fisherman's wharf and especially around alamo square and supervisor breed's district and golden gate park of which my district has a large portion and especially around 8th and 10th and 15th with different cut throughs to the park, but also, along the park boulevard, that runs north, south on different routes that are taken alternatively by some of these buss that go through the residential areas. i know the importance of the tourism industry and that the tour buses that are beneficial in some ways to our economy and the city. i think that there are limited things that we have enforced in the city and i know that we have the bus parking management plan and a number of changes and even severe restrictions and bans but in many residential areas and i think that many of my constituents

feel that there is not enough enforcement that we need to see more safety, especially where a big tour bus went down in a residential street on 12th avenue and five people were injured and one person, very, very severely. my office started talking where casino buses and other types of private buses traveled frequently, right near child care and library and they line up and layover where they load the passengers similar to the tech buses that are now all

over parts of the mission but also but definitely more fitting for a commercial corridor and this is an ongoing issue for my office and there is a number of frustrated rents that have met with the mta. and the concerns rose last year, after the incident on 12th avenue. the sierra club has weighed in and i know that there are changes from the end of last year as well, but the residents on mccalister and other streets have raised the concerns with my office as well. and i think that the goals for this hearing for me are to hear from mr. robins and the mta on how out reach is done and the engagement of different neighborhoods when they raise

the concerns. and i know that 12th avenue is an alternate street when the boulevard becomes too heavy with traffic for some of the bus drivers and i want to be sure that we endorse the rules about the double parking and installing the buses in different areas throughout the city. and to develop the clear guidelines to allow or to restrict the buses and the private tour buss that travel down those streets and i am going to encourage the residents from not only my district but other residents to work with the mta and how we can protect the public safety and keep our residential corridors as livable as possible

i want to know if jerry robins can present and i know that there is a powerpoint given from his office. >> thank you >> good morning, supervisor mar and yee, and i am jerry robins with the sustainable streets division with the sfmta i have a five-minute powerpoint with an overview of the tour bus regulation issues that we deal with. thank you. >> tour buses do have complaints about the parking and the traffic conflicts as shown in these photographs. and wide turns that can cause concerns, and some of the buses use amplified loud speakers and the buses often have loud engine noise on hills. and emissions are also an issue.

and loud buses on the city streets, tourism is the number one industry and the buses are a more ifish ent way to move people than if they drove in cars or rented cars and the bus pros vied a popular service. sfmta has tried to mediate and tried to seek, win-win situation, the tools that we have available for us is that we are able to restrict the tour buses with eight or more streets completely and we can either invoke that or not invoke it and there is not little ground and we say say that five buses are permitted but beyond that no buses are allow and it is kind of an all or nothing regulation, the state public utilities commission and the licenses and buses that operate in more than

one county, so, it is state law prevents the city from requiring the operators or issuing permits to tour bus companies to operate on a specific route, we are not able to do that, if they just go across the golden gate bridge, into the county, they are preempted from these regulations are enforced and defined by 100 dollars and the sfmta parking patrol offices can enforce if the buses are illegally parked but only the police department can enforce it operating on a restricted

street. ? examples of restrictions that work well, this map, shows twin peaks in the middle of the map, the figure eight roadways and there are two ways to get up to twin peaks and if you come in from the north, excuse me, you are traveling by a lot of residential, land uses. and at that approach is restricted and if you come in from the south you are not driving by anybody's houses. and that is unrestricted and we encourage the buses to come up using that route. and we think that this works well. >> before you continue, one thing that i am curious about is what the criteria for deciding, what streets are not allowed to go to, how do you make that decision. >> sure. >> that will be helpful. >> we want to make sure that the people can get to places like twin peaks in a bus so if there is one route that is available, like this one coming up from the south, then we feel

comfortable, restricting the other streets that are more sensitive with the residential land uses that is not always the indicate. and in a telegraph hill there is one way up and down, and the buses are restricted and they are not allowed to go up there and there is not enough rooms to park the bus at thes top of the hill any way and so we try to take into account the concerns of the residents the concerns of the adjacent land uses but also the needs of the tour bus companies to get where they need to go. >> supervisor mar? >> you know, i just was going to ask about the criteria and do you consider if there are senior centers, child care or school, facilities, and sensitive populations of people where safety might be even more important on some streets? >> all of those sensitive land uses we take into consideration. >> because i worry, if policies are driven by just by the

