>> if people don't have a computer and they want to get this information, where can they get it from? >> we have a fact sheet that we printed and i have brought some copies today. we have them at our offices at 1455 market street 22nd floor. people are free to come up and get some copies of the fact sheet. if they would like a presentation for their community group. we are happy to give a presentation. i will give my phone number. 415-522-4804. my e-mail at chester er dot fung.

415-522-4804. my e-mail address: chester.fung at sf.org. >> thank you. i have no questions at this time. i'm going turn it over to derek. >> i too will yield to get to public comments. we'll go to john lions from the fdr club.

>> i want to say this you to the council for having this meeting. my name is jonathan lions from the -- department for san francisco with persons with disabilities. i want to say thank you to mr. fung. i don't know a lot of public employees that are willing to come to a public meeting about controversial issues such as brt and provide their contact information and direct phone number. i just want to say this you to that and also want to say this you to the ta for taking the time to seek public feedback on this project prior to finalizing their recommends. so i just want to say this you to him for that. as he mentioned our organization will be having a presentation on geary brt at our february 5th

meeting, wednesday at 630 p.m. at northern police station. all interested are welcome to attend. our organization does not have an official position on this but speaking personally as a resident i have some concerns and excited about efficiency of brt, but as a blind pedestrian i'm concerned about traveling to the middle of geary hoping that i might be able to find the platform in order to get on the bus since there will now be two platforms to find. that is a big issue for me personally and also as mr. fung mentioned the issue of separate of stops is a big deal for people with disabilities as well. my personal advocacy would be to help mitigate the separation of stops. it would be to extend the two out to

33rd avenue. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> next we'll hear from thomasa. >> again, good afternoon. i'm thomasa. the 244 000-0000 which of the proponents of the project which they foresee, there is a shortfall of $125 million for now. it says here in this conflict that the benefit is 20 percent faster transit travel time. so we just heard there is an express bus that already exist on geary

boulevard. what i have been hearing about this over the past few years is the purpose of this is to make it easier for people to get downtown to their jobs faster. to me, $240 million shows some people in richmond to get to their jobs faster is a very poor use of taxpayer money especially because of all the tremendous hardship and risk it will cause for those who are elders, those who have mobility issues, those who have vision and hearing problems or issues and those of us who can not walk more than half a block. i happen to be lucky enough to have a car and i'm able to drive. there is no way that i can take munis if i had to walk. let's say a person lives a block or two off of

geary boulevard. imagine having to walk 4 blocks between bus stops. this is an incredible hardship for elders and for people that have children with them. this is as far as i'm concerned an insane proposal. who knows what the back room dealings were to come up with this what i would say is an insane proposal. so putting these buses in the middle of geary blvd. some people have heard me say this, this is why i'm motivated to say this. i have seen people fall out and into a gutter. i have stopped my vehicle and assisted the person that have fallen into

the gutter. then i will have people honking their horn as i help the people out of the gutter. as i have literally picked someone up from the gutter, this is why i'm opposed to this project. unless you see that, you don't think of it. >> we have other people. >> this is really important. please respect that. there is not a lot of people who would be affected by this who are not able to be here today. two or three lanes of traffic in each direction that people with disabilities or elders or people that be blind would have to cross is putting people at severe risk. furthermore if a person gets off a munis vehicle and falls out of their wheelchair you know you are going to have these three lanes

of traffic coming at them and the person is extremely vulnerable at these intersections. for these reasons i urge you to oppose this proposal. anything that has the munis vehicles in the middle of the roads where it would be better to have them at the express routes. >> next we have susan pfeifer. >> we only ask that you honor this time and then you can come back at around we'll give everyone a chance to talk. you can come back and voice the important things. we just want everyone to get an opportunity to speak. thank you. >> thank you. hopefully i will be brief. i want to reiterate

some of the comments that have been made. the secretary of the fbr club and senior with disabilities. i agree with jonathan's comments. rarely do i applaud public agencies but it sounds like the outreach intake of public comment has been done better than most. so that is appreciated. my first concern was when he talked about going out to inform the community if there would be input and if it's too late for instance some of the comments made today is it too late for any changes to be made. you are never going to please everyone. but i am concerned about the longer distance that people will have to walk. the baby boomers are aging and remember we were the largest single population ever born at one time back in the 50s. as we are hitting our 65 and above you

are going to have more seniors out there. that is the hardship that i'm concerned about. if the people have to walk to the middle of the street to board, if there are pot holes in the streets that they can tip over. people can fall or trip and that can be an issue. you are already saving time with being able to adjust the lights so the buses can travel through intersection more smoothly. so reducing the number of stops seems to be maybe not the best idea when you want to make it easier to get to the buses particularly the people who work. seniors and disabled rely more on public transportation than many other people. thank you. >> next we have richard.

