i believe. >> all right. >> is he out in the hall? okay. >> vera hale. >> miss hale. good afternoon, miss hale. >> good afternoon. i wanted to say a couple of things at your last meeting, and i was so surprised president nolan's move that i didn't and there is some information in here that i wanted to pass onto you. on the accessible parking recommendations, especially on disabled placards and the charging of fees at meters, charging of regular payments. i think you should know there are 60,000 people in san francisco who have disabled placards. and most seniors who have them

live on fixed incomes and the added expense of paying $2-$5 an hour to park would work a great hardship and eliminate their ability of what they need to do or reduce it. i know it's not appreciated very well around here, like if you have to go to the doctor, or you have to go to the grocery store or senior meals program, or if you want to go out with friends or relatives or volunteer for an agency. many of us do volunteer work. some of us get paid for it, some of us don't and now that you can't park in the city hall lot, even if you are commissioners, then you understand some of that. and my third point is the changing meter regs will not bring more parking. i complained during this

committee about otis street there were so many disabled placards that you couldn't park. but when they changed it it was all city trucks and cars that parked there. so i don't think that that will increase parking in spite of your very nice video. there is nothing like that will increase the parking. it will make it harder for people with disabilities. i wanted you to know those things. >> thank you, miss hale. next item, then, consent calendar. >> seeing no other person who wishes to address you on this matter, moving on to the citizen consent calendar. these items are considered routine and will be acted on one vote unless a member of the board or public wishs it severed. item 10.1 j, that item is now

only an establishment of a tow-away, no stopping time on mission on 16th -- on mission street on 24th. >> motion on the consent calendar? >> motion to approve. >> second. >> all those in favor, signify by saying aye? >> aye. >> ayes have it. next item. >> next item on your agenda is item 11 a presentation and discussion regarding the transit effectiveness project. >> as we get into this, i just want to make sure you understand this is an informational presentation this afternoon. the board will not be making any decisions. it's not scheduled for that. it will come much later and we'll hear about that in the process. how many folks are here to

speak about jackson? thank you. we're glad to hear from you all, of course. just wanted to re-emphasize the transit effectiveness product is undering review so that if the board is not able to or planning to make any decisions with regard to any tep recommendations and what the environmental review does is clear an envelope of changes that the agency could consider from that following public outreach. we would subsequently bring recommendations to the mta board in the coming years, but we certainly have heard and seen a lot on the three jacks

and maybe on the 8x. and that feedback is very helpful and we'll be engaging with the community to solicit that feedback before we make any recommendations to the mta board. sean kennedy is project manager for the tep has a presentation, an informational presentation to give an update. >> good afternoon, mr. kennedy. >> good afternoon directors. my name is sean kennedy and i'm the planning manager for the tep, the transit effectiveness project. and i'm here to offer an update on where we are with the program and then discuss our outreach efforts coming up over the next 6-8 months. you know, san francisco is a wonderful city, and it deserves a world-class transit system. since 2006 we have been working with the community, as well as this board, transit operators, and other stakeholders to put a plan together to develop a

system that will accomplish that. but we are faced with three big obstacles. one, we have an aging infrastructure. we have the oldest -- one of the oldest fleets in the country transit vehicle-wise. two, we have a dense and congested city, we're the second densest city in the united states, besides new york city and we operate in a con strained right-of-way. a lot of competing interest for space and roadway space and there is really no room for expansion. so there is a lot of different modes and options that want to vie for that space. these pictures on the slide here really represent how these obstacles are experienced by the customer. so two of the major concerns that we have heard from our customers over the years are that one, muni is

unreliable and two, muni is crowded. and thankfully, we're on our way with the help of the community and you on the board, we're on our way to developing a program of enhancements, that we think will really improve the system dramatically in the short-term. the tep at its base is first comprehensive review of the system in over 30 years. imagine san francisco 30 years ago. the travel patterns, where people lived, where people were going is vastly different than what we see today. and we really need a system that relates to that dynamic change and addresses today's community's needs. so that is really led us to a goal of two things with the tep >> one improving reliability and two, improving the user experience. muni is the backbone of our community. we support a vast number of

