>> co-chair senhaux: excuse me, good afternoon, everyone, we're going to start in about a minute. just to let everybody know.

>> co-chair senhaux: good afternoon, everyone. we're going to get started with the second part of our agenda. we're going to go to information item number 7, san francisco digital equity and the disability -- [buzzing] >> was that from me? excuse me, hold on. >> can we have the camera room move -- >> control room, can you move the camera up a little? >> co-chair senhaux: thank you. ok. we're going to -- ok, we're

going to continue. information item 7, san francisco digital equity and the disability community and i'd like to welcome our presenter, alex banh, digital inclusion officer, committee on information technology, city and county of san francisco. thank you for waiting and that slight interruption. >> no worries. thank you for having me. can we present the slide? here we go. ok. i'm digital inclusion officer for the committee on information technology, i'm here to present on the san francisco digital equity initiative. so this... thank you. so this is a city-wide initiative started by the committee on information technology just last year. and the role of this initiative

is to coordinate city-wide efforts to ensure all residents have the tools and ability to participate in digital society. why does this matter? basically technology today is a vital necessity in terms of employment, nearly all major companies post job openings and take job applications exclusively online. in terms of education, more and more students are expected to use technology to complete their homework and schoolwork and parents are expected to use internet and portals to engage with their teerchls and schools. -- teachers and schools. finally, many health care providers are providing online portals and patients are encouraged to use the portals to communicate with their doctors,

manage their records. digital divide still persist. estimated over 100,000 san francisco residents lack home internet access. and low-income residents, seniors and people with disabilities are most at risk for lacking access. in terms of digital skill, national studies show that seniors and low-income residents are three times more likely to report having low digital skills compared to high digital skills. and in terms of confidence, another national study from key research shows that adults with disabilities are less likely to report having high confidence in their ability to use technology compared to those without disabilities. so our approach has been to produce research on the digital divide in the city, to engage stakeholders with action plans

and on how to bridge the digital divide and fund and engage in pilot programming to address identified gaps. so our year one progress, in terms of the year one progress, we're currently conducting a city-wide survey, it's a large scale random sample to get a sense of the skills and access levels across the city, across various demographics. we completed a qualitative needs assessments with focus groups, that interviews 60 residents across public housing and we're wrapping up a cyber security survey because coming out of the needs assessment, we found out the target population was disproportionately at risk of falling victim to online scams and malware and viruses. in terms of stakeholder engagement, we've met with over

40 stakeholder organizations and surveyed 60 community-based organizations on what they're currently doing in terms of digital equity and what they would like to do to see the city support their work. finally, we launched training and connectivity projects at two subsidized housing sites and three workforce centers. out of this work we have a playbook, which i'm here to talk about today. so the digital equity playbook is a resource for any social service agency to incorporate digital equity services. it includes training strategies, sample curriculum, referral destinations, connectivity resources and standard assessment tools. it's available at our website at sfcoit.org/digitalequity. the reason we decided to do a

playbook, we wanted to help organizations already working with the target population, so if you're an organization already working and engaged with low-income residents or older adults or adults with disabilities, you have a trust built with them. instead of creating brand new institutions to just do technology, we wanted to help them infuse their existing services with technology services. and by doing so, we hope to improve geographical coverage of technology services to reach high-needs segments and do this in a cost effective way. the playbook is divided into five chapters. the first chapter is to understand your audience, the second chapter to help people get connected, the third is to teach digital literacy, the fourth is to advance skills and the fifthed chapter is to continue and work on your services. so in chapter one, we're

providing six standard questions and we're hoping that more organizations incorporate these questions into their intake. the idea behind the questions is to get to know the digital needs of each individual that you're serving, right? just because you're working with adults with disabilities or seniors doesn't mean all of them have the same technology needs. someone might not know how to use internet or a computer at all. someone might want to learn how to do job-specific skills like excel. and someone might have all the skills necessary, they just don't have internet access or computers. by incorporating these questions into the intake, they could tailor the services provided to the clients based on the needs. these intake questions have been incorporated in sf goodwill's intake process and they've used it effectively. chapter 2 is about helping people get connected.

