budget analyst. can we take those with recommendation? >> we can take those without opposition. >> and the underlying item without opposition as well. >> so moved. >> okay. we have the last item of the day so madam clerk can you call item 18. >> item 18 is hearing regarding funding the municipal transportation agency's bicycle strategy. >> thank you very much. this is an item sponsored by supervisor mar so i will turn it over to him to do the hearing. >> thank you. we have a audience of not only children but bicycle advocates with us and i would like to thank kathy and fred for their incredible work from the budget analyst office. i have been working with my staff peter [inaudible] who did work on this as well, but i first wanted to thank

them for the attention and the seriousness that they took towards this. last may when the bicycle coalition and other advocates organized a bike to workday that i believe all the supervisors and the mayor participated in and i spent the night in intense frustration and there is the happy side and the side that san francisco needs to be a bike friendly city but when you look at the funding it's neglected and when you look at it it's half of what is needed and after the deaths of emily and others i along with other bicycle advocates and others felt pissed off there's not enough work done to make our streets safer or even to follow up after deaths happen and i think this hearing

is coming out of much of that intense frustrations and also being pissed off as well. i have been looking at different studies from five years ago from mayor newsom's administration to other bike strategy proposals by the mta and even surveys by the san francisco county transportation authority that show that 2/3 of the city want significant increases in bike funding and 1/2 of those surveyed by the transportation authority want aggressive increases in funding so we're here today kind of thinking about the demands from not only bicycling advocates but the vast majority of the people in the city as well and we are looking at this report that compares us to other cities and if we like to think of ourselves as a bicycle city and seattle and portlandia and even minneapolis

put us to shame and i hope we put our money where our mouth is by the end of this hearing and follow up as well. we spend less per citizen versus these cities and this is all in spietd of the fact that biking as a mode share is greater here than those cities and many cities throughout the country. this year we suffered and felt the consequences of inaction as a city with bicycling and many deaths and emily's death and others that we know about dangerous and not just soma but in the city and young professionals that have perished and to eldr elders as well and i think there is a more imperative and many advocated this and make the city safer for bicycling and other modes of transportation as well. also bicycling needs to

be safe for families to feel comfortable to bike in the city as well so that's a goal. the responsibility to fund the bicycling infrastructure really falls on all of us as the board of supervisors but also for the mayor and the city departments as well, and i believe that we have failed in that regard as well according to the reports. the mta, the mayor and certainly our board of supervisors i think have to come together hopefully with this hearing but also and beyond to put our money where our mouth is and to support demands that have been coming from different neighborhoods in the city for increased and even just adequate bicycle funding in the city so this year i mentioned we suffered consequences of inaction. we have seen that as we advocate to make our streets safer that kind has been addressing other issues as well. i wanted to just wrap

up my introduction remarks by saying i think the report from mr. rose's office is the result of an incredible amount of analysis and work and thinking of recommendations that hopefully will dialogue on today and beyond. i wanted to say to that as a member of the bay air quality air district and the bay area association of districts and as we increase growth and transportation goals we have to absolutely improve bicycle spending and infrastructure in the city. reaching the goal of 50% of the trips by transit biking and walking is an ambitious goal but i think we can achieve that by not looking at the muni system which is heavily burdend and how we get a good bang for the buck and increasing spending in the bicycle infrastructure as well and as i said muni can't do it alone and infrastructure is a

key part of meeting the city's goals. very low maintenance and operational cost of muni makes investing in bicycling really an incredibly cost effective way of improving our climate change goals of our city and our climate action plan as a city so san francisco cannot afford to not invest in bicycling infrastructure according to the report and even the mta's own bicycle plan from five years ago to the plans of the bicycle strategy today in 2013 point us to really put our money where our mouth is and fund much more aggressively the bicycle infrastructure suggestions of the mta and i would like to ask fred rousseau from the budget analyst office and katie who did an incredible job on this now to present. thank you. >> chair farrell and supervisor mar fred rousseau from the

