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.mot

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 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 a lane of traffic for bus only service for the bus service and removal of lanes for opt minimization and expect to move the same people along the corridor if not more once the project is completed. there are many competing elements that go into developing any project, and part of a successful project is prioritizing the critical ones up to 36 different items were looked at during the development of the preferred alternative and the early design of the project. if you're interested in more detail on that it can be found in chapter 10 of the environmental report which was made public on july 5. but the

primary ones that we have been focusing on these eight. performance, passenger experience, access and to the disabled community and pedestrian safety, urban design and landscaping, system performance, environmental and social fix and operations and maintenance and construction and capital costs. this map shows the location of the future brt stations. a significant portion of the travel time savings expect friday this system is achieved by stop consolidation and eliminating about a 30 of the stops along the corridor. these locations were chosen because they're the heavily used in service so it was deemed critical to preserve them. in addition to that they are --

the vast majority of them have significant east-west transit routes so they're critical transfer point for travel n some ways the van ness once it's completed it will be like a trunk of the tree and east-west branches to carry people to other parts of the city and connecting at these locations. a number of concerns have been raised by members of the public and staff as well about traffic diversion and left turn removals. what i can say to that is that the environmental report did a great deal of analysis and mitigate the concerns raised and as you proceed with the engineering construction of the projected we will continue to work very closely with our partners and other city departments and the

public to minimize the adverses impacts while maximizing the benefits of the project. i would like to talk a little bit about what people can expect to see once the project is completed. this is an architect's rendering what it could look like once the project is finished. the preferred alternative is center running right side boarding system. that can be explained better in this plan view. essentially in an effort to preserve median green space and improve the overall look of the corridor and passenger experience wherever the station -- wherever there is not a transit station the maximum amount of median and green space is preserved for tree planting and greening. where there is a station because of space constraints the bus lanes are pull

together and pull closer together to pull into the station shown here in red. i just wanted to highlight this particular location this area here and this is the transfer point for the eventual geary brt as it moves forward and projected to one of the -- if not the most busy transfer stations along the line, and a major transit hub. for that reason it stands out as being the only block long station in the system right now covering the full length. the project is going to be responsible for constructing a number of major elements. outlined here the boarding islands and the dedicated bus ways and the medians are obvious. more

subtle items not readily the public are things like fire hide drants, curb ramps and rehabilitation and sewer line rehabilitation and we are building a brt and as well as revitalizing the whole van ness corridor as part of this project. in relation to that work that's within the project there is a number of parallel projects going on. sfgov is replacing the traffic signals and overhauling the trolley wire structure in serious need of replacement. puc is coming in doing sewer work and water line replacement along with procuring new radios for communication and traffic signal control and vehicle procurement. on the -- in line with the vehicle procem