>> i'm the transportation chair for russian hill neighbors. russian hill neighbors has been involved in this project since inception represented on the city advisory committee. we are strongly in support of this project. we are very concerned that our neighborhood as most of the northeast neighborhoods is essentially isolated in this city with the corporate transportation running three 1/2 miles an hour resulting in market street. we welcome this project as well as the extension of the central subway to washington square. an effort to get good rapid transit into this neighborhood. we support the project very strongly. i have two caveats. one is that we do not support the addition of the boyar street station. this might seem counter

intuitive since it serves our neighborhood. the boyar station comes within a block of the union street station and seems to be superfluous as well as slowing down transit services. secondly it's my observation on exclusive rights on the munis metro on embarcadero on third street that for some reason exclusive right of way transportation is slowly considering the fact that it's supposed to be running fast and hopefully you will be looking at why those services run so slow and get some good speed up on the van ness corridor. but beyond that, we are strongly in support of the project. >> thank you.

>> steve vu. good afternoon. we house a senior center. we would like to thank the staff for working to amend the resolution resident before to you ensure consistency between what was voted on at the mta board earlier and by you today. with the amendments that were read earlier which include the northbound vallejo variant. we fully support this and congratulate everyone on this monumental effort. >> adele goldenberg. good

afternoon. my main language is russian. i'm in the notre dame apartments. i want to thank you for your decision to let us have bus stops. because we need it very much. we try to be active and because senior people to move is to live. so we are very very thankful to you for your decision. thank you. >> next speaker. >> zeal an situ. [speaking

foreign language] >> ladies and gentlemen, i'm the resident of the notre dame residence in the section of baldwin and van ness." our building is from china and -- we depend on 47 and 49 bus. >> we go north and south to exercise and see doctors. the

47 and 49 bus to be terminated. this will reduce time for the traffic. but there will be a problem for seniors of the building. for the new system, we'll be able to walk down 3 blocks to union street to take the new system. for now we have to go to jackson street to take the system. the munis bus turns

left and turns right. seniors across the street. it's really to get residents. if used as a stop, you have to consider the traffic time and there is safety. >> safety is really important. this is a responsible. seniors

have signed a petition. we have to have northbound and southbound stops by van ness. hope you will consider our safety and approve the proposal. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> next speaker will be sam young. >> good afternoon. >> hello, we understand that

this new system is to have communicate -- communions for the public. please don't forget our seniors and taxpayers. so when we are old, we don't want to be deprived of our traveling privilege. and deprived of our social resources. because the bus stop around our residence is about 5 blocks east valley far away in the city. so i

strongly request to establish the vallejo bus stop. okay. thank you. next speaker. >> shelby. hello i'm from the san francisco transit riders union. i'm here to do two things: one deliver our version of van ness rapid transit petition which we now have 132 signatures. we are very much in support of the van ness bus rapid transit and we want to thank you for your work on think. to have a better bus system we have to have this. we are pleased with the lanes and i will say for the

very short pilot program we are doing on church street, we have seen that having lanes that transit does speed up. we limited stops as few as possible, traffic lights and more frequent bus services and high quality shelters and buses. the moment is 5 miles per hour is the average speed of a bus. you can more or less walk. i do on the treadmill, actually. you can walk and 5 miles per hour. we have to get faster than that. they are very crowded, the buses. i love van ness. i live 1 block from van ness. we need to get less crowded. 70 percent of the 47 is a crush load. we have to go ahead more people on buses and out of cars. the faster we can get the buses and the safer we

can make it for the bikes and pedestrians, we can get them out of their cars. we thank everybody, the ta and cac and sfmta. >> herbert weiner. i encourage you to stop and pause and not move this quickly as possible. for one thing, how does this affect cars? you are going to have a spill over of traffic from franklin and hyde street and eleven worth streets. they are going to be more heavily populated by cars. i realize there is an anti-car culture in this city. the reality is that everyone drives cars including communist. so the thing about it is, you have to really start

balancing your thinking in respect to cars. and you cannot give cars short trips. they are part of the problem. as far as i can see, this agency has done nothing about the problems of cars. parking is even worse and you are supposed to address parking. the other thing about the bus stops, i say retain all of them. this business of speeding up traffic of buses, you can do this by putting more buses on the lines. you should not eliminate bus stops. there are people in addition to the people on vallejo street who are fragile, who are handicapped who are going to have to walk longer distances. people under 50 are saying, tough with seniors, let's throw them under the wheels. you should have a more compassionate approach to this. you are here to serve the public as a whole. you are not here to serve certain

