i wish you would address an atrocity. i attempted to travel to 38th and tara vel and caught a shuttle. i waited for several minutes for the 28 bus. the information panel kept fluctuating. finally the bus came. it was full and passed us by. the next bus

would come in 80 minutes so i had to travel to lombard street to catch the 43 and in turn connected me to l at forest hills station and i arrived at my destination after one hour and 50 minutes. the punch line is that i would have gotten there much earlier had the 29 bus been available, but no it was discontinued by the transit effectiveness project. now, what happened to me could happen to other people, and this is basically the dirty work of the transit effectiveness project which was rubber stasmd by mta and sanctioned by this board and you all should be ashamed. in addition i would like to have a response from mr. hailey from my email about switchbacks. it's been two months and his response is slower than a muni bus. >> thank you. next speaker

please. >> nick kemora, kelly cutler. >> i am nick and volunteer with the coalition on homelessness and here with solidity with the community living in their vehicles currently experiencing displacement crisis as a result of the over sized pilot parking ban and i am here to summarize some issues i realize that were not in the agenda but the outreach was supposed to be done by the sf hot team but we are getting reports that sfpd are doing the outreach and handing out the fly ares and reaching out to the vehicles and we believe this is a terrible strategy and increases police mar rasesment and the fear of being displaced by the police. second, tickets have been written to people living in

their vehicles. from what we heard you stated in public it wasn't going to be before july 15 that tickets are issued and we're here to tell you they're issued and this could create a mistrust and we are looking to avoid that and nit to outreach to july 15 and people are getting tickets and will hinder that and lastly there has been a death of someone living in a vehicle in san francisco that reported increased stress and anxiety before their death. i think this is an incident of this legislation adding stress to people in a moment of crisis and without housing. we anticipate increase in physical and mental problems for people living in their cars. we sent you a letter from the coalition to each of you. i recommend that you work with us and find a

solution to homelessness in san francisco. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> [calling speaker names] >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. hello my name is is kelly and a volunteer with the coalition on homelessness. our stance on the over night parking ban issues has remained consistent and will fight the restrictions and of the originally passed legislation and while it is called a pilot project we continue to hold concern that this is not a pilot project but rather a fast track city wide ban on over night park against homeless families and individuals. we are concerned that all future decisions will only center the voices of the

city powerful business owners and city officials and leaving out the voice of those impacted by the policy and policy changes. we have some immediate steps and sliewtionz that mta could implement to support the needs of homeless people currently living in their vehicle. number one, create a mechanism to drop tow changes as a result of this policy. >> >> number two have an assessment of parking in san francisco and outline where signs are posted and parking for over sized vehicles are still available. in addition we would ask this information be made public and accessible so folks can identify safe places to park their homes. number three, reconsider all parking parking policies that negatively impact families and individuals living in their

vehicles such as other over night parking bans. >> thank you. next speaker. >> [calling speaker names] >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. my name is elsaand intern with the coalition of homelessness. we feel confident we are counter the harm and impact the policy will have on san franciscans. while the mta is not responsible for the issue of homelessness in san francisco we are all responsible to do our part to find a solution, especially those that serve in public office. the mta has no possible -- has no responsibility to pass the buck -- we will continue to reach out to you and offer solutions and organize with the communities affected by this policy and we're hopeful you're

open to meet with us and as the pilot projects rolls out and displaces people and we sent a letter requesting information and would like to create solutions with you. many of us think those agreed to meet with us and we look forward to hearing from everybody else at the mta. thank you for your time and service to our community. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> [calling speaker names] >> good afternoon. >> hello. my name is melody. within four days of june 4 of this hearing the police began knocking on our doors telling us to move regardless of the fact we were legally parked and instructed to move to another block where it was illegal to park at night. during this kind

of stress we cannot rest. it destroys our sleep cycle and not eating right and making bad decisions. lack of sleep leads us to poor control of chronic diseases such as hypertension and heart disease. due to the stress i made the mistake of working on getting rid of my things to comply with the rv law instead of going with frosty emptying our trash. he passed a way. i am here to tell you we're law abiding citizens and we need a safe place to park, so please help us. thank you.

