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tv   [untitled]    March 12, 2015 1:30am-2:01am PDT

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otherwise own and drive private automobiles are now able to live car free getting us one step closer to the transit first city we want to be, but while most of the conversations about these shuttles focused on those riding the buses we wanted to discuss the people driving these vehicles. the shuttles are operated with private companies that contract with them. drivers work for the shuttle operators and not for one of the big companies here in the city. the drivers are behind the wheel for eight hours a day and commutes and stand by time of four, six hours between shifts. these stand by times are often unpaid and because the drivers may live in other parts of the bay area they don't have the option of going home during these stand by times. they usually have to wait in the bus in the middle of the day not
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getting paid. today we will hear from a few folks who will talk to us how challenging the shifts can be, navigating our city veets, driving up and down the highways is not easy, but just as important because prief shuttle operators share muni bus stops it's important that we do as much as we can to minimize the risk of disruption to our public transportation system caused by any labor disputes. it could cause gridlock scpurnd mine the flow of our public transportation system. this resolution calls on the san francisco municipal transportation agency to adopt a provision that would require commuter shuttle permit users to demonstrate labor harmony conditions or lack thereof when submitting for a permit to stop in bus zones. the resolution
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does not define what laborer harmony is and i look forward to working with the mta board has it has a definition for the shuttle driver and -- ensuring fair treatment of those men and women that drive the shuttles. colleagues i have minor technical amendments they will distribute now and i will ask that we adopt after public comment. thank you madam chair. >> thank you supervisor wiener. we're going now into public comment. i have a few comment cards here. sue vaughn. i've got you up first. there is doug blotch second and mark greaseon third. welcome back. >> okay. good afternoon supervisors. my name is sue vaughn. i am here to ask you
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to amend the labor harmony resolution and you should support the shuttle drivers but strike out reference to the commuter bus program and policy which is illegal as it is in violation of the california vehicle code. i congratulate the newly unionized shuttle bus drivers but i believe the operators want to operate their vehicles within the law. those who pull their bus into muni bus stops do so in violation of the california vehicle code and for the saiiveg clarity i brought copies of the vehicle code which is explicit and prohibiting common carriers and bus stops in the stops. there are good reasons they shouldn't be permitted to operate in the muni bus stops and i explained some of the reasons in an op-ed i wrote with former director bruce okra and it appeared in the chronicle on friday and i have copies of that as well and i
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will ask the clerk to make everything i give you part of the public record. on the back of the op-ed are copies of the assembly bill 61 introduced by assemblyman travis allen republican of huntington beach in california and would privatize our bus stops by making the occupation of the muni bus stops legal. this should be a concern of you and to all other san franciscans as the sfmta expects the demand for permits to operate and private shuttles and muni bus stops to increase. they should be in transit hubs and better yet expand public transportation. congratulations to the newly unionized shuttle operators. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon supervisors.
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mark gleason and principle officer of teamsters local 665 in san francisco. first i all i would like to thank supervisor wiener for his work on this important issue. he has described eloquently today and in this morning's chronicle the effort designed to keep buses moving smoothly while supporting the effort to take prief cars off of the street. it's undeniable that the commuter program is a success and reducing reliance on private vehicle traffic in san francisco. however, congested all of us feel san francisco's city streets are now rest assured it would be much more so if the workers who rely on the shuttles to travel to the offices outside of the city were all driving private cars. as the city considers making this
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program permanent we are glad the city is taking the relationship between the shuttle drivers could impact the transportation network. this resolution is an important step forward and we look forward working with the sfmta when they consider structuring this program in expiration of the pilot program and i emphasize again we thank you very much all of you for considering this legislation. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon supervisors. my name is doug block and with teamsters joint seven and covers 100,000 teamsters in california and i was asked to give an update to the drivers in this industry. >> >> unfortunately we had two
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drivers and one in the supervisor's district that had to go back to work but wished to join us today. they are two of 140 drivers that service yahoo, apple and ebay who voted to join our union just a few weekends ago. the one driver actually picks up people at muni bus stops and joined nearly 90 facebook drivers for loop transportation that organized with us but negotiated contracts that are going to bring people on average 9-dollar an hour wage increase, family paid health care, five weeks of paid vacation, pension and more benefits especially for the issue of split shifts which the supervisor mentioned. there are drivers from dozens of companies including just about every company that has a permit under the pilot program who are talking to us who want to
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organize, and we support this resolution because in the course of the organizing we would hate for any of this campaign to impede with the normal business of muni picking up hundreds of thousands of people everyday, so thank you, city and county of san francisco for your leadership on this issue and to supervisor wiener for putting this forward. >> great. thank you. are there any other members of the public to speak on item number two please come up. >> thank you supervisors. i am cynthia cruz with the san francisco league of league of voters. they're part of the regular group that you see here regularly and with people that may not understand or know what is happening with the minutia, what is happening in committees so we keep an eye
