transportation authority meeting

for today, tuesday, april 24, our clerk, if you could please call the roll. roll call, commissioner breed absent. cohen present. fewer present. kim absent. peskin present. ronen present. safai present. sheehy absent. stefani present. tang present. yee absent. we have quorum. >> last week, schools and families celebrated bike and roll to school week, thousands of youth and adults rode in bike trains, rode with parents and teachers and used their own pedal power to get to school. on april 17, our director joined supervisor ronen's office to

celebrate with students as they biked and rolled to school. bike and roll to school week is sponsored by safe routes partnership and organized by the san francisco bicycle coalition and we are a proud sponsors. to keep things rolling, it will be held may 10th and we're pleased to help sponsor the bike to work day. in addition to biking, participants can volunteer or join a convoy to bike to work with their neighbors. these events stand in marked contrast to the challenges we've had with e-scooters on our sidewalks in the past several weeks. i called for the three major companies to work with the city, as you all know, they chose to flat our process. i appreciate the efforts of public works and the city attorney's office to help manage these devices when left

inappropriately in the public right-of-way and continue to be concerned about people operating these devices on sidewalk which is not legal and has led to injuries for pedestrians. our staff is tracking a new bill that has been introduced in the legislature seeking to enable these devices to operate legally on sidewalks and we will pose any provision that -- oppose any provision that hinders our ability to regulate this activity in san francisco. finally, on a more positive note, i'd like this ask staff to arrange a briefing at our meeting in may for the body by the planning department on the newly renamed rail yard alignment and benefit study that is nearing completion. the study which for the past three years has been analyzing alternative lines for the downtown and look at removing the caltrain yard is now in the final stages with recommendation

for the pennsylvania alignment for downtown caltrain extension south of the current terminus. this will pass below 16th street, preserving access into mission bay which will be a huge improvement for the city. i look forward to hearing about the analysis and for this body to move forward in confirming the alignment and finally advancing design of this project in the coming months. of course, at our last meeting announced that at your request we will return to our committee structure and i am working with staff on those changes to our rules and regulations. and with that, is there any public comment on the chair's report? seeing none, public comment is closed. we'll going to the executive director report. >> our condolences on your loss. >> supervisor peskin: thank you. >> members, we're happy to bring the rail yard alignment and benefit study to the board with

our partners at planning department and other agencies next month. that's a really big development. i look forward to further conversations there advancing the works to deliver dtx. meanwhile, at the state level as you heard a few times, april 2, the state department began a process that allowed permits to be issued for driverless vehicles. we continue to track that. mayor farrell held a safety briefing last month. and we continue to weigh in at the state level through the rule-making that is happen, even the public utilities commission which regulates tnc, they're now proposing that autonomous vehicles be allowed to be tncs. it's a very fast moving landscape where they're seeking the public utilities commission to involve autonomous vehicle technology in the next generation of that technology.

we're working with sfmta to comment on the decision, we're working on the rule-making at the federal level as well with numerous cities in california. we thank senator feinstein for pressing our issues in the ab start act. in terms of regional planning, the good news, we were pleased to see metropolitan transportation commission recommending approval of four priority grants that will difficulty san francisco. the first is to the planning department, $500,000 for a study, 500,000 for the market street hub environmental impact report to advance planning in the south van ness mission corridor and then two grants to planning department for the pda housing feasibility analysis. congratulations to all the

applicants. we are appreciative of the support. regarding regional topic of interest, the means based transit fare program was held and commissioner kim along with our reps have also weighed in. pressing for further work to develop the path program, pass program version, the staff recommendation had been for 20% discount for qualified riders to be funded with $11 million and one to one match by operators. bart is concerned about going beyond the 20% discount and our contingent would like them to consider a pass base discount, not just per ticket. we'll continue to track that work and try to bring back another version of the staff recommendation next month. commissioner kim in particular had expressed frustration that the staff had not considered integrating the program with clipper, we'll continue to

follow up on those concerns as well. our horizon work, this is mtc planning work and it sets up the next bay area, continues at the regional level. the region is doing what we had done in the connectsf program, looking at scenarios. demographic shifts and making sure that the future projects that we invest in can perform under any of those given the uncertainty we face. there will be a series of policy papers and we'll keep you posted on those. we've been collaborating with mta and planning department on connectsf work that will feed into the horizon work in the plan bay area. we'll keep you posted on the transit pieces and the streets and freeway planning we're doing for future planned areas investment strategies.