budget analyst office. i will provide an overview of the report and katie who is staff on the project and then i can respond to questions or provide more details. could we get the laptop here? great. thank you. quickly the scope of the analysis. we were asked by our office and you supervisor mar how sfmta bicycle strategy strategic plan could be funded and implemented. how much of the current capital and operating budgets are now allocated to bicycle mode projects? how projects and funding is prioritized by sfmta by mode -- in other words how bicycle projects are decided on? we're asked to look how sfmta delivers its projects and if there is room in improvement

and project delivery, and we were asked to compare san francisco investment in bicycle infrastructure and projects with other cities in the u.s.. to start with we looked at the strategic plan and the large goals of sfmta from their strategic plan they have established the goal of decreasing private auto use to 50% of all trips by 2018 --

scenario and that has a price tag of $191 million and if implemented is expected to increase bicycle mode share from the current 3.5% to between eight and 10%. the next slide

is just an overview of the bicycle strategic plan scenario. again this is the midpoint -- or the middle of the three plans included in the bicycle strategy and increase bicycle mode share between eight and 10% and these are some of the details of what would be included if this plan was implemented. 50 miles of existing bicycle network is upgraded, 12 miles of new bicycle facilities, 21,000 bicycle parking spaces and so on and as i mentioned the cost associated with it is $191 million. one of the questions that we were asked to answer is what is currently being spent on bicycle projects and the bicycle mode in both the operating budget and the capital budget for sfmta. this table on

the slide now presented shows that on the operating budget side the bicycle program within sfmta is budgeted at about $4.2 million in the current fiscal year and that's out of a total budget listed and 1/2 percentage point of the total budget. the budget itself is not distributed by mode so we can't present all the numbers for how much is spent on each number and we know and sfmta can confirm that the lion's share go into transit and operations of buses and trolleys and lrv systems. on the next slide shows the capital budget and the capital budget is a five year budget as sfmta. the total budget for the current five

year period is 2.6 billion. of that 35. 7 million or 1.39% is allocated to the bicycle mode and this chart shows the distribution of the budget by mode. it does include a big chunk in transit because central subway project is included in there the number is larger than usual but if you back that out the majority is still on the transit side. in terms of bicycle spending in other cities and you provided some of the summary numbers on that supervisor mar. here's the table showing some of those comparisons. because of the difficult of getting budget information that's truly comparable to what we have for san francisco we used a per capita measure so we used expenditures from the other cities on their capital

improvement per year and projects and compared it to the population so we could get a common denominator for all of the cities we're comparing. mostly we looked at u.s. cities but we have amsterdam and one of the leaders and copenhagen in bicycle infrastructure and clearly at the top there with the amounts shown and 17.5 million. relative to the population and bicycle spending of $22.42 per capita. >> it's nice to be there that way but nice to though amsterdam in for context. >> and the cities here drop down and minneapolis and the lowest of the cities and san francisco is at $9.16 so not at the top

or the bottom of the comparison cities. >> can i just ask about mode share? >> yes. >> i know that we often say that san francisco 3.5% and even though shooting for 20% by 2020 according to some aggressive goals but what is the mode share of the cities compared to ours? >> i don't have those numbers in front of me and amsterdam is about 37% and nerm --

>> in terms of implementing this scenario and these projects currently sfmta has money available and budgeted for the next five years in terms of bicycle projects and that amount is about $37 million. what we have done on this table is shown what's currently available and known to sfmta and already assumed to be budgeted for bicycle projects and that's broken out by year here. we combined some of the years because we wanted a five year window so we could end up in 2018 and achieve the bicycle mode share goal of eight and 10% consistent of what is in the bicycle strategy so we selected five years and started in fiscal