we have an interactive map of the city's public wi-fi points and computer labs. we have information on the library's hot spot lending program, where library patrons can borrow an internet hot spot and get wireless coverage for three months, i believe. we also have information on various discount internet programs through different internet service providers and we have resources to help residents buy low-cost computers. so here our interactive map of public access and computer labs. this includes the hash tag sf wi- wi-fi locations, park and rec locations. we have every library branch, rec centers, nonprofits with computer labs and we have all

the sf connected sites, which includes the lrc, as well as the lighthouse. lighthouse for the blind. >> alex, for folks who are in the room who can't see, can you talk about the concentration on the map. >> yeah, so we find there are a lot of locations offering computer labs or public wi-fi throughout the city, but at the same time, most of them are concentrated in the downtown neighborhoods. so in the tenderloin, mid market and soma areas, when you go further out into the south and southeast neighborhoods, you start to only see library locations or maybe city's parks. so the resources aren't equally distributed geographically throughout the city. >> thank you. >> chapter 3 is about teaching digital literacy, so within the

chapter we define certain standards for what digital literacy means. we have sample curriculum from established service providers throughout the city, which includes teaching people how to use their smart phones, smart phones are becoming increasingly common, but many people, talking a population who have smart phones don't know how to use them to their full potential. we want to increase the smart phone literacy as well. we have assisted technology resources which i'll get to. and we have assessment tools to gauge digital literacy for our clients. so the thought behind incorporating assistive technology resources in the chapter is that not all individuals with disabilities go to disability-specific centers for services. someone might have a disability but they're going to their neighborhood workforce center or going to their neighborhood family support services center. so we want to make sure these

centers also understand all the different resources that are available to help any client they have to disabilities access technology that can improve their lives. we gathered resources with help for the mayor's office on disability. they include access ingenuity, the department of rehabilitation, the ilrc, including their device lending lab, the hearing and speech center of california, lighthouse for the blind, access technology program and the library assistive technology resources. that's chapter 3. chapter 4 is to advance digital skills. so we have workshop curriculum specific to teaching what we call intermediate skills, so things like learning to use excel, or introductions to photo editing, or introduction to

coding. we have a list of free online training platforms to teach skills. we have resources for organizations to organize what are called learning circlings, which are book clubs for online classes, so this came out peer to peer university. it's online only university and what they found is a lot of students were interested in taking online class, but by taking it themselves at home, they didn't have the accountability and support to complete the classes. so they ended up dropping out. so instead of just having people take classes by themselves at home, they organized these learning circles at the library, where groups of people got together, taking the same class, meeting at the same time and they found the completion rates were higher. and then we have advanced training referral destinations as well in this chapter.

and then the rest is just to iterate, so we have tips on how to continuously improve the programs. we have a roundup of all resources toward the end. we have summary of our equal ta tav resource that went into producing the playbook and personas that are hypothetical clients that people might meet and what kind of technology needs they have and they need to help address. that's the playbook. and you know, this is really meant to be an it raytive project and working document, so we have a road map for continuing to improve this document. out of our tests we have a couple of requests already. the most common are to add more curriculum for even more basic skills, so you know, our curriculum i guess, for basic digital literacy goes a little

fast in expecting how quickly someone can pick up a mouse and start typing. and our testers felt like that wasn't realistic for every client, so they wanted materials for even more basic training. and at the same time, they wanted more materials for intermediate skills. so as clients get comfortable with using internet and using a computer they want to feel confident in their skills to go out and get a job that requires them to have digital skills. we also want to increase the disability friendliness of the playbook. so most of our qualitative research focused on workforce centers and public housing. we did come across people with disabilities at each one of those sites, but we want to spend more time dedicated at disability centers to understand the full range of needs and solutions that we can provide in terms of technology.

and then for our forms and tools, we want to continue to improve our forms, we want to validate them so they're accurate and precise. so, before i jump into the discussion, i wanted to show you with the play -- what the playbook looks like. you can access it at sfcoit.org/digitalequity. this is our website. there is a big button up top that says download the digital equity playbook. and this is it. let me just scroll down to some interesting sections. so here's information on the library's hot spot lending program. actually three weeks at a time. let me correct the record.

