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 still easy for these technology workers to live in

san francisco and make those quick connections and get to their homes down in silicone valley. does that raise a ceqa concern around displacement to cal train and muni and say this is a ceqa problem because you are going to cause these technology workers to want to live in san francisco and we are making it too easy for them to get to work. >> absolutely. i don't want to mins words but everyday when the government does a transit program or fremont or san francisco muni program, they do an eir. the eir analysis all the impacts including air quality, including growth, what is called growth inducing impact. will it increase growth in springs when bart opens a station there. what are the mitigations for that.

how do we account for that? that's what we do everyday. that's what san francisco is doing today for the transit program. why should google shuttles be any different. >> if muni lines are coming every 45 minutes and decides to add more buses on that route and is more usable and easier for getting people around, that could trigger eir? >> it is doing that now. >> i'm talking about adding more buses on it, they have to do a full eir to do that and they have to take into account whether adding more buses on that muni line is going to displace people. >> ceqa is triggered to create a fair argument that there is going to be a significant impact. in your single line,

i downtown that line would increase displacement -- or cancerous risk. however this one does. we have expert testimony showing that these little emissions from these buses alone is above the ceqa significance threshold for cancer. there is a cancer risk plume around the stops within hundreds of residential properties because these buses run on diesel. a ceqa or eir, would say can you run them on hybrid something that muni invested in that are hybrid or electrical buses. why can't they be? >> how about making it so traffic flows better on the 101 make it easier for workers

to get to san francisco and get down the peninsula. you say that is displacement? anything that makes it easier to get around the bay area, any type of transportation improvement to make it easier to get around the bay area has issue of displacement. >> every project in san francisco road wide has had an eir. >> i'm not saying road wide. any argument, if we make it too easy for people to get around then we are going to cause displacement and it's going to cause ceqa displacement. >> i only know one way to do that. that's to widen the road. any road had an eir and

analyzes air pollution and they come up with mitigation measures. let me clarify, ceqa doesn't mean stop the project. it means study the project before you take action and when you take action and impose measures with eyes wide open. do it smart and figure out a way to benefit the residents in this city most and minimize the impacts that means funding for low and moderate income houses and whether that means emission for buses and do it with full knowledge before you take action. >> my final has to do with traffic noise cancer pedestrian arguments around these shuttles. it's your contention that these shuttles have these impacts in terms of bike pedestrian safety issues and bike lanes and giving people

cancer because of pollution and noise and so forth. so, the question is, in the context of all of the auto traffic in san francisco, if my memory serves we have around 350,000 registered vehicles in san francisco and you add on top of that the many many vehicles that come into city from the east and north and south bay there is a huge amount of traffic in this city. in the context, do you know what percentage of the pollution or noise or cancer risk is being caused by these shuttles which are a very tiny percentage of vehicles in san francisco everyday? >> the noise analysis looked at the analysis and looked at the background noise and concluded that the buses are significant. on the air

pollution impact, dr. paul rose felt did the same analysis and concluded from the diesel emissions of the buses alone exceeds the ceqa approval for the analysis. we are not talking about a drop in the bucket. >> do you know what the personal is? i assume you would put that in your brief if you knew what it was. we are talking about a hundreds of thousands of trucks, cars, suv's and every kind of vehicle that we have. all of that and you had these buses which are very very tiny number in comparison. i would think if you had that number you would have put it in or if it were at all favorable. >> it is not in there and,

the cancer is 800 in a million. it's 1.5 percent. which is the significant threshold is 10 in a million. we are above the significant threshold that has been adopted by our agencies. if you don't like that threshold, the bay area air district, take issue with them. that's the threshold adopted throughout cal kachl california. >> in terms of the bike and pedestrian problem you talked about blocking by lanes and other problems caused by the shuttles, as you were taking off some of those problems, i was thinking of i see the same exact things with muni buses and trucks. maybe i can take you through my district 1 day and we can see all the vehicles that park in bike

lanes, yes, you are absolutely right that these shuttles. i have seen that happen and seen it far more often happen with cabs and trucks and other vehicles as well. we know that muni, it's a very common complaint in the city that muni buses don't pull all the way in the bus stops. my question for you in terms of bike and pedestrian impacts, how is this at all different from the problems that we see all throughout the city all day everyday in terms of buses and trucks and other vehicles that do cause very very real problems for bikes and pedestrians? >> first off, 14,000 of us got tickets for parking in those muni zones. these google buses got 10 or 40. there is a clear differentiation of enforcement. i think it's a poor argument to say the problem is already bad so it's okay if we make it worse.

