know consideration. we were looking to expand parking access where parking is allowed. i'll give you examples that we didn't really go into detail. right now the current city policy or guidelines says if there's a tow away zone you don't put a blue placard zone there. well, why can't i still be as responsible as you on monitoring the clock and moving my car if i have one. we're suggesting that mta revise its guidelines so as to allow a blue placard space in a tow away zone on bush or pine or whatever for rush hour so there might be more accessible parking on streets where there isn't any. but >> the committee's recommendation to increase the number of blue zones has prompted the sfmta to do a full survey of existing blue zones

and coordinate between departments more about blue zone placement and how it relates to other projects so it's a really positive force that we're thinking about blue zone placement related to ep or a bike and ped project that might include removing parking spaces. >> do we have any other commissioner comments before i open it up to public comment? okay, director riley. >> commission er. >> commissioner er riley. >> thank you for your presentation and all your good work. i read your material you provided. it says there are three times more of the placard than all of the metered parking space available in san francisco. do you have any suggestion on what we should do with the

existing placards. >> partly why we're suggesting a time limb, a four hour minimum, because as it is now, somebody could park there until the next street cleaning so they could park for the next week, that doesn't allow for parking turn over. established time limits may be four hours or eight hours, that's the way to encourage it. i gotta say also, it may be that we're dealing with a lot of suburbanites coming into the city to shop or work and we can't control how they are issued. that's why we asked dmv at tightening up the criteria. right now it's very broad, substantially interferes with mobility. others have something like cannot work more than 200 feet

or needs portable oxygen. so criteria were tightened up, time limits were established, that could improve the ability of people with blue placards to park more near whatever destination they choose. >> the blue placards -- are they permanent, you don't need to renew it? >> they are permanent, but reissued every two years. again, the idea is if you have a permanent disability, whether it's arthritis, gout, whatever, you're not going to be cured except by miracle and therefore you /p need to have this readily available, but by

having it renewed every few years dmv finds those who aren't around anymore to use it. >> there are 2.4 million placards in existence in california. one of the ideas that the committee did talk about was having all of those people get re-certified for their placards, but in the end they didn't recommend that because it would be such -- a lot of bureaucratic works in the dmv and expense to the placard holders to go to the doctor again so they recommended moving forward with the clarified criteria but not reissuing them. i think on the whole the committee's package of recommendations will reduce misuse enough that we'll see open spaces in san francisco. >> thank you. >> commissioner o'brien. >> yeah, one more question. so have you kind of defined a

ratio of number of parking permits that are out there to the number of parking spaces that are out there? and i'm wondering what that relationship is in comparison to the number of total cars out there to the number of total parking spaces. part of it is -- i'll probably go along with increasing the number of parking spaces dedicated to the blue zone, but with mixed feelings because i'm always /tprus frustrated when i'm hooking for a parking space, but it always seems the handicap spaces are empty, but i know that's an emotional reaction because i'm frustrated. i'm trying to do the right thing, but i want to make sure that it's the sensible thing.

so the ratio of total number of cars in san francisco, the total number of parking spaces in what it looks like in relation to the number of parking permits to the number of parking spaces. >> the approach we took is to recommend the city increase the number of blue placard spaces to be consistent with the amendments likely to be made to the aga that would call for 4 percent of metered parking spaces to be made blue placard zones. we /tkw-pbt look at the number of cars in the city or the number of blue placards. it just was easier to have us conform to federal law for percent and then to go with additional changes such as better monitoring of the users that a monitoring by dmv of those who issue the placards, maybe some improvement or tightening of the criteria. that can help control or

improve the turnover of parking because as it is in general there are more cars registered in san francisco than there are curb side spaces, period. irrespective of blue placards, there would be no way we could establish any ratio, because as you do that, as the population shifts and as more people age and more aged develop a disability you wind up with larger and larger numbers of blue placards. the idea is to conform to a national standard and manage the parking through enforcement and monitoring. that's the way we're doing it. >> commissioner dooley. >> did you say 2.5 million placards in california and 500,000 are here in the bay area? >> yeah.

>> do you have any numbers to compare? i'm just curious, like, los angeles or san diego, how many of that 2.5 million are down there. >> 21 [inaudible]. >> bay area's nine counties that touch the bay. >> that's bigger, that's definitely not san francisco. >> that's for how many areas for how many placards are in there. i could definitely get those. >> i'm just curious and why there's a difference. >> we have gotten requests and comments from other major jurisdictions about what we're doing so la, san diego, san jose are quite itly monitoring us, letting us be the first-out of the gate with the recommended changes. we will be presenting later to the

accessible parking what they can tell us about blue placards in los angeles city, los angeles county, san diego city, county, sacramento city, county. we can ask for that too. >> thank you. >> i did hear the stats for sacramento county once and it was similarly mind boggling. a lot of other cities have been struggling with this in california. >> i just want to let you know that the vice chair of california commission on disability access and he has let me know that he's interested in what the commission's recommendations are going to be. that's a state body that is also taking a look at reck men recommendations that this advisory is putting forward.

