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 to speech tt or speech to text tt actually is something that is very leppful for me. one of the things that is not brought up in the conversation is the amount 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.

>> but meanwhile, we'll have cleared the entire thing and done a significant design work for it, as well -- environmentally cleared. >> thank you for good work. >> thank you, council member williams.

council member orkid sousouni? >> i like the idea of the -- the public transportation is very useful, and as i mentioned, the islands are so unsafe. and as a if a deaf person, if a car is going by very quickly, i don't know about it until it's very close. there's also no overhead shelter for the rain, and i don't know if you're proposing ni anything like that. as for the crowding, it's very intense, so sometimes people wait across the street to wait for the bus to come. now as a bicyclist, i notice that many bicyclists just zoom past in that area and it doesn't give people a chance to cross, so perhaps another suggestion would be also to have a separate signal for bicyclists only. i know that many bicyclists

don't follow the street signals because they're designed for cars, but they could become this whole separate transportation category, so again for me as a deaf person, it's very dangerous for me to have other bicyclists go by, yelling at me if i can't hear that. so again, going back to it being wide, that's wonderful. however for deaf people, there is no -- you often discover quite a lot of bad do in those areas, so if there were garbage cans designed specifically for that in that area, that would be great. there's also needles and a lot of stuff in that area, and there's not trash cans for people to put them in. last one, when you're talking about crosswalks, i'm wondering if you -- sorry. the interpreter has to ask for clarification. have you thought about -- >> a scramble?

>> yeah, some -- like, this multiple cross ways at the same time versus singular crossing at the same time. >> i don't know if that's effective, if that's safe, having people out in the middle of the street when traffic is going by, not sure about that, but just wanted to know if you inquired about that, and that's my last question. >> and i really appreciate you using so many different modes, and often we'll get people commenting on one mode. i think when people experience them all, then it's easy to balance the competing needs. you had a lot of comments, and i hope we get a written comment because it's a lot of things to think about. trash cans with lids are one of the things that we're talking about, as well as trash cans on the muni islands. as for the scramble, we did consider doing a scramble which basically allows you to cross all four directions at once.

itself on market street, it does not work for us to allow the signal timing. i'm going to call my colleague from the mta because he's going to be better at talking about why. >> hi. my name is ian traut, and i'm a senior designer at the municipal transportation agency. one of the main reasons was the width of the intersection, as well as the street car tracks were the two main reasons why we thought that pedestrians scrambles would not work on market street. however, some of the intersections on the north side of market, such as o'farrell, grant and market, as an example already sort of function as a scramble today. so we are looking at those kind of -- the -- the intersections on the north side where the street grid is a little bit

different, so... >> and i apologize. i know you had a lot of questions about the design of the islands and also the design of the bike way, but i was trying to keep track of them. is there one in particular that i could answer or do you just want to make sure we address it when we see the written comments? >> well, i was more of just suggesting -- the problem with the islands is it's great that you're going to increase the size, but part of the problem is getting to the island. >> yeah. >> because so often, bicyclists go by so quickly, they feel they have the right to run the red light. >> yeah. >> so it's difficult to try to wait to catch the bus. it's great that you're going to expand them, but it's just that there's still going to be the danger of crossing the street to get there, so it is just a challenging situation. my suggestion is maybe perhaps creating a separate signal for bicycle traffic. i don't know if you're even willing to do that, but just to consider a separate traffic category to try to get them to

stop. >> yeah. we actually are adding a significant number of bicycle signals, and i think you're absolutely right that in some cases, and i've witnessed it personally, there'll be a midblock crossing, for example in front of 1155 market, that bicycles often blow through it. there's a red light and it even says stop, but they're thinking it's for the cars and not the bicycle. so in that case, a little red bicycle, and a whole host of engineering improvements. ian has some great ideas in terms of stripage and signage that make it clear that they're really supposed to stop there. it's just for people to cross, it's not if it's safe, it's okay for the bicyclists to blow through. i think we're trying to design the bike way, the entire motivation behind it is with a better and safer bicycle facility, we can expect people to behave better. that's the way we're

approaching it. right now it's a little bit of the wild west out there if there's no bike lane, and so people are -- i think there's no control, and i think as we provide a safer facility, then, the expectation is that people will start to behave, also in a way that is a little bit more respectful of others on the street. and with all of the things that we mentioned about crossings and how people get to the islands, both on the curb side islands, we're thinking very carefully how to reduce those islands. we're also thinking about is there a system of way finding for people who are on the sidewalk to understand how to get to the islands -- the center boarding islands that are right out in the middle of the street. and i don't know, virginia, if you want to talk about that, but that's an idea -- there is a tactile way finding that we can design that would help people know what's out on the tactile and other way finding

