buses run on diesel fuel. they cause cancer risk that exceeds ceqa threshold adopted by our bay area district and slows down muni transportation time. that cause conflicts with bicycles and displays our low income and modern income community about who we were just speaking in the last item. at the same time, we are trying to create new housing opportunities for low and moderate income people in secondary housing units and loudable goal we are creating shuttle buses that displace the low income people we are trying to help. ceqa recognizes -- >> can i mention this. we have a rule in the board chamber

to not express either support or opposition to statements. if there is going to be a statement that everyone disagrees with ora -- an agrees with. we pause your time. back to you. >> thank you. at the same time, that the city is performing a ceqa exemption, the city is preparing a full environmental impact report for muni's transit efficiency tax project. muni has to do a full eir. when google wants to run illegal pilot shuttle there is no review at all. environmental review, ceqa review is required to analyze what are the impacts of this in terms of pedestrians, damage to our streets, in terms of bicycle safety and

-- diesel emissions and what are the measures to reduce those impacts. can require non-diesel buses and those that don't interfere with bicycle lanes and pedestrians. can we require funding for low and moderate income housing. these are all alternatives that would be analyzed in a ceqa eir and what this city is bypassing completely. that is illegal. class 6, it says it's limited to basic data collection and research and experimental management. this

is not an experiment. also, this project goes far beyond the information collection. we are not just collecting data about the buses, they are changing the law. currently it's illegal for these buses to stop in red zones at all. the city is changing the law to make it legal. that's not just information collection, that's a law change. also, the city admits that ill will be moving stops and relocating many of these stops. that's also the court may not exact exemption from ceqa if there is environmental impact. we have that here in spades. the

budget and the city's own budget and legislative analyst report which was issued yesterday and was commissioned by supervisor eric mar concludes that these buses are having a negative impact on san francisco. the reports conclude that these google buses they are extremely heavy. they are 60,000 pounds when fully loaded cause over a dollar a damage to city streets for every mile traveled. by comparison, a fully loaded suv causes one penny of damage to city streets. we are talking about a lot of damage. we are not talking $1 per is to the. -- stop. it cost me $2 to get on a muni. these buses are conflicting with muni

services. the report also concludes that these shuttles are blocking traffic and causing safety impacts on pedestrians and bicyclist and especially differently abled people not able to get out because these commuter shuttles are blocking the muni stops. we commissioned reports from impact partners of a reputable firm that did studies throughout the state. that this is an environmental impact displacement. they are caution displacement impact and brining high income people into the city and displacing low income and moderate

income people. in school bussing we bus low income children of color to go to neighborhoods of quality schools . here we are bussing white adults where they displace low and moderate income people. this is the reverse of affirmative action. human impact partners concludes that this has significant noise impact and we have submitted reports from rose feld that these shuttle buses alone cause significant -- cancerous risk. the baseline is for two reasons. it's illegal, an illegal operation cannot be the ceqa baseline. these are pirate

shuttles. second. the city is changing the law. in so doing it's taking something that is currently illegal and trying to make it legal. with submitted the testimony of traffic engineer tom bro hard, a professional engineer. many don't want to run illegal pilot shuttles. they have reducing the number of operators and increase the number of buses, operators and air quality risk. this is not merely maintaining the status quo ante, this will result in increase in the impact we are currently seeing from the illegal program. thank you. i will be happy to answer any

questions. >> thank you. i think a number of us are trying to understand what happens if we would support you on this appeal. i understand your argument is that with commuter shuttles and the program as proposed we would see more traffic accidents and more pollution and more congestion. and we learned from the mta that if shuttles in san francisco are removed, 50 percent of those that don't have cars would get cars, 35,000 car trips a day, 11,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. can you help us understand the continue -- contradictions in the argument? >> most than half said they would drive alone if the

shuttles were discontinue. >> half said they would drive alone. >> 49 percent said they would live in san francisco and would also put less pressure on low and moderate income housing in the city and the next is public transit. which is also great. this is not the end of the world. but if the board were to require ceqa review, the shuttles would simply continue to operate as they have been as a gray area of the law. the city has not been issuing many tickets. they though -- know they violating the law. there is not formal agency action. it's the agency action that triggers the ceqa review. we can ceqa review is required to

legalize this program and then make a fully informed decision on how the program ought to operate and what measures imposed including emission controls, location of stops and funding moderate and low income housing. in the meantime i believe the program could continue to run in the gray area that it's been running for about 3 years. >> i appreciate those comments. i appreciate the fact that there likely will be some people who will been taking public transit but let's say there is chance that 49 of them will be driving in their private vehicles and wonder what kind of effect that is going to have on our streets when it comes to pollution and traffic. also if you can respond to the san francisco bicycle coalition sent us a letter and what they laid out also echoed in the

