>> i really believe that all the arts have a serious function and that it helps us find out who we are in a much wider sense than we were before we experienced that work of art. ♪ it's been requested we move to item 11, which is the lombard street. >> thank you very much. just two things i wanted to bring up. i attended two weeks ago the board of supervisor's land use committee hearing on the

differences we're having between as stated in the new development coming forward versus the fire department. could we get a report back as soon as is sort of feasible and as soon as there is something to report. it is a little concerning that we could be moving towards designing streets that a future mta board might then be sitting down and talking about how to redesign to make them slower er and safer for pedestrians. and then also i know that there has been a lot of discussion around -- discussion around the charging for criminal activity for traffic crimes and traffic violence. i know the da is looking to hire a dedicated person to follow-up on traffic violence or traffic crime, however we

want to phrase it. i want to know if there's anything we at the mta can do to encourage that funding to be made available for that office so that things that have happened, such as the incident on folsom street where a young was killed by a right turning truck around no charges are being placed, if we can do anything to make sure the office has the resources to do what we need to do? >> i'd be happy to report back on that issue. there are a number of discussions happening over the next couple weeks including some formal ones. with regard to the funding issue in the da's office, i'm not sure if it would be possible or appropriate. the mayor will be completing his budget next week for the board of supervisors on june 2. i don't know if there's time for the board to act.

i think board members of the juries could individually contact the mayor's office to express that desire. >> i know that's something we're all trying so hard to reach a vision zero level and to have a situation like that where there is video evidence and most people would think that driver should be charged with something and to have nothing come out of it is very frustrating for anybody who's a street user in this city. thank you. >> other members? director ramos. >> i was hoping we might be able to get a staff report or some time to talk about the most recent developments with respect to the van ness brt boarding. i know this has been a conversation that's been happening and i want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to understand the issues we're dealing with.

i specifically want to make sure we talk about the different opportunities that we have for the entire city and addressing level boarding as a key strategy to speed along boarding and reducing dwell time and increasing our efficiency throughout the city, if that would be okay. >> members consent. anything else? okay. >> directors will go to item 11, as requested. >> a couple things have been brought to our attention. one is sf gov tv we really need to speak into the microphones because we're missing some of this. and if members of the public wish to speak you need to fill out a card. >> [inaudible] and on friday july 4. >> who's presenting this? >> our city traffic engineer

who's been working with supervisor farrell's office will present. >> good afternoon. ricardo with sustainable streets division. i'm going to be presenting on the lombard street closure. basically we've had discussioning with supervisor mark farrell's office about residents of the area about the problems on the areas of lombard. a lot of people want to visit this area and look at it and it's been that way for a long time.

the residents are not antitourists. they maintain the flowers and are quite welcoming. i think the issue is that what has been a residential area has kind of increased over time. there is congestion on lombard street itself and extends all the way to van ness. because of these problems, the mta has already committed to deploy resources to the area so we have about six parking control officers set during the period between memorial day and labor day that are stationed to control traffic in this area of lombard street, both at the foot and top of the of the

intersection so it's one of our larger areas. the mta has already committed resources and some of these resources are what we'll be using to do this pilot and rededicate the resources in the summer. there's been concerns as amount of visitors has increased. [inaudible] and crowded intersections has led to safety concerns. there have been injury collisions, including one that occurred in 2011 during july 4, where a 4-year-old girl was hit by a vehicle where she was going down the hill and the driver claimed they lost control of the vehicle. there have been incidents, but overall the street is set up so that vehicles drive through slowly, but as i showed in some

of the photos, there are a lot of pedestrians and visitors going through the area. the crooked street task force was set up in 2000 and was led by the then department of parking and traffic, and at that time they looked at those issues about congestion, what do we do to address the large volume of visitors. at that time it was more about vehicular traffic and resulting impacts to the neighborhood. a lot of alternatives were looked at, but none were necessarily adopted or consensus alternatives. this has been an issue that has been bouncing for a while without any sort of resolution so i think this is kind of a new suggestion to look at the idea of closing down the street for a short period of time during the peak visitor season. the supervisor has convened a

series of neighborhood group meetings. we've reached out and written a letter in support. as indicated the supervisors are also supportive of this proposal. the congestion that happens on lombard street, between hyde and lemon worth and extends to van ness and northbound hyde. there's two ways to access the crooked street, one through lombard and the other is on hyde. the cable cars do operate on hide. this photo shows the cable car stopping here at one of our stops. from this photo you can see something that we've been doing for the past year, which is prohibiting the turns from northbound hyde to lombard when parking control officers are

stationed and they deemed the situation to require it. this is in order to ensure that the back up does not block the cable cars. if you can imagine a back up of one or two blocks can severely slow down or cable cars as they're trying to navigate through this area and the cable cars go through the area and have to grab and let go on the cable so this can put a lot of wear and tear on the equipment so the goal here is to ebb sure the cable cars are operating safely and avoid the delay and wear and tear on the equipment. this has worked relatively well. we have signs and we have parking patrol officers that basically enforce this particular temporary [inaudible]. the back up that develops on lombard, the main approach is on lombard eastbound. this is a view of what the parking control officer sees so they are the ones that determine when the vehicles are safe to approach based on pedestrian and other traffic in