the staff also have been preventing at various conferences, pricing and demand management. this is becoming a much greater topic nationally as well given that the infrastructure is mature, in our state, built in the 50s and we're in the management mode, maintenance mode and others are looking at demand management, given that technology and policies are enabling many more strategies to be realized. so rachel highet and camille are presenting on treasure island and bart perks, demonstrating that incentives can encourage people to shift their time or mode. again, the treasure island has met, they met in april and heard an information item. anyone interested, we can provide more information. this is an idea that merged from public outreach for future residents of treasure island to

be able to use a pass that enables muni, the ferry and the ac transit service in the future. in addition, we are working on the vision zero ramp study, there is an online and paper survey that is available for residents and travelers in the soma neighborhood, where we have a lot of freeway touching down onto the city streets. we're asking neighborhoods, residents and stakeholders to identify the worst intersections, the places we need intervention to improve safety. these are in multilingual format online and on paper. so please contact colin post our staff at our front desk can direct to you the survey. we want to thank commissioner ronen's office of a walk-through of the hair ball. the staff and public works, bike coalition, district 9 and 10,

cac all toured the area, looking at the lighting in the freeways, the underpass. it was striking to see how many lighting fixtures were there, not working. it's a mixture of jurisdictions, san francisco public utilities and caltrain have lighting facility, so we'll be looking to retro fit the existing lights and adding more. the fleet replacement and expansion is continuing a pace 47 new buses hit the street in the third quarter. this is exciting. the prop k tax is being used to help replace the expanding fleet. we saw 28 more diesel coaches and 19 trolley coaches under the contract with new flyer and several of them have been rolli rolling onto the streets. finally, on management administration, i want to thank

cynthia fong, she has been joining us about 20 bay area agencies with a common goal to assist small and disadvantaged local firms doing business with transportation agencies. they meet on a monthly basis to establish ways to better increase participation from the local and disadvantaged businesses, in fact, we'll be hosting a meeting in educational workshop on may 15, 1-3 p.m., it's on bonding and insurance. it's for small and emerging businesses to learn more about insurance and bonding requirements related to transportation and learn how to obtain sewerty bonds -- surety bonds to increase their capacity. thank you, with that, happy to take questions. >> supervisor peskin: any questions? any public comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. thank you, director. if you could read the next item. >> item 4-11, compromise consent agenda.

5-11 were approved and are being considered for final approval. they're considered routine. prepared to present if desired. if a member objects, we can move to consider separately. >> supervisor peskin: any public comment on the minutes of the april 10 meeting? seeing none, public comment is closed. on the consent agenda, a motion? made by commissioner tang, seconded by commissioner sheehy. >> on the consent agenda. cohen aye. fewer aye. kim aye. peskin aye. ronen aye. safai aye. sheehy aye. stefani aye. tang aye. yee aye. the consent agenda is approved. >> supervisor peskin: nexttime. >> item 12 on the update of the

valencia street bike plan, information item. >> good morning, commissioners, my name is kimberley and i'm the project manager for the valencia street bikeway improvement project. thank you for having us here today to share our updates on the project. so the project began in february of this year, and for this project we'll be taking a look at safety, curb management and enforcement along the valencia corridor. we're setting the structure from

market to mission street. the project will result in a phased implementation plan we'll be bringing forward in the fall and with that plan, we'll have recommendations for the corridor. i wanted to share about the outreach we've been doing so far and the data collection effort we're starting now and touch on the near term improvements you may have seen and the next steps between now and next fall. for our outreach, we've been calling this the early listening phases of the project, we conducted door to door and stakeholder. so far, we've gone out along the entire two-mile stretch of valencia speaking to the businesses, we've made contact with 15 business -- 215 businesses and shared with them a survey, which is meant to find

