about how we can better partner with the small businesses, the commission level but also down to the neighborhood and where possible, the individual level, i think that there is some work to be done in the area of research, as well as assessment and i think that was one of the recommendations and in understanding how transportation patterns and traces, impacts small businesses, and how projects that we might be leading are part of. and projects like them can impact the vitality of a commercial corridor and i think that there is a lot of data out there that we could get smarter and better about how we are using or how we are using it.

awareness, and education small businesses that were early on in the process and addressing things like loading and other issues that we understand are very directly important to small businesses we go and we work with the groups and we deal with the parking and loading issues, and that remains in an area where perhaps we could do more and make sure that our folks understand the needs of small businesses and including cash register and certification requirements that our sister agencies are imposing on them. and in terms of awareness, and you know, anything that we can do more in terms of promoting the small businesses during things like small business week or the day that we had last saturday, i think that there is a lot of opportunity there. like rise and promotions and marketing. we have done a fair bit with you. and with the small business community, and i think that there is probably the opportunity for us to do more

there. making sure that the people now how to find the parking and better for all modes of traffic so that we can get the folks to the great commercial corridors that we have and then finally, engagement and including and i think that is at the core of where some of that concern have been in the last six months, or a year, and making sure that we figure out the best way to early and effectively and consistently engage with the effected small businesses, and making sure that it is a two-way dialogue and, making sure that we can come out that have process, with recommendations for improvements to make safety and to make our streets safer and to make them more accommodating of all of the different modes of transportation, that use them. in a way that works for small businesses as well. and so, we appreciate the partnership that we are developing with the office of small business and i also want

to thank, regina's office and my staff, and not just for working together, but to put this together, but for the ongoing work that we are doing collaboratively together to improve the transportation and the small business vitality in the city and so thanks for having this forum and look forward to the discussion. >> thank you, very much and thank you, regina, these were both two great presentations before we start our general dialogue up here, we are going to first take public comment. limited to two minutes. and so with that, we would like to open up the public comment. >> chris dolan and mary, hall and paula swartz. >> good afternoon, directors, my name is christopher dolan and i earn the dolan law firm in san francisco and i started

the business myself with one secretary and i now employ 45 people and i have commerce in the city, that brings people to the city. and i have employees that live in the city that need to get to work i have folks that need to get to court and go and go. i need transit. and i want to just say that on market street, i bought a building between polk and van ess where you need the courage and the bullet proof vest to get to work every day and i stayed there it seems to be a great place, twitter finds it to be an ideal location to be but it always wasn't. and what made the difference is the way that market street has evolved. and one of the most important

going to collapse. transit is like water, if you put in a block in one place, it will move another place if you give that need another avenue it will take it and as a small business person, thank you for holding this meeting and thank you for helping my people get to work and my clients get to my office and to keep the city alive, thank you. >> thank you. >> next? >> mary lauren hall.

swarts, and kaplin of >> i am with the alliance for biking and walking and an organization based in washington, d.c., we focus on biking and walking issues and i am here today to give you a little bit of context about what is happening in our cities across the country. we are really seeing that after 40 years of being with the care and urban centers are experiencing a boom in growth much like san francisco is. and what is interesting about this boom in urban growth is that it is the first time that this has happened since we billed out the national infrastructure for the highways and the automobile age and it is a great news for the economy and small business and because it means more of a customer base and it is also a bad things for businesses in the transportation planning where we had been used to the planning for the automobile only road space and it is just the case that when you have thousands of people moving through a city, getting everybody from point a to b by a car is not going to keep on working, new roads is not an option and there is not the land use space and the transit

is expensive and it is certainly important and that is why we are seeing many cities across the country implement the bike lanes and these are lanes that have separation between the traveling and automobile traffic and bicycle traffic with plastic posts or parked cars or planters, and it is an innovative solution that does not take a lot of time to put in that many cities are starting to implement and the co-author and the impact on the local economies i have been examining the data speaking with the owners, across the country, and the cities where, the transportation planners are building these types of bike lanes on the streets, people really enjoy these types of improvements.

