motorized scooters on the streets of san francisco obtain a permit to operate from the sfmta. today we are here to consider enacting that permitting system to we can put in place the board of supervisors vision for that ordnance and the themes you will hear from the presentation and in all of our comments is that we believe that any use of the public right of way, sidewalk, street, bike lane, ought to be in the public interest and we think that a scooter permitting system, any scooter permitting system could authorize us to put in place should prioritize public safety, public equity and focus on accountability by operators. we'll go through each of those points in our presentation. we encourage you to allow us to carry out the vision set forth by the board of supervisors in those particular areas, safety, equity and accountability. with that i will turn it over to

my colleague miriam. >> the floor is yours. >> thank you. >> good afternoon. thank you so much for having me today. i'm miriam surel and i'm the acting bicycle program manager in the streets division. i'm happy to present our recommended legislation establishing a permit program for shared powered scooters in san francisco. today i'm going to give a little bit of background about where we are with scooters in the city and then talk about at a high level some of the things that are in the legislation package before you. so i first wanted to say as the sf mta i support these emerging options. we are happy that the private sector is getting involved and providing innovative new ways

for people to get around the city as the scooters provide a last mile solution. we are really excited to see that continue. however, we are proceeding with some cautious optimism because we know that there are potential issues with this and have been issues on the streets and we want to make sure that as we step in as a governmental agency we have the opportunity to make sure these things are meeting the public interest. so a little bit of background on the scooter system themselves. you may have seen these on the streets. they have been out there for just about six weeks in san francisco and in a few other cities in the u.s. a little bit longer. they are really new. it's a new model. it's similar to what you see in our dock less bike share system, you use the app to find a scooter near you and to unlock the scooter and then you can drive it to your final destination which you don't need

to have a specific docking station. so there's that level of flexibility. the scooters are electric powered so they need to be charged. one thing that we've been seeing from some of the scooter companies is having contractors go out and charge the scooters usually at night for a fee. the scooters are generally taken out of service in the evening. we've been hearing a lot of excitement from members of the public about these scooters. people have written to us to tell us how they are now able to use these scooters to make trips they weren't making before or instead of other kinds of car trips so that's great to hear. we've been observing ourselves and hearing a lot of reports of some of the challenges associated with these scooters. so the most important thing in san francisco is the safety and access of our streets and in particular sidewalks need to be the place where you know that

you can walk and get around without encountering safety hazards. what we've been seeing since the deployment of these scooter programs is there's some lack of compliance with rules regarding where to park the scooters and where to ride the scooters. people are riding them on the sidewalks, parking them in ways that obstruct the pass of travel and this is particularly an issue if you're somebody with a mobility impairment, maybe you're in a wheelchair or have a visual impairment. you wouldn't be able to avoid these hazards in our streets and it's something that we need to find a way around. so that's something that we think is really critical as we move forward with this program. there are regulations that govern the usage of these scooters, in particular regarding prohibiting sidewalk riding, requiring helmet use. those are in the california vehicle code along with requiring a driver's license and recommended bike lane ifs

there's one present and then we have local ordnances as well that talk about the sidewalk space and not obstructing the right of way. those apply whether it's a shared scooter system or if you are an individual owner of a motorized scooter these apply. what we don't have on the bookings right -- bookings right now is any regulation. that's why we are working on this two-tiered approach that you've seen in other permit program where is the board of supervisors has made division i changes to the transportation code that established a new violation for scotter companies operating a shared system without a permit from the sfmta. the legislation before you today is to establish that program and authorize the director the offer permits to scooter companies. there's one more level of detail, terms of conditions and application. you've probably seen in the

legislation that a variety of the items note that the director of transportation is authorized to specify further details of the permit program. so the legislation is long. i'm not going to go through every single provision included in it. i wanted to draw your attention to some of the high level goals that we've had that we've been thinking about when we developed the legislation and talk about some of the details that relate to those goals as well as some of the additional requirements that we could have in the permit itself to address them. so of course being that you are hearing from me today we want to ensure safety and access on our sidewalks. some things include requiring the companies to provide user education, requiring the companies to be responsive if there are -- if we notify them of issues with scooter parking, have their phone number on the scooter so that individual members oh of the public can

contact them if there are issues. this is a really important issue for some of the members of the board of the supervisors that we've been working with and one of the things i wanted to add is we'll have a cap on the total number of scooters issued through this program because we want to stem the possibility of proliferation before we can get these other issues under control. so we have one of the changes since the legislation was shared on thursday is that we are changing that cap so that it's five permitees will be -- the maximum that we might grant and we have a total cap on the number of scooters which is 1250 and then up to 2500. now we will be in the permits themselves issuing a number for each company so each company will only have a certain number but this allows us to, you not my, see whether there's any nuisances and what the company has proposed to do with their

