code, article 11; and making environmental findings, and findings of consistency with the general plan, and the eight priority policies of planning code, section 101.1. ~ california street. >> thank you. and we are joined today by mary brown from the planning department to speak to this proposed landmarking under article 11 of the planning code. >> if i can have the overhead. good afternoon, supervisors. mary brown, planning department staff to present the proposed changes designation of 66 0 california street, the old st. mary's church rectory building pursuant to article 11 of the planning code. the four story building was designed in an early modern contextual style [speaker not understood]. architectural firm skid more owings and merrill and construction was completed in 1966. the building meets article 11's criteria and grounds for a change of designation to a category 3 contributory building. the building's identified and clarifying features include all exterior elevations, the connecting bridge walkways and sustained glass buildingses at the rear designed by mark adam. this change in designation was

initiated by the property owner, the san francisco archdiocese. the building is located within the c-3 downtown zoning district. on november 20th, 2013, historic preservation commission voted unanimously to support a change of designation to a category 3 contributory building. there is no known opposition to this change. this concludes my presentation and i'm happy to answer any questions. is the owner supportive in >> they initiated themselves, great. thank you. colleagues, any questions or comments? okay. thank you, ms. brown. we will open item number 2 up for public comment. is there any public comment on item 2? seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] >> colleagues, could i have a motion to forward item 2 to the full board with positive recommendations? so moved by supervisor kim and

we'll take that without objection. [gavel] >> thank you. okay, madam clerk, can you please call item number 3? >> item number 3 is a hearing directed to the department of public works, municipal transportation agency, public utilities commission, and pacific gas and electric company to explore a number of issues, including where projects are occurring, including sewer, water, natural gas, and road resurfacing, and what the benefits of these infrastructure improvements are; how the projects are coordinated to comply with the city's mandate that once a road is resurfaced no work will be done for five years -- absent an emergency -- to minimize repetitive street disruption; why some blocks remain under construction for very extended periods of time, with on-again-off-again work and repetitive digging; how blocks are chosen in terms of scheduling work; how many blocks are worked on annually and what the future schedule looks like; how departments are minimizing disruptions to the public caused by road work (parking, traffic, detours, noise, dust, et cetera); how contractors are held accountable for completing work in a timely manner, complying with contractual requirements, delivering high quality work, and minimizing impacts on surrounding neighbors; why some blocks, after undergoing utility work, only get paved on one side of the street and what we can do to prevent this-- one please. i called for this oversight hearing to receive an update from various city departments, including department of public works, mta, puc as well as pg&e on the very significant amount of road work that is currently he occurring in san francisco. i think it's really important in looking at the big picture to understand how important, in many ways unprecedented this road work is, and how positive

it is. we have in this city i think delayed a lot of important road and underneath road truck work for way too long, and we are finally addressing it in a meaningful way. ~ infrastructure work we are gradually replacing our entire 100 year old sewer system that fails all too often. we are gradually upgrading our water system, and we know that we have too many water main breaks and so we're trying to address that. particularly in some neighborhoods like in diamond heights in my district which has a lot of water main breaks. we are -- pg&e is upgrading its gas lines, which is very important particularly from a public safety perspective. and the department of public works is aggressively engaging in road resurfacing and, indeed, has doubled the amount of annual road resurfacing that

it performs. thanks to the generosity of the voters in passing prop b, now thanks to the mayor and this board, we a prop b funding runs its course, we are fully funding road resurfacing out of the general fund. so, this is critical, overdue investment and it has to be done and the city is going to be better off for it. with all that said, any time you're doing a lot of road work that's going to benefit the city, of course any kind of road work is disruptive. streets get shut down. parking is temporarily lost. roads are not in great condition while they're being worked on. and, so, it's always going to

so they can come in and doing it before you complete the project and cover up the street. that is a very important rule because in the past the sewer department would come in and do work, finish it and resurface the street and then a year later someone else would dig up the street again. it was very frustrating. ~ ~ so, now we try to avoid that. but what that means when you have three or four different projects that have to happen, they happen one after the other and you don't know when one is going to end. and, so, then you have to have mobilization for the next project. and so forth. in addition, there have been some challenges with some contractors ~ in terms of how long a project takes or sometimes starting and stopping with no clear explanation why, or having a gap during the project but there is still no