out more information about the needs of the businesses when it comes to commercial and passenger loading. from those surveys, we've received 80 responses from a 40% response rate. we're defining outreach as handing a vey to someone. we've reached out to 45 different stakeholders and those stakeholders are covering community groups, neighborhood associations, places of worship, schools and even tncs. so some of the conversations we've noticed that people recognize the number of compromises, tradeoffs and challenges with valencia street. some of the feedback we've heard from the conversations include the need for loading. as your going down the street, you see folks are stopped in the centre turn lane. that's one of the things we're encouraged to look at. we've been reminded of the

number of schools and we've reached out to the schools and have conversations with dhem about their needs. we've heard feedback whether the enforcement group is taking a look at the bike lane or emphasis on parking meters. through all the conversations we've been encouraged to have a flexible design. we just wrapped up all of this rh about a week or so ago, so we're going through and conducting analysis of the data gathered and will be bringing that forward in a few months. most recently, we've engaged with a consultant to begin data collection along the corridor. right now, we're collecting bidirectional volumes, there are three locations where we're getting a feel of the overall traffic volume. we're taking a look at the parking occupancy and turnover

and collecting bike lane activity. that will be happening next week. with the data collection, we're hoping to get a better feel for the overall interaction and behaviors in the bike lane, whether it between commercial loading vehicles, tncs and bikes. we've conducted a customer survey that was conducted the first week of april. it is to help get a better feel for shopping patterns along the corridor and that has resulted in 200 responses. most recently, in mid march, a number of improvements were made between 15 and 19th street n. the photo, you can see the one that buffer that was installed. in that one-foot buffer, a number of delineators were installed. they encourage further separation between vehicles and

bicycles and they were only installed in the areas where the bike lane was adjacent to a park and there were no impacts to parking. with the improvements, we're trying to encourage changes along the corridor while working on the overall planning for the project. the next step of the project includes a series of community workshops in the spring, we'll be bringing back all the information we've gathered from our stakeholder interviews and door-to-door outreach. later this summer we'll have a project open house. we'll be working on a number of near-term improvements. so as you saw with the safe hits we installed from 15th to 19th, we're making additional improvements, including slot improvements, intersections that have high number of collisions, we'll be taking a look at color curb improvements along the core do. with that, i'll be happy to take

questions. >> supervisor peskin: any questions? commissioner ronen -- sheehy. >> supervisor sheehy: the time line for the project is -- when do you -- this seems like this is going on pretty long. you're talking about the end of the summer? >> so what we're working toward right now is have a series of community workshops. we're aiming for mid june. the workshops is going to bring back the data analysis and outreach and then later this summer we'll have open house where it will be the culmination of everything we've seen and heard in the work shops and later this fall, we'll be back to the board with the near and long-term recommendations to the implementation plan. >> supervisor sheehy: so really the fall of this year, maybe a year from now we might see those go in? >> with those recommendations we have to see where we have

funding as well as public support. one of the things that we're working on that we called out in the initial scope when we got the funding for the project was that we're taking a look at market to 15th. market to 15th was a stretch of valencia called out in the pine apartment public plan for parking protected bike lanes. we have an engineer working on a fees nlt of that stretch. if it looks like it will work, we'll get the protected bike lanes. >> supervisor sheehy: less than a year from now? >> we're trying to work on it as quickly as we can, so he's working on those, while we're working on near-term improvements in the corridor. >> supervisor sheehy: what are your conversations -- i mean i see a lot with the people who have businesses there, but what were your conversations with people who actually use the lanes. the people who actually use the bike lanes.

because i've been down there, the traffic is constant. >> there is a lot of public support for the parking protected or some sort of separation between the cars and the bikes. so we've heard comments ranging from let's have a two-way cycle track, with parking protected bike lanes. it's been quite a range, but there is a lot of support from folks that do bike there. we've also made a point to reach out to businesses and those who need to use the parking on the curb to get a better feel of what their thoughts are. >> supervisor sheehy: you talked about a lot of collisions. it is not safe right now. so, i guess i'm not capturing a sense of urgency when i see families that bike up and down valencia and i bike on valencia and i've taken part in people-protected bike lanes and observed the traffic in the evening and the tncs that just basically pull over and don't really care if there is somebody