[applause] >> thank you. next speaker. >> charles mcgregor. nate neary. mary mcguire. >> hello i am charles mcgregor and finding a place to park is a serious issue. i thank you for your time. >> thank you sir. next speaker. >> [calling speaker names] >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon commissioners. my name is nathan biery and marks my 48th year in the taxi business in san francisco and i came here to give you a little harangue as usual. when the sfmta took over the taxi regulation i the met with the regulators and we didn't have enough capacity to meet demand. we needed more cabs. this was four or five years ago. best result we've had is a report by

mr. haira who is an academic from canada and in response to our cancerous problem prescribed aspirin. thank you very much. we still need more. as i stand here today on tuesday afternoon san francisco is about a thousand cabs short of what i would describe as adequate service, adequate. my understanding of adequate is -- we're talking about adequate medical care, nutrition, or adequate education and if you had a chance to get superior for your families you would get superior. we don't even have adequate yet. we have poor and we have to get beyond that and i don't know how soon this is going to happen but the public deserves better. we as an industry deserve better. if you look at yelp i am astonished

anybody calls for taxi service in san francisco. we stink and we stink because we don't have enough and you will hear from drivers that we get unfair competition because we stink and it has to stop some time and i hope it stops soon. you will have more reports. the ultimate solution is to be at capacity to do our job. do you have any questions? >> thank you. next speaker please. >> mary mcguire, barry. [calling speaker names] >> mary mcguire -- ballpark. i thought we had a cab stand in the area. you can't even get near it because it's loaded up with black cars, town cars, whatever. there's all kind of stuff there. we can't get near it. i thought you hired an

investigator to give the people tickets or shoo them away. we can't even service the public. the ad on the muni bus -- really, better, faster, cheaper than a taxi. are you kidding me? this is the culture of safety you're talking about. i'm going to quote from your agency's comments on the rule making. you note that the insurance policies exclude claims for transported passengers for a fee and you address the ride share claims of excess insurance but pose the question will excess carriers not coverage with it and you say electronic hailing is the way of the future and you might as will tell the truth. we're not going to get t the dispatcher rough statistics and estimate is down 70%. i talked to two

dispatchers from two major companies and ours as well. we're smaller. the companies have cabs but don't have any drivers to fill them and as pointed out the industry is getten eaten alive by the unregulated industry and how can we fill the medallions if the companies can't fill their shifts. this is a disaster. this is a disaster and i don't know. i have nothing more to say. i have five seconds. >> okay. thank you. next speaker. >> barry toronto followed by howard strausser. >> good afternoon. >> hi. good afternoon chairman nolan, fellow directors. i hope you had a nice 4th of july. i wasn't very happy considering the fact that independence day -- we well are a nation of laws

and unfortunately we have a mayor that doesn't consider the transportation code viable part of this city. if you watch tv or if you want i can send you an email link to the video. apparently mayor lee called a certain app gay on july 13 in the city. i guess apparently rumors daughter works for that particular app and i am concerned that you have a mayor that appointed you is supporting this app which is know is illegal and in fact the insurance doesn't cover it and more and more insurance companies are contacting the drivers and your private insurance doesn't cover the use of this vehicle so i would allow you guys to get more involved. any day now the ruling from come back from the administrative law judge and you should want to know this information and react

to it publicly and be on strong with the taxis. if not -- i am telling anyone in the public now the medallion is worth nothing. don't buy it now. don't buy it until we can rule out these apps. if not i'm going to go work for one of them because i'm not going to get shut down. my driving record has been clean for a while so i tell you i would rather do that than have to pay all these fees. the drivers are paying the fees. the cars are getting inspected. the drivers are getting more and more training and the problem is the enforcement has been really bad and in closing the city attorney won't help enforce it like l.a. does. why not? let's get a statement. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. [applause] >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon directors.

haw ward strauss ner and want to talk about the parking history in san francisco and every problem that you have to deal with, so early on after the people had cars, people built garages under their houses and apartment houses and later i imagine that the city agencies provided parking on city land for city employees and we know where it's leading us now but the first major thing was the union square garage. it was like a wpa project and 39 or so and the merchants realized they needed to have the consumers have a place to park and got together with the city and the first partnership to build parking in the city and under union square and people were asking how did you do this thing all over the country and we built more of these types of garages under parks and helping

to pay to keep the parks in business. the next thing that happened started in oklahoma city. they found they had to put in meertds to cause turn over for the merchants and of course as san francisco as other cities did this say source of spare change while doing good and turn over with parking but we continue in san francisco doing a pretty silly thing. in 1955 the zoning codes were changed to require that if you want to build a house, an apartment, or anything you have to provide a parking place. now did people want that to park on the street? did they want that so there is no development in the neighborhood? who knows but this is a major problem and increases the number of cars. later on the next thing happen you continued building nor garages and followed by building a freeway virtually on geary

