tv [untitled] August 9, 2013 12:30am-1:01am PDT
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remarks from john and ken really helped frame the issue and i do want to reemphasize a point they think both of them made i think as you're seeing on the regional level but particularly in the local level there is much better coordination i think in terms of land use and transportation planning in terms of doing them together; in terms of integrate transportation needs into the land use process and vice versa so i think that's where we need to be and should have been and i think the overall story so far is we haven't invested in the transportation system that we have today for the last generation or so, and again that's a similar story with a lot of the city's infrastructure and we have all this growth that is projected to come which i think as director ram said the growth is coming regardless whether we want it to or not. it's a matter how do we manage it so it comes in the right way
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and allow us to preserve what we love about the city, so going to the slides i'm going to speak a little bit to where we are and what some of the needs are but i think you alluded to this in the opening remarks, so in terms of opportunities within the transportation system here in san francisco when you look at transit what we have going for us is that we have a very dense system with high ridership, high percentage of trips again in san francisco are taken on transit. i think it's something like 90% of the residences in san francisco live within a block or two of a muni stop so we have a dense provision of transit in the city, and likely a lot of latent demand, a lot of folks who would be taking transit if it was functioning better so in other words a lot more people we have been serving and in terms
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of walkability we're one of the most walkable in the country and there are a lot of transportation needs done on foot and done comfortably and enjoyably. in terms of cycling we see there is strong demand and laitant demand and even during the time when we didn't see improvements and we still saw riders and a tremendous investment on the infrastructure and the benefits of moving people and finally in what people call the "sharing economy." car sharing, electric bike sharing, shuttles, and bike sharing of course happening
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this summer. there's a lot of new and innovative ways that people are finding that they can get around the city without needing to own and use primarily their own automobile so i think we have a lot of opportunities as we look to address the lack of investment as well as the growth that is coming. but the flip side is that there are challenges associated with our system, and i think you enumerated these somewhat, but there's a lot that we need to do in terms of reallocating the space on the public right-of-way and prioritize transscpit it provides a better option. >> >> to capture some of that latent demand. in terms of the pedestrian environment i know all three of you have been focused on this. as delightful and enjoyable it is to walk
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around san francisco our safety statistics are not something to be proud of so there is need in terms of infrastructure and enforcement and education to make walking safer in san francisco. similarly while there has been a lot of growth in cycling we currently have a fragmented network that largely is serving only those kind of the boldest and fearless in terms of using a bicycle for day to day trips, and then finally with kind of proliferation of vehicle sharing we're similarly finding a lot of competition for scars curb space and right-of-way that we need to figure out how to accommodate if we want to facilitate vehicle sharing as a solutions for how people get around, so the reason i am addressing all those challenges are important i think is somewhat highlighted in this
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chart, and what this shows -- this is just -- this is data from the transportation model that is run by our county transportation authority, and it's showing kind of estimates of where we were a few years back and when you layer on the growth that is anticipated to come what that means, and so what i think is most striking is there's a lot more trips that the growth is going to bring to san francisco, and i think what this chart shows if we don't make investments to improve what we have, and to expand capacity, that there's going to be a lot more private automobiles driving around san francisco. it won't really change from where it is today and the share of the trips taken, so when you think about life in san francisco whether on foot, on a bike or in a car
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think what it would be like with that many more vehicles on the street i don't think that's the san francisco that we want, so what it does is it really calls for a shift of the other modes of transportation. so when you kind of overlay the maps that director ram had shown in terms of where the growth is going to be what you can see is demand for transportation in certain parts of the city, particularly in the eastern parts, will be pretty significant, and some parts it's a long existing high demand corridor such as mission and merchant corridor, the geary corridor but in some cases there is new demands and along the eastern part of the city and southwest to southeast and that means more strain on the providers such as muni and
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bart. bart downtown stations and embarcadero and others are already at capacity and if you look at what is going to happen not just within san francisco but the travel patterns to and from san francisco and the bart at capacity and the muni metro operating near capacity that's a lot of strain on the system that we need to figure out how to invest in so that we can accommodate it. so in the short term we do have some things that we're working on that will help and i am using the term "short term" kind of losesly here, but looking to the future we are replacing much of the muni fleet right now we have one of the oldest bus fleets in the nation. something that san francisco should not be proud of but within five years we would have