parking signs up. and, so, it's led to some frustration, lack of understanding of the public in terms of what projects are happening, why they're happening, why are there gaps, why are there stops and starts, and so forth. and, so, the purpose of the hearing today is really to give an opportunity for the department and pg&e to talk about what work is happening, how the different departments are coordinating both internally and externally, how contractors are being held accountable to make sure that they're complying with their contractual obligations, how information about these projects is being communicated to the public particularly surrounding residents and surrounding businesses that are impacted, and how people can get information if they want that information. so, i think people understand

how important this work is and we just want to make sure that the coordination and the information is a good as it can be. and then in addition we want to make sure that we're being efficient, and particularly that the mta is given a full opportunity to come in and determine whether while we're digging up a road, should we be putting build outs or doing other upgrades to improve pedestrian and bike access because it's sometimes more efficient to do that while we're already doing the work. so, with that, colleagues, if there are no additional comments, i will invite mr. suites from the department of public works to come up and who will make some introductory remarks. ~ sweetses i know there is a presentation as well. >> good afternoon, supervisor wiener, supervisor kim, and supervisor cohen. my name is brad sweetses i'm the deputy director for public works and the city engineer. and i want to start by thanking

you for such thorough and comprehensive introduction. you made my job easier. i'm going to skip some of the sentences i wrote here today. we have representatives from public works. the municipal transportation agency, and puc here at your request to answer any questions after our presentation. and as you noted, when you called for this hearing on road work oversight, the unprecedented level of investment in our road and utility infrastructure is vitally important. you also noted that these projects, to upgrade our sewer, water, gas lines and streets disrupt people's lives on a daily basis. we don't dispute that, but what we hope to make clear today is that as stewards of the public right-of-way and our critical public infrastructure, we go to a great length to minimize those disruptions through a

methodical coordination and oversight. this is not only my mandated by city code, but it's also the core component of our collective missions. and it must be noted that these short-term disruptions result in long-term gains. there is no doubt that we would rather be praised than criticized for all the work that's taken place to improve san francisco, making our city safer, more resilient and more efficient to serve this generation and many more generations to come. like you, supervisors, at times we hear from constituents when a project seems to be taking too long to complete when there is dust, traffic congestion, vibrations, parking restrictions or noise, we take thea complaints very seriously and work to resolve them or make them less disruptive whenever we can. and sometimes when we can't or when we unintentionally drop the ball, we look for ways to do a better job going forward. as you will see in one of the

slides in the next presentation, we have hundreds of projects underway and the pipeline at any given time. and i assure you that the city agencies and when applicable private utility companies coordinate the work every day. i can tell you without hesitation that there is unpresidented level of synchronization. throughout all of our organizations, we hold regular safety first meetings including monthly check ins involving our directors to coordinate our projects to minimize disruption and to use our public funding wisely. we track progress using time technology and we make public outreach a priority. again, i want to thank you for holding this hearing. as i stated earlier, we have representatives led by vince harris who is the director at mta and emilio cruz at puc here to answer any questions you have.

together we prepared a powerpoint presentation presented by lynn fong at our bureau and street use mapping. the presentation will [speaker not understood] steps we take jointly to coordinate these projects. thank you. >> good afternoon, members of the board. my name is lynn fong. i'm from the department of public works. and the purpose of this presentation is to provide an overview of how city agencies work together to coordinate infrastructure projects within the public rights-of-way. again, i just wanted to emphasize, we have representatives from all departments on hand to speak about the specifics that you might have. so, coordination is imperative in the city's effort to improve the quality of life in san francisco, and coordination can be successfully achieved through efficient, effective, and fair administration of the