article that said that shared grave concerns about this appeal because if we were to uphold this appeal that would jeopardize this program to advance bicycling and pedestrian safety and transit improvement. we know we are in a time where we need do everything we can to move forward with pedestrian improvements and cycling improvements. can you respond to this issue? >> frankly i don't understand the comment. we are not saying those are improper. we are saying this one is in large part because buses are interfering with bicycle lanes and those are precisely the impacts that ought to mitigate on the eir. these are those

who raised these concerned. i would find the best locations for shuttle buses to stop that don't interfere with bicycles and pedestrians. >> i might be interested if we were adopting a permanent program. if we were to support your appeal, the same wild west that occurs in the street with a lack of regulatory control around commuter traffic would exist and what we currently see on the streets without any rules, i'm trying to understand that i would think that a pilot program that creates some rules and structures which the sf mta has dealt with the number of issues would be addressed. i'm not sure why that is not preferable to a situation that we would have a lack of rules and chaos on our streets. >> before we write those

rules, we should know what we are writing. we need ceqa review to write, if we have stopping, what should those stops should be and what those mitigation measures be. if san francisco wants to reroute the commuter buses, it did you tell does an eir. why should google buses we preferentially treated to our system. >> we are including data to inform the best policy that we have. >> over an 18-month period is a long time and before the government takes a year 1/2 and starts moving things around without knowing what kind of impacts we are going to have, it's important to do the ceqa review now upfront and that's what the law requires. we are not talking about, we are talking about two things, policy and law. the law is meaningful and ceqa says before government takes

action you have to be fully informed. you have to analyze the environmental impacts and alternatives before you take action. ceqa says look before you leap. >> i appreciate that. >> thank you for the presentation, mr. drurey and for the very helpful submissions. i have a number of questions for you about some different contensions that you've raised. so, the first is you made a couple comments today and also rethinking your brief. in your presentation today you talked about "trucking in high income people who will displace other

san francisco residents" bringing high income people in "and in page 10 you talk about displacement and" replace them with workers with the technical companies sponsoring these shuttles and wealthier and less likely to come from people of color. "my question to you is what do you mean by those sentences? let me tell you how i'm reading those and frank lau e -- frankly what i think is at the center of causing cancer and bicycling. these statements are at the front of what is going on here is what is not a ceqa issue which is a political current. that is a significant set of

assumptions that use technology workers that aren't real san franciscans. that they came here as a result of the shuttles, that there is some sort of outside invading force taking over our city and that they just aren't one of us. now, we know and anyone who knows people who ride these shuttles knows that quite a few of them have lived here for a very long time. many of them used to drive and now take the shuttles. many of them consider san francisco home and are passionate about this city and in fact in the survey that you just cited more than two-thirds of them said that even if the shuttles disappeared tomorrow they would stay in san francisco and half of them would brave that awful community -- commute on the 101. given

that, is it your contention that these people who are on these shuttles are actually not real san franciscans? that's aah! it reads and the statements you just made, that's how it's sounds. single family >> that is what is on the ceqa section g-12 that it will replace a number of existing population replacement of construction elsewhere. the place for them being displaced ground 0 is 65 percent latino, overwhelmingly of color. those people are being displaced. that is recognized by ceqa. we saw this on the fillmore redevelopment when the city

was trying to urban renewal and displaced a population. these are serious impacts. there is mitigation available in terms of housing and low and moderate funds. whether these residents are city of san city san franciscans or not. i'm from chicago. i live now in west portal. people come in. every new wave of immigrants is rejected by the old. that's how things go. >> that doesn't make it right. >> i'm saying it's a natural thing, but when the government takes action that will result in mass displacement of people which this will. ceqa requires that that impact be analyzed and mitigation measures

adopted and implemented. >> my next question is going to be about whether these shuttles are cause a displacement that we are all concerned about and the displacement is happening and goes well beyond the communities described as happening in my district as well that we see because of the explosion of housing prices with significant displacement and we are all concerned about addressing the housing issues that have caused that displacement. i do think that just because it's the tradition of whether it's human innate -- nature or san francisco themselves and that they are causing the problems are to blame i think it has nothing to do with ceqa. what we are talking about displacement and what we are seeing and concerned about, i have a few questions. in

terms of the shuttle program, my understanding is that 80 percent of the shuttles at issue that are part of this program are not shuttles that go between san francisco and the peninsula, but shuttles that operate exclusively within the city. ucsf, kaiser, academy of arts, levis, san francisco general, gap, williamson ma. why doesn't your brief talk about the 80 percent of the shuttles that are within san francisco, unless i missed something, the exclusive focus has been on the 20 percent that go down to the peninsula? >> because the 20 percent that have the impact that we are complaining about. the one, inter city shuttles, academy