biking in the lane. so i just -- i'm not getting -- i mean this sounds like something that might happen two or three years from now. in that interim, people will be injured. i get loading zones and all that, but at the end of the day is what more important, human life or other interests? and just the sheer lack of safety on that street. i find that concerning. and then the -- so that's just a comment i guess. the question is, what are you looking at between san jose and going all the way up san jose to randall. we have protected lanes on san jose to randall, we have this huge stretch over to valencia that could be, you know, you could put parking protected ba bike lanes in tomorrow. >> yes, so the cross section of

the roadway is similar to the cross section between market and 15th, so some of the designs we'll take a look at for one of both could be very similar. >> supervisor sheehy: so, i guess is there any way to accelerate this process? >> i can take a look at it and discuss with our management what could be done to fast-track this project. >> supervisor sheehy: great. thank you. >> supervisor ronen: thank you. i do want to -- appreciate that you tried to take some interim quicker steps with the protected bike lanes at certain points that don't affect parking. just wondering what your feedback has been about the half measure? i've gotten mixed feedback and has it made the situation better, or in some cases i've heard that it's a little worse. >> we've heard mixed feedback as well.

there was a lot of excitement initially and then a few weeks later we did hear some concerns about how it was operating. there are still vehicles that are choosing to pull into that bike lane, sometimes even squeezing in between the curb and the safe hits. so we're taking a look at that and monitoring it. as we continue moving forward on that. >> supervisor ronen: if it is making matters worse, then we should be making sure that we're taking them out until we have the full study. i want evaluation in the interim on that. i will say that is not the only measure. i was thrilled they responded to the letter, both lyft and über asking them to drop off on side streets. lyft is doing a pilot project between 16 and 19th. i haven't seen data on how that

project is working. i'm looking forward to seeing that. i wish über had done the same, they didn't and we're continuing to push them to look at alternatives, drop off and pickup places. and then we did advocate for the mta to increase enforcement, which they have quadrupled, but i don't know if that improved to the double parking yet. it would be nice to see interim evaluations with the three strategies working in tandem and see if they're working while we're conducting the study and hopefully, installing a full protected bike lane on valencia. >> our team is receiving that same data you received from enforcement, so we're going to take a look to see what patterns in terms of what citations have been upped. and we've made the effort to reach out to lyft, we've met with them with twice now.

we have asked about their pilot and we're hoping to get a little more information once that pilot concludes and they have data to share with us. so we're making that effort with them as well. >> supervisor ronen: i do think as we're waiting for what we know will ultimately improve the situation greatly, that we should use every tactic we can to improve the safety issues on valencia which are serious and evaluate what is working and what is not. let's not make the situation worse, i want to make sure we're evaluating that closely in the interim. thanks. >> supervisor peskin: thank you. any public comment on the item? please come forward. thank you. >> hi, my name is mark, i have a thing called designer, the reason that i'm responding is

that couple decades ago i did a design for elevated bicycle guideway that would go from downtown across from north to south santa cruz and i worked for ten years with the inventor of a structural system. and i found, i was astounded by how light this structure could be and how inexpensive it could be and recently there has been breakthrough in materials and some opportunities to bring this structure forward. and so, i elevated bicycle guideway could be a solution to the problem you're talking about. please stand by.

the real test will be the upcoming public workshops where the community will be able to voice their opinions on the proposed improvement. we are confident through the

m.t.a.'s thorough outreach process the team will be able to insure that the project serves all the people who bike. i have received a lot of emails from members who are excited to see safety and traffic improvements coming to a major north-south bike corridor. i can say that our members are excited to see the m.t.a. imagining and creating a better valencia street. we look forward to further work done on the project. thank you for your time. >> thank you. are there any other members of the public who would like to testify on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. this is information item. so we will go on to the next item. >> item 13, progress report for the van ness avenue bus rapid transit project. this is an information item. >> how are we doing there? >> ms. mccarthy. we made up for lost time yet? >> good morning, commissioner. to touch off of that, i am peter