allotted scooters. so that's a change. i also wanted to add that regarding the requirement of user education around parking the scooters and riding on sidewalks we are working closely with our accessibility services program at the sfmta to provide clear guidance beyond what is in the public works code and where we expect to see those scooters and what we consider to be an appropriate parking garage. even an individual user who thinks they are doing the right thing may not understand the issue. we want to be clear about that and we will be including those kinds of requirements in our permit application to inform the scooter companies of what they should share with their users as well as inform the users themselves. we also want to be protecting the interest of users specifically so the first set of things are really about the broader population of san francisco. that includes provisions around

requiring a privacy policy, so to protect and safeguard the private information of users of the systems and then also making sure that they are aware of specific safety laws and safety operation of the vehicles, so helmet use and things like that. as an agency regulating these programs we see it as a great opportunity to promote equity in the expectations for the scooter companies. we will require a low income plan, a multilingual website but we are also going to be asking them to share their service plan with us and that would need to be approved. it's something where we have encouraged them to consider deploying in communities of concern and we can weigh it as we look at the applications received and potentially award a certain number for deploying in certain areas. that's something that we are excited to continue to consider in the details of the permit. finally, we are looking at

evaluating a brand new transportation option. this is our opportunity to gather that information and come back to this board with some for the recommendations. that's why we've implemented -- or drafted this legislation as a pilot program. another change since what you were sent to shorten the pilot from 24 month to 12 months. i've learned so much about scooters in the past six weeks as i'm sure you all have to. we know in the next 12 months we'll be able to learn a whole lot about the operation of these on our city streets and make recommendations about how to proceed into the future. now in addition to having the pilot requirements we will require the company to provide us with data so information about the number of scooters they have, the number of trips per scooter, kind of origin, destination, data, that kind of thing and then we will ask for demographic information as well as travel choice, mode choice questions the might be through a survey that we ask them to administer. so through those things we'll be

able to evaluate what the actual benefits are to the transportation network, meanwhile we'll be collecting data on what some of the impacts continue to be. finally we want to minimize the burden on our agency, public works and other agencies in the city. we don't want this to become something that taxpayer dollars are covering the cost of a lot of staff time administering this kind of program. as we often do as our pilot programs we are establishing a fee to apply for the permit as well as a fee for the annual permit program which could cover the cost of administering the permit. we are also requiring the companies to pay into an endowment which would be used to fund reimbursing us or other agencies for -- >> how much. >> it's $10,000. they're required to reimburse us for cost incurred so we don't

need to ask them to reimburse right away, we already have an account going. as the dollar value pile up for impounding the scooters or any damage to property value we would be able to collect on that. then we also have a violation for either operating a permit that isn't part of the scooter share program, not a permitted scooter or for violating the terms of the permits. those are things we will be administeri administering. in order to achieve those goals we set forth we have end goals to dwruse. the first part is the application for the scooter company to demonstrate their intent. we will require a maintenance and operation plan where they explain where they plan to deploy the scooters, how they plan to dispose of the batteries from the scooters and other things like that and that would

be where we would consider things like how many scooters each permitee should receive. the application will also just spelling out in detail what our requirements will be regarding user information, et cetera. that will be their opportunity to agree to those requirements and those will be further developed in the terms and conditions as part of the permit issuance. this will also be the opportunity to ask them to be creative and what they might do. it would be as a second phase in the user education and insintives and information doesn't provide the desired outcome. we are not requiring it but we want companies to think about are they going to require a walking mechanism or something like that. not part of the initial plan but we'll look for that information from the different companies. after permits are issued we are going to be monitoring these

guys really closely. we need to make sure that we are seeing improvement month over month. there's a learning curve with these. it's pretty new. we want to make sure that we are tracking percentage of sidewalk riding, are there differences between the different companies that are shuissued permits alon those lines. those are the kinds of things we will be tracking. if we are finding issues with those we have the authority to revoke a permit. so we would issue a notice and ask them to get in line and that is definitely something that we think is really critical. i didn't want to include a lot of language from the legislation in this presentation but this one is important. if the users are continuing to violate the law that we can hold the scooter companies accountable for it. that's a problem in our current lack of regulation on this issue. so we'll be monitoring for that sort of like continued failure of the users to comply with existing laws and that's something we expect to see in

order for companies -- in order for companies to continue to have a permit or in order to understand if the permit structure is strong enough to achieve the benefits that we need to see. so with that i just want to close by saying i think that the legislation is really comprehensive about addressing the issues that we have before you today. it's really critical that we implement legislation that allows us to regulate this so that we can achieve the maximum benefit to our transportation network and convenient and mobility of san francisco residents but also minimize that potential negative impact that we've been seeing so far today. with that i'll take any questions that you have. >> mr. mcguire? >> i'd just like to clarify something that miriam said and i was supposed to say at the beginning. there's two specific word changes to the legislation that you have been you that staff are suggesting. as miriam said, we have been racing quickly to learn all we can about this industry.