number of people that complain, i guess that one worry is equity for equity purposes, the most affluent neighborhoods get the most and the low income might not raise as much of a stink of the tour buses coming down the streets and so i am wondering how you factor in the equity about the vulnerable populations. >> sure we are sensitive to that certain and we try to take the needs of all of the residents into consideration. ... >> how do you do that by the way? >> we travel to the site, and we make observations, and we talk to the people who have made the complaints. and we talk to the tour bus operators. and in many cases we are able to persuade the daour bus operators to take another round around the sensitive areas if possible without evoking any instruct regulations, if that does not work, then we will move forward with the restrictions. >> okay.

can i just say that around the twin peaks area, and then you have in the marina around fort mason here, we had some north beach telegraph hill as you mentioned in alamo square and i am going to guess that those are more of the afluent areas of the city and are there examples that you have in lower income neighborhoods where you are also sensitive to residents around for senior sen ters or schools mr. robins? >> well, on the map here, i am sorry, it is a small scale, but, there are a lot of restrictions on the northern end of the city and there are also, some restrictions in the bay view hunter's point area on the vehicles over three tons which would also apply to tour buses and other parts of the city where i think there has been a lot of conflicts between the trucks and residential land uses and we have tried to keep the trucks off of the residential streets as much as

possible in those neighborhoods. so, you mentioned fort mason, this is a restriction that we think is not working very well, and fort mason is in the center of this photograph, and there is no way to get a bus to fort mason without driving over one of these restricted streets and that is something that we are trying to avoid. and we think that it is good, that the buses are able to get into a place like fort mason, when they have the events, but in this case, we have made it very difficult for them to do that legally, and we want to avoid replicating that type of situation. >> supervisor yee? >> just a quick clarification, we have two colors here green and red? >> yes, so which one? >> thank you, >> the red line is restriction on any vehicle over three tons. that would apply to a truck or a tour bus, the green applies to commercial vehicles, with

eight or more passengers. >> got it, thank you. >> that covers tour bus and small vans. and i just like to point out that in addition to attractions like fort mason there are businesses, located in mixed use areas or residential areas that rely on the tour buses to get groups, and group clientele to their business and we try to be sensitive to that as well. >> one thing that we are working on, this was suggested by supervisor mar's staff, is in addition to pointing out the restricted streets to the tour bus operators who also, indicate which streets, we encourage the buses to be on. we are working on this map now, that shows the arterial streets

in yellow and the streets that we would like the busing to stay on it also shows the major destinations and the vista point and the places where they can stop and load the passengers legally and really can park and this is also a positive message as well as the restrictive message to get out to the tourist industry. we also have the ability to create tour bus loading zones such as this one which reserves the space for the buses so they can get to the curve and puts a time limit on how long they can stay. >> finally, we do do a lot of out reach and we work with the community groups and san francisco travel and the tour bus associations and the san francisco tour guide as examples of groups that we are dealing with, i think that our biggest challenge is a lot of the tour buses come from out of the area, and there are hundreds of companies around

the country, and it is difficult and challenging for us to communicate these restrictions and guidelines, to them efficiently. >> thank you, would i be happy to answer your questions or go to public comment? >> i think that we might have some public comment, but i just was going to ask about the 12th avenue incident? >> right. >> so the bus tours usually goes down the park boulevard north and south and the traffic seemed to be so heavy that the driver took an alternate route but could you talk about what the approved alternative routes are and what conditions allow a driver to move off of the preferred boulevard type of route and to go down a residential street where he hit a low, hanging wire, and it cut through the top of the so-called poplus tour bus and

the two, double decker tour bus and almost ripped a woman's nose off and injured other people in that incident, and could you talk about what has been done after that incident to make sure that he streets and those types of tour buses are safe? >> my understanding is that the wires are required to be 18 feet off of the ground and in this case, something went wrong, and the wire has been lowered. so we have encouraged all of the operators of these double decker tour buses to be very aware of the situation and be cautious of any low hanging wires. because, >> the bus tours is a private company that you can only encourage them to do that, what more could you do to protect the safety of the passengers of those types of vehicles or even the residential area that they go down where the wires may hang low in the future as well?