year2014 and 15 and programmed what they identified for bicycle and that includes the revenue bonds issued this year and sold now to come up with a revenue sub total of 28.$9 million or $29 million for the five year period. and that is measured against the $191 million cost of the strategic plan scenario. we backed out $20 million because of that amount is already been programmed or spent on the 2009 bicycle plan which predated strategic plan scenario, so that leaves us when all this is said and done with one seventy one million dollars in costs and then we back out the known revenues so we have a short fall of $142 million so it implements a strategic plan scenario in

the five year window $142 million would be needed, so on the next slide we have some possible sources to eliminate the bicycle strategy funding sort fall. i want to comment on the recently released mayor's transportation task force which looks at transportation funding for coming decades and identifies a number of sources. all of these sources are also in that plan and in the series of recommendations developed by the task force. they have more than these identified in their recommendations as well and they also identify implementing as a bicycle strategic plan -- there's some differences. we looked at it for a five year window. i believe the transportation task force window was 15 years and included 83% of the strategic plan scenario and some other projects that were

the more ambitious build out scenario so it's not exactly comparable but the task force does also address this plan, but again we ha put it into a five year period and looked at revenue sources for that period and different from the perspective of the task force so these sources are possibilities to be used for funding the projects over the five year period. just quickly they include two things that don't exist right now but could if they're approved by the voters next year and that is the vehicle license fee increase, which has been proposed, and state law now allows san francisco to increase the vehicle license fee from 6.5 to the historic level of 2% which would provide estimated about $73 million a year in new revenue for san francisco. we

also considered general obligation bonds which could be issued, the 500 million there isn't the plan yet but it's the capacity that san francisco is estimated to have now by the control's office in debt issuance. the increase of sales tax is another option we considered. that would generate about $73 million a year -- again requiring voter approval as do the general obligation bonds. proposition k is the half sales supplement tax revenue allocated here in san francisco and take the revenues as sales taxes are generated and advance them and get more of the cash up front and execute projects sooner and in other words between the project window and they would incur financing cost for that but it would give

them the cash up front and other possibilities here. there are revenue bonds considered in addition to what has been released this year. a possible series for 2016 of $150 million and 2019 for the assignment amount and a portion of that can be funding bicycle projects and this is from discretionary revenues and currently there are some funds moved from the sfmta operating budget into capital projects each year. it is a small percentage of the budget but that's another possibility for funds to be transferred and general fund money unrestricted from the city and county of san francisco could potentially moved over to fund some of these projects on a one or two year term basis. pardon me. so

using those sources what we did was provide three scenarios to get to the $142 million short fall. i won't go through the details on all of these but we divided this up. the first one shown is revenue sources that would require voter rks approval so includes the increase in the vehicle license fee, sales tax increase, general obligation bonds and you can see we have taken a portion of each, so we don't assume any source is 100% available for bicycle projects but taking some of each of those and allocated them over the years until they're available until we get to the final fiscal year 18-19 and totaling this amount over time. that is one scenario. there is a second

scenario which are sources that wouldn't require voter approval and the revenue bonds for example and transfers from the operating budget of sfmta and san francisco's general fund and the third scenario that combines some courses that require voter approval with some that don't and again taking portions each year and totaling this amount by the end. we were also asked to look at sfmta project execution and delivery because there are bicycle projects being implemented and have in prior years so the question was raised are questions being delivered timely and what would happen all of this additional funding available? is the agency capable of absorbing the funding and delivering the projects on time and consistent with the five year plan? so on that 47 of the 60 bicycle projects from

the 2009 bicycle plan which preceded the bicycle strategy have been completed. 13 projects are still in progress, sussended or being replaced. certainly if the influx of cash as portrayed in these scenarios occurs it would be a large influx. it would mean that the agency needs more staff, more contractors to actually execute the projects. there are 37 engineers now and planners for bicycle and other projects but on the bicycle side they're executing average of $7 million a bicycle project a year so if we went up to $38 million which would be the average assuming the $191 million plan clearly there would be a need for some additional staff and use of contractors. there is a staffing analysis under way at sfmta so we are hoping and we do recommend that could