that would help people understand what's on the -- do you want to talk about it? >> hi. i'm virginia rutka with accessible of th accessible services at sf mta. we're looking to see if we could employ something on market street, as well, and that would be part as simon mentioned a whole system of way finding techniques. >> including some guidance in the paving itself that would help people understand where to turn for the -- for the -- for the islands, and then, the islands themselves, there will be shelters. right now we'd be considering they'd be some version of the clear channel shelters out there today. we have heard from a number of constituents that they wished there would be something other than the clear way shelters, the muni shelters, so we are thinking of something, beside there's a whole legal system of

things with the mta and dealing with their shelterum ises, but we are working on that. >> thank you, council member sousounni. council member smolinski monthly month. >> i'm curious whether your proposal for a 15 foot sidewalk allows for cafe seating and all that kind of stuff because i can imagine the pedestrian walkway getting squeezed out little by little. >> yeah, that is a great question and it actually anticipates some ideas that we are thinking about right now. if you go to market street today, there are a number of locations where there are tables right now, and i think it's contributing to the feeling of a very livly street, and we want to figure out a way to support them while maintaining adequate pedestrian through way. so a couple of the chairs and

tables today, with the double row of trees, there are some pinch points with the current situation. we are hoping to -- if you imagine that 15 feet that we're talking about, if we took 7 feet for a satisfy a table and chairs down, then there's only 8 feet for the through way. so what we have to look at is what's in the furnishing zone adjacent to these areas that we might want to have cafe excitit

>> i have a few thoughts that maybe we can expand on for a few more minutes, if that's okay. first, if we could, you mentioned briefly the b.a.r.t. portals. can you speak to proposed changes around the portals as it relates to navigation for folks? >> so b.a.r.t. has a program that is going to be replacing all of the escalators on market street and provide canopies and as part of those, they are going to be including some kind of way finding built into the canopies themselves. there's going to be some kind of maps related to -- sort of like the mtc maps -- there's maps on posts today on market street that have some way finding. b.a.r.t. is proposing to include some dwisadditional wa

finding. other than that, the only -- the only thing we'll see is that there'll be canopies over those. we're not changing the dimensions of those openings at all, it's just canopies. b.a.r.t. is proposing to close the two entrances on the western end of civic station in front of the hotel widcomb and burger king. in fact they've already closed that one. >> that's what i was getting at. otherwise, it doesn't sound like their significant proposed changes to the location of the portals. >> except for that one close you ar ing, that's the only one i know about. >> thanks, and then, i was wondering if you could expand on part of what will need to happen we think around this

project is also a significant educational campaign so that folks know, you know, what's happening and this is of course -- that's part of that, but can they speak to maybe what either dpw or main ian is -- is knowledgeable on this, too in terms of what we've done in speaking to folks like the bicycle coalition who previously spoke to this council about engaging with the disability community, as well, around their part in educating around safe crossing and pedestrian safety. >> so i think it's clearly been identified that education campaign is going to have to be a part of making this work successfully. not only are there going to be significant changes to vehicle access, but these flex zones, the way the bike way works, the way the transit islands work,

all of these things are going to be relatively new to san franciscans, so we're going to have to come up with a way to educate everyone on market street in particular on the bicycle lane because one of the consistent comments we get is concern about some bad bicyclists' behavior that feels threatening that puts people at danger, at risk. so we have talked to the bicycle coalition. they're very supportive of this plan, but they also recognize that this bicycle lane is not designed for the speediest commuter, so this is not a bicycle lane that is about the fastest way down market street, but what it is designed to do is provide a very safeway to get down market street, so we expect many different types of users to be able to start feeling comfortable to bicycle on market street, and we have a whole host of bicycle sharing on market street, so we envision tourists and younger people and older people are going to feel comfortable about bicycling on market street. but we have talked to them

about the need for an education cycle on market street. for this to work, we're going to have to help people understand how to use it. do you want to say anything? >> this is ian traut again. i would just like to add in traffic engineering, traffic safety, we call it the three e's to traffic safety: engineering, education and enforcement and education is really one of those three key pillars. and we've already spoken with the light house for the blind and they've mentioned the use of tactile maps because we are, as simon mentioned, we're making pretty significant changes to the lengths of the boarding islands and also the location of the transit stops, and -- and again, we're working through the strategy, but that is going to be really a key point for this project. >> thank you. and finally, i have one last question before we move to public comment. and so we've talked a little