neighborhoods throughout the city, 95% of people within the city of san francisco are close to muni service. we support trips to schools, to work, to cultural events, to basically just hanging out with friends and family. and if you are a choice-rider, so somebody who has other transportation options and still picks to use transit or transit-dependent person you still count on muni for specific thing, reliable service that allows you to get to work on time of and service that you can take to the doctor in a comfortable setting or a comfortable atmosphere. so what have we done or how are we trying to deliver such a system? we have delivered two major types of projects. one is our projects that are based on our major corridors,

our highest ridership corridors. these are corridors that serve as the back [pwo-efpbt/] system. lines like the 14 mission and 5 fulton and 28/19th avenue and these lines basically accomplish 60% of our entire system. there are ten specific lines that we're addressing currently in the tep. and through this community process over the last six years we have identified projects and proposals that we think will reduce travel time in these corridors by up to 20%. you know what does 20% mean? it sounds like a random number and to put it in prospective, i want to talk about the 5l project and related to travel time in general. we started the 5l project october 28th, so it's been about a month. we have been looking at data during that month and it's still preliminary, because you know, a month of data does not

a success make. but we have noted that if you lived in say the park presidio area and going to market with the 5l, you are now making that trip five minutes faster. five minutes twice a day, because you go down and back, that is 10 minutes. you have five days a week, you have almost saved an hour of time a week by the improvements that we have made on the 5 fulton service. the trade-offs are focused on on-street parking and that is a discussion that we need to have with the community going forward. the second type of project or major improvement bucket we have identified is service changes. one of the major tenets of the tep is increasing neighborhood service. so the 28l, our proposal for the 28l is a great

example. it currently runs north-south from the marina to daly city bart and operates during the school peaks. so a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the late afternoon and our proposal is to run that in the southern end, extend that service over to mission -- the mission corridor. and extend to van ness and north point and run that service all day. so we're really connecting some of those outer neighborhoods together with all-day, fast, reliable and frequent service. also with the service proposals we're also attempted to reducing and addressing crowding. back to the 5l example, we had a lot of crowding issues in the inner portion of that line. the 5l is really -- we added 30% more capacity in the middle part of the segment there that

is addressing crowding concerns and usability of the service for the people. so of course there have some trade-offs. to make these improvements that we're talking about, it's roughly a 10% increase in service hours. so obviously, a major impact on our operating budget. and we're talking about ways to kind of mitigate some of that need, and i will go into that in more detail in a minute on reconfiguring routes and the trade-off there. i did want to notice note that no frequency direction to the evening or service are proposed as part of this process. so how do we move these benefits forward? how do we engage people and talk with where we're going and how to implement? so work to-date has been focused on our environmental impact report,

eir. an eir evaluates, as director reiskin was saying, evaluates the maximum envelope of solutions that we're going to consider in future as we try to roll out these projects. the comment period for our draft eir, we released the draft eir in july and the comment period for that is closing or has closed -- excuse me, closed september 17th and the planning department is no longer accepting further comments on the eir. and the final process for this eir should be coming to a head in the spring, early spring. but even before that process concludes, we're really eager to get out and start talking with the public about these possibilities. you know, vetting with the community. what projects we are ready to go forward with? what solutions to the reliability problems that we're facing? can we go forward with now? where do we need to go back to the drawing board and how do we

balance the needs of all the stakeholders within the framework of improving reliability and improving the customer experience? so just to illustrate kind of how our outreach process is, i want to go back to the 5l for another minute. the 5l is a corridor that runs on fulton to the beach down to transbay. and it's about 20,000 riders a day, a little less. very crowded line, especially in the middle portion of the line. the average on-time performance systemwide average floats around 60%. so it makes a great line for studying and seeing how our proposals will work. i do want to point out that first and foremost, this was a project really created in concert with the community. i mean, in the summer of 2012,