where you can borrow a mobile wireless internet device and get wireless anywhere for free. there is information about several internet discount programs, so at&t has a program, each are $10 a month for those who qualify. comcast has a program. and there is a national nonprofit based in minnesota that is p.c.s for people that offers service for $10 a month as well. let me skip ahead to the assistive technology section. under resources. so in the back, we have all the resources listed together. and we have the referral destinations, so for each assistive technology -- [buzzing] -- so for each

assisted technology research we have notes, what people can expect from each center. so we encourage everyone to take a look at this playbook and send us your feedback. i want to jump into a discussion. with the council. and here are some of my questions. so i wanted to get your thoughts on the playbook, especially the assisted technology resources we're recommending. i wanted to get your thoughts on what is missing from the playbook. i wanted to talk about strategy for conducting the technology needs assessment with the disability community. and some recommendations on organizations we should engage in rolling out the playbook. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you, open up to council member questions. kate williams? >> council member williams: i

need just a little technical assistance, [laughter]. my goodness, you have accomplished a great deal in just over a year, that's wonderful. and you may be aware, and i'm sure you are because you've been working with the lighthouse, but there is a program at the lighthouse, at least to benefit those in the audience on the bridge, that some do not know about it. it's called oib, are you familiar with it? you might want to include it in the playbook if it's not already there. oib is a program for older individuals who are blind. so we find that many older individuals aren't part of the department of rehab and they're wondering how can i get help when i'm not a client at the department? they can do so with training for devices and computers at the lighthouse under the program for older individuals who are blind. if you don't know about it, i invite you to call our access

technology group, actually our rehabilitation group and they'll be able to tell you about that. >> yeah, great, i didn't know about it. thank you for the recommendation. >> co-chair senhaux: council member orkid sassouni? [inaudible]

>> thank you, that's a great idea. advocacy and referral center -- referral agency, got you, thank you. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you council member orkid sassouni. co-chair, blacksten? >> co-chair blacksten: i have to second what my colleague kate williams said, you've really done a tremendous amount of work in a year's time.

i'm very pleased and this is impressive. so, in my particular case, i am blind and hard-of-hearing, so in addition to not being able to see, i have to use hearing aids. i use text to speech technology which is called jaws. you may be familiar with that particular software program since you work -- i mean you've worked with the lighthouse. and i also use braille technology. electronic braille device. i'd like to be able to collaborate with you going forward because with my situation in the insurance field, i'm going to have to make presentations using screen share. and that's a big challenge, especially with text to speech. in other words, that's where your perspective clients can see

you and if i were able to see, i could see them and we're not in the same place. so this is going to abchallenge. -- be a challenge. and i'm wondering, you put together this playbook and i'm going to go online and look at how well it works with jaws, i bet it's been tested already, i want to find out how well it does work. but are you prepared to do that, in terms of working with individuals like me? >> yes, we would like to. i wanted to get organizations to get in touch with to reach the residents. so we have lighthouse. we have dial rc. are there others, council member orkid mentioned de cara.

>> co-chair blacksten: the lighthouse, i work with a program, i'm going to mention another one with the lighthouse, they're excellent too, it's the natural deaf-blind equipment distribution program. so you might want to touch base with them. i know that cohen is their lead tech over there, so that might be something you would want to check out as well. i would recommend. >> will do, thank you. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you. i just have some comments, not necessarily questions. first of all, i appreciate the strategic planning around your playbook. i appreciate that you identify that people with disabilities have various needs with regards to assistive technology.

i appreciate that. i like when you were talking about as far as the type of feedback that you're getting, i appreciate the outreach that you're doing, not only to nonprofits agencies, et cetera, i know you've been working with the mayor's office of disability, but you're can look to network with seniors and people with disabilities in their community. they might not come downtown to a nonprofit, they might not be able to access those services, but they'll be able to go somewhere in their community and be able to learn about the assistive technology as you mentioned, it ties into employment and that's another important issue for people with disabilities. so it's great as far as your expansion and networking, to make sure we get this information out to those communities and those agencies. so, i want to thank you for that. any other questions or comments from the council before i open

it up to mod staff? ok. staff? >> hello. thank you, this is nicole again, thanks, alex, again for being here today. really appreciate all the time and effort you've put into this work so far. i want to offer that mod would be pleased to help coordinate any additional focus groups around disability technology that we may want to move forward. i also would like to offer our local colleges and universities are a good source for folks who are learning to use technology, folks with disabilities. so we'd be happy to help make connections in those areas as well. >> thank you, appreciate it. >> co-chair senhaux: any other questions from staff? oh, heather? thank you.