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on things and we have been watching the shuttle bus program for two years so i want to reiterate because it will get skewed that the league has never said we're against the shuttle bus program. we just always said tech buses should pay your fair share. we want the program to be legal and right now it is illegal with the vehicle code. ab61 outlines just in putting forth language that would legalize it that this is illegal. when we spoke earlier on the program we noted a number of things that do keep this prebeing a good pilot program for the city. one is that it's on streets with -- that are unsafe for pedestrians and bicyclists. we would like for it to move out of the red zones
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and into white zones to lessen the impact to muni. i really understand why supervisor wiener is bringing fort this resolution because these companies are really famous for just moving to the next best thing that's cheaper in terms of wages, and when there's not labor harmony we are looking at companies that will drop the drivers that just unionized and it's important but also it's important to talk about a program that is legal and i suggest that you put forth amendments that make this program safer. thank you. >> any other members of the public to speak on item number two? okay seeing none item number two public comment for item two is closed. [gavel] and supervisor wiener had a couple of amendments. >> yes thank you very much. thank you to everyone who came out today. i would like to make two motions. first to move the amendments that i have
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distributed and second i would like to -- once we amend that move that we forward the resolution as amended with positive recommendation to the full board to be heard on march march 24. >> okay. >> >> those amendments have been unanimously accepted. thank you very much. [gavel] >> and the motion to forward. >> i'm sorry. the motion to forward to the march 24 meeting has been accepted unanimously. thank you very much for your leadership on this resolution. madam clerk can you call item 3. >> item 3 is a report on the status of double parking. >> yes thank you very much. i'm excited about this hearing. double parking that affects all of us in the daily lives of san francisco. supervisor wiener is also the awr thur of
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the item. any opening remarks? >> yes thank you madam chair and for all three items today. so colleagues today i called for a hearing to discuss and receive an update related to double parking and double parking enforcement in san francisco. you may recall i think we were the same membership of this committee about a year and a half we held an oversight committee on double parking and it's to hear what if anything has changed in terms of the mta and sfpd's approach to addressing this issue. double parking to be quite frank is absolutely ramp end in san francisco. we see it with delivery trucks. >> >> we see it with private automobiles and taxicabs. we see it over and over again. no
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one is saying that double parking is inappropriate 100% of the time. there are times when double parking is unavoidable. for example when a delivery truck has no where to pullover and in fact delivery trucks have a partial exemption under the vehicle code from the prohibition on double parking if there is no where to pullover and if they're not blocking a public transportation vehicle. however, what we see in san francisco goes well beyond that limited situation. we have developed a culture where many people think that it's appropriate to effectively leave their car in the middle of the street, and we see double parking all over and it causes a lot of problems. it's not uncommon to see a single double parked car causing a multi-block traffic jam in san francisco. it's not uncommon to see a
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double parked vehicle block a muni bus and even shut down an entire muni line. it's not uncommon to see a double parked vehicle in a bike lane and as a results they have to go out into the bike lane and a we build out more bike lanes it's appeared as an invitation to some to double park as it's an additional parking lane. what we heard a year and a half ago there is little remarkable parkings san -- parking enforcement in san francisco and we seen that on a few of the streets in san francisco on average one or two double parking tickets per day when we know on those streets and others there are
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dramatically more double parking than that. it's a real issue and double parking needs to be addressed. it's not enough when the worse case scenario for a double parker is once in a while that a police officer or parking control officer will come up and ask you to move on. that provides no disincentive at all from double parking if the worse that happens is you're told to move. without consistent enforcement and includes citations there is no credible down sides to double parking and we will see ramped parking in the city and the streets are congested and it's critical as a city we effective manage our transportation system. that means better enforcement for example of blocking the box which i know is starting to
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happen. it also means more effective enforcement against double parking and not just downtown but throughout the city, so today the mta and sfpd will be reporting and providing us with data about the status of double parking enforcement in the city compared to our previous hearing so fiscal year to fiscal year and i am very interested to see how they compare and to taking it from there so colleagues if there are no additional opening comments i would suggest madam chair that we proceed to the mta for an additional presentation. >> great. sounds good to me. thank you for joining us. >> good afternoon. i am the enforcement manager of the mta. so today i would like to provide you with a report the status of our enforcement efforts on double parking. i would first
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like to refresh you with the california vehicle code, the law, and as supervisor wiener indicated there are some limitations, but we certainly are able and cable of dealing -- capable of dealing with the limitation toss the degree that we can. the california vehicle code for double parking clearly states that no car or vehicle should stop or stand whether attended or unattended and that's the key, whether they're actively loading or unloading. the exception is california vehicle code 22502 which does allow for commercial vehicle to the degree reasonable amount of time to actively load or unload.
