transit in our city who are united to achieve an excellent and affordable transit system and we are excited about bus rapid transit on van ness as the first bus rapid transit in our city. we posted a petition on our website just last week for signatures in support of bus rapid transit on van ness. it's already over 100 cigna signatures and growing. i have it to give to you to hook at -- look at it if you wish. there are lots of things wrong with this plan, i'm sure. it's anning way to build a better way of transportation for or city. pressure the mayor to give muni the money it needs.

we want in project to adhere to the goals standard brt as someone mentioned. we want this to be excellent, we want it to happen. thank you. i'm done before the dong. do i get [inaudible]. >> thank you very much. just want to note that you did go with us on a trip to mexico city to see the bus rapid transit system there and it was great to have you with us. thank you, next speaker please. >> my name's eric from rescue muni and we strongly support this brt, which we and all the people have been pushing for on all the corridors for years and years. thank you for the great job putting it together. we hope you'll vote for it and i appreciate the supervisor's concerns about anything that would slow the project or buses down. we would encourage you as commissioners and supervisors to crack the whip on some of these other brt

projects which have really been waiting for these even longer. this one has been like lightening compared to some of them. thank you you. >> thank you. are there think any other members of the public who'd like to comment? >> good afternoon. my name is /stkwrabg key. i'm a member of the citizen's advisory committee. i'm very supportive of this project for the simple reason that as one of the writers of prop b back in 1989 that was passed by the voters back in 1989 there was a four corridor study and the van ness corridor was one of the studies that was brought forward that had the top priority. i'm all for this project because it'll help the senior disabled

community, as well as those individuals that will be depending on the new facility of california pacific. it's between post and gary on van ness. i strongly support of this eir and hope that you support it as well. thank you very much. >> thank you. if there are any other speakers, please come forward. if not, i will be closing ing public comment. anyone else who'd like to comment, if you can please line up along by this television set by the windows. thank you. >> my name's robin and i'm a member of san francisco transit riders union. i'm a resident of san francisco and van ness has always been a big part of my life because my parents work along van ness and i go to

school there so i've used van ness avenue to get to school. i'm really glad that this project is coming along and i hope that the consideration to transit riders are being taken into consideration so this will be a sustainable project. i'm glad we're making the step forward for a project that would help people feel more proud of san francisco transit. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> hi good afternoon, my name is jeffrey johnson. i'm with transform. i used to be a former open city council member staffer. i'm here to advocate for brt. we're doing it in oakland, we have some of the same concerns you guys have. with seniors, we had it three new stops with in particular project. they're doing it in san jose, they have an emerald line in oregon, they have a

project in ohio. some of the concerns -- i know commissioner breed talked about drilling underground, but in seattle they're taking down the double decker freeway, that drilling understood ground is very expensive. up in oregon we did a really good job with proper vegetation, trees that are over, like, 75 years old. there has to be a vote to remove the tree. if we're really serious about climate change and emission reduction, we need to get on board with the brt because we can only build so many roads and i just think it's a really exciting project and we should do it. hank you. >> thank you very much. and if there are no other members of the public who would like to comment, i will close public comment. public comment is now closed. okay, this item is live before us. commissioner chiu, with these items.

>> colleagues, i'd like to make a motion to add the northbound station at vallejo. specifically the language i would add would be on page three of the resolution that we have to add an additional whereas clause that states the northbound vallejo station would provide enhanced access to the people in the northbound corridor and then on page six under section five in the second line it would read, "turn, including the northbound station variant." and then on the next line, /theurpd line of section five, it would read, "the authority hereby approves the lpa, including the northbound vallejo variant." with that i would ask for your support with the reasons we've discussed before. >> motion from commissioner

/kphao*u chiu and seconded by commissioner yee. any discussion on the motion? commissioner wiener? >> [inaudible]. >> okay. so colleagues, can we have a roll call vote on that motion? >> on a motion for item number three, avalos i, breed i, campos i, chiu i, cohen i, farrell i, kim i, mar i, tang i, wiener nay, yee i. motion passes. >> commissioner wiener. >> thank you, i look forward to voting for van ness brt project. as with any major transportation project it entails very hard choices and we have limited roadway and

there are always going to be difficult choices and you're never going to make everyone happy. i completely respect those who have concerns about the project in terms of the parking, traffic impacts. i understand that, but now is the time for us to move forward with making muni work for san francisco and right now in many ways, muni is not working for san francisco and it's not reliable enough, it is not fast enough, it is not predictable enough in terms of when it's going to arrive and how quickly and officially it's going to travel. one of the reasons on why it is not predictable and reliable is because of the intense mixture of buses and traffic. it is almost impossible to predict with any significant degree of accuracy whether a bus will stick to its