>> hi, i'd also like to continue to work with you on developing the resource list. it's a good start, but i know there are other agencies we can add there. and maybe we can even make it more disability-specific to different types of disabilities. and expand that section a lot more than it currently is. so there is opportunity for growth there. thank you. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you again. >> may i ask one more question, i'm sorry, denise. >> co-chair senhaux: of course you can. [laughter]. >> i'm curious if you could maybe say a little bit to the council about what you think the next steps are for you in terms of -- i know you have the road map, so what are your -- what do you think the next steps are in terms of priorities in disability engagement? >> it would be to schedule those focus groups and interviews. start with the needs assessment. >> thank you very much.

>> co-chair senhaux: so thank you for presenting. thank you for being here. i'm going to go ahead and open this up to public comment on this agenda. does anyone have public comment on this agenda item? thank you very much. >> on the bridge line? >> co-chair senhaux: ok, can we get to the person on the bridge line? hello? zack? >> yes, hi. >> co-chair senhaux: please go ahead and address your comment or question. >> thank you. yeah, i want to thank alex for the presentation, i enjoyed what i've heard so far and i'll be reviewing it more. i'm interested as well in developing that resource and hopefully that resource list can be given to ilrc and similar organizations 0 for people to

plug in. however, i want to address issues i've been having with disability in tech. i used to work in tech and i have background with the issue. but i also have carpal tunnel and i've had surgery on both my hands, so text of power that phones need and digital devices need to properly do a lot of accessibility aid. speech to text requires, to do it well, requires a really decent phone that in most cases can cost up yards of over $100 and usually a quad processor and couple of gig bytes of ram. and i find those resources do not meet the criteria of processing power that is needed to actually provide the help that people like myself with

disabilities need. the other part of the conversation i would like to open up, which is slightly different, is the idea of actually, some of the burden for tech and people with disabilities to have to have technology to engage in primary and basic social services, i think there is an incredible burden right now in san francisco put upon lower income and people who have to have all sorts of technologies to be good for them. and i can say with experience that, from my experience, that having to have smart phone and having to be available to it all the time, when i live in a dead zone, so a lot of calls don't come through. and i also have carpal tunnel like i mentioned, can be very

trying and painful. [bell ringing] i heard the bell, so i'll finish up. i wanted to say my experience had a home delivered meals program referral that was denied because they weren't able to call me, my phone wasn't working. so i'd like to open up as a conversation to say, maybe some of these resources could consider catering to people that are not actually really able or wanting to use technology all the time. and provide some -- [bell ringing] -- wiggle room around that like snail mail and e-mail and other technologies. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you for your comments. i believe someone in the audience wanted to make public comment. thank you for waiting. >> first of all, thank you, council members, and also thank you for the presentation on the

digital playbook. my name is ann, i work at the lighthouse. i have two questions/comments. my first is you all mentioned there is a wonderful resource to find out if you're not in the downtown area particularly, places with computer labs, so you can go and leverage access to computer. do those points of interest or those computer labs indicate whether there is accessible features? including both physical as well as digital? because if somebody with a disability, i would say, oh, that's wonderful there is a lab, go there and find out, oh, there is not the software i need to use on the computer. that's my first question/comment. second, someone who has disability who intersects with race, ethnicity, is there any plans to look at access for minorities, particularly those who may not have primary access in english?

so those are my comments/questions, thank you. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you for your comments. any other public comment on this information item? ok. we're going to go ahead and close public comment. we're going onto information item number 8, better streets plan. i'd like to welcome the project manager simon bertrang, department of public works, city and county of san francisco. >> good afternoon. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you for being here today. >> good afternoon, i'm simon bertrang, department of public works. i'm joined by some of my colleagues, in case there are questions for us to answer

together. i'm actually here to present about better market street. market street is our busiest pedestrian corridor. it's got hundreds of thousands of people a day. it's our busiest bicycle street, thousands of bicycles every day. it's the busiest transit corridor. it's got tens of thousands of riders on the surface, 1 in 10 is on the surface every day, but it's our most important street from cultural perspective. it has to serve transportation needs and be a great street. it has significant challenges. it has safety challenges, it's a high-injury corridor. the transit stops, the brick ramps, none of them meet the current ada standards. it doesn't have a continuous bicycle facility and all the infrastructure that you see and cannot see on market street is nearing the end of its useful life and needs to be replaced