incorporate some of the assumptions of this additional funding that might be available. in terms of need for improved project delivery and those issues were addressed by a control's audit in 2011 of the sustainable street divisions of sfmta which is responsible for the bicycle projects. they did have findings that recommended improvements in project delivery and management tools. some of those have been implemented by the agency. some are not implemented yet or partially implemented but they deal in general with managing projects, tracking projects better, having more systematic ways of overseeing when projects are scheduled, and what the budget is, and being able to readily compare actual to budgeted funds and time tables. our recommendations quickly are for

the board of supervisors to urge the agency to implement the controller's recommendations, particularly regarding the paint shop. that's where some of the problems where and germane with bicycle projects and has to do with striping and getting the lanes developed and maintained and they have implemented some of the recommendations but there are still some regarding the paint shop to develop -- this is for the agency and develop a tracking system the agency is in the process of developing an electronic system that will be agency wide and allow for all kinds of project tracking and management controls, but it's still a couple years off by the time it gets to sustainable streets and projects r and our recommendation a less sophisticated system in place

so that the measures are tracked and reported. we recommend that those types of results and the changes in the paint shop be reported back to the board of supervisors every six months. we further recommend that there is a report back to the board of supervisors and the sfmta board of directors on the staffing analysis under way to come up with the numbers that would be needed of additional positions and additional dollars for contractors to actually implement the strategic plan scenario. and then we have a recommendation that the agency sfmta and dpw work together and report back to the board on bicycle bicycle implementation plans and their work and projects require a lot of coordination with dpw and it's important that be in place so projects are not delayed for that purpose and the final recommendation is that the board of supervisors establish a process to follow up on the scenarios that are presented here and the pros and cons of

each of them, and possibly consider other options as well, but a process be established to come back to this, and work towards implementation. that's the overvie katie and i are happy to respond to questions. >> i have no questions and i know we have from the mta tim and the staff that that is here and i don't know if they were prepared to respond to a number of different issues that mr. rousseau and katie raised in the report but i would like to invite you up if you would like to make any remarks and we have a number public comment speakers as well. >> good morning. i am with the mta. i wanted to clarify a few statements that were made. i think that the way they're written is a little misleading, specifically the number of

staff that is dedicated to bicycle projects and 37 people part of the traffic calming bicycle pedestrian, pedestrian safety, and school guard crossing program. the $7 million of the bike projects that some of the staff work on. it's not all 37. i wanted to clarify. i ask for that to be clarified. in addition we are worked on all of the funding recommendations that we put together with the strategic plan scenario were fed into the mayor's transportation task force process so they're in the recommended categories there, so we're happy to move that forward. of the recommendations that the legislative analyst made i think we're working on almost all of those and we're happy to come back periodically as it makes sense to update whether to this committee or the transportation authority whatever you think is

appropriate on the update and the progress. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> so those are the official speakers and chair farrell could we open public comment? >> so we're opening public comment. the time is two minutes per person. i am going to call names and read them off. it doesn't have to be this order but if your name is called please come forward. burt hill from the bicycle advisory committee, sue vaughn, patrick trawber, jenny lee, leah sharm from the bicycle coalition, do you think las nickelson, [inaudible] madeline [inaudible] from san francisco league of conservation voters. >> thank you committee. this is a very important meeting and i

really applaud you supervisor for bringing us together. this report concentrates heavily on infrastructure proves but there are five other ones and if you focus on the 2020 we need to look at things like education. europe in establishing its system it has now implemented education at every school level to help people learn from a early age the rules of safe bicycling and the process of doing that. we need something and spend more money with the school district. it won't be funded out of the school district or the superintendent office. i think we need to integrate our education system. law enforcement -- i have sat through meetings and i know you have and enforcement needs help. they're not going to fund themselves for the things