>> the problem is not that it's bad, the problem is that we are going to single out this tiny set of vehicles and workers and say they are different. it's not the shuttles that are arguing. we are going to make it this one group. that's the fundamental problem with what i think that you are arguing. >> i want to put an exclamation point to this. i have no problem with the workers. they are causing growth and bringing wonderful things to the city and creating jobs. that's great. i'm saying when a government takes and action with environmental impact, ceqa is required to minimize those impacts on the city and residents of the city and maximize the benefits of the programs and this may mean chargeing the shuttles more than a dollar to load more than a hundred people to load

them when i have to pay $2 just for myself. at what point do we mitigate the impacts and you can't do that unless you do ceqa review. you can't mitigate the impacts and have mitigation measures and alternatives that would reduce the impact to the project unless you do ceqa review. if muni has the do it, why should this private illegal program not have to follow the same rules. >> i think it's apples and oranges what you are talking about. i appreciate the responses. >> thank you. >> supervisor campos? >> >>supervisor david campos: i learned not to get in an argument with you. just a couple of points. i want to be clear about what you are saying because for any lay person there may be confusion about what the appeal is about. as i understand it just to be very clear you are not trying to stop the shuttles

from functioning in this city. >> correct. >> the only objective if we are going to have a pilot that the environmental impact should be studied? >> correct. before the government takes action, not after. >> okay. can i talk to you a little bit about the displacement issue because assumptions about whether or not displacement is happening and the questioning whether displacement wasn't happening but my understanding is that there was a recent piece of information provided by the anti-eviction mapping project. i don't know if you have seen that. >> yes. >> can you talk a little bit about that, what that is? >> absolutely. sit possible to project on this? >> it is. sf gov tv, can you

hit the projector? >> this shows that 69 percent of no fault eviction have occurred in 4 blocks of these shuttles stops. these shuttles stops have an impact on no fault eviction. they weren't doing anything wrong. they just got evicted. these shuttles, you can look by craigslist how the rents -- >> do you know of analysis issue? >> no. but the report did. the report was just released

yesterday. that report concludes that there is evidence that the shuttle buses are having an impact on displace many and causing rents to rise. there is significant evidence. one of the authors of those studies alexander goldman is here to talk about her research to show that resents have risen faster around the shuttle stops. >> to comment on whether or not the class fixed exemption is met here, can you talk a little bit about the way in which the mta is describing this pilot which the way that it reads is simply about data collection but as i understand it there is more than just data collection happening. these shuttles are transporting people and doing these other things. can you address that issue? >> correct, class six is a funny exemption. it's call

information and data collection for experimental management. it's clearly, if you look at other classic exemptions and there is absolutely no reported case law under class six. it's kind of a wild west exemption, but perhaps not for long. the other exemptions that have been granted have been for real research where we are taking water samples or digging test wells. that's what the exemption is for. if they were just running around the city taking air samples, that will be information collection exemption. here it's not just information collection, the city's actually proposing to amend the city's transportation code to make legal what is currently illegal. it's currently a violation of the state vehicle code for a private bus to stop in a public bus stop. the mta has amended the transportation code to make it legal in the

city of san francisco. i think that's preempted. i they the city's law cannot violate the higher state law. regardless, this city is taking this legal action which will have a significant impact. although, the city is also proposing to change the location of many of these stops. that is not just information collection, that's moving the desk chairs around. the court's have construed ceqa exemptions very narrowly which in the cast ak lake got leveled in an earthquake and they said we are going to do a ceqa exemption and build higher and the courts said you can't do a ceqa exemption because you are not building it the way it was. once you go outside the narrow scope of the exemption, the exemption

doesn't apply anymore. here the city is changing the law and changing the location of the stops, transit, we've got transit engineer tom bror hard who says those changes alone will increase the number of shuttles, increase amount of traffic, increased amount of pedestrian impacts because many operators don't want to operate illegally. but they will operate once the city makes it legal to do so. >> if i may, when someone is cited, what is the basis of the violation, is it the code that they point to? >> yes. it's state code 22500 which makes it illegal for any vehicle to block the bus stop. >> who enforces that?

>> the san francisco police department or muni zone enforcement officers. >> are you saying the pilot says it's okay for the shuttles to violate that section of the code? >> yes. the primary legal action occurred in the pilot program is to amend the city's transportation code. the city's transportation code makes it ill egal for a private bus stop. the pilot project amends the city's transportation code to make it lawful for these private shuttles to block the muni stations. >> is the city amending the transportation code to allow any private citizen to use the stops? >> no.

>> so you have a situation where the shuttles can park there, but if you and i do, we will get -- >> $271. >> okay. >> the private shuttles would pay $1. >> another question, is there any requirement that a ceqa exemption relate to a pilot project that is actually legal or can you issue a ceqa exemption to do something that is illegal? >> i don't think the city can authorize an illegal activity, period. there is another argument in our letter that the transportation, there is this hierarchy in law. you are a harvard guy, you know this stuff. federal law supreme and then there is state law and local ordinances. the local ordinance has to comply with

state law. state law flatly prohibit private vehicles from stopping in these red zones. the city can't change that. in fact there is a california supreme case out of oakland that he would. oakland tried to make something lawful in the city of oakland that was illegal under the state vehicle code and the city said you can't do that. >> just a final question, do you have any case law that deals with that in the context of ceqa? >> no. not off the top of my head. there is azusa landfill that was leaking in violation of state water code and the court held that because the landfill was violating the state water code it could not