>> i am dedicated full time to working with small businesses one on one as well as the small business community in general, and to, do out reach for infrastructure projects being programs, and to businesses that want to become more bike friendly and do bike education, and so i am out on the streets, and i am new to this position and so the fruits of this work are not yet he evident but i want to introduce myself and i want to say that the vision at the san francisco bike coalition includes a thriving small business community and

our city vibrantcy depends on the small business culture that is sustainable and that is growing. and that small business, and livable streets go hand in hand and i want to highlight a couple of examples in san francisco. on valencia street, two-thirds of the merchants said that the improvement bike lanes and etc., improve their business, and the recent study by the fisherman's wharf shows that improvement to jefferson street, brought over a one million dollars in gross sales as compared to last year and this is a brand new project with parking conversion, and traffic calming, and wider sidewalks. and so there is a precedence in san francisco for the benefits of some of these projects. and the cities like new york, and on 9th avenue and union square, have the pearl street in brooklyn, and seattle, and washington, d.c. and chicago. are all investing in the livable streets, and seeing the

benefits to their businesses, and so i hope that you continue to do the same for san francisco. and i hope that this hearing is a good first step in making sure that all of the important stake holders from the small business community are involved. and that we can work together moving forward. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker? >> gwen cap len. >> nicole snyedr and dan nuentan. >> i appreciate having this hearing with the sfmta and the small business commission together. and both our directors are here. so first of all thank you. my business is ace mailing in the north east mission business section of the city and we are in the pdr zone. and in our area, which is bound by 19th street, through division or 13th of the central freeway, by protrero and cap street we have a little bit of

everything there but we are particularly concerned about the pdr zone and being able to load and unload trucks. and load and unload as commercial businesses in that area. we are also concerned about retail parking, and meters and we are also concerned about commuters who park in our area and go downtown, or wherever they are going, and so we realize that this we have a lot of big jobs in front of you, but we appreciate the opportunity, particularly, in my area, for the nod to what is required of a pdr zone, so thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> niekol snyder, dan wintom and steven cornel. >> good afternoon, i am the executive director of walk san francisco and thank you so much

for taking the time to address this really complicate and timely issue. and thank you to the directors for your thorough presentation and it sounds like there is a lot of thought that has gone into this and i just want to say on behalf of walk sf, we are really excited that these conversations are happening, and small businesses are the heart of our community, and really, small businesses make our communities walkable. and they are really important piece of a walkable community. and as the daughter of two small business owners, i know how important walkable, or small businesses are to to a community in general and neighborhoods. and also i know how hard it is to operate a small business, and the challenges and that is where i get my work from. and you know, we, as walk sf, we see this new partnership as

a opportunity to move forward and address some of these challenges and figure out some solutions. and again, you know, we know that walkable business areas are the most thriving business areas and so we want for them.

without a doubt, many bicycles will grow and continue to grow as long as the city continues to make bicycling a friendly and welcoming place. and we have our headquarters in our store in south park and soma as well as a store in the mission and no doubt, the biggest obstacle for our ability to grow our business is the lack of infrastructure to make bicycling and walking friendly. particularly in the soma area where we are headquarters and there is no greater impediment to our growth than when there is traffic congestion caused by cars. people will choose to to bike and walk and take the public

transit if you continue to make the investment, i have a car, a bike and walk and i don't, drive unless i need to, and like many of our customers we will choose to bike and walk if you make those investments thank you very much. >> steven cornell, scott vetal and those are the last two people who have turned a speaker card in under this item. >> i have owned a small business in the neighborhood and regina said really well what the concerns are and i would like to add to it that, we are not just when you own a business and we get upset, at coming to dealing with mta or the police, or whatever other department, we have so much passion involved, because we are so involved. and like i said i owned my business for 39 years and i have an enormous investment in it and all of my fellow

merchants have huge investments and time and money and our employees that we work with we know them all and so it is very important to us and so we go crazy sometimes when we have to deal with the city comes and gives us new regulation or wants to change something. we have always, in the neighborhood, thought that muni is very important thing. and there is not a commercial neighborhood in san francisco that does not have a muni line on it. we want it. and when muni wants to remove a line, and take away a bus stop, we go, nuts. and that is how we can get a lot of merchants to come out to something, to tell them that a muni stop is going to be removed and we are all out there. we heard earlier about how certain streets are doing really well under a lot of bicycles, and it is true. but, one size does not fit all. so valencia street is a great street for bikes but there are no hardware stores or large grocery stores or big drug