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the enforcement practices differ with commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles. the commercial vehicles maybe enforced if there is legal space available and they have chosen not to take it, yellow zone, meter, white zone, what have you. there is no evidence of actively loading or unloading. they're creating a hazard and that is key here whether it's roadway vehicles or bicycles, and that goes to again mr. wiener -- supervisor wiener your point about bicycle lanes. there's more of them, and if there is a request to move and they choose not to move they will be cited, and vehicles clearly that are blocking muni will be cited -- >> i'm sorry. can i just interrupt you briefly? you
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made a comment if they are asked to move and refuse to move they're cited. that goes to the comment i made before and we heard this a year and a half ago there is always a request to move first and if you don't move you're cited and i would just like to know that mta's view on that? that says to me in general the worse thing that's going to happen to you if you're unlucky that a police officer or enforcement officer sees you the worse thing will be you're asked to move and presumably most will move if you're asked and if you don't that's life but how is that a disincentive in that's the worse thing some. >> again the first couple conditions. if there is legal space they will be asked to move into that space. failure to do so will
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mean citation. >> i understand but you're asking them to move and given an opportunity and i guess the question is if the worse thing is going to happen you're asked to move how is that in anyway a disincentive for double parking? i might as well double park because the worse thing that is going to happen to me is someone will ask me to move. maybe i am a little uncomfortable about that and there is no penalty and that's the question. how is it a disincentive? >> it's not a disincentive but it's clear if there are other options they could have taken and didn't take they can and will be cited. if it's a hazard that's not a case they won't be cited and again there is the law that gives them some room if
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there are no places to go they're not creating a hazard they can do that for a limited period of time to actively load or unload, so you know if we don't have some flexibility, some leverage commerce won't happen. >> we're talking about private vehicles -- >> i'm not talking about private vehicles. the next one passenger vehicles. there's no discretion. we don't -- unless the only exception that i will say there is if there's -- they're actively loading a passenger vehicle, a disabled person, or elderly period. otherwise they will get cited. okay. the next slide provides
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the annual statistics for 2010- 2014, and i have included in this the bike lanes, something i didn't do last year, because it's key to enforcement and eliminating very similar double parking. while the citations for 2014 did go down bike lanes citations went up. the primary cause for this has been staffing, and we were through more attrition early 13 for about six months we had -- we were down about 33 positions, and we filled those positions. it took about six months to get up to speed, the training, the
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learning, and we were then down approximately 26 which we then filled in 2014. >> so double parking for blocking bike lanes went down in 2014 -- >> went up. >> citations for double parking in 2014 for blocking bike lanes were down? >> yes. they were down so comparing 13 to 14 it was down. >> you're saying -- >> for double parking. >> because of under staff something. >> correct. >> and that's been corrected? >> it has been corrected. bikes -- but again blocking the bike lane they actually went up. okay. next slide. comparison of the double parking by violation or by vehicle type last year in the september
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hearing we on the trucks and commercial vehicles we went from 62% to 53%. that's a reduction of 9% in citations so the citation numbers went down for commercial trucks by 9%. for passenger vehicles they went up from 33% in 13 to 46% or 13% increase. >> that's in the total mix -- not the number of citations? >> no. that's the number of citations broken down by commercial and passenger vehicles. this is a total complement of citations -- >> right. the percentage of overall increased from 33 to 46. >> correct. >> but an increase in the
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gross number? >> no it was not. just a shift in one citations to another. >> but overall the number went down of citations? >> correct. we again look at top 16 parking citations and the majority if not all of those are muni corridor, and mission is one of the top in terms of citation issuance. it is a problem especially when you add construction. a lot of construction going on all over the city, south of market. it creates a larger problem for us, and for vehicles to find parking. the other locations and many of them the citation count went up some some of the other locations. the other thing to point out we actually started going out further of the
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downtown corridor where observations or complaints by others have come through our office and we have evaluated them and deployed pcos out to them. valanes virginia -- valencia being one of them. >> >> do they represent mta and pd. >> it's about 70% mta and pd and consistent and a small number of five, six a month of muni and taxi inspectors. >> but they're included? >> yes they are. roughly 7%. >> why is sfpd such a tiny amount? >> i can't answer that you but i know if commander maddox were here she
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would say it was an important enforcement to her and her officers. their focus has been historically different, and they're spending quite a bit of time -- lately the traffic side on gridlock. >> okay. it seems there is very little double parking enforcement from sfpd. >> yeah. i don't have the answer for that. >> well, i mean if 93% of the double parking di -- citations are issued by mta that's an overwhelming majority. >> correct. the next slide supervisor wiener you requested to see these specific streets, and in all cases probably but 18th street citations have gone down on those streets and again
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we're talking a total of citations listed here down from the previous here. staffing -- and focused on other streets. next slide is a trend since the last hearing, the september 30 hearing, and as you can see the red line is double parking citations, and the trend on that is going up as well as blocking the bike lane. both are going up. comparing february 2015 to february 14 we saw a 69% increase in citation issuance for our double parking. for
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bike -- blocking the bike lane citations 139% increase compared to february of 2014. some of the things that we have done on the next slide, what i call the emphasis, the communications and training. we actually started after the last hearing a small group of pcos, parking control officers, to perform targeted or enhance the enforcement in areas there were high volume of complaints and/or observations including muni. so we did that through november 13 and 14 -- 2014. in 14 i established another detail in conjunction
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with the bike lane residential parking, those things that are complaint driven, and try that out for a while as well. it was evident to me that in some locations where we put in a detail and targeted that citations actually dropped. in part when drivers that are inclined to double park see a pco they tend not to double park, so by the nature of our presence is a deterrent. for the commercial many times, and i have talked to a lot of the commercial drivers, deliveries. they feel that it's the cost of doing busines