>> and we could, other than to encourage them to be cautious, the next step would be to restrict them from the certain streets with you we don't know in advance when the wires are going to be substandard or lowered. my impression is that this was... >> supervisor yee has a yes about that. >> the question, who is responsible in this city for these wires? to make sure that they are 18 feet? >> the state public utility commission regulates the utility that places the wires. >> and so, who communicates with them? from the city? >> we communicate with that agency. occasionally. people have the ability to file complaints and contact them.

and across the street at van ness >> do you know even though it is not, our responsibility, do you know how we actually come out to check? is there a constant checking of the heights of these wires? or is there... an assumption that they are all 18 feet and something happens, and waiting for an accident to happen before you respond? >> i really can't speak to their inspection practices i am not knowledgeable about that. >> you know, i think that we need to bring them in and ask, because, really it does beg the question, like, on the one hand, it would be nice if the bus drivers could be more careful, but, if they are driving with the assumption that it should be 18 feet, it is very difficult for i would imagine a bus driver to run into a wire and realize oh, my

god it is not 18 feet. and so, i hope that we can follow up with that discussion. >> i think that would be helpful and before we proceed, not that no one else here is special, but i do want to acknowledge some special guests who are visiting the chamber. teen parker elementary school, and so,... >> that is where supervisor yee went. >> okay. >> and so, welcome elementary school to city hall. >> yeah, really give them... >> and give them a big hand. >> i just want to follow up, so what has the mta done after that terrible accident injuring five people on 12th avenue, have been there some restrictions on 12th avenue and if you could get back to the question of if a bus is supposed to go down the boulevard and veered off into a residential area, what conditions allow them to do that.

>> they are not restricted from many of the streets that don't show up on the map. so they have the right to do that, but should do that cautiously. >> and if you could talk about the fisherman's wharf and how the restrictions came about and i know that there are restrictions on the loud speakers from the top of those bus and driving around and then there were some restrictions made over the past few years. >> sure. >> by very active residents around the alamo square and also in the fisherman's wharf area. >> we received a number of complaints from an area between fisherman's wharf and china town about the tour buses driving through the area with the loud speakers squaring and pointed to the crooked street and people were allowed of hearing the same loud speakary nounsments every few minutes and we had several meetings

brokered by supervisor chui and we asked the tour bus to regulate the amplifiers on their own. and a period of time went by and the complaints continued and so we took the step of restricting the tour buses from the six block area. and we also made sure that the buses have an alternate route to get between fisherman's wharf and china town. and so we felt it was a reasonable restriction that didn't impede them from doing business in the area. >> could you talk about the alamo square restrictions that came did a few months ago? >> right, back in 2011, we received a letter from the alamo square association addressing a long standing concern about the large volume of tour buses that were driving by, stopping on haze street, and letting passengers out, swarming across the street. and blocking traffic and again,

using cloud speakers and making wide turns that delayed traffic, and emissions, and all of those complaints, that i mentioned earlier. and we did an extensive evaluation of the area and we counted the number of buses and we went through the environmental clearance and then we worked closely and we had a tour bus task force where we invited people from the pec and from the police department, from the various neighborhoods, various tour bus companies and the san francisco travel, and tried to work out something that would make everybody happy. and maybe allow buses on one street, but, just different from other streets and the square and we were not able to reach any kind of compromise like that, so we moved forward with the total restriction around that 13, and 14 block area around alamo square. >> and that was went into effect, january 15th of this

year. >> thank you, i really appreciate the changes and engaging of both of those different neighborhoods but my hope is that our office continues to work with you and the residents of the inner and the central richmond that have been expressing some similar concerns over the past few years but thank you for your presentation and your work. >> you are welcome. >> supervisor yee. >> i just have one more thought. is it and has there been any discussion, whether or not it makes me sense that whenever a tour bus want to operate in san francisco, that they actually could go through and not a permit, but go through the process where they indicate to mta or some other organization of the department that they will be operating it and this is the route that they are