>> they gave us positive oral comments about our program. >> does anybody know what he thought of this program -- >> he likes it. >> let's open it up to public comment? any members of the public that would like to make any comments on item six? seeing none, public comment is closed. i'd just like to weigh in. i do like this. i like the fact -- one thing is -- about having to pay for the meter space, that's only fair because it is the turnover ratio. it's almost as if, like, you know, there's -- being equal and especially on the turn overbecause i do see that abuse where people do park for a full week in handy cap zones and so it's street cleaning day and there are other people who

would like to use that spot that can't and i know of some situations where people use it to park all day while they're at work and commute downtown and i just think that's unfair. and the turnover, if you have the turnover then you have more people coming and shopping and going to the businesses in the neighborhood so i personally support this measure. commissioners, do we have any recommendations? >> would anybody go along with the idea of -- as we do put a policy or motion to approve this, would anybody go along with a suggestion on the end of the motion to ask them to consider increasing parking, adding parking facilities to the city to just relieve overall congestion? >> absolutely. >> i would. >> okay. i'm willing to make a motion to

support this as it's being presented today, but i'd like to also include with that a recommendation that the sfmta and their part in this would revisit possibility of adding parking facilities in the city as part of the overall solution to the congestion problem, and that's my motion. >> i'll second it. >> roll call. >> commissioner adams. >> i. >> commissioner dooley. >> i. >> commissioner dwight.. >> i. >> riley. >> i. >> commissioner white. >> i. commissioner ortiz-cartagena. the motion passes seven to

zero. thank you very much. you doing item number seven. >> review and discussion on recommendations on sfmta [inaudible]. >> thank you commissioners. just -- we have our ongoing matter regarding the sfmta and small business. the commission had a meeting on may 6 and, um, i want to appreciate director ed reskin

for his continued interest to help serve our small businesses, but also how to do that with the mandate he has as well, being the director of sfmta. so two things are happening as a result of this, and that is from the small business leaders meeting t group that meets with the mayor quarterly, a working group is being developed of the businesses to begin a discussion and dialogue with the sfmta and a meeting is scheduled for that in early november . thank you commissioner adams for reaching out to the sfmta chair of the board, so we are going to have a joint hearing with sfmta board and small

business commission. majority of boards generally have some sort of -- they provide governance and direction to a regulatory agency so they have very specific things they work with like with the planning department, the planning code, the sfmta has their plan, the [inaudible] policy. there's thing they work with that govern themselves by. the small business commission, you're an advisory body and so we don't necessarily have those kind of things delineated out so what i would like to do is take the opportunity for this commission to help us help you

in preparation for the joint hearing on information that you may need, things that we might help formulate that we want to present to the sfmta board. this is just kind of a beginning structure of what to think and then we have our outreach committee meeting, which they can help work on some of these or start formulating and flushing and then we have our november meet /-ging and then a potential proposed date for a joint hearing is early december. unfortunately later than that the sfmta is starting january they have all their mou's and every single mou with every employee entity is up for renewal in year that they have to get resolved before the budget season goes into budget season. so we're going to need to do

this before the end of the year. you know, i any we'll be able to do it. i wanted to just recap on may 6 some recommendations that the commission had made after the hearing and one is the mayor appoints a small business owner to the sfmta board, the small business is a stake holder related to the bicycle advisory committee, pedestrian committee, walk sf livable cities, require sfmta staff to meet with osb staff before initiating a project in a business area, require that sfmta staff come before the small business commission at the start of a project in a business district. the outreach needs to happen early in the design and development phase and dedicate staff to be a liaison to the

business community. those are some of the recommendations. we can solidify those, continue to work on them, continue to expand on them. i put forward just kind of some list of questions that have come up through some discussions with the commission, committee, the council of district merchants with the small business leaders, with the mayor, various things, so i'll run through and i'm just going to read them through and we can have a discussion on are these areas of interest you'd like to get more information before we have our joint hearing. how does the sfmta determine whether or not all means of the vehicular traffic can be accommodated on a street? is there a distinction of types of uses in the transit plan for residential streets and

commercial streets? are traffic alterations codified in the transportation code prior to implementation of a plan? when the sfmta proposes the removal of parking meters how does it offset the loss in revenue. how are parking principles and goals applied when of types of business activities in a project area? does it review the zoning for the areas and apply the principles of the master plan, which is the planning department's master plan, when designing a project area? how do they plan for the facilitation of commerce? does there need to be a thorough analysis of loading zones? and i think this is probably a

citywide analysis. how loading zones are not utilized, how are deliveries made, types of delivery vehicles? types of delivery vehicles need to be in that completed in the information in the information development of design. census need to be done before the city takes steps in doing dedicated bike lanes, bicycle tracks. need to help small businesses access loading zones so we have situations -- we had a recent situation with la cacina where they put in a loading zone in front of there, but because their businesses are small businesses, they don't have commercial vehicles or can't get commercial tags for their vehicles so therefore started getting ticketed. that is more of a state legislation, but, you know, i think part of the thing that we

may want to present to the sfmta board is we would like to see some creative ideas and staff work on some solutions to help all of our small businesses. does the sfmta do an assessment or analysis of green zone use and the impact of removing the green zones when designing a project area. does there need to be an economic impact report where impact will create a significant change. using polk street as an example, how do certain areas of a city get factor /spwaod a plan especially when you have both sides of an area which will have significant dedication to bicycle lanes. sometimes these things seem to be in conflict and we have other initiatives that also utilize that space and so --