>> yes. my name is richard rothman. there seems to be inconsistency. you have mta wants to put in this disability policy of making it harder for people with disabilities who work downtown. they want to put in a plan where you can only park four 44 hours and you have to pay for meters and another city agency wants to put in a bus system where people with disabilities are going to have to walk longer to the bus stop. so how can the city, does the city know what they are doing? there seems to be some inconsistency in that. i ride to 38 all the time and it's great. i don't understand why one mta wants to encourage people with a disability to

take public transit downtown and the brt wants to make it harder for people to get to the bus stops. i wish the city would come up with one policy so the the people in the disability community would know what the city's policy is about people who have disabilities and who work downtown and how are they supposed to get downtown. thank you. >> thank you. next we have charles minister. >> thank you. charles minister, a member of the senior and disability action. i would like to second what the sister said earlier about the obvious cost and the necessity of this. i don't hear a dime being spent for new transit vehicles. i use the 38 and my wife uses the 38

everyday. the biggest problem i find on the line is that in rush hours there are not enough seats in the front to take care of the disabled people. as a senior i have to vacate the seat to move to the rear of the bus. this is for the downtown interest where they are the retail giants to get the workers downtown quicker pure and simple and get those shoppers downtown pure and simple. this is unconscionable to spend so much on this project. you have people as we've heard earlier here disabled people living on the streets. we are going to spend $240 million to make the buses go downtown faster. we need more buses on that line so people can have a seat especially the disabled people. sometimes you get two wheelchairs on a bus and a third wheelchair can't get on

the bus and they eliminate a lot of seating. this is the only thing that we need to do is put more buses on the line. i want to thank, salute the drivers and the maintenance men who keep these buses running. they are the ones that keep the job going, they are the ones that we have to thank. not these people, again, the downtown business interest. if they want these buses to run downtown faster, let them spend the money. that's where you get it at. they have got billions to spend. their stocks are going way up the board. don't come to the public here and put the dime on us. thank you. >> thank you very much. if you don't mind i can clarify. actually part of the budget of this project is going towards new transit vehicles and the issue that we see with respect to the crowding which is a very

real phenomenon. we definitely acknowledge that crowding is an issue. but the issue we see is that you can't put more buses through the geary corridor as it is now because of the slowness of travel on the geary corridor. so this project is intended to allow us to put more buses through to alleviate the crowding problem and we are looking to put new buses on the corridor that are low floor and more accessible to boarding and getting off the buses. i just wanted to clarify that point. >> next, we have bob planto. >> i'm bob planto. i want to

use the documented camera to provide visual sample examples of why i think there is problems for seniors and people with disabilities regarding the staff proposal alternative. some of the time savings are going to come from eliminating bus stops that automatically means we have to walk farther and it's not just a distance. it's crossing multiple additional intersection exposing us to more auto traffic. right now, what i have got circled is in the fillmore section. they propose to eliminate the stop at geary and laguna next to the chinese consulate. not such a good idea considering how much people go there. if you are pushing a baby stroller, if you are a senior, you have to go uphill.

the worst one is in the richmond area. here again, you will notice the two orange sections are the proposed brt stops at 6th avenue and funston. eliminating the 9th avenue stop. that's a distance of 6 blocks between the two stops. the 9th avenue stop is where the elementary school. so kids are going to have to walk farther if they take the bus to school. on the other side of 9th avenue and geary, there is a funeral home. that may not seem like much to a lot of people, but if you live in this city and you have the contacts and you wind up going to funerals. if you have to walk three 3 blocks in the rain to get to that funeral home, you may not go. it's not just that 6 blocks, if you look further in the outer richmond they keep the stops where they are. they

are 2-3 blocks apart now. they want to remove the 9th avenue and replace the laguna stop. i'm suggesting they are not thinking of the population of the need of the benefit stops closest to their destination. kids, people with disabilities is a problem. they are looking for all numbers of rider ship. not specific numbers of who is riding where. that's a problem we all should address. thank you. >> next we have a comment from david dippel. >> my name is dave dippel. i

have been trying to get a point across. the basic concept is great. what they need to do is think about only having one lane in the center for commute direction traffic. keep all of the buses, all of the stops, even for the express line where they are. and that will accommodate greater push through of the numbers that they need and the express buses when they have finished their stops and start to go downtown can go into brt lane. the problem with left-hand turn lane they are talking about stopping half of them in the richmond and that means those they have left will increase issues of pedestrian injury. they need to also think about coordinating the call buttons for the walk lights with the