taking, do you do that at all? >> i would like to see that done, they apply through the state puc and we request that he forward those applications to us and i have not received anything since we made that request about a year ago. >> and boy. >> okay, thank you. >> i do have one final question before we turn to the public comment, and as i am looking at these restrictions that are placed around these tour buses, i am wondering if the same analysis in the terms of the impacts that it could have on the residential streets is applied to the shuttles and the commuter shuttles that are being used by some companies in some parts of the city. >> i think that they should be, yes. >> we are going to be doing an 18-month pilot to study the impacts of the employer shuttle bus network and that will be part of it. but right now, no, sir

restrictions are not applied as of yet. >> no, they stay off of their streets that are currently restricted. >> okay. >> thank you. >> supervisor mar, and i wanted to just say that i think that is a great question and we are going to be having a hearing in this committee and i think in several weeks on the current regulations of the google and the bio tech bus and hopefully mr. robinson and others could share some suggestions for how to insure that they are regulated effectively as well. okay. thank you very much. >> thank you for the presentation, and why don't we open it to public comment, and any member of the public who would like to speak on this item, come forward. >> hello, supervisors mar yee, and campos, my name is shany and i am here as part of the alamo square neighborhood, but not part of the neighborhood

that was considered during this plan. and i know that safety was the initiation for this, but i wanted to emphasize the notice and quality alamo square was able to ban the buses after three years, but according to the mta, the ban took place based on the grid that alamo square provided. webster street was not included and just to address a point that was made, we do have low income housing on our street and so the problem was pushed to us and since january 15, we have had a number of tour buses come by using pas and the people are taking photos in my window. and i have had a tour bus, point up and say, look, there is an inhabitant of one of these beautiful victor ans to take a photo and people did and the notices is obnoxious and i contacted supervisor breed's office who told me that the board of supervisors has no

jurisdiction and they said that to contact the mta or organize the neighborhood association did and so three years to get our street off of this, and the mta jerry rob bins first told me to call the police every time that the noise is if someone comes by with a pa that is obviously not a viable solution, and since we have had upwards of four buses coming by an hour. and we are not at the height of tour season and then he asked me to document these offenses with photos which i have done on monday, i had a tour bus stop in front of my home to pick up tourists. and in front of my home, and so now that anderson and the board of supervisors does have an interest that was not given correct information by supervisors breed office who apparently is co-sponsored this bill, and i am asking the board of supervisors to address this problem city wide, do not ask us to fight this street by street. and neighborhood by neighborhood. and i think that it is

unacceptable. and but now on webster street we are being told to organize like the alamo square association did and to your point, the low income housing people i have tried to talk to the people and they are not interested and they don't want to create the problems and so i think that this is ab absolutely unfair situation. to ask the tax payers to manage this problem. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> welch, neighborhood council and another aspect of the issue of tour buses, haight ash bury has been the recipient of tour buss for 40 years, our usual way of dealing with it is to gere at the people on the buses. but there is a conflict that was not mentioned today and that is between the muni stops and tour buses and at haven masonic and on the 43 line and

a very con jected intersection and the transit first intersection, routinely the tour buses stop at the muni bus. there is a 71 and a 33 stop in which the tour buses routinely off load and on load folks there. and also, on shrader ash bury and coal, it is not as uncommon although not as frequently as at muni stops, we find tour buses pulling off while the patrons shop on eight street and keeping idling on these residential streets and it

seems to me extraordinarily inexplicaleb that the sfmta pays for attention or any real requirement prohibiting tour buses from dropping off a passenger at muni buses, this is not a muni bus stop period of time. we are talking five to ten minutes for these buses in muni bus stops requiring muni buses to pull around them or double park or double load. which is about the least safe thing that you can do besides riding a bicycle on masoic avenue. and so, i would hope that mta would address and this board might address exactly how mta polices this question, of the use of tour buses on muni bus

stops, thank you. >> thank you very much. >> any other speakers please come forward. and if you would like to speak if you could please line up. >> thank you. >> good morning, line up to your right and our left. >> thank you very much. >> my name is amy and i live on 10th avenue and i am one of eric mar's constituents and i have been having a lot of communication about our issue and i want to paint the picture of what it is like to be a resident for our traffic safety issue. i live across from the richmond branch library and the tenth avenue is a children's library, with the toddler playground and it is only the swings and the play structures for two to five year olds and although it is used by other children as well. and there are two schools on ninth avenue, and the school and on my street, two doors down is the neighborhood free school and i am here r