we held a number of meetings to design these projects and kind of finalize the planning level on projects that we're going move forward with. and then as the project moved through the implementation process through preliminary design and detailed design, we held numerous workshops and hearings. and heard a number of competing interests, but also a lot of items of support and working together with the community to come to a final solution. i think the final bit in the outreach process loop is maybe the most important and that is that we're continuing to seek feedback. we are evaluating the performance of the line on an ongoing basis and continuing to make tweaks and kind of improve the service to make sure that we're offering the best that we can. just a few specific examples on some of the input that we have changed: we have mostly heard comments around the service

changes in the parking impacts. so some of the changes that we made to the stop locations, for instance we added a stop based on community concerns closer to bart. so that we keep that connectivity going. we dropped several right turn pockets that were in our proposal. we changed our whole proposal around mcallister and central, based on transit operator feedback, as well as the community's concerns around that stop. we kept a stop at 37th and fulton. originally we had identified that stop to be eliminated, but talking with the senior center there and we came up with a great compromise that works for everyone in keeping that stop at 37th and folsom. and then we also to show some of our -- listening to the public, and continuing the evolutionary process, we had

originally eliminated the stop at baker and mcallister and talking to the business interest and muni operators, we implemented that stop and it's back up and running. on the parking side, as i mentioned there are parking trade-offs with the 5l. we were sensitive to that. we had a lane-widening from stanyan, to central where we took 9' lanes and converted as a way to basically improve safety for everybody on the corridor. buses can't fit in 9' lanes so we're trying to improve the safety there. and basically community feedback on parking and other issues we expanded that lane widening two blocks to the east, central to baker and allowed 20 additional parking stalls to be installed in that two-block segment. so to-date,

so far, the 5l is get something pretty good reviews. riders seemed pleased with the process and the end product. we're excited to roll this process out for other lines in the tep as we continue to push for better service and involve the community. the 5l wouldn't have been the success it is had we not gotten some great feedback from people along the process, as well as our transit operators who have helped tremendously in making this project a success. so we're really excited about our process and moving forward. back to the tep in general, much like the 5l, we have heard two major categories of concerns to-date, that relates to service changes and parking removal. these issues and this feedback that we have gotten has really helped to form our outreach plan that we're kicking off in the new year, in january.

and we are going to concentrate on talking to and hearing from communities that are more likely to be impacted. we have heard from the three jacksons corridor, about elderly issues and steep grades along the corridor. we heard from the 8x stakeholders that our proposal to truncate the 8x at broadway is causing some potential concerns. we were going to replace or are going to replace the part of the service that would not longer be served from the 8x with the new route called the 11. so no service would actually be lost at any stops, but as was rightly pointed out it does reduce or eliminate the one seat ride up to north beach and that is something that is a concern to that community. and then another example, 17-18, where we're proposing to

realign it and make it more secure and most of that would be picked up by the 1.17. some there have little segment of the 18 that would no longer be served and that is causing some obvious concerns and we need to rectify that. we're designing opportunities for engagement with the communities moving forward that will balance the trade-offs and keeping in mind the ultimate goal of more reliable service and better use for all of our users. so the next steps, just to reiterate, we're beginning outreach in january. january is really the kickoff to our implementation outreach. there are two types of proposals, like i said, the capitol and the service. on the capitol side we have ten corridors that we're proposing capital projecteds on. we have broken those up due to staff resources and we're

focusing for the first three or four months, so january through march/april-ish, on five specific corridors, inner mission, 30 stockton, 5,71 on haight street and visitacion valley and we'll be working and concentrating our outreach effort on the 14, both the downtown segment and the outer 14, as well as the 28, the j, the l and the n. on the service side, service improvements, service changes like i said, are all over with. we have roughly 45 service changes out of our 70 lines in the system that we are proposing. but we're going to be focusing our outreach starting in

january on the communities most likely to be impacted. like i said, the three -- the x corridor north of broadway. the 27, reroute proposal on vallejo. so there is a number of specific locations and specific service outreach that we need to start doing starting in january and will be going for the next several months. then the idea is in mid-2014, the first time we would bring any recommendations in front of this body for a decision on anything. obviously, it won't be the full tep or even parts of it. it will just be certain buckets and certain things that we feel ready to go, both from a community standpoint, as well as design and funding standpoint. so we'll have to