stores, all of which take huge trucks to be delivered all of the time. some of us actually make driver deliveries, you will see that sometimes on mission or whatever, you can't have one size fits all, transit first, i want to put a cheer out for mta and it is the only department in the city that has gone out of its way to make sure that the employees do transit first, and that is in the other departments thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> scott howgen and zach stenzer and kristine winser. >> scott howge, owner of cal insurance on 33rd, and we are right on the metro line. and first, i would like to thank the mta for meeting with the small business commission. and secondly, i would like to thank the commission to convening this meeting. some of us in this room were

involved in the creation of a commission, going back to 1985. and at the time, we created the mission, the commission, to give the small business a voice and that has been our montra for 30 years now that we want the small business not to be the only voice, but when the decisions are made, that impact us, we want to be a voice in the discussions. it is important and i also want to thank, director executive director reiskin for meeting with us over the last few months. i think that it is important for the board to understand that decisions made by the mta, effect our livelihood, and they effect our employees, and there is steven cornel said we have a passion about that. and we want to be good people, good citizen and promote the interest and we want to promote the transit first, but this is

our livelihood and your decisions impact our livelihood. the second thing that i would like to say is one of the things that is very frustrating and i really applaud moving this commission forward and having the two commissions talk, is that is bringing us in early on. we don't want to be reactive. we want to be proactive. and we find if we don't get brought into the decisions early on, we are backed into a corner. and we become reactive and that is not where we want to be. so i encourage these dialogues, or these discussions to continue and the collaboration because we are both for the best interest of the city of san francisco and the people of san francisco and the employees, thank you. >> zach stender, kristine winser those are the last people that i have speaker cards for. >> hello, my name is zach and i am co-owner of hukle berry

bicycles. and we are proud to be there and we are really happy to be in the middle of a very exciting time in central market it seems, and while, a lot of improvements are happening to the city scape, we want to see, more biking improvements. and obviously, i run a bike shop and so i have motives here, but increasingly my customers are business professionals, they are business executive and they are financial workers and tech workers. and who are hop on bikes to get to work, and not because they have to, cycling is no longer an alternative means of transportation, it is a means of transportation. and it is if anything, becoming you know, people are almost bragging that they are actually choosing to take a bike, we are selling nice and her nicer bikes, and you know the people that would drive a nice car or

take a nicer means of transportation are getting really nice bikes and they are getting out there and finding traffic despite the number one concern being their own safety. and beyond these folks, there are thousands and thousands more who would ride their bikes, and if they felt safe on the roads and we need, safer infrastructure for cyclists and we need to be aable to accommodate more cyclists and the nice effect of that is that will ease the load on private vehicles and more importantly public transportation. >> my name is kristine winsor and i have been here for four years and i walk, i bike and i own a car. i mostly shop, at small businesses. and i do that by walking to them, or biking to them or

trying to take transit, if you give me the option i will never choose to drive, i hate driving in this city. and i hate parking in this city even more. i would so much rather just get on my bike, and park it in one of those parklets because i can always find parking and i know that it is safe and i am going to find it when i get back and if you your business is around one of those, then i am going to shop there, even if i was not intending to go there. and that is the parklet and i can shop there. and so that is how i get around. the cyclists are not going away and the city wants more cyclists and we are going to be there and we are not going to stop cycling. if you give us the means like the track and the safe protected bike ways, you are going to find a lot more of us out biking and not driving and then your delivery trucks will

get anywhere they want to go because the car is going to be parked somewhere else instead of a parking spot in front of your store. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> other speakers, please? >> thank you, commissioner, actually i filled out a card and i dropped it off and i may not have. >> david sehgan and i am a businessman here in san francisco and i have a couple of businesses. and also, a resident and i have been involved with the merchants in the market and the castro and that is the similar merchants association and i would like to thank the commissioners for have the joint meeting and it is really important to bring, this issue to light. and what i want to talk about is that we do need balance. and we need balance here in san francisco, between everyone that spoke today and also with the small businesses, that pay the bulk of the taxes out of all of the people that the stake holders here. and we also need representation for the families, that grow up here in san francisco.