gabancho, the project manager on the van ness improvement project, the core of which is the van ness bus rapid transit project which will feature san francisco's first bus rapid transit system. globally proven solution to i a dress traffic congestion and improve public transit. wrapped around the core is an extensive amount of utility work and other civic improvements along the corridor. when last presented an update on this project, directorruskin was here in september and we started the utility trenching and potholing to identify utility conflicts moving forward. now the work is well and truly underway and the water line work has begun in earnest. identifying and managing abandoned utilities requires a great deal of care and the

extense of the utility complex with the planning is unfortunately increasing the days necessary to complete this phase of the construction. in addition, night noise and vibration have been tentative and the team is taking measures wherever possible to reduce the impact of night noise to the community. as much of the project work as possible is being moved to being completed during daytime hours and we are working and we are looking at some re-engineering some of the work we were doing to minimize the amount of night work that is required. unfortunately, because van ness avenue is part of highway 101 and a very busy corridor, there is some work that we will have to do during the night. thank you.

while some of the work is proceeding on or ahead of schedule such as the installation of the muni joint duct bank along the west side of the street, the extent of the utility complex is increasing the days of work necessary to complete the overall utility phase. the original plan to open 2019 has unfortunately been pushed back to late 2020 because of the ongoing challenges. the project will continue to implement tactics to reduce the project's delay. the product team is urging the contractor to pothole and well in advance of the utility work as it progresses so that we can resolve utility conflicts before the impact the schedule. we are also encouraging the contractor to put on more crews and run more shifts and use the crews that they have more

efficiently to accelerate the work as much as possible. in addition, we are working with our sustainable streets division to try to ep o up the total number of streets -- to try to open up the total number of streets to increase the number of intersections under construction at one time to try to get ahead of this and get back on schedule. moving forward, we are in phase one of the project and that is primarily utility work and the major milestones will be the completion of the sewer work and the water work as we move forward as well as various upgrades to the auks illy watt -- to the auxiliary water supply system. they have been particularly involved in helping move this work forward as efficiently as possible. one of the -- like all large projects, we had our challenges. the contractor has filed eight

notices of potential claim with the project. the project team has rejected the eight notices that have been filed. three of those notices of potential claim have materialized into actual claims totalling just over $21 million, and 358 days of delay claimed. we anticipate that some portion to have remaining notices of potential claim will also move forward into actual claims. we are continuing our robust public outreach effort with weekly construction forecasts being sent to the community. and holding regular community office hours at the construction office located at 180 redwood along the corridor. and i would like to thank you for your time. and we'll be happy to take questions. >> thank you. are there any questions from

members? commissioner stephanie. >> thank you, chair. i had a quick question with regard to the article that was in the "examiner" today about the unexpected old city infrastructure under the street causing part of the delay. the you explain a little bit more about that. and also, when planning for projects in the future, is there a way to detect that before we start digging? >> we start with extreme part of it. we discovered all sorts of infrastructure, some of which we knew about, some of which was not located exactly where we expected to find it. and some of which was completely unexpected. as an example of infrastructure that we found that was completely unexpected, we were delayed on one block and found the remains of a retaining wall used to build the building on

that block when the original construction was going on. when the construction was finished, the retaining wall and tiebacks were left in the street where they had been installed during the building construction. they were what's called abandoned in place. they didn't show up on any of the drawings or any of the surveys, and we were digging and suddenly we hit them and it was a matter of trying to identify whether they were still in use, who owned them, what process we could use to get around or through them. there have been a large number of particularry gas lines that -- of particularly gas lines that we have found, some of which could be in excess of 100 years old that run down the length of the street and have laterals that go out to the blocks. most of them, of course, are abandoned, but for safety reasons, we can't -- the contractor simply can't start demolishing.