constituents. you are not supposed to do that, otherwise you become hired guns. you don't want to do that. you better start thinking things over because this is going to be a disaster. don't say i didn't warn you. >> tim donely. >> i have been following this issue for years. i live on van ness, at the meetings the neighbors have suggested to make the 47 limited and keep the 49 because you need that and keep the bullying out to eliminate the merging and make the bus only lanes on the right. try it out, if it works, leave it, if it doesn't work, take it away. you would save $125 million. but they weren't interested at all. i found out

why. they are getting 150 -- 15 percent of the cut on this project. they a lot at golf street as the main vehicle for south. a third of it is steep hills and one way at each stop. that's impossible. the achilles heel of this project sfo parking. they spend 1 hour studying parking. they went from 5-6:00 after business hours from clay to mission street. they determined from that that there is no significant double parking issues on van ness. that's crazy. so i urge you guys to relook at this. it's ridiculous the way it's stated that eir is not complete and i think if you guys accept this as it's

written, it's really questionable why. >> thank you. >> next speaker please. >> jeff simco. >> thank you. i just, this is not a point for me to reiterate the points made earlier about the problems with this program. i will make a few of them real quick and talk about a few alternatives to the project. i don't have all the pages here, the 800 pages. but, the project as it stands you are going to displace thousands of automobiles and they are going to plug up streets. the access to this brt in the first place at the south end at mission and south van ness avenue. it's

going to create longer transit times actually in the end. how did you get the savings? the savings is seven men's for the trip, 30 percent time. that's still not rapid transit. i can still walk it and you got that by removing stops. a lot of people here talking about please don't remove my stops, i need my stops to access your facilities. this plan gets a savings by removing stops that people that ride the bus need. so there are a couple of alternatives to this. one alternative is not put this thing in and get the plan that you will get savings in time that you plan to get by spending $125 million. i go down there and you have a million dollars by the end of the week. the other alternative if you want to spend the money, you can put in the express bus and put in the lanes that you

talk about for an express bus for more stops and have the regular bus on the side. the express about us would share traffic with the cars and so forth, but you would remove the left turn lanes and you can have safe on and off situations. >> tone lee? good evening. me again. tony, cab driver. according to the newspaper that i read a couple months ago, your capacity of person per rider maybe 650,000 per week. that means you are below the 90,000 people are using the munis system. we have about 900,000 population in san francisco. that means every 19 people, only one using the

munis. that's a very low percentage. some are using double time. actually use your munis system maybe 60,000 only. taxi can run 60,000 per day also. so it's low because you have increasing this percentage if you are doing good job like this. i support it anyhow. don't listen about senior. they always stay there and they go across 5-10 minutes. in beijing city they broke 8 million per day already. when they put the bullet train in chain, they put in the double sign cross like this. south and north and east and west is not a full length. in 2020 they are going to connect with a bullet train. every city will connect

with a bullet train. san francisco future is we have to put subway on van ness street. this is our future because we already finished a central freeway by 2019. i hope i can quit my job by that date and take munis at a low price. our future put the subway because look at the san francisco, look at the big picture. it's a square pox. we have the subway like a z car because they don't look at the whole map. my time is up. >> berry toronto. >> good afternoon, i think i might need a translator. just kidding. anyway, because a cab driver is here and not silenced about the concern and impacts. the phrase unintended consequences is something that

should be looked at. when i came here, they put new meters on mccallser and franklin and goth. when you do something, people are going to change their behavior because it doesn't fit their needs. in terms of taxi service, it has looked at how it impacts taxi services that you limit terms that serve regular customers and regular businesses that call for cabs all the time. this is a number of restaurants in the corridor that use taxi cabs. if the traffic is so bad during the times, taxi cabs are not going to go there. no matter how much it cost. it's going to cost more gas and frustration to get to the

location. also maybe look at more arrow signals in certain streets to help speed up traffic so they don't conflict with pedestrians and also you can change the timing on broadway. when you are going northbound on van ness, you can make all the lights during off peak hours until debit to broadway because you have to sit there. they have the turn arrow. you have to allow more time and when you go northbound you can go through broadway and continue through lumbar street and go to fisherman. wharf. i think your monitoring should be stringent so there can be stringent immediately.