city's excavation code. the excavation code can be found in public works code article 2.4. article 2.4 governs the rules and regulations for excavating, coordinating and notification for excavation projects. this map you see is a map extracted from vista, the city's mapping tool that maps out projects in the public right-of-way. each icon on the map represents either a currently planned or ongoing construction project. as you can see from this map, we have a lot of excavation and projects going on in the city. and in order to ensure that public visitors and residents are able to safely navigate the city within the least amount -- with the least amount of construction disruption possible, it is imperative that excavators are required to coordinate projects. to give you just a summary, in 2013 alone, over 4,000 excavation permits were issued resulting in over 10,000 street segments or 100 miles of impacted roadway. that means one in nine blocks

in the city have a planned project or a project that's currently under construction. that includes 50 miles of paving, 15 miles of sewer, 15 miles of water replacement, ~ and 23 miles of pg&e gas main replacements. so, our goal to coordinate include minimizing the impacts of streets that are under construction, protecting the public's investment in the infrastructure improvements, and improving the public right-of-way by completing all public projects in the most efficient and effective way possible through the use of coordination tools and effective public outreach. coordination is a requirement of the public works code. specifically, public works code 2.4.12 is called the coordination of street construction and the requirements include the following. coordination shall occur when work is planned [speaker not understood] within a five-year period. when work is planned in the time frame for two ore more

city agency, one agency shall perform the work with an agency joining in a joint contract. also when work is planned within same time frame for two or more private utilities, one agency shall perform the work with the other agency joining in. permits shall be conditioned to maximize coordination and minimize construction [speaker not understood] construction period that owe can ierx. -- occur. as part of administrative code chapter 5 article 7, they are required to participate in a meeting called [speaker not understood]. it is utility liaison on construction and other projects. the duties of the subcommittee will be to work out scheduling of utility work that is connected to the department of public works projects. the purpose of the monthly coordination meetings are to create joint projects and to minimize the impact of construction on our streets and in our neighborhoods. members of cold call include dpa, dpw, mta, puc, pg&e,

comcast, at&t, dtis, sf thermal and other various telecom companies. >> in terms of how the coordination actually happens -- and i know it's very challenging so, you know, if pg&e goes in and starts by doing its work and it's going to hand off to the water department and the sewer department, so forth, i can imagine it being very challenging because there's no way to predict exactly how long, say, the initial agency is going to take and then presumably the second agency that's going to go in, they he need to bid out their contract. so, it can be a cumbersome project. presents a lot of challenges. and i know we ideally would love it that one agency ends and the next day agency picks up where it left off. how do the departments work to minimize the gaps between the projects? because -- i've seen this in my

district a few times -- from beginning to end it can take an awfully long time. how are you all trying to minimize those gaps? >> one of the main ways to minimize the gaps is to create what we just called joint projects. what that entails, there would be one contractor that does all the work instead of multiple contractors with multiple schedules. a joint contract will create just one contract with water, sewer, and paving, all tied into one. and to minimize the disruption, it is in a linear fashion. first sewer goes in because it's the leest utility, followed by water, and then finally by the paving. but it has to be in a linear fashion. and the way to minimize it is we do it in block segments at a time. we don't try to dig out the whole entire length. let's say there is a long project along market street. we would not completely dig out the whole entire market street from first to ninth, let's say, and then come in later and do

sewer. what we try to do is in more discrete segment at a time so we go from area to area. >> how does that work in practice? because i have heard of some projects that are very fast, where constituents report everyone got in and out pretty quickly from beginning to end was a few months. we've had a few others, like on casalle street, going up the hill, ended up being the sort of never ending projects. i'm sure there are complexities -- in practice, how does that play out? >> so, there are complexities like you did mention, the complexities do include sometimes there is repair work, unintended repair work that is discovered. and if that does happen, that type of work does need to go back into the design plan and although it doesn't seem as though we are not coordinating or we're not being effective with the timing, there is some back -- there is behind the scenes work that is