be returning at several intervals through the next several years to make all of these decisions final. i would like to say, please follow our updates as we develop specific times, dates and locations on outreach starting in january. www.sftep.com or email directly to tep sfmta or call our sfmta tep hotline. with that, i would be glad to take questions. >> thank you. excellent presentation. before we do that i believe supervisor farrell has joined us. thank you, mr. kennedy. good afternoon, supervisor. >> good afternoon, commissioners, director reiskin, mark farrell district 2 supervisor. thank you for hearing me today and allowing me to speak to you. i will do my best to keep my

comment brief. i was just briefed by our controller's office about the mayor's transportation task force and i know the extreme challenges that we have, financially, especially as a transportation system. you have my commitment to work together inside of city hall, certainly now as chair of the budget and finance to find solutions to that. i agree with the sentiment of the task force and co-chair has it all san franciscans should be able to choose among many high-quality transportation options. so the tep's end, i want to speak about you today, because it affects the district that i represent in a large fashion is the elimination of the 3 jackson line. i am here to tell you as someone who was born and raised in district 2 and raising my children there, i have ridden the 3 jackson my entire life and i know so many countless others, many who are behind me today that depend upon it for their daily lives and that eliminating that line would

have a disastrous effect on the neighborhoods that i represent and i urge you to consider that. the three jackson has served the neighborhoods for decades and includes a huge senior population, a disabled population, that i have heard from and spent countless community meetings already on this topic since this idea was floated about last year. and i think as important for me, many students and staff that are part of the schools that are in that surrounding area, there are nine schools in that very close vicinity within the three jacks and they heavily dependent upon that line to serve the schools and educate our children. several of the schools i know have written letters to you, to the mta board as i have about the elimination of the 3 jacks line. and i hope you consider that as part of your deliberations. i will tell you that my office

has been engaged and i will commit to continue to engage and outreach with the neighborhoods of district 2 and i am offering here to help engage in the community as i have done so far. i know sfmta staff has done it to some degree, but as proposeded today with elimination of the 3 jacks line, the neighborhoods have not been listened to. the statistics that are in the books don't paint the full picture. this is not just about peak ridership times. this is about other populations in san francisco that ride our buses, and use our transportation system in no one peak times. you know, is there a cost-savings to this elimination? that hasn't been talked about yet and that has to be part of the process. and to me, as well, the

alternatives that get proposed, simply to say go to the one california, take those. this is a steep area, you know? topographically, these are seniors and it's not so easy to walk a few blocks and we're talking about vulnerable populations in a steep part of town. we love our city and our topography makes us who we are geographically, but we have to think about that with our transportation system. we know san francisco needs a reliable transportation system and i fully support the process that is happening, but with the 3 jacksons, at the expense of riders, many who are seniors, disabled and especially those who depend upon using the three jacksons to teach and go to school i don't think reflects the values of san francisco and i ask you to reconsider that. i commit to you my support to

help engage with my community to help do that. thank you very much. >> thank you, supervisor. [ applause ] members, let's move to the public hearing. we'll hear from the public at this point. mr. kennedy, i'm sure we'll be talking to you a little later on. miss boomer. >> we have members of the public here and also in 408. so if you hear your name in 408, if you would make you your way to this room to address the board. [ reading speakers' names ] >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. >> i grew up on the 39.

i rode the ecar, which was a streetcar the size of the cable care. i'm a native and i ride the no. 3. i ride the no. 3 from one terminus to the other terminus. from walnut and california to bart or muni. and the california street doesn't do that. it doesn't stop at a connection. you have to walk a couple of

blocks. and during the winter, during rain, and all of that kind weather, but i have also rode the cable car when it went all the way to presidio, the california cable car. thank you >> thank you sir. [ reading speakers' names ]. >> mark christenson, third generation san franciscan. very simple put there are elements of the transit effectiveness project that need to be reevaluated before implementation. there are two elements that many believe are flawed. getting from point a to point b is