>> annie wine stock. i'm with the organization that works with cities around the world to building other transportation systems. the president of our board,en enrique from bogota which carries now 1.6 million passengers per day. they implemented that in there years. it's a model to the world. the design for the van ness brt is reaching international best practice. when it opens it had hit standards. there is one standard in this process, it's in cleveland. the u.s. is really lagging behind having this silver center project in san francisco will be the first big city to have the silver standard brt. this will be great. we helped to see the completion of many of these standards throughout the world. when one designed like the van

ness process it can benefit the passengers and traffic. we saw in mexico city when they dedicated a lane to brt, they took the buses out of traffic and that improved the level of service and allowed traffic to flow more easily. we are excited about the work being done or geary. when it opens. if they are both built quickly behind the other, we can have a brt network which is a great advantage to the city and san francisco can be the second gold brt project. >> thank you, mr. president. i'm delighted to be here. i'm involved with also with the civic center. we have followed this process for it's length. we appreciate some of the

problems and being san francisco, it's inevitable. we generally have unanimously supported the mid-median proposal that's before you and think that will enhance our area. now, as you know civic center is in a historic district. it's one of the more important architectural treasures in the city, if not the nation. we want to participate in the next phase, the detailed planning process because we want to make sure that the stations and the platforms in civic center conform to the historic district and to the original planning principles that are responsible for the area which are relatively simple of harmony order and symmetry. i don't think that adds to the cost. it may even reduce the

cost. we would not be in favor of some uniform jazzy proposal that goes from one end to the other. we have the city hall preservation commission commented on your standard bus shelter. we think they look a little gerish in front of city hall. we are community benefit district committee looks forward to working with your staff on the detailed staff and planning department. >> that would conclude the public comment at this point . thank you very much. members of the board, comments, questions? >> i had the privilege of seeing the brt lines up in mexico city. it was truly impressive. it carried 850,000 people a day and it makes a

huge difference. the comment was just made about freeing up room for the cars is exactly right. this is amazing. i think there is a lot of work to do, i for one intend to support it. >> okay. so members of board, ramos, you want to make a motion? >> yes. >> we need to do the amendments first. >> yeah, i would certainly make a motion to adopt the amendments that are proposed for the resolution we are voting on. >> on the amendment, all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> then on the amended resolution. >> thank you chairman nolan. i want to echo the comments that have been made with the kudos that should be given to the cta for getting us to this point we are inventing the brt wheel with this project and we are learning as we've been going

along, but it's been challenging and i think we have a fantastic project that we are going to be voting on today. i want to thank the mta staff that helped chip in when called upon to make this thing work and as efficient as possible. i especially want to thank the ccdc and the folks representing them for having gotten engaged in this project and make it as sensitive to the communities concerns as possible. i understand there was an issue about water do you go this project by adding a station. it's our job to respond to the concerns that have been raised and rational to the community as a whole. if it were one thing that stopped in front of somebody's house that wanted a brt station. we are talking

about a senior center that houses dozens of seniors. we are going to have to sacrifice a little bit of time. but compared to the overall savings from the plan and from the level boarding that will eliminate fr the need for ramps, all forward payment systems, we are going to save so much time that the expense that we are having to pay out by having to stop at these stations is i think is insignificant. i want to make sure that we are going down tremendously from the over all amount. we are going to be saving time from the overall stations as well. i thank the cta for getting us this place where we can't think about this situation and make it ourselves and having the cta make that policy decision. it's your job

to give us a really efficient system that we can sense advertise to the communities needs. with that, i would like to make the motion to adopt the project and the amended resolution. >> second. >> any discussion? >> you summed it up. thanks for all the hard work. >> all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> thank you very much. call next item. >> item 12 authorizing directors to issue a request for proposal to previously qualified vendors for sfmta correct 2013-19 procurement of new light rail vehicles. >> we have a very short

presentation to speak about the arrival of the new vehicles and i will give you an update, late breaking news for your consideration an i want to give you a preview to you and the public about why we are doing this right now. >> good afternoon, mr. hailey. >> thank you, good afternoon. over the last 11 months we've been engaged in a process to begin the replacement of our light rail fleet. in terms of all of the things, all the initiatives we talked about in improving the service, the rail cars will certainly need a key to expanding the service, reducing crowding and improving reliability. our focus has been not only on