just to keep san francisco running the way we're doing it today. here's pictures to illustrate the deficiencies. you can see the vehicles and the bikes trying to work together. there is not enough room. you can see a transit island which is so narrow that the buses cannot deploy their ramps, so we do not have ada curb ramp or access ramp onto the island because we don't want wheelchairs or people with carts to get on there. so we need to fix the deficiencies on market street. the city's vision for better market street is to bring transformative change to street scape, 2.2 miles, octavia to steurt street. i'm going talk about a couple of things that will be of most interest to this council. so just as a background, we're completely reconreceiving the --

conceiving the way muni runs often market street. -- on market street. we're changing all of the configuration stops on market street in order to create those center lanes, will be more like rapid stop spacing, so there will be rapid bus in the center and curbside lanes, local stop spacing. so it's a complete reconstruction of muni on market street to accommodate the fact that the mta is looking to increase service substantially. so if you add a couple of buses to the nine, a couple to the 38, a do you mean the 7, a -- a couple of the 7, pretty soon you have a lot of buses on market street. right now there are 100 buses an hour. muni would like to increase service and there would be 125 buses, per hour in both directions. that's a bus per minute in each of the four lanes.

we need to reconstruct the street to increase reliability. our pedestrian safety and bicycle safety is key. it's a high-injury corridor. we're going to do improvements to improve the way that people are able to use the street, either on the sidewalk or on a bicycle. i'll get into more of that later. we're proposing a host of vehicular restrictions to support that muni performance increase as well as the safety improvements. basically, you know, there is a couple of details here, but it's basically between van ness and steurt street, there would be no private vehicles allowed. that means commercial vehicles, taxis, but private vehicles, including über and lyft would not be allowed. accessibility in the ada clients, the access for taxis on market street and the creation of loading zones is key to

maintaining accessibility for people on market street. again they accommodate para transit as well. and many of our facilities are not up to standard and we would use the project to create ada compliance and accessibility improvements for the entire street. we're reconceiving the street scape. the brick out there, the trees, we're proposing to replace all of that, mo of the trees, not all of the trees, but with a new paving, with new street scape improvements, site furnishings, benches, plantings and you'll see the vision for that. but -- there is one more. i managed the infrastructure -- mentioned the infrastructure so all of the hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure investment on the street, we're pairing it because when we reconstruct the surface, we want to do the underground utilities and the overhead wires to keep market street running. this is a picture that shows

some of the -- this is a lane that is coming apart. the track lane is coming apart and we're having to fix it, but all of the facilities on market street are at the end of the useful life like this track lane. so a couple of years ago, 2015, we piloted a previous version of market street's plans. we had an idea of putting a cycle track, which would be halfway between the sidewalk level and the roadbed level, sort of vertical separation from the road. we piloted that on the south side of market between 12th and gough and the universal conclusion was that it did not work, it did not increase safety for the users of that cycle track. and vehicles used it as pa parking lane, because we design you had it to taxis -- so taxis could drop people off on the sidewalk. it wasn't working. we had to put posts in the location. at this point we might have just

painted a lane on the road and put the delineators. would have been cheaper. we are proposing a sidewalk level bike lane. so this section that you see up there, shows a section of what looks like sidewalk, but a portion of that is a bikeway. so the sidewalk itself is only 25 feet wide. there will be separation between the bikeway and the pedestrian area. and that is what i really wanted to get into, in this presentation, what we're thinking about with the separation, people have a lot of questions how that will work to maintain safety for people using the sidewalk, as well as utility for the people using the bikeway. just before we get there, i have an image of today's market street with the wide sidewalks

that are underutilized. they're too wide and we don't have amenities on the street. a lot of them were removed over the years. we're proposing to maintain a wide circulation area for the sidewalk. replacing all of the brick, refreshing all of the street scape. including new trees. and then creating a bikeway that is separated from that new sidewalk by a series of vertical obstructions and a warning surface and visual distinction that will make clear to people where the bikeway is and where the sidewalk ends. i like to say that we have a shared bikeway and sidewalk in the city, in the embarcadero, but it does not work when it's crowded. so we want to create a bikeway that has clear delineation between where the bikes need to be and where the people safely can be without having to worry about bicycles. there are precedents around the world, a lot of them in european