we have to make an effort to identify the original owner and if no owner can be found, we do what's called hot tapping and windowing where we drill into the pipe and make sure there is nothing dangerous inside of it, cut a hole into the pipe to see if there is wiring running through it, and if it's found to be safe, it's ripped out. but that process takes time. and it's unfortunately means we can't just stick a backhoe in the ground and start marching down the corridor. i'm sorry, what was the second part of your question? >> is there a way to see whether or not -- >> oh, one of the technologies that we are experimenting with on the project and in an effort to address this issue is ground penetrating radar. that can tell us if there is an the exact depther to material and can be used to highlight as we move forward. and there's what you have to be

careful about. in some cases it is provided information that was useful to us. and in other cases there was another block where we had so many basically two, four, and six inch laterals from the street onto the block that the ground penetrating area couldn't distinguish individual items there. just showed as a uniformed block which it reads as regular soil. when they opened up the ground, we found all the pipes that we didn't know were there. in the end, there are record searches that we did at the beginning. there was -- like i said, we are experimenting with this g.p.r. technology which has its advantages, but it has its limits as well. the only real way and from the

ground of suspicious areas. and going back to the office and figuring out identifying that area. >> once you discover this, what is the process for notifying the district supervisors and the public so that we can inform our constituents about how much longer it's going to take? i get these questions asked all the time at community meetings. >> ms. mccarthy, maybe you want to answer that or maybe peter wants to answer that. >> kate mccarthy is the public information officer. >> and that answer -- >> and actually, like outreach and engagement manager. thank you. so with the delays that have been happening, we have been sending official briefings each month that give an update. since about november we have

been regularly updating and public officials if we have about 300 on our list to notify them and say, hey, these are the latest conditions that we are undergoing and we also include an update on the schedule delay. that is one way we have been doing it. we have a weekly forecast that we publish that is online. and we also take subscriptions via email and text message so we can on a weekly way notify people. we have a quarterly news letter that we mail out to about 30,000 project neighbors. >> thank you. >> and you have been very responsive to all my constituent requests, so thank you. >> thank you. we have a great team. >> do you want to give the url or the email address for anybody who is watching? >> thank you. that is a great idea. sfmta.com/vanness. go to the project website and there is a place on the right column where you can sign up for project updates. you can get text messages or emails if you prefer.

and you can also if you don't want to get updates but just want to see what construction schedule is, you can see the project updates on that upper right hand corner on the website. sfmta.com/vanness. >> thank you, kate. >> thank you. >> are there any other questions from members? seeing none, are there any members of the public who would like to testify on this item? good to see you. welcome. >> i am very familiar with this site, and also concerned about the senior disabled community along the corridor. for example, at pacific you have two large senior disabled buildings, pena and this sort of thing, and you have -- there's the senior disabled build iing d

octavia and i was just wondering if they have this from the project managers who have approached the seniors disabled community. there is what they have -- they have what they call city wide council made of of all the senior disabled buildings in the city. and i suggest they contact them and tell them that there are some people that for some reason do not speak english or cannot afford a computer and suggest they contact these people because they would definitely be affected by it. >> thank you. i am sure you can talk to peter or kate.

public comment is closed. thank you for that information update. mr. clerk, next item, please. >> item 14, late night transportation working group phase ii final report. this is an information item. >> all right. we have ben from our staff. do you want to start? >> sure. good morning, members of the board. we have some slides here somewhere. i will start and keep it brief while they get the slides set up. thank you for hearing this item this morning. the san francisco late night working group is an effort started four years ago, april 2014, and it emerged out of a hearing at the board's land use committee. and then supervisor weiner offered a resolution to create a

group looking at late night and early morning transportation to, from, and within san francisco with a lens primarily on workers as well as residents and visitors. and over the last four years, the group has met a dozen times and the first phase resulted in the other 9:00 to 5:00 and identified 15 recommendations that were ultimately distilled to a series of next steps on this slide. and the first report and extent the appreciation to the late night working transportation doup. to date we have had representatives from the transit agencies and night life advocates and other stakeholder who have participated in this process over the years. and i think have done some really great work. with that, i will turn it over

to colin. >> thank you, ben. good morning. the first of these that i will talk about is an effort to look at service in the all-night period. and we look a look at the existing service and how it is performing as well as where there are gaps in the existing network. we identified a set of recommendations that include things like improving route 91 as well as extending service to fisherman's wharf and some service improvements to the east bay and the peninsula. in terms of what is going on now, they have implemented a pilot of some of the service to the peninsula. meanwhi meanwhile, sfmta has applied for lifeline fund for the extensions to fishermen's wharf. meanwhile, a.c. transit, that service is in question at the moment because some of it was -- some of service is funded by bart pilot that is expiring. so we'll need some new funding to implement the service