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replaced the entirety of the bus fleet and not just mean kind of nicer cleaner one buses but more reliable ones as well. we will have dedicated transit lanes and the transit effective project and looking at making the current system more effective and will significantly improve the reliability and to pick up the latent demand and serve the existing demand. some other capital projects are happening. the transbay terminal will be open for service. the van ness rapid transit will be open. first phase of electrification for cal train and part improvements. these are all things happening in the near
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term somewhat that will improve the transit side. in terms of the other aspects of the system we do have the mayor's pedestrian task force released a strategy that identifies the needs to address the high risk corridor and key intersections and identify some short term things that we can do to make a big down payment on the safety investments to make the city much safer to walk in. we are continuing to walk through the implementation of the current bike plan. after the injunction was lifted we're about 80% through of implementing the projects of that bike plan and with the new bicycle strategy forward increasing the safety and attractiveness of cycling and the mta board just increased
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the share of on street spaces available to car share vehicles. we are working out conflicts with the corporate shuttles that move 35,000 people a day. we are working through new developments to implement transportation demand management practices such as incliewgdz of muni passes and bike parking and things of the bike, so all those things in the short range will kind of help us both improve service and accommodate some of the initial growth. so in terms of funding which is really part of the i think the emptus for the hearing this slide just shows how we're funded today. about a third of the revenue -- this is the operating budget we're talking about. about a third come from parking, meters, citations. we get 80% of the
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city's parking tax. the general fund transfer, the baseline transfer pays for about a quarter of the operating budget. transit fares pay a quarter and we get assistance and grating grant and sales tax funds that pay for paratransit service that come forward as grants, and you can see on the expenditure side like many other service providers or city agencies about 60% goes to salaries and benefits of our employees, so that's what builds our going into the fiscal year that just started 851 million-dollar operating budget, but if you link that to the outcomes we're getting from that budget, and mr. chair you referenced these at the beginning of the meeting
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and 60% on time performance, inadequate quantity of vehicles and bus and trolley side to meet the demand, not consistently able to meet the charter requirement of 98-point 5% of scheduled service delivered. what is happening is that budget doesn't adequately support our service plan and we estimate on the muni side we need additional $50 million a year and on the supporting services side such as some of the other parts of the right-of-way that we manage, traffic signals, sprieping, signage. there is oocial $20 million annual deficit that. is what is standing between scpuses being able to deliver on today's service plan the quality and quantity of service that we think that san diegans expect and deserve and.
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>> >> >> even with the service plan today we have a gap of what we're resourced to provide and the expectations for the service. on the capital side this is our current five year cip. started in the last fiscal year going through 2017. it's about a 3.2 billion dollars plan and a billion of which is the central subway and the lion's share still comes from the federal government so as we think about the chair's comments where the federal government maybe going in the future in terms of resourcing transit systems in the country you can see if that share dwindles that will have a significant ability to deliver our capital program which is primarily aimed at keeps the assets in a state of good repair. some things that have happened -- we did get the funding grealt for the central
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subway. it's nearly a billion dollars from the federal government to expand and meet the demand that we have been talking about. we recently got a transit performance grant from mtc to improve service on some of the heavily traveled lines. we have 62 new buses. i think half of them are here and the entire bus fleet will be replaced within the next five years. thanks to your leadership we got prop b passed and smoothing streets and pedestrian and bike infrastructure and also has funds for traffic signal infrastructure. but as you mentioned we have a significant backlog. in today's term focus you look at the value of our assets and the percentage of each category of assets that are currently beyond their useful life that represents about 2.2
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billion dollars backlog which will grow over time if we don't have investment to that $5 million you referenced earlier. >> >> 5 billion you referenced earlier. generally to bring the assets in state of good repair we need to spend $5 million a year for 20 years and we currently have half of that and in terms of improving the system, improving the performance of muni, improving the safety and accessibility of the bike and ped networks that there are additional needs we're not funding. when we think about the funding needs for transportation we can think about it in three buckets. one is bring the system into a current state of good repair and enhancing what we have and through the transit effectiveness project and the pedestrian and bicycle proves and expansion to meet the