and i grew up here in san francisco and i raise mied family and i live in san francisco and i want them to be part of this decision making and we need balance for them. the life cycle of family in san francisco, and includes having infants and having to go to see doctors, and going shopping in the neighborhood with these, young kids, and with the parking is a must. and going to the different party and going to see family. and they become older and they become school age and then, you need to take them to schools. and their school events and their sporting events and the baseball practice and dr. visits and multitasking and having to go to the hardware store and having to go shopping and dinner prepared and having to pick up your other child. and we are more than just bikes, and the families can be forgot enhere in san francisco and i hope that you continue to focus on this issue and focus on meeting balance for our small business and our families here in san francisco. and thank you very much.

>> thank you. >> next speaker. okay, good evening commissioners and my name is henry and i am the president of the san francisco counsel of the district merchant associations and first of all thank you both and the commission to convening this meeting this evening. and our administrator and i was in vietnam and i was talking to a couple in vietnam and i was just chatting away and one of the things that they have said is parking being taken away. and but, there are putting in garages in for the cars and so that is what they do over there and so, no doubt, there is more and more people riding bicycles and accommodate them. and i think that it is a great idea. and so we are through and but not one size fits all and as one of the previous speakers has said and some ways they work well and some they don't. and i really would hope that the mta and sits down with us

and the considers which areas it does work in and which areas it does not and come to a conclusion where everybody will be pleased with it. thank you. >> any other members of the public? >> okay. in you didn't fill out a card, you can come up and speak. >> you filled it out on a matter not on the agenda. >> if you like to speak now, come on down. >> okay, thank you very much. i am very pleased actually to see this joint meeting here. i am madalyn and i am a advocate for all of the people in the polk corridor and i have had the pleasure of getting to know many of the small business owners and talking to them personally and they could not be here under normal circumstances but this is their

holiday time. but several of them actually volunteered to write notes for how they feel about changes. okay, i would like to first of all just dichotomy and several of them, cyclists are families and cyclists are customer and business owners are cyclists and this is an either or which is not true and this has been underlying some of the arguments i will start with the first note, we are owners of a small business and, we have seen it change often. we know how important it is, sorry. we know how important it is, for businesses to anticipate and adapt to change in order to thrive and know what really effects our business and we change our shop design seasonally and the city and the public spaces have a longer cycle and it is at the beginning of a new cycle with the new design. and we want to see the best

design of how the city has been and will continue to evolve and as san francisco grows and extremely important that fewer people drive or our lives will become unbearablely grid locked and unhealthy. most of the customers come by here walking and transit and cycling and stand strong for our best interest with the understanding that there are many other merchants who feel as we do that everyone will benefit if san francisco's plans are smart and forward looking, there is another one that also with the same things in different terms, but they do contrary to popular opinion, they do understand that a lot of the customers do not arrive by car and they are willing to adapt and change to any loss of parking and changes in loading. thank you. >> any other members of the public that would like to make a comment? >> my name is mitchell berg and i am a business owner on polk

street and actually this evening, is the district association christmas party and that is why most of the merchants and i am the only one here and the vast majority i think do not feel as the last speaker said, we are pragmatic group that is happy to have dialogue and be part of the process. and agree that sacrifices need to be made to accommodate all users of polk street. but there has to be balance. and everybody's needs should be taken into account not just one aggressive voice for the group, there are many stake holders and i hope that the small business community can have a better voice and more say in the process, because they are willing to make sacrifices and help bring balance to the process. thank you.

>> thank you. >> any other members of the public? >> seeing none, public comment is closed. >> chairman? >> thank you. mr. president, and thank you, for the very thoughtful conversation and suggestions and the work in the written presentations is excellent. and very, very helpful, i think to all of us, certainly to me. i would like to comment on something that a couple of people have said and i totally agree with the one size does not fit all. i have used my role as a commissioner here to look at and look out for the entire city in terms of transportation, that is the charge. and the same time being mindful of neighborhoods and groups and individuals, and circumstances that are around the city, i can assure you that it is an extremely difficult job and for us it is going to be getting much more difficult in the coming year because the transit effectiveness project will be coming out and that does involve some or one of the