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tv   [untitled]    November 23, 2014 10:30pm-11:01pm PST

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pedestrian safety issue the buses are crowded if you look at the peak period peak direction so the the 2 hours in the morning and afternoon there's about 24 buses going in that direction and all 24 of those buses are standing room only and many much more crowded than that and not only crowded buses but buses stopping a lot. the 71 for example is on time about 50 percent of the time in the study corridor. >> so, you know, obviously there's a lot of issues and opportunities in haight one of the great things is we're really lucky because there's a
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really rich network of community groups great history of public involvement on the haight and we've been working with some of our inter agency partners planning department and on projects in haight as well as improving bicycle access on the haight and we've also been able to do this public infrastructure the public participates and started a few working groups one in the upper haight and one in the lower haight and specifically the bulbs and that's one of the concerns that's been kind of driving the city planning public's realm process creating a real field for haight not just another neighborhood but something special and we, you know, we've done a lot of good outreach but there's a lot left to do obviously we got a letter yesterday from some merchants
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along haight that note they are not fond of shelters and issues like that. we're going to be working with them for the next 6 to 12 months and obviously the legislation before you today related to the curb work and that will be worked out as we work through the design phase of the process so the project proposal -- what's come out of all this outreach as i mentioned four major areas we wanted to make sure we addressed through this process pedestrian safety we have a few things elements that we're doing specifically vision zero wise to improve the pedestrian safety conditions term restrictions and traffic signals and i'm going to talk a more in a minute here about
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travel signals and could crowded buses this body has already really addressed a lot of the needs on the crowded bus side through the legislation on march 28th that included the service changes on this corridor as well as the budging process where we allocated resources to address that we're going to be adding two more buses an hour on that corridor so should help to address some of those crowded conditions going from 12 to 14 buses nothing in the legislation today that's related specifically to crowding but i wanted to make sure you knew that's something we're addressing. and widening those sidewalks making it easier for people to get around and traffic signals, you know, during all of our outreach we've had a lot of positive response people are really
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excited about the pedestrian improvements and reducing crowding on buses and having their trip go faster but we've heard two specific things people have concerned about and one is traffic signals and two issues people bring up one are traffic signals the best choice at all 10 of these locations we're proposing and is two are they safe? are they good for pedestrians? doesn't that doesn't that make haight street more unsafe for pedestrians so we're sharing our findings on safety particularly and looked at all 13 intersections and we found that those 13 locations have gone from 30 pedestrian injuries to 8 so it was 30 when it was just stop signs after
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signals were put in the injuries dropped down to 8 seems to point to a safer environment and and then enhanced infrastructure not only have signals going in but including pedestrian bulbs and countdown timers and all those improvements will go into intersections that do become signal ized so what are the benefits? once again back to the 4 major points that we're trying to address. pedestrian safety. so i mentioned
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previously that 25 people have been hit by cars between central and in the last 5 years and if we had been able to install the pedestrian bulbs we would be able to have influenced 17 out of those 25 so about about two-thirds of those pedestrian incidents so we think we're addressing a large share of the pedestrian safety concerns and i mentioned it takes 11 minutes to ride on a muni that 1.5 mile corridor and our proposals we're expecting a 3-minute travel time saving about 25 25 percent savings in travel time cht time we're going to
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continue like i said working with neighborhood groups to identify how the bulb look and how specifically long and how wide the bulbs are going to be and what's going on those bulbs what kind of amenities and how are we going to make it look and best serve the people on the haight corridor and i wanted to give you a quick look forward. this isn't the last time you will see me we're starting 3 more corridors for outreach and another meeting tomorrow night and stockton through chinatown and visitation valley and out on geneva so you know anticipate you know probably winter to springtime before we come back
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with additional projects for legislation so with that that i'd be happy to take questions. >> thank you. >> if you go back to slide 8. that's the benefit slide? >> the benefits? yeah. okay i don't disagree with your findings the the only thing i see that's a pet peeve of mine you create a blind spot so even if the pedestrian has to step out to see if something is coming whoever is driving by doesn't know until that person steps out so the question becomes if you look at the question on the bottom i understand the need for a bulb out but it's 4 parking spaces away in order to generate that right? so the question becomes
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from a cost standpoint would it be better to say let's eliminate those spots first and you can at least get the impact right away i know the bulb out is going to go there but if you remove those spots you eliminate that blind spot right away that's something you can see right away. >> just to clarify take the parking spots out even before -- >> yeah because it's a hazard. >> it's a huge safety improvement isn't it? >> members of the board? >> i have no questions. i'm looking to the public. the public. >> all right. first speakers will be richard johnson and michael smith. >> i've been involved with the