be exempted from ceqa. that is fairly close and that is cited in our papers. >> thank you. >> supervisor avlz avalos? >> >>supervisor john avalos: i'm a uc santa barbara guy. there is a comparison that my colleague was making well, there are bike lanes and zones and lanes that are blocked by cars that are not shuttles that there is an existing problem because cars are already doing this. but then there is private shuttles that are doing this as well. we are singling them out in our enforcement here. what are your thoughts about that? i think that there is consistent routes that the private shuttles have that are different from cars that

randomly might be in a zone? >> i think supervisor wiener mentioned things like cars, fedex trucks and shuttles. these shuttles are huge. they are much much larger than a private automobile and larger than fedex and larger than garbage trucks. >> we talked about the difference between intracity and inter city shuttles. the difference is that i don't notice the intracity buses that much. i know there are stops that are zoned and built out. i think of uc being that way. when i'm riding my bike on valencia street or when i'm with my kids on 24th street in noy valley and i see a shuttle go by, if i'm on my bike i have to swerve out of way

deeply into traffic that i'm going to get blind sided and on 24th street i see cars backed up for blocks trying to get around a bus and people edging around buses blocking their pathway make it very dangerous. what are your thoughts? >> absolutely. the buses tend to be much smaller and they have stops for a shorter period of time because there are fewer people boarding and unboarding. they have a less of an impact on pedestrian and bicycle safety and interference of traffic. i live around glen portal and that place is a mess because of giant buses getting in and out. you don't have that kind of impact with private cars or even with these short hall shuttle buses because they

are smaller. here is a great visual from the report commission by supervisor mar by the budget legislative analyst which shows the impact of the shuttle buses being greater than cars and other shuttles purely because of the size. these are giant 60,000 pound buses. >> then i heard from one of my colleagues that there is people who are in the bus on the shuttle buses are ascribed as not being san franciscans. i didn't hear you say that. did you say that? >> i never said that. >> i thought it was something taken out of context. i didn't hear you say it either. in fact i heard you say quite the opposite that they are contributing to local economy. >> they do wonderful thing. i know many of them and they drink very good scotch. >> so just something that hasn't been talked about and

i think it's significant or could be significant or i don't know if you thought about it yourself is that i look at other places around the bay area and the land use policies that are around these places make it very restrictive to build and build large amounts of housing. i think that's a contributing factor to people living in san francisco. not just that we have a brighter whiter tablecloths here but the fact that people can move here and there are more buildings going on here and market street dramatically change in the past 3 years with large high rise buildings and that is happening here. have you analyzed in any of your work what the land use policies are with people living here and on shuttles? >> a lot of these communities like mountain view are highly

restrictive on housing especially low and moderate income housing. there adds to the quality of restaurant. there are lots of good places in mountain view but other aspects driving people into the city. we do need more housing in the city of san francisco. >> certainly. i support that as well. do you think that land use policies, that you have elsewhere that are more restrictive saying in mountain view as your connection to our displacement issue in the city >> yes. to the extent that they won't build housing in mountain view or other areas near these large tech hubs, it forces people to look for housing elsewhere and if you are going to travel you might as well travel to a great place like the city of city of san francisco. i want to say one more thing about tech

workers. i think they are good people and would like to see this program mitigate it's impact whether they have to pay $2 to get on those buses and those $2 is used for low income and moderate use in san francisco. i think they would applaud that opportunity and we can give them that opportunity if we do an eir for the program. >> supervisor kim? >>supervisor jane kim: first of all the fact that we refer to tech workers as if they don't belong here. the asian immigrants were prevented from going into schools and which was in school. i don't think this is at all this same type of thing and i hope we stop

using that type of analogy. i have a couple of questions in this appeal. first i want to address the issue of displacement which you had that you have been asked quite a lot about. two questions, one, how strong does the correlation of displacement need to be. so i read the bla report as well. they were clear that there was no yet causal connection between the increase of the google bus. it does not show causal correlation. there is evidence of rent increase in that area but not sure of the rest of the areas. in terms of the case law that you looked at and how it defines displacement how strong does the correlation need to be and is there case law where there is not direct displacement. usually the displacement that i have seen in ceqa is

demolishing a placement. >> ceqa has three steps. one is a categorical exemption, two, a negative declaration, third is eir. that is step one. at step one which is the city saying we are not doing any ceqa at all, the standard is low. is there substantial evidence to establish a fair argument that the project may have significant environmental impacts. that's really low. and what the court's have held generally is that fair argument is created by any expert testimony. here we've got published journal articles and public legislative analyst report, we've got a report by alexandra goldman and report by stam an design by urban

foundation and report after report concluding there is a high correlation around these stops and higher rental displacement and that is enough to create a fair argument that these shuttles maybe having a significant environmental impact. that should trigger an eir which the city can do a full analysis of those impacts and are they significant and what can we do to mitigate them. is there enough of a nexus to require a fund for low and income housing moderate. i think this company would welcome the opportunity to do so as with the workers. unless we do the ceqa review, we won't know. >> under case law do you have examples of where this low standard where expert testimony simply gav