the area, including cable cars. the intersection itself is frequently visited by people on foot as well so a lot of people are there trying to take pictures, having a good time, some of them are trying to get the best picture possible so they may be standing on the street so our parking control officers are helping to navigate that through their actions. the crooked street itself is a relatively confined right of way for pedestrians. it wasn't necessarily meant to accommodate large amounts of tourists so there are congestion points where a lot of people going up and down can get kind of congested as pedestrians. some of this congestion overflows into the residential driveways so the crooked street allows for local access to the buildings, apartments and houses that are situated on the street, as well as mont claire

alley, which is off to the side, the north. this is a typical view. these photos were taken in may of this year, so this is not the peak season. i just went out there on a low point in our visitor time, but the typical behavior is for pedestrians to find places where they can look and take photos. we've had situations where motorists will stop, the people get out of the vehicle and take photos and that can make more problems so one of the solutions we've had is parking control officers mid block to make sure that doesn't happen. this is at the bottom of the hill, here a lot of pedestrians are taking pictures at the bottom of the crooked street. as vehicles come down we have

parking control officers here trying to create spaces for it to be safe. so what's proposed is a closure of eastbound lombard. we're adding the blocks between larkin and hyde so not all the vehicles are forced to detour at hyde. doing that would create problems for or cable cars so we're trying to detour them a block to the west to avoid all the vehicles all the sudden being detoured right at the top of the crooked street. we're doing -- the proposal is to do it for summer weekend, starting june 21, including the 4th of july, which is a friday. this was just to allow for the

pilot to analyze the peak 4 of july weekend and also other weekends to see if there's a pattern that develops with the closure. the street won't be closed all day, but during the times where parking control officers are stationed already, so about noon to 6:00 pm. staff will exercise judgment about whether the closures should continue beyond a specific amount of time to have a safe transition. local vehicles will be allowed so we're trying to develop a system by which residents are allowed through the closure since we have parking control officers there that will be achieved by someone clearly identifying themselves as someone who needs access to the street. this is only to address the vehicular congestion and safety issues that happen when we mix

large amount of vehicles with large amount of pedestrians. this is a map of the streets that will be closed, so again, two blocks, the first block between larkin and hyde to create a buffer, and then the actual crooked street. if approved by the mta board we would then be implementing the pilot closure on june 21. we will monitor results. if at any time due to conditions as identified by neighborhood groups, the public, our old parking control officers, we determine that this pilot is leading to too many unwanted consequences, we will stop the pilot so we do have the flexibility since then a pilot to not continue through all four weekends if that's what's determined to be a safe or preferred by the parties involved. so we'll be doing monitoring of traffic to see if there are, again, any unintended side

effects. sometimes when you close streets there's problems with other streets. there may be issues with pedestrians overtaking the crooked street and some intersections and that becoming something we need to manage and how residents have access in and out of their homes on lombard, that will also be something we'll monitor. we'll be talking to our cable car division to see how they're affected by this closure and we'll be doing observations as well about how the traffic disperses in the area. the question again, when we do a pilot is what would be the lessons. we'll document the consensus, talk to the people that live there to see their impressions. depending on the feedback we get, this is something we may or may not try the next summer, summer of 2015. on a very long term basis, the crooked street will remain a very popular attraction for

both vehicle travel and pedestrian visitors so the issue will remain, how does the city want to deal with this very popular destination being in such a confined residential area. should we leave it like this, have it be monitored by parking control officers or do something different such as this pilot trial closure. that's the primary issues i wanted to highlight. >> thank you. we have a representative here from supervisor farrell's office. care to say a few words? >> good afternoon. i'm legislative aid to mark farrell and i'm here on his behalf today. thank you for taking this item. we wanted to let you know this item has been going on for quite some time and have heard from the residents on the

crooked street and other surrounding areas as well about the public safety concerns that are presented. there are too many cars, too many pedestrians and it has become a significant problem. i'm -- i walked in a little bit late to the presentation. i apologize for that. i wanted to let you know that there have been vehicular accidents there over the last year, year-and-a-half. we have the three accidents, which have been documented in sfpd reports. the lieutenant is here if you have any questions on those reports. it's not just overcrowding. we have traffic backing up all the way down to van ness, on hyde, at the bottom of leven worth, the surrounding streets. it is a mess. this is not our first approach.

this pilot program, we have been working with the sfmta and i have to say they have been absolutely incredible and amazing to work with. it's increased the number of parking control officers on the weekends for that additional enforcement. it has helped a little bit. the problem still persists. i myself go out there just to test it. i live on greenwhich street. i went out there to meet neighbors who were complaining about a at&t box, i went up van ness, up lombard, on a thursday afternoon i could barely get down the street. and nobody's there. nobody is there enforcing anything, any rules. so we're here to ask for your help, basically. our understanding of the pilot project is that it would inform

staff as to whether the problems are alleviated by a closure. we don't know that, it hasn't been tested. whether or not this is the answer, we don't know, but we think something needs to be done. we understand it's a balance. obviously this is a huge tourist attraction in san francisco. not just san francisco, but in our country. people come here to see lombard street, we get that. but we want it to be a safe tourist attraction, we want it safe for pedestrians and residents. if this isn't the answer, something has to be done. we plead with you as the board of directors to point us in the right direction to solve a problem that has been going on for much too long. thank you! thank you. . >> thank you. >> i have three people who have indicated ang interest in this matter, randall, followed by richard and then reid.