countries, but north america, vancouver, seattle, they have been starting to build the bikeways. there is one in boston as well. they use a series of cues to see where the sidewalk and bikeway is. those are surfaces or planting beds or other vertical obstructions. so we're working to think about how to design that buffer zone. and we're working with a team of people internally, engineers, landscape architects, our accessibility experts from the mta, as well as from public works. and we've been working with mod and outside advocacy groups to ensure we can come up with a design for this buffer between the bikeway and the sidewalk that will function in the sense that bicycles will not be on the sidewalk. they won't be able to move quickly on the sidewalk. they see a little congestion

onto the bikeway, they whip on the sidewalk, endangering the pedestrians. we have a series of signals we're going to have to come up with. we don't have the solution today. we're working very hard, because i think no one, including a lot of the advocacy groups working, want 2.2 miles on each side of yellow detectable domes, mostly because it wouldn't serve the purpose that the domes -- it would dilute the power of the domes to signal you're entering a roadway. we're going to come up with something new working with our internal team and advocacy groups to signal that difference between the two. there is three things i wanted to cover. the others are short. the first was the bikeway and how it's separated from the sidewalk. other is that the existing board of market street, i showed you

that. it's very narrow, five feet wide. only half of the islands are ada accessible. so we're going to provide new islands to provide full ada access, including to the f streetcar at every location. and we're going to design them so in some cases two buses can stop at the same time. and we may design it for three buses to fit at a time. it's going to be much more comfortable waiting area. the picture shows people crowded, we're going to create 9-foot boarding so people have space on the islands. here's an image that shows red color an existing boarding island, 175 square feet and then the image shows the future boarding island is much longer,

wider, doubling the size of the boarding islands an i show the people squashed up there trying to wait for the bus. here are images that start to show how the boarding would work. where they're at the curbside, people getting on and off the bus have to cross the bikeway to get to the boarding island, because the boarding island -- the bikeway goes behind the boarding island. we've built this design elsewhere in the city. on 7th street, 8th street, there is the design where the bike lane goes behind the boarding island and we're proposing that bikeway be at the same level. this makes it easier to cross because pedestrians in wheelchairs can be on one surface, but we have to design it carefully to make sure it's safe and we don't encourage conflict between bicyclists and pedestrians.

there is a whole host of pedestrian safety improvements in addition to the details i was going over. i want to make sure you guys know we're doing intersection changes, we're shrinking the crossing distances, taking the two-part crossings, trying to consl date them, make it safer for people to cross. we're going to propose wider curb ramps so two people can pass the same time. we're going to align them. a lot of the cases, the curb ramps are on different sides of the crosswalk, makes it harder for people to cross and find them. we're going to make them wider and easier to use. signals as we mentioned, sidewalk extensions and bulbs and a host of new crosswalks and signals to help facilitate movement of people. there is an example of one at hyde and grove, crossing from the library, to the other hyde

street. there are images which i might skip, but they start to show, if you looked carefully, you would see where there are some existing curb alignments in red, dotted line and we're proposing new sidewalks that would shrink the crossing distances. this is a visual where we're able to do that. we're able to shrink the crossing distances to make it easier to cross the street. finally, the loading zones is unique. we're going to be providing loading zones up and down market street, because we've identified para transit and commercial loading has to take place on market street. but in order to make it work with the bikeway, we're proposing a unique type of loading zone that would also be at sidewalk level. so if you imagine there is a rolled curb, a curb without a

right angle, but a little flatter so the vehicle can get on it. it goes over the curb, cross the bikeway and maneuver into a loading bay, that happens to be at the same level of the sidewalk and the bikeway. there would be warning domes at this type of location because we're signalling you're entering a vehicular area. that is unique design. that would be to allow us to the do the bikeway and maintain loading. it creates conflict between the two modes, but we look at maybe time of day restrictions on loading to reduce the conflict, so maybe in the inbound direction in the morning, maybe no commercial loading. but mta is going to explode how to do loading on market street with the new design. and there is image that shows exactly how that works. you can see very clearly there is a bikeway that goes to the

left, around the loading zone. and the trucks are clearly parked between the bikeway and the sidewalk and you can see there is a series of detectable warning strips to make sure the trucks don't stray onto the sidewalk. so right now, we're in the middle of environmental review. we're past the middle, which is probably the first time on the project we've been able to say that. we've made significant progress, we're almost done with all the technical studies and drafting a ir by the end of the year. we're doing conceptual engineering, so a lot of drawings are from the engineers as we work out the details to a degree that makes us feel comfortable. we're only 10% design, so we have a lot of time to get this right and we've been doing a bunch of stakeholder meetings and meeting with advocacy groups to make sure we're getting input