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growing demand, so here's just examples of where some of the big buckets of needs are as we look to the future and ranging from what the pedestrian strategy identified as $363 million for walking infrastructure, up to more than $3 billion for full -- not just replacement of muni fleet, but doing the capital maintenance that is required over the life of the vehicles that muni has not been resourced to do in the last generation, so as the fleet gets towards the end of its useful life it's not degrading in performance such as we seeing on the streets today. in terms of the operating budget and putting aside the structural gasp and even when we close the gap and the increase demand on service will be we estimate somewhere
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between 50 and $100 million in terms of operators and mechanics, car cleaners, all the folks that provide and support the service in order to meet that growing demand. this is beyond what is in our operating budget and the growth that it accommodates. so as some folks have mentioned the mayor did convene a transportation task force to try to look at these three buckets of need, the state of good repair, enhancements and expansion and how do we adequately resource and recognizing neither sacramento or washington dc are likely to be increasing part of the solution. this is somewhat a laundry list of ideas that have been generated through that process. none of these recommended at this point. this is just a list of ideas that
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are being put forward or that have been put forward to the task force and they will be using the remaining time to whittle down some of these into recommendations but you will see some of the things that we reference here. the transportation sustainability fee and other things i think director ram mentioned development pays roughly for 30% of the cost of development -- the cost of the impact to the transportation system, so it does leave a pretty significant hole for us to fill, and i will just close by saying kind of reinforcing the growth is coming to san francisco; that the people that are here aren't leaving and more people are coming and more jobs are coming and those are good things so we really have choices that we need to make. i think we got away for a few decades with not making investments and not just our transportation system but the road system and the water system and the sewer system, a
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lot of city buildings, but we're beyond a point where we can get away with that anymore, and i guess what i would leave you with is if failure to figure out how to solve this, and it's a big problem to solve, will have real impact san francisco as a city and the people that live and visit here. in terms of the quality of life the ability to get around the city will degrade. transit service will decline. getting around on bicycle will decline and we will have more cars and bringing with that congestion and safety concerns and if all of that happens some of the shift we have recently seen of the regional economy back to san francisco would start to go the other way. the transportation system can be a big part of our competitive advantage both attracting people to live and
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work and thank you for the opportunity to have this hearing and i am happy to answer any questions. >> thank you. president chiu. >> thank you and i realized i should have thanked the chair for this hearing on this top and i can mr. reiskin and with the transportation and quality system. as you noted the mayor and i called for a blue ribbon committee and experts around the city and including yourself and supervisor wiener to put our heads together to figure out how to address the long-term needs and one top level question i have as i looked at your presentation i have seen different numbers on what the big number is for the next -- let's say 17 years until now and 2030 and i noticed you didn't sum it up and if you had a number and what you expect the needs for during that time per year or over the next two
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decades can you quantify that or can you not answer that? >> yeah. we have it quantified. it depends how you measure. what we originally proposed for the task force to do in the three duckets and i think it was the order of 6 billion between now and 2030 and again it measures how you measure, how you define -- that's what we were solving for so it's not the total need. it's the unfunded portion of the need. there are different numbers depending how you measure but it's significant and just the state of good repair and currently just within muni if you look at the current asset base the degree to which we're beyond the useful service life of our assets is 2.2 billion dollars so the numbers
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are pretty staggering. >> and i did some quick math we're talking quarter billion dollars a year as a short fall for capital needs? >> yeah. i would say just for muni to bring the current assets into a state of good repair for 25 years we need that much, $250 million a year. that doesn't include the cost of enhancing the system or expanding it, so the needs are at least at that level. >> and i suspect we're not the only city in the country that are facing issues like this. my sense is mocht of the major metropolitan areas many systems are faced with these challenges. from your perspective are you looking into what other cities are doing and trying to reconcile the short term financial situations we're in with the longer term capital needs? >> yeah it's a discussion that
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is absolutely not unique to san francisco. we are working through the california transit organization. we are working through the american transit association and sharing ideas and advocating at the state and federal level. some of the ideas -- the revenue ideas that we brought forward to the task force are examples of what other cities are doing. there is nobody that solves it -- particularly the older cities that have older transportation systems they generally have pretty significant holes. >> okay. thank you. i look forward to working with you on these difficult issues. >> likewise thank you. >> if i may just add to that. i know through the transportation task force we come up with quite a list of possibilities, and i think there is a even broader list in the presentation. it's going to have all the ideas on the table, but fundamentally it's a question of political will and making sure that the funding that we have and funding