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bringing down of the central freeway, , and where my issues come with the stoplights at haight and webster and haight and buchanan and when i moved in in 24 years ago our quality of life issue was crime and violence now it's traffic and being hit by cars. recently this week i was almost hit at buchanan and page and the thing i see with the stoplights i look at them as a quick fix akin to adding another freeway lane. in the morning the
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intersection are blocked and you are creating pedestrian nightmares. a permanent fix is the issue with fell and oak and instead of letting the google buses you should be partnering with them to move more transit similar to like what the subway system does in new york express versus local and finding out how we can get more people from the avenues that's where most of the traffic is coming from and that's why you have the delay in the bus schedule. one other thing i'd have to say about the sfmta is their method i'd have to say i find it just it's a very difficult issue and
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i think that you should have reached out to buchanan we're at ground zero if you are going to do vision zero. i think you need to do more with that. >> next speaker please? >> especially on a weekend
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there's tourists everywhere and walking around them is kind of annoying i have to go into the street. the improvements to pedestrian safety also sound like a nice idea idea i'd like to see some action behind all the talk about vision zero. i guess that's it. thank you. >> thank you please. next speaker please. >> mikeal smith. >> my name is michael smith. basically i spent all day looking at transit data and what i want to do today is help you inform your decision. all of these proposals are great but traffic signals are questionable so i'd like to show you this information here. the idea here is great in that
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-- if this is the speed of the vehicle instead of him stopping at the stop sign they should be able to go right through and save time. the question is how much time will you save and you can map out the street and look at the gps data and you can find out how long it takes to cross intersections and so the delay time is is shown here for various intersections i measured i rode the buses in order to collect the data on the left-hand on the left-hand side there's a on the left-hand side there's a theoretical idea if you look at the measurements they are not as good. so the theoretical it's pretty high so the gain.
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not every bus gets a green light. what happens is about 5 percent of the time on average buses will be slowed by 5 seconds when you take that into account -- there's basically no savings in time and webster and laguna the saving would only be a couple of seconds. shrader and broderick should not have traffic signals. it has a traffic signal currently and that should be replaced with a two way stop. >> peter straus and barry toronto and chris tin evans.
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>> thank you. 2 weeks ago transit scored some amazing convict amazing victories at the ballot at the ballot and that creates a lot of momentum almost mandate almost to move ahead by the types of projects represented by this proposal and it's encome bent on us to move ahead and show results quickly. so i'm glad to see this is on a relatively short time frame that we might see things by the end of 15 or shortly therefore really urge staff to expedite that and i think the the onus is on us and we should move these types
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ahead and secondly i'd like to speak as a resident. i lot of my neighbors have expressed concerns about the traffic signals proposed at peer son scot and elsewhere on haight i've always seen traffic signals as a safety measure and i don't think there's things that people should be afraid of you know if they are properly managed certainly we want to make sure the timing doesn't allow speeding of cars and lastly relating to traffic signals one thing we'd like to ask staff to look at is a management of traffic signals to do a pilot essentially of managing a traffic signal where normally it would be flashing red essentially the equivalent of a stop sign but that would again could be preempted as transit comes along you know to
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provide a solid red on cross streets i think a pilot like that is warranted could be valid on haight and fulton and we'd like to see that and you will be getting a letter on that thank you. >> good evening or good afternoon it's almost evening. i say that i'm concerned at putting traffic lights may encourage jay walking right now certain streets have stop signs and allows for the free movement of pedestrians a lot of people that live in the area or hang out in the area are just going to choose it as an opportunity to jay walk and it's -- the problem is that it's a lot of them ignore the lights and it's a major problem and the taxi drivers see all
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the time with jay walking particularly in the tender loin we're used to it there so broderick is going to be counter productive because it's going to be ignored and in the lower haight at pierce son scott a lot of them used to going through the stop signs are they going to stop at the lights? that's the that's that's the that's the question of that's the question. they need to stop like cars do at these lights. by a pedestrian doing a jay walking move or also a bicyclist coming through can create liability issues as well. until you are out there many hours a day you can't imagine what you see happens with this as well. and in closing you suggested taxi stand at ashbury who made this
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suggestion? hy is that good? you can't even enforce keeping cars out of out of masonic. so i think you are wasting your money when we we should be focusing on putting cab stands where they are going to be mostly used not just by passengers but by cabs as well you are wasting money. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> all of the listed merchants