>> loading zones. >> yeah. and i'd like to also note from you what information you may need ahead of the hearing to review the sfmta's strategic plan for 2013, '18, get information on that are transit first policy, information on their current plans, bicycle plans, roll and function of the bicycle advisory, pedestrian advisory committee, if there's any sort of internal policies in terms of rules and functions and they work with specific organizations like the bike organization and other committees that do advise them or they consult with. and then what information do you think the sfmta needs to hear that we can help organize nice organize and put together to present to the sfmta board.

>> regina, one of the things i'd like to see and hear is -- i know we had an issue in our corridor, is the determination of bus shelters and their locations. >> that's a good one. >> and their outreach with that because we had a bus shelter that was placed right in front of one of our small businesses and it blocks [inaudible]. >> mm-hm. >> i'd like toe review a lot of this information. i mean, if it's in print, certainly the first door -- >> good to know. >> i'd like to review it. >> yeah, i would too. >> it would be good to take a look at all the plans. >> absolutely. >> compare and see if there's any contradictions. >> well, the one contradiction was, you know, supervisor wiener had that legislation on

double parkers. if you have it on polk street where they are taking you out for bike lanes and you have the double parking issue, where are those people going to go to load and unload. i'm seeing that more and more in the merchant corridors. that's why i'm glad they have the loading zones 'cause i hear that from a lot of small businesses, a lot get their deliveries -- they're taking them now in the middle of the night which the neighbors don't like that because it's the night taking loading zones, but that's when it's gotta happen now because of some of these new restrictions so something's got to give here. >> see some of the loading trucks, they put in the middle of the street. >> yeah. and you're starting to see more and more of that. if you go down valencia street in the middle of the day you will see the trucks, especially the restaurant trucks loading

and unloading, not off to the side, but right in the middle of the street, which is blocking traffic and everybody gets upset. >> i think that's important with the economic impact report that i know they're suggested on columbus avenue that they remove the loading zones and when i read the eir it said huge impact, not mitigatable, nothing to be done to relace them. you know, that's just crazy, you know. i mean, you got to do something. >> right, and similarly also i went last week i went to a presentation for folsom street between... >> 11th and -- >> and 4th or 2nd, yes. they're doing a pilot project. this project seems to be

relatively okay. they're keeping the parking and doing a bike lane along one side of the street, but ultimately the proposal -- currently some of the design ideas down the road are both sides of the street and that street has heavy pdr and businesses that rely on their getting either deliveries or they're the type of businesses that have deliveries going in and out multiple times a day. i think that those are the things that will be helpful for us to say a neighborhood commercial district is not the same as a street like folsom which is heavy pdr, so the types of business uses and parking next to the curb are different, while you might say parking is the same. then the

other thing -- what was interesting for me is the painting of the green stripes and there's a whole education component of this in terms of how they're designing it and where vehicles -- you know, where they're proposing for vehicles and the bicycle lanes to sort of merge so that cars and trucks can make a right hand turn. i think that needs to be some thought out -- i said are you going to write on the street for right turn enter here and they hadn't thought about that so i think that's where there's potential of risk with that because i -- you know, and even after having this conversation and knowing sort of, like, the serrated green stripe means that's where a vehicle can pass through, as i was coming home i

wanted to make a right on to 9th street and realized oh, i had passed that serrated area. you know, even though i had that conversation, i am still not accustomed in my mind, you know, of that's where i enter to make the right hand turn and so being cognizant of that, you know, i went up a couple more blocks before i made my right hand turn instead of doing it, but i think that there needs to be a good deal of education. you know, if we're going to be making these significant shifts on how we're using the streets for people who drive vehicles and then ensuring how are we also ensuring that we can be confident that people are riding bicycles are -- i think there's an assumption that -- while probably 85 percent --

i'm just making up percentages, but a high percentage of people who ride bicycles also have a driver's license, but there are people who don't. we may see more and more individuals who are riding bicycles who may not necessarily have had a driver's license and so know the rules of the road as well. so i any that's a conversation -- it's a broader conversation but that's something that could be added to it as well. >> i wanted to add to things that we'd like to have the sfmta look at ahead is the draft eir citywide. i actually contacted someone about the columbus avenue part of it and they said didn't even know it existed and that lays out these plans citywide.

it's 800 pages, but you can go through it, which is what we did in our neighborhood to see what parts were about columbus after and that's where we saw that they had these impacts that were extremely negative and had no suggestions for mitigation. i found that to be very interesting to look at and i would request they look at it and we do also. you know, we could pull out the parts that are relevant because it's citywide, but it pretty much goes through every commercial corridor that's projected to have changes. >> commissioner riley. >> yes, i want to follow what commissioner dooley was talking about. i said that we need to see the six items prior to the meeting so we can identify areas of concern, and i also think that mta needs to see all of that as