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that we can obtain is actually used for transit, and one of the arguments that i've been making for the last few years we have gotten into a bad habit in san francisco from diverting transit money to other -- admittedly important policy needs, whether it's impact fees we see it all the time. transit impact fees are non existent or low and other fees are high and for other important needs. we saw it when a bunch of muni money was shifted over to the police department in the form of a traffic work order which fortunately is starting to be reduced and i think we will continue to see -- for example the vehicle license fee and we assume it's going on the ballot for next november and we're all supportive of it. it's my view the bulk of that money should
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be used for public transportation, but there are people who have all sorts of ideas. i met with a group last week that wants a good portion to go to health and human services and while it's very important to have good health and human services in our city i don't think that's what the vehicle license fee is for, but we're going to have a continuing series of political decisions to make about whether we're going to actually support our public transportation system with money, or whether that money is going to continue to be used for other needs that maybe quite important, but don't do anything to increase the reliability of our system. >> yes. i think we certainly have choices as a city and county to make how we allocate our resources. transportation is not the only area of government service that has been under funded or under invested in over the years. i think
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there are some revenue vehicles that might better suit certain needs than others. obviously there seems to be a pretty strong nexus between a license fee and the transportation system since it applies to motor vehicles but they're decisions that we have to make if we want to be a world class city and in order to do so we need a world class transportation system and we need to resource it. >> i agree. president chiu did you have another comment? >> just a follow up and i want to echo the comments about the license fee. in 2009 with conversations i had with the labor and business community we were prepared to go forward with the license fee but given the economy at the time we thought
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it would be tough. i agree with supervisor wiener and it's an option to look at. i am interested in moving forward with that and the lion's share should go to transit. a different question i had i know this year our general fund contribution to the mta has increased pretty substantially. i think we have kicked in over $20 million to the mta to help move forward the jenld your agency is trying to move forward. i am wondering if you can tell us where that additional money is going to ? and related to that there is an ongoing conversation about how long it takes to finish major projects and could you talk about some of the changes you're making in the agency to bring down the cost per project and if we get more money in the system and bring down the cost it will allow us to move the agenda faster? >> sure. two good questions. in terms of the general fund contribution we are just starting the second year of the two year budget so our budget was approved by the mta board and the board of supervisors a year ago and it was based on certain assumptions from the controller's office on what the subsidy would be which now
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thanks to the health of the economy had come in higher want because we hadn't budgeted those dollars and didn't have them appropriated they basically will fall to the agency's fund balance which had been used over the years to plug holes in the operating budget, and was well below the mta's board policy of what an adequate reserve should be. the policy is we should be 10% of the operating budget and the order of $85 million. the last cycle it was down in the low 40's so we planned on building up that reserve. this will allow us to get that reserve built faster back to the responsible level where it should be, and in terms of project delivery it's something that after spending three and a half years as public works director something i focused on pretty significantly, and many
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of the capital projects of the mta are implemented by the department of public works. a lot of the pedestrian and bicycle and traffic work are implemented by public works but something we were doing there and something we are doing at the mta -- the main thing we're doing is kind of professionalizing the project management and the systems that we use to manage and monitor projects, so that we are using kind of modern systems to know at any point in time what the status of every project is, so that before they get off course in terms of taking too long or spending too much money we can proactively manage to bring them back on to schedule and on to budget. we're also working -- i think more collaboratively than the mta has in the past with other agencies and there are
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other stakeholders and a lot more coordination between our department and public works and private utilities and just actively managing much more. i am meeting regularly with the project managers of all the capital projects to identify where there are issues to see if i can do something to pick up the phone and a stall on the project. i think we're already doing much better. the mta before i got there had in -- initiated this and the changes were implemented so there is
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