arts, the white zones, that is legal. the shuttles is 1/4 of the long distance shuttles and they don't have the same impact on air pollution. many of them run on gas and not the same amount of diesel fuel and because they are smaller and shorter, they don't have the same interference. almost all of those that we are talking about excluding displacement do not exist. it's the inter city buses causing this ceqa impact. >> if the inter city within san francisco? >> yes. the long distance shuttles are causing the impact of the streets, pedestrian safety that we are talking about. >> even though 80 percent of the rider ship of the

intracity shuttles that you have more vehicles some which use white zones and muni stops those are not causing gentrification, not causing noise pollution and not giving people cancerous. in fact, when you look at the gentrification issue, some of those institutions and companies i just read, i'm sure that they rival a lot of these companies in terms of what they are paying a lot of their workers. the health care industry has some very highly compensated people as well as levis and gap and it's your position that only the fact that tech workers living here is causing gentrification and only the tech shuttles that are causing the noise and cancer problems. i don't understand that distinction except under what i talked

about before that these are somehow not real san franciscans and we want them out of the city. >> i never said that. you are putting words into my mouth. these tech workers are like any others in the city and have the right to live where they like. when the government takes an action like ceqa, that what we are saying. the intra city shuttles don't have the impact to move them. it's a different kind of impact than a shuttle that's taking someone down to mission bay and back home into their home in the city. >> i think that statement you just made shows exactly what this is about. that was an extreme stereotype of people

working in that industry. let's talk about whether these shuttles are actually responsible for the displacement that we are all very concerned about. so, as i understand it from the mta, of the 35,000 daily boardings and as i understand it it's not the number of riders. most people will take a round trip and board on one end and to go back home. of that 35,000 number of boardings each day, 20 percent approximately are from the shuttles that are taking people down to the peninsula. mta tells me it's about 6500 daily boardings of intracity bussing approximately 250 riders are making a round trip. now, as

you also have indicated before according to the mta's data, if the shuttles were to go away about 30 percent of the people surveyed of the riders wouldn't make the trip anymore. now, of course some of those people as you mentioned which would get a different job or work from home, they would continue to -- let's say 30 percent moved down to the peninsula. 30 percent of 2550 riders is an a little of about a thousand people in your best scenario

leaving san francisco and move into peninsula. put that in context of a population of increase of 75,000. is it your position that those 1,000 tech workers leaving san francisco and move to the peninsula is going to have a significant impact in terms of reducing displacement in san francisco? >> yes. and the reason is that ceqa recognizes that impacts are cumulative. you can never say all the pollution in the bay area is because of chevron or shell. it's cumulative impact that comes from many sources. the budget and legislative analyst report recognizes that this is one impact that is contributing

to gentrification in san francisco and it's a localized one. you will hear testimony from others who have done mapping and say 4 blocks of google stops property values have appreciated much faster than in other locations. in other words the google stops themselves are having a market impact on rent appreciation in there by displacement into highly localized ill -- impact. people don't walk to their google shop. when you look at craigslist that says 2 blocks away from the google stop. at premium marketing and it has a very significant impact on those locations particularly clustered from the mission district. my comment about denny's. i

apologize but i don't because there are summaries that reasons that people choose to live in san francisco. most of them are quality of life and we have wonderful entertainment and restaurants that you don't generally find in the suburb. that was a shorthand way of saying that. but it's true, that is why a lot of creative tech workers many of whom are friends of mine, by the way, and my children go to school and their children go to the same schools. i have nothing against that, but when there is a government action, a ceqa requirement is done. >> maybe there were more studies attached about

gentrification and dynamics and causes of gentrification. one of the theories any other that has been studied is that transit in some sense can cause gentrification because people want to live around transit and we are a transit for city and want people to use transit and we find that when you have a good and usable transit hub people want to live around that and that can lead to higher property values." so is it worry position that if transit service or transportation service in general whether it's a freeway or transit service, if transit service is improved to make it easier to get from one part of the bay area to another part of the bay area, does that mean that the potential gentrification of packets of

that transit improvement need to potentially trigger an eir. so, example, let's say a shuttle disappears tomorrow and at the same time muni and cal transdo what we have been begging for years. that muni increases it's service to have more frequent service to get people from different parts of san francisco via bus to cal train faster whether it's faster service on the -- to get there or faster service on a number of the other established lines to get this. we are going to put more buses on there and make it a better service to make it an easier connection and at the same time finally cal trains electrifies and cal train adds more vehicles and so we have a much better connection. so the shuttles disappear but it's