pressure plate for the left-hand turn so when somebody pushes a button it stops left-hand turns. if they don't have a push button, the left-hand turn has a priority and it's like every other light at their turns. i believe they have to go back and reengineer this so that we push the most amount of traffic in the commute direction. it not the off hour traffic where you need that second lane. and what we are talking about is cutting the cost down and maintaining the number of stops for seniors and people with mobility problems. beyond that, when we had two street car lanes on geary up until about the 1950s, they were discontinued because of issues of safety. i had a

great aunt who broke a hip getting off one 1 of those street cars. it's an extremely dangerous place to be and as it is now with the two lanes, they have got, i think about eight designated traffic issues being addressed on geary, plus they have the ramp on one side and the median on the other which takes a total of nine. if you put in a left-hand turn lane, you have 10 lanes of activity. there is too much stuff going on on one street. it needs to be reengineered. >> thank you. >> and our last comment for this topic will be from jerry grace.

>> i think i know they do what they are doing about brt because the transit is doing the same thing. they are trying to change everything around going faster and easy on foothills in oakland. they didn't want it and other places didn't want it. they are the same way. what they try to do a little bit different in what oakland is trying to do, brt they are trying to get faster and quicker. yes the car can go around it. and get more people

on brt faster and especially where those stop by stop on for them. -- >> can you pull back from the microphone. >> i didn't know i would be that close. the other part of it, yeah, the buses going to stop, but some of the buses limit place by place but the brt is faster and quicker. yes, the big crowd is true, but it's faster and quicker because the counties have one down there too. i think that's why. that's why they do it. this is a question i wanted to ask. i

want to know how many businesses of brt will go. how many buses will go on geary both sides and how many traffic will go down to. i know there is one. but i wonder how many buses will go down. >> excuse me. this is public comment at this time. questions can be answered. you can ask that and they will get back to you. for the timeframe we don't have time to go back and forth for questions. thank you very much. that was the last public comment for that part of the presentation. we want to thank you very much for coming and presenting today. thank you. right now we are going to move into informational team item 8.

light rail accessibility and boarding platforms by annette williams. thank you. we are going to hold off on questions. we are running on our time. thank you. >> hi. i'm annette williams, manager at sf mta. i appreciate you inviting me to be here. i wanted to introduce a few people so people know and have phone numbers. i have three of the staff people from the accessible services department here with me today. matt west with munis operations with accessibility with the red tie

and virginia who works on capital projects mainly munis and fleet and the sixth route vehicle and sandra padilla who is working on pedestrian on bikes and she is the one that got the compliment earlier and parking issues. we are all available to you. we want to hear from people. the phone number. 701-4485. another important resource is our multi- modal accessibility advisory committee. there is four people from that committee, jackie bryson and gene green and damien williams. we want you to know that you can get in touch with people in the community and the

multimodal accessory meetings. we want to be a resource to you. please use that resource. what i was asked to do is give you a little bit of a history of accessibility. today we are talking about the munis metro system. what we used to call street cars and light rail system. which goes from the downtown out into rest of the city. munis was the first public transit system if the country in 191-2100 years ago last year. it wasn't accessible for many many years until the 70s when we built the underground munis metro which is the stations that are familiar with in embarcadero,

powell, civic center and montgomery. at that time all of those stations have elevators. that was the first step in terms of accessibility. that happened in the 70s with the opening. and prior to that underground we had the old those vehicles were outfitted with high low steps. the steps can go up and down and underground the steps came up and you were able to board at

all level. after we had done that and we wonder how can you make the rest of the system accessible out on the streets where you are going up and down the stairs. we designed a way side platform. i will show you pictures later in the presentation. i will show you some purs pictures. i don't know if it's better to look at paper or me. what happened was at that time, we started to look at what can we do on the surface system. what we were able to do was to ramp up to munis. we were only able to put those in places where munis that had right of way where the land was part of munis which wasn't in the street. some of

those examples, we did seven of those back in the 80s like carl. we were able to do it at the end of the lines where it wasn't in the street right-of-way. so at that time we did about seven of those way side platforms and in the 90s there is the passage of the americans with disabilities act. one of the requirements was to designate key stations. you can think about boston or new york or the systems especially new york they have an underground systems. they need to go through their systems and decide what will be key stations and put in elevators. we put in those requirements with reference to stops. we put in key sto