>> good afternoon, sir. >> i live at 2215 levenworth, which is about a half a block to the right of the picture you had up here. and i have two issues that i want to speak to. i would say the first one is side effects and unintended consequences. a big side effect of the current situation is if you were to look to the right on levenworth you'd see a string of cars parked on the street, half on the sidewalk. they're blocking our garages. multiple times i've come home, i find somebody parked in front of my garage door and if

there's right there i ask them to move. couple of times they're not there. i said who's car's that and so far i've been able to find somebody. we haven't actually had to yet call the police and try to get them to tow it, but that's probably going to happen some day. the other undepended consequence of all these cars parked is deterioration of the sidewalk and it's aggravating, our understanding as the sidewalk deteriorates and crumbles, we have to pay for it. all these cars parked on the sidewalk are doing that. and about this experimental traffic stoppage that -- thing you're going to be doing, i think i applaud the notion to do something, but it's really important to examine not just that street, but the whole neighborhood. you know, i can't imagine -- i don't know whether doing that

is going to increase the amount of people parking down there to get at it or decrease, but it's really important to watch that and see what happens. and then the other subject i want to move -- >> thank you, sir. >> your time is up. >> oh, i didn't know i had time limit. >> yep. richard followed by reid. those are the last two people that have turned in a speaker card. >> yeah, i'm richard. i'm at the northeast corn of of levenworth and lombard and i've lived there for 30 years. as far as i can tell, this simply deals with the ro traffic on a particular stretch of lombard street. one of the very serious problems that has come up are the massive numbers of pedestrians coming up from

columbus where large tour vans are letting them out in groups of 20 to 50 at a time. they're coming up to the intersection and often with amplified sound with mega phones. and that's getting out of hand. one of the things -- the traffic control situation with the officers from mta is very -- there's a become variance in the quality of the enforcement. some of them do a terrific job, others like last weekend, two of them sat talking to each other most of the day and when i asked why they weren't getting the pedestrians out of the intersection, they said it was too hard for them. it's a mess right now and it's become qualitatively worse in the last two years as i've pointed out. also, the time of day -- it's not simply weekends anymore. it now includes weekday, from early in the morning to early

evening. it's not just the summer. it used to be seasonal, but it's not anymore. i'd like to know what the pilot project is supposed to accomplish. i understand that it's important to get the traffic off the street and i support this proposal, but what are the alternatives. one of the things that happened when they paved the street around 1999 -- >> next speaker please. >> as much as it's been framed as a safety issue. they've made it a safety issue because it sounds better than

what it really is. it's an annoyance issue. everybody playings well in the sand box. this is about a privileged few who are annoyed that other people want to come and enjoy themselves. i will grant you on the weekends, it's a hassle. you know, if you live on lombard street, you chose to live on lombard street. you can live anywhere else you want. and shutting it down to cars -- part of the fun of lombard street is the fact that you are driving so you can go down there on the weekends.

i've stood at the top of lombard street, watched people coming over the top, and these disgruntled faces from having to wait in the line to get there, when they hit that curve their faces light up. it to shut it down it's a shame. it's another nail to the soul of san francisco. deal with the problems of congestion, but keep the street open. thank you. >> next speaker please. >> good afternoon directors. [inaudible] crooked street situation where we go hundreds of time almost every month. the last speaker gave you very good picture about the safety and about the people getting

annoyed who lives there, but the main point is your cable car is loaded, cable car at market people are waiting for two or three hour just to get to [inaudible] street. they're paying heavy price just to get to [inaudible] street. when they come in the taxis, even if it's a 60-year-old person, a 40-year-old, they're behaving like a 10-year-old kid. their faces lights up when they see the crooked street. millions and millions of photographs are taken there over and over and over again. why? people love that. how many things you will [inaudible] this way. close the golden gate bridge? don't come san francisco, we are closing. and if not, this is the most best attraction in the whole

world -- crooked street. people from 200 countries come and say oh, i love to see it. are you going to deny them this thing? there's congestion, but it's not difficult. i go through that congestion all the time. it takes me not more than three, four, five, seven seconds. i never stop there [inaudible] going through an intersection, [inaudible] than this intersection. please leave it open, it's the love of the life of the people. thank you. >> last speaker, james hickman. >> good afternoon, i'm james hickman and i represent the lombard hill improvement

association, which is our neighborhood association to take care of the street. it's very difficult to convey an understanding of what's going on in that street. these opinions just spoken are representative of what people think when they hear about this issue and i can assure you from someone who's there -- i'm retired, i'm there 24 hours a day, i've been there for 17 years. there's absolutely a safety issue, among all the other issues going on,. what you essentially have here is thousands of cars a day directed on a tiny one lane, one block difficult to pass street that was