schedule because it'll get caught in every single traffic issue we have, whether it's a double parked car, traffic jam, accident -- whatever it might be. we absolutely need to move decisively forward with brt, with van ness as the first example and we can't stop at van ness. we need to have more bus rapid transit lines and we need to have a political will to do that. i do want to comment on the comment that was made about the 7 minute issue, which i think will probably get quoted in the press and there will be some sort of narrative out there about how there is $125 million dollars outs there to save seven minutes. i think that is

totally misleading. saving seven minutes is incredibly con /seb conservative. all you have to do is ride on these lines when there's any traffic, not just rush hour, even 2:30 in the afternoon. i think the savings will be significantly more than even minutes. that is appropriately conservative which is what we try to do when doing an environmental survey. if you multiply that out for people who use that twice a day, that is -- i think i've calculated this correctly -- an hour an 35 minutes that one person using it twice a day has saved in a week, which i think calculates out to 80 hours of that person's time over the course of a year. if we value

someone's time at $15 an hour, and that's about $1200 a year. now i'm really getting into economic analysis, but if we had ted egen and he were to calculate it, i'm told there are 16,000 boardings on these two lines of this stretch only, and that doesn't include the people who have boarded south of van ness or north of the northern turn so it's probably higher than that, but let's call it 16,000. ened you multiply 1200 times 16,000. you' talking about millions of dollars of economic savings a year, whether people are working or just in the the value of their time if they're not working. over years you

recoup the $125 million pretty quickly. i think when you look at seven minutes of savings, which i think is too conservative, but it is what it is. even with that conservative number, the savings are quite extraordinary. and then expand that out to other parts of the city -- if we could have that level of savings all across our muni system, it would absolutely revolutionize muni, would save people an enormous amount of time, increase ridership which would increase revenue and it would be a virtuous cycle. it is not a perfect project, but is very good and a positive step for the city. >> thank you. i have some comments here. [inaudible] commissioner wiener is that we were actually building transit for the 21st century. we have

so far to go with building out transit and different parts of san francisco, be it 19th avenue, et cetera. and brt is a real vie vital part for meeting future needs of future generations. we have to take into consideration that there's a ridership along the 49 line and [inaudible] we're going to see major development site at cathedral hill that will increase ridership tremendously. this actually compliments what we're going to see moving forward. travel times reliability, pedestrian safety benefits are going to be great as well. that's significant. the number of lives we'll be saving will have untold benefits in terms of financial costs and the lives of many people who will certainly be saved. the list

goes on and on. i want to make sure as we move forward is that the [inaudible] plans that we have any milestones, implementation, i think we have to have strong oversight as we're doing the build out for bus rapid transit on van ness, that we have a clear report back from the ta and the mta as things are moving forward and really have a clear structure for management of how we're going to see that the project is moving along as we had planned so i want to make sure we can build that in the future that we have these reports to come to, transportation full body as we move forward. we do have our statement of overriding concerns. i think that statement really matches our need to assert ourselves with the transit first city. there are many challenges we face moving forward to increase or transit experience. it does have impacts on cars and on

parking. that is certainly true, but i think if we do a great service to all of san francisco that we advance [inaudible] and i believe the approval of the overriding statement is going to be necessary as well. with that, i'll open up for colleagues to make statements before going on to a vote. commissioner mar. >> thank you. i wanted to thank the public for giving such great input. i wanted to also echo what some others have said that this will help us begin to construct our rapid network that we so direly need in the city and to increase the number of people that are getting on public transit with more efficiency, effectiveness and higher quality as well. definitely speeding it up and making it higher quality experience for many of us to use more frequently i wanted to ask mr. schwartz

and miss change from the ta if they could comment. peggy referenced the institute [inaudible] or itdt standards for assessing brt's, whether they're in brazil or in cleveland and they analyze them based on five basic essential elements -- busway alignment, dedicated right away, platform level boarding and they evalwait them on a gold, silver and bronze level. i know annie from itdt will be visiting next week, but i'm wondering if you have any sense of how this would be evaluated by itdp. >> thank you for the question. we have received several visits from them and they don't rate the system until it's already been built, but from their initial assessment they think