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are opposed to this proposal at this time. over 2 years ago the haight ashbury community began a process at the direction of alexis smith from san francisco planning and the proposal is a part of that process and it's inaccurate to to say it was a public realm process. the sfmta joined the process late. . merchants had
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not been given updated drawings as promised. the proposed plan is premature and it's in conflict with the planning process and its approval should be delayed until the planning process has has been completed. a number of businesses have signed on. thank you. thank you very much . >> walk sf has been working with our members and sfmta to discuss the haight street
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transit corridor improvements and it's been you know i come with mixed thoughts we just actually returned from a vision zero summit where we heard from sweden and what they have talked about is they don't rely on transit signals as a solution they rely on a safe system that forgives creating a transit system that forgives when someone makes a mistake so if someone makes a mistake and jay walks that might mean their life whereas with a stop sign or you know what they are really moving towards are things like roundabouts or other improvements that are safer than just a stop sign so with that information from the country with the lowest rates
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of pedestrian and all traffic injuries and fatalities and thorough analysis we might need to take a better look at certain intersections and determine if the the traffic signal is the best solution and cut through traffic might be you know it might not be haight street where we see the pedestrian injuries increase but maybe on the streets where there's more cut through traffic happening because now a signal is there that facilitates -- and they are not getting pedestrian improvements because this is focussed just on haight street and the last couple of things i want to highlight an e-mail was sent to the board highlighting that a lot of the improvements are
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not up to the plan requirements so i hope that when we do make improvements on this street that they are up to our existing best practices. >> next speaker please. >> good afternoon everyone. i'm dave prinze i've been on haight street for for 17 years 5 days a week for for 17 years i'm pretty familiar with the street. it's not an issue on haight street maybe when there's a could not gas there's a dong there's a congregation of street people with dogs but i'm mostly opposed to the bulbs not so much the lights the bulbs are problematic it's a narrow street as it is and it seems unnecessary to me and it's going to remove parking spaces. how many parking spaces are
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going to be removed and if they are removed what's the impact? from my calculations at least 20 percent of the parking spaces are going to be moved at both ends and that's going to create congestion and creates a domino effect if cars have to drive around looking for spaces i'd advocate against the bulbs they are not necessary. you say the buses need a bulb -- there's no traffic it's a dead end so no traffic coming. the bus stop there is perfectly adequate to serve the needs of what they are trying to do to increase our travel time that that shouldn't be an issue. you are taking away our loading zones and we need our loading zones we have about fifty deliveries a week and hundreds of customers bringing in
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products as well take away our loading zones and people will double park ups and fedex now how is the bus getting by? whoever has planned this hasn't informed us giving us a chance to respond and communicate with them in a in a way that we can do this together in a way that makes sense. so just to come here and tell us you are going to take away our loading zones and we've been providing money and taxes for the city is not fair. >> thank you. >> good afternoon. >> hi i'm joe gold mark i've dave's partner i just want to give you a little more of a picture of that end of haight street you have whole foods on one side you have ameba on the other and right beside us is a
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mac donald's and we all have driveways coming and going the proposal is for a bulb out right in front of our our store and right in front of whole foods and buses backed up way behind it and nobody is going to be able to get out of out of the driveways for starters and cause congestion constantly stopping and going with exhaust and the lights -- if there's no bus there the lights themselves is going to cause congestion because there's going to be cars lined up just to get through the lights. it's un warranted and unneeded there's a nice bus stop right in front of mac donald's now right in front of our store with the bulb out that's going to create this unbelievable congestion not to
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mention what dave mentioned with our deliveries. we have a couple of hundred people a week come to sell us stuff we're like a trading post at amebia we buy and sell used product. they can't double park and they can't park because the parking spots are being taken away it's a disaster for us that's all i'm saying. thank you. >> next speaker please. >> hi my name is tim park er. i'm concerned that the traffic bulb outs in particular will cause a a traffic nightmare up there. there are many merchant s on haight street that have
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supplies delivered all day long. i get my supplies delivered by big trucks and if you make it so that nobody can pass a bus, how are the supplies supposed to to be delivered? i think it will actually slow down the buses which is what you are trying to improve so that's my main concern. just need to be able to do business on haight street. thank you. >> >> thank you thank you sir. >> next speaker please? >> >> hi. i own the haight ashbury music center for the last for the last 34 years i work 7 days a week i still do and i just heard about what's going on last night and i work on this street so somehow this