bit about the timeline for the project itself. in -- within that how long do you anticipate taking feedback from -- from the public about disability access issues? >> so i'd say there are a couple different tracks of feedback. i mean one is going to be our environmental reprocess. there are very clear moments where we're going to get feedback on our draft eir. we're publishing one at the end of this year, and then, one about six months later. but we'd actually like to get more like design input as we're moving from this 10 percent percent conceptualization of market street towards 30% schematic drawings for market street, we want to make sure we are developing a plan for this buffer for the crossings, for the boarding islandeds, and that's where we need the feedback from the disability community. it's going to be a little bit of back and forth, because we

need to find out what the concerns are, show them, do you think this is actually going to work. i would just call out walk sf recently hosted a meeting on bicycle facilities in the city and interaction with pedestrian safety, that i attended with a lot of my colleagues, that i thought was very successful, and i was very heartened to hear at my table some representatives from the light house getting really interested in coming up with this idea of what's the tactile solution that's not 3 feet wide of detectible domes all along market street. we're going to have to tap into that interest to get good feedback, because we need that to be safe, and the only way we're going to be able to do that is a little bit of back and forth. >> so do you anticipate that's going to be going on for about six months. >> yeah, for about six months. we're going to be starting detailed design at the end of this summer. so april, may, june, july. i'd say six months is about exactly right.

we really want to start to bring in focus what these improvements actually look like. there's a whole bunch of drawing that has to take place after that, but it's always our intent to make most of the decisions early, because if you make them later, it just ends up costing money and time. so yeah, six months is a good estimate. >> okay. thank you. thank you. thank you. >> we'll definitely want you back in that time frame to hear about any updates and feedback you're getting from the community. so i want to thank you for being here, from our presenters, and i'm going to go ahead and open it up to any public comment on this agenda item. so do we have any requests for anyone to speak, any public comment? >> yes. >> oh, please come to the podium. thank you. >> i'm bob planthold. i've been a member of the citizens advisory committee for this second major phase for some time. it's been a learning experience

for me, but i also want to tell you the staff have been very responsive and never dismissive when i raise a question or make a suggestion about some accessible feature or some change suggestion. beyond that, i want to say that people who are representing other constituencies have been separatelily independently responsive. one example, janice lee from the bike coalition has come up with some suggestions that are supportive. i'm almost always the only person with a known disability present. there's room for more people with more disabilities to come, to attend, to show up, to make public comment. these are held typically at the 30 vanness offices of dpw, so that's vanness and market, with multiple muni lines

intersecting, and it's after work, like 6:00 to 7:30 so whatever job you have, you can get there. it's not every month, but you can come, make public comment. m.o.d. can get on-line and send it to you folks. i do want to say that separate from, in addition to enforcement regarding what has been already acknowledged as a bike anythiflagrant violation it's going to help if the board makes some resolution or public comment about the need for education and enforcement, and here's why. a couple of years ago i persuaded a then command staff police officer whose responsibility included that area to do a sting for a couple of weeks about bicyclists blowing through the midblock crossing between 7th and 8th, because i mentioned that's

where the m.o.d., that's where the b.a.r.t. elevator is, that's where the muni crossing is. it happened for about two weeks. and he was transferred to the equivalent of siberia that's not conducive for advancement career wise. he's back now in the mainstream of san francisco, but the point is, you need to make sure through some formal statement that education and enforcement of bicyclists is important and necessary on an ongoing basis so that police have that piece of paper to be able to show to anybody who says, well, bicyclists are being perpersecutpersecuted or being particularly picked upon. ain't so, but until you do it it tends to be looked at as individual, and therefore neglected. >> thank you.

is there any other public comment on this agenda item, please come forward to the podium -- oh . thank you. go ahead. >> yes. i come to you with some background in this concern of pedestrian safety for our seniors and people with disabilities as i held that seat on the pedestrian safety advisory committee for ten years, serving under the will of the board of supervisors and the mayor. and i pose this question so tou and to tim. i did not hear at all in this presentation on the redesign of market street about inclusion of a.p.s. where will assistance devices be installed on the medians or the sidewalk with people with impaired vision to cross from the bus stop median or to the sidewalk? that was not described,