going on where let's say there is a repair work of water that is unattended that has to go back to the designer, that has to be replanned out, that has to be redesigned out and then has to go back to the contractor. change orders need to occur, and this does take time. it does seem like it takes a lot of time, but there is a coordinated effort to try to get that work done and completed in that segment as fast as possible. so, that's what happens. it's just the public doesn't see that. it's all behind the scenes. >> is there some sort of safety net to flag, for example, streets that it's taking an inordinate amount of time? that's what ends up causing the frustration where people say i know this is really important work, but why is it, you know, why are there these huge gaps in time and the streets in bad shape? >> well, what we do have are just -- when there is work that does occur, there are permit requirements that start an end date -- say there is an extension. questions are asked, you know,

the department doesn't just allow extensions to occur. they say, well, why do you need the extension? what work is entailed with this extended work for the water department, sewer? and if the contractor does have a reason why, we say, well, is there a way you can condense that time frame, do you need the extra two months or are there areas you can work on while you do the investigation for this particular area? so, there are questions asked instead of the contractor being allowed to work as long as they want. so, that's how we mitigate to what extent we could. >> in terms of the contractors, how are we -- i know there are different agencies that might be the contracting department with the contractor. how do we make sure the contractors are complying with their -- in terms of their contracting? not just the timing aspect, but also just i think some of the

smaller things that really can frustrate people in terms of cleanliness and picking up after themselves or trying to minimize dust so people aren't having enormous dust coming in their windows or covering their cars, or only putting up no parking signs when they're actually going to be doing work. i know that really drives people nuts when, you know, no work is happening for a week, yet the entire side of the street says no parking. how do we -- how do departments really hold the contractors accountable for those kinds of things? >> so, that's why we have inspectors at hand. we have bsn inspectors, we have department of public works, inspectors that are assigned to specific city contracts. we have puc inspectors and nmt inspectors, we do -- inspector are required to ensure that housekeeping is met, restoration is completed in a timely manner, and basically to make sure the contractor adheres to the public works

code excavation code 2.4 i mentioned previously. you know, like i just said, there is so much work going on in public right-of-way. inspectors can't be everywhere at all times. so, the way we engage with the public is you can always call 311 if you see a trench that needs to be repaired, or if you see dust that seems more than what it should be, or you know, just more construction disruption. we very much encourage the public to come out, to come and contact us through 311. and that's -- we work together, you know, with the community in that way. and as far as the parking signs, you know, that is a really big challenge for us. if you do see -- part of our notification is the parking signs. the parking signs are required to be placed a minimum of three days in advance so that the public does know, hey, there's work being planned in this area and the parking signs are the only notification often that the public does receive for

projects that are in duration of 14 days or less. so, what happens is that the contractor, you know, by code is required to place the signs just as the notification, but sometimes something comes up where they don't -- they're not -- they can't start on that day. you know, it's inclement weather, maybe there is something they didn't mobilize all their equipment in a timely manner. they have to mobilize their equipment to another emergency job. but that's what does happen and that's what we do in order to try to mitigate or, you know, reduce the construction concerns that the public does have. >> thank you. >> okay. do you want me to continue on? >> please. >> so, where are we? next page. this is a list of example of coordinated projects. code cop and other city agencies engage together to create these coordination projects. so, it's important to note even when projects are joined or coordinated, the order is linear and therefore it can have the feel of two to three

separate contracts with a prolonged schedule. however, i just want to point out that the benefits of coordinating are a greater infrastructure reliability, less chance of pavement failure, less chance of cutting into a newly paved street, there is a cost savings involved, and there is a more intense construction that arection -- more intense construction up froth will reduce construction needs in the future ~ so that if we if youth in water, sewer and paving at the same time, yes, it can be a huge nightmare, especially for the community that are impacted by it. but we get this all done at one time just through a coordinated project instead of coming in and leaving the area, then coming back in months later. and the next page is sfmta improvement condition projects. there is mta staff on hand that might want to come up and talk a little bit about the next two slides.