it would be at least a silver, which -- this would be the first system in america to get a silver. there's one bronze out there so we're hoping for the gold. one of the silver -- >> that's not bad. >> we're hoping for gold. one of the key points is having passing lanes, which we know may be a possibility on geary, but there's not enough right away on van ness, so sometimes the standards don't fit the exact context we have, but we'll try and include every feature that would help us go for that gold standard. >> thank you. if no other members of our body would like to make comments we can go on to a vote on these items. >> on item number three as amended, commissioner avalos i, breed i, campos i, chiu i, cohen i, farrell i, kim i, mar

i, tang i, wiener i, yee i. item passes. >> item passes. very good. our next item is our closed session on executive director search. it is 1:1 8 right now. i'd like to propose we go into recess now. allow the clerk's office to get the board meeting set up and return after our board meeting. it seems cleaner that way we can have the full discussion about the executive director selection all together after the board meeting. let's take a recess. we'll return after the board meeting.

>> we are approving as many parks as we can, you have a value garden and not too many can claim that and you have an historic building that has been redone in a beautiful fashion and you have that beautiful outdoor ping-pong table and you have got the art commission involved and if you look at them, and we can particularly the gate as you came in, and that is extraordinary. and so these tiles, i am going to recommend that every park come and look at this park, because i think that the way

that you have acknowledged donor iss really first class. >> it is nice to come and play and we have been driving by for literally a year. >> it is kind of nice. >> all of the people that are here. ♪ on behalf of the parks

commission. we are just proud to be a part of this great community event. >> we started this 3 years ago, this thing called met pole. it was part of sunday to participate in a pedestrian oriented family way. 3 years later. the ping-pong festival has taken on by itself and wanted to take on the diplomacy for china and also to focus on a community of youth, family and seniors to play ping-pong and pick up this exercise for all to participate in this community. a long time ago when i was little, i played for

years on and off. now from the master, the station, he's been getting me back into ping-pong. i'm excited to play with the mayor and everybody else today. >> mr. wong said it was a tough match. it was very exciting when it got to two. you didn't know who was going to win. and then he has some from his friends on the side to win this match. >> he's really good. a little bit better than i expected. we'll have a rematch later on. >> even though in the beginning level, it was really competitive against the police department and he takes it like a great relationship with the

community. >> playing with table tennis club since 1997. i'm one of the founders of this club and now our members starting from 7 people to now more than 200 members. >> i have been playing ping-pong for about 8 months. my dad taught me how to play ping-pong and i have watched it on computers and then i tried it myself. >> a lot of people like this sport and it's increasing a lot of the members. >> i think all of the different youth and seniors and families really get something out of this. it is also a way to participate. it's great to have so many organizations that are reflective of what they do everyday and come out and play ping-pong. >>visit us at

sfgovtv.org and click on buzz, thanks for watching. >> hey there, san francisco, here with the weekly buzz, it is september, and you know what that means? it is summer time in san francisco. you want to burn some calories while enjoying the great views enjoy a work out this friday, they are different each week and exist with the work outs

including running hill and core, and be ready to feel the burn, after your work out, recharge with the healthy goodies from the farmer's market. this saturday, will feature a free cooking demo and check out the class at eleven and rock out with treats and recipes. >> the 33rd annual comedy day is the event for you, laugh your socks off with a full line up of 40 comedian and this free, five hour comedy show is the biggest biggest day of the year in san francisco so don't miss it, and that is the weekly buzz, for more information on any of these events, visit

>> san francisco parks, golden gate park transforms into one of the greatest music festivals of all time, let's journey, inside, outside land. ♪ >> to this, our 6th year doing the outside lands and our relationship with san francisco, rec and park. and we work very closely with them in the planning and working very closely with the neighborhood organizations and with the city supervisors and with the city organizations and with the local police department, and i think that the outside lands is one of the unique festivals in the world and we have san francisco and we have golden gate park and we have the greatest oasis, in the world. and it has the people hiking up hills and down hills and a lot of people between stages. >> i love that it is all

outside, the fresh air is great. >> they have the providers out here that are 72 local restaurants out here. >> celebrating, and that is really hot. >> 36 local winerries in northern california and 16 brewers out here. >> and you have seen a lot of people out here having a good time and we have no idea, how much work and planning has gone into this to make it the most sustainable festival in the united states. >> and literally, in the force, and yeah, unlike any other concept. and come and follow, and the field make-up the blueprint of

the outside land here in golden gate park and in the future events and please visit sffresh parks.org.