street and convenient for people to drive down to the garages. there is more history and we have more time today. thank you very much. >> mr. chairman that's the last person that turned in a speaker card. >> thank you very much. >> is there anyone else? >> okay. come forward please. >> art, you wanted to talk about item 14 on the agenda. we're not there yet. we're on item nine. >> we will be there shortly. >> [inaudible] >> okay. thank you. >> all right moving on the consent calendar. these items are considered to be routine and enacted by a single act by the board unless an item is requested to be severed. mr. chairman i have no requests. >> motion to approve? any further discussion? all in favor say aye?

the ayes have it and before we leave public comment and there are a couple of things and with the large vehicles and the july 15 date and start enforcement and represented here that's not the case, so i would be interesting hearing back on that at some point and members consenting. director reiskin. >> i would be happy to report back. it's my understanding there are four tickets issued in error and will be invalidated. >> do the people know that? >> i don't know. i just learned about that but we will report how the implementation is going. >> we received letters from the coalition and we appreciate that and the cab stand issue that ms. mcguire raised. it's not good if you can't get to it so -- maybe not today but some point soon. >>i would be happy to. i know

there has been work between our folks and the taxi division to discuss the ballpark taxi access, but obviously if the taxis are getting blocked in getting there then as you say it's not very effective so i am happy to report back on that. >> and we will ask director reiskin to come back with that. thank you for bringing that to our attention. >> moving on to item 11 on the regular calendar, a presentation on the van ness bus rapid transit project. >> peter o botcho, will present and we have michael schwartz from the transportation authority as well. >> i asked for this item to come before us because i was with him in mexico city and seeing their lines so effective and 850,000

people a day read the lines and all in four years. obviously they have a different system than we do but it seems like we have an awful way to go for the one project and i am interested at some point in the presentation what could be done to speed it up. it's such a long time and a valuable thing -- we could do quicker than other things we try to do. good afternoon. are you ready? >>i think so. >> okay. welcome. >> actually you have to speak from that one. >> good afternoon chairman knoll nolan, numbers of the board. >> >> and staff and members of the public. i am the sfmta project manager per the van ness bus rapid transit project and i am here today to give everyone a brief update on where we are with the project and what we're trying to accomplish with it. the purpose of the project, the purpose and need of the project

-- i am sure we're all aware of the difficulty -- the sfmta's motor coaches and trolley coaches have getting down van ness avenue and the need to improve transit in this important corridor and that is the primary goal of this project and one of the main methods of accomplishes this goal is by separating the buses from the mixed traffic and providing their own transit dedicated lanes. along with this we intend to improve pedestrian accessibility along the corridor. pedestrian comfort along the corridor and enhance the van ness corridor infrastructure. i would like to talk a little bit about how the van ness brt fits into the

operations of the mta and the future of the mta's development. as you can see from this map in the green it provides a north south trunk, an area where there is little rail currently available, so we will provide basically a high capacity corridor for the mta without having to build a rail line along van ness. it's designed specifically to hook up with the geary brt and currently in development and provide east-west connection point and connection hub at van ness and geary. as part of a larger mta network service for the van ness brt will be provided by the trolley and motor coaches

currently operate the 47 and 49 limited lines. as you can see from this map the bus rapid transit project will operate in the exclusive right-of-way along van ness. for the rest of the run they will operate as they currently do along the traditional routes of the 49 limited and the 47 lines providing connection to other parts of the city and the 49 line will run virtually the entire length of the city. what goes into making a brt system? what is bus rapid transit? it's the dedicated transit lane is the obvious item but there are subtle features and signal authority and opt minimization to make sure the buses get the extra jump on the rest of the traffic lie continuing to allow

the traffic to move efficiently. all buses to maximize the speed for which people can board the coaches and of course pedestrian improvements and high quality stations are critical to encourage people to use the system and feel comfortable being able to take the system to their destination along the corridor and walk the final distance. the expected benefits of the van ness project up to a [inaudible] percent in transit time. up to 50% improvement in reliability and expected 35% or increase in boardings while maintaining the same corridor person you there put. in layman's term means we're taking