>> mr. chairman, supervisors, good afternoon. i'm vince harris for capital programs and construction for sfmta. i'm also joined this afternoon by brian who is our senior engineer for traffic routing and for sfmta's single streets division, also our communications division director candy sue is also here available to answer questions that you might have. we'd just like to take a few moments and provide some sfmta context if we could. first of all, we want the committee to know that sfmta recognizes and takes extremely seriously the importance of inter agency coordination to reduce construction impacts on our traveling public, and san francisco communities. as it relates to our division, capital programs and construction we call cpmc deliver capital mta plan revolves around four basic categories of work. shown on this slide, they include system safety security project, system expansion,

state of good repair. of thea category projects, the one that requires probably the most coordination and interface with our city family partners is probably state of good repair. these are projects like our major road replacement, projects on lrv cable car lines, or overhead contact wire replacements for trolley coaches and lrvs. this can be caused by sfmta upgrades, but they can also be caused by the result of work by other departments as well. as it relates to coordination, this process literally starts right at the beginning of any project that we do. our process for project delivery includes capital improvement program planning, project initiation, country clubtion turrell engineering, detail design, and of course actual construction which includes contracting, construction management, and project close out. during cip planning, we set project scopes, estimates,

target schedules as well as we establish all key project interfaces with other city departments and any third parties, for example, pg&e. we also begin the development of our outreach plan for the [speaker not understood]. this work as we get and go through our process is further refined as we go through each phase of delivery. i'm going to stop there just for a moment and ask brian and candice to have a word and we'll come back. >> hello, i'm brian duso with sfmta traffic routing. stainable streets division. so, my team, the traffic section, we work with dpw, muni, puc and port on the various projects developments, specifications detailing land requirements, how many lands will be affected at a given time for a particular construction by a particular project and question also work on restoring the striping after the work is completed. we also work to make sure that a lot of these projects are

coordinated together, both with public and private construction projects, and our specifications in addition to land requirements focused on traffic requirements. we also take into account and make sure that transit needs are taken care of, make sure there is a safe travel to path for bicycles and safe for other travel pedestrians. finally, last point on our section the holiday moratorium to make sure the holiday moratorium, excuse me, special events temporary street closures are also perfected during construction. >> a couple of questions. in terms of -- this is a question we get a lot, in terms of once road work is done, the repainting, and my understanding is that as soon as people say why it's the most bizarre restriping. it is ultimately followed at some point by the permanent restriping, the painting, the

stop lines, so forth. can you just explain that process and how long it typically takes to get the permanent restriping down? >> certainly. so, for most city projects, they're going to. to provide temporary striping until the block is accepted. what they mean by that is dpw, in this case, would inspect the block to make sure that it was paved to city standards before it was accepted. at that point we can restore striping. so, we have increased our striping crews, number of crews that we had, we purchased additional equipment. all that came on board early last year so that we could keep up with a lot of the construction that's going on. a typical crew, which is five people, can probably stripe i'd say three blocks per week. again, it depends on hyde the street s how many lanes we have, and how long the belongs are. these are alvare i can't believes. that's typical. ~ it doesn't happen in linear fashion.

fulton street which was just repaved, they did all the lane striping first and then came back and did the caracas. crosswalks. it was all completed ~. the lanes were down much more quickly before they came back and did the crosswalks, which takes much loppinger. one thing that dpw has done to help us out a lot is we used to accept larger segments and they've broken them up into smaller segments, maybe a five block segment, now we can start striping that right away rather than waiting for the completion of the project. that has gone a long way to improving our ability to respond and get striping down more quickly. >> okay. my other question, i'm not sure mr. de set oto if you would be the person to answer this. in terms of the follow-up paving where we want to make sure ~ that as repaving and other road work is happening, that mta can determine, we do want to do whether it's build outs or other projects, i don't know how that's working.

related -- i know i had expressed some frustration to dpw a while back, and i think this has been addressed that we're under aba transition plan, putting new curb ramps throughout the city, and that there are -- there were some intersections that were being done that are really problematic, pedestrian intersectionses that we wanted to build out for a while, and they were being -- intersections were being completely taken apart and back together with curb ramps without build out. is there more coordination between dpw and mta, not that we want to build out every intersection, but to at least not -- potentially say we can have the resources and do this now and not have to tear up the intersection repeatedly, let's do that. can you or someone comment