to make a safe sidewalk for everyone. and thank you, all. i'll stop there. but we're happy, ian and i, to answer questions and virginia is here today. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you, i would like to open up questions afrom the council. co-chair blacksten. >> co-chair blacksten: good afternoon, simon, good to see you again. i was at another presentation you made about a month earlier to the california council of the blind san francisco. you covered a lot of the same materials, but i think you have done a great job today in talking to us extensively about what you're doing. so i really commend you. this is -- wow. this is an outstanding project. you're doing a lot in the period of time in which you've been involved. i just wanted -- by the way, i'm

so glad that you're going to be rebuilding those center islands. wow. i mean, that is very challenging to navigate. i have a guide dog, getting on and off the buses, people are crowding you. that's not easy. so i really am glad to see that you're going to redo that and make it more accessible. now, two areas quickly. the first one is, are these lanes. and that does concern me. you're proposing to have the bike lanes be at the same level? as the sidewalks. so if i understand you right, you're going to have tactile markings, you'll have some kind of barriers, that would separate the bikers from the people walking. i just need to you to talk a

little bit more about that, because i have a dog, and you know, she's going to have to guide me safely through this kind of area. >> yeah. so i think what i would say about that is, if you think about the buffer zone between the sidewalk, and the bikeway as kind of a furnishing zone. so when you're walking down the sidewalk, there is a through-way, your expectation is that there will be no obstruction, but adjacent to you there is an area with trees, lights, parking meters, obstructions in the furnishing zone. so the way we're designing it, the buffer adjacent to a minimum 15-foot wide three-way, with few exceptions. there is couple of pinch points where we don't quite reach 15, but we're maintaining this idea of a wide freeway and then adjacent, there is an area with trees and the object strucks are

trees and tree pits, some benches, planter beds with flowers and other things in them. tables and chairs. host of thing that are obstructions, furnishings, but really those are all being contained within the furnishing zone. so someone with a guide dog, using a cane, it should be predictable where the zone is in the sense that your thruway is clear and the zone, with the obstructions and the tactile warning and high contrast, visual indications that help people who have limited sight to see there is a difference between the two. so we haven't designed that perfectly yet and that's the committee we're working on that includes our internal accessibility experts as well as outside advocacy groups that we're relying on. i don't know if that answers the

question, but it's a buffer/furnishing zone. >> co-chair blacksten: that's fantastic, that helps me understand what you're doing and that's going a long way to make it work really well. the other thing i just wanted to touch on, i understand that über and lyft are not going to be allowed on market street and it's been proposed by the lighthouse that perhaps there could be some waiting areas on side streets for people like me who would use über or lyft could go and get our rides. can you talk about that? >> so, again, thanks to the outreach, we were able to meet with the lighthouse and understand some of these special needs of the idea that über and lyft, that when we're think being removing them from market street, because the purpose of that is not we're against über or lyft, we're just trying to

limit the traffic on the street. but when we met with lighthouse we realized there is a whole community relying on the services to get around in a way that they've never been able to rely on other services, similar services to do before. so we have in our conversations with them, we've committed to trying to create zones on the side streets easily reachable areas that would be also clearly identified in the apps that are use to call the services, that would help direct people to where they needed to go. and once they're there, there is some way of indicating that you're there and i'm being vague, because i don't know what the design looks like, but we're in -- we understand the need for clear easy to reach, easy to identify zones where people can get picked up and so we're already going to provide passenger loading in these areas, but there are questions

are there design things we can do to make it easily identified to everyone, where you can get picked up by any passenger vehicle. >> co-chair senhaux: council member kate williams. >> council member williams: thank you. it's so exciting. it's huge. i mean this in a funny way, i think the only thing you left out are hot dog stands. it's amazing what you're accomplishing. and i'm wondering if i'm going to be alive to see all that. what is the projected time frame and is there funding to start the project? or is there funding or will there be funding? >> there is funding for the first phase. the city not only has the money to do the design work and planning work in order to make sure we could build this, but we have money both in the 2014 transportation and mode

improvement bond. please stand by.