we have two suggested changes to the legislation that's before you. the first is changing the duration of the pilot program which the legislation is written as 24 months, we are suggesting 12 months so we can get more quickly to a final decision about what the future of scooters might be in san francisco. the second has to do with the number -- the allocation of permits and the number of scooters % -- per permitee. we are looking at a cap of 500 each and recommending not the 500 cap with any particular operator to simply have a cap of 2500 permits for the ultimate build out of the program to be allocated among any credible operators who apply. we note that we don't know whether we are going to find five operators apply who might meet our standards and be granted a permit, we could find that we have zero. so we are looking for a little bit of flegs -- flexibility to

make sure that we are granting them who meet the permit requirements. >> anything else? >> there's technically three changes in the legislation. so the 12 months changed and then saying that a total -- the total number at six months is 1250 and then the total is 2500 for the remaining six months of the program. >> all right. very good. all right. here's the order of show. we have an aide from supervisoo peskin's office here and then i'll ask my board members if there's questions. the board members will wait until after public comment. thank you very much. the floor is yours. >> just a few comments to put this into context for the board of superrise advise --

supervisors as well. as you probably know by now earlier this year in february -- it was about mid february we started to hear about the controversial roll out of scooters in san diego, santa monica, news stories and then people who were close to the issue either at mta staff or members oh of the public asked us what are you going to do about this. i believe in part because just a year ago we went down a very similar path with stationless bike share. in then collaboration with the mayor we had an establishment permit like the one before the board last tuesday. per your division ii authority you are here to establish the provisions. i have to acknowledge that we were surprised by the fanfare around scooters. i don't think that anybody expected it to grow into such a

conversation and such a controversy particularly given how pedestrian -- excuse me -- the stationless bike share legislation was and the permit process around that. this is just a very casual in our view regulatory role to institute this permit requirement. that division i amendment was passed by the board unanimously last tuesday. it ought to be effective in about a month's time. much to sfmta's credit, they are doing this in tandem so that the division ii legislation will be effective around the exact same time as our division i transportation code amendment. i think that may be evidence that we are getting better at this process and anticipating the challenges ahead. i think the idea is yes there's a reason to be excited about emerging mobility services. we think there's public benefit to be had from the arrival of

scooters or stationless bikes or electric bikes. it's actually really hard to approximately and assess what that benefit is until you also assess and approximate and address the potential harms to the public realm as well. that's the prerogative to anticipate those harms and enact permit conditions that help this new industry evolve into something we can stand with and stand behind with the utmost confidence. i want to think about harms that transcend the very obvious harms that we've seen and have been spoken by pedestrian advocates across the sidewalks. that i think is probably the most apparent harm that we've seen but certainly there are other things that have been brought to our attention as well. i do want to sfmta, for instance, for addressing some of the more environmental

conditions. you know, they certainly carry the banner of reduced emissions, getting people out of their private automobiles. what, for example, are the things to assess the impact of cars that are zigzagging across the city on a nightly basis, to retrieve scooters and redistribute them in the morning. how does that impact the over all carbon footprint of electronic scooters. the material impact on our landfills, i think that the department of environment provided some input on exactly, you know, what are the best practices around the recycling, the reusability of potentially tens of thousands of scooters a year. there was a tech crunch article. if these have a life span of about two month that's potentially 2500 per two months over 10,000 scooters ended up in landfills, hazardous materials.

we should at least be assessing the best practices in that realm as well. privaciily -- privacy policies this is not something that's at the forefront of everybody's minds. our office has been looking through these privacy policies and noticing kinds -- kind of trouble things going on with personal private data. i don't think that users necessarily understand that when they are signing up for one of the scooters companies they are con sending to them accessing their credit reports and they are using that and making that accessible to third-party advertisers and web beacons. i don't think that users are particularly aware that these terms of use can change retroactively with respect of uses of non-personal and personal information without notice to the user at all. what kind of conditions can we develop as a city to mitigate some of that potential harm? certainly i think that we would be excited if there is capital in the private transportation spear that's very good.

but should we be okay, is it an acceptable trade off to allow companies to capitalize and increase their value based on the information they are acquiring from users and selling our montizing for a third-party user. i think that's something that body should consider as well. a couple of things i don't think that are really in here. first to the extent that individuals are looking at being a quote, unquote charger of these scooters either as supplemental income or as a wage, what from visions can inhibit some -- provisions can inhib inhibit some practices. is this a viable form of employment? at the very least i think that's something that should be studied here. this is one that supervisor

peskin is about, approaching the companies about past bad behave -- behavior. we've seen the introduction of our permit requirement and after that multiple scooter companies coming in with a great deal of arrogance, i believe, and causes thesis troubles on our public rights of way. is that behavior that we should be rewarding or can we insert something in 916 subsection e of the legislation before you that would allow the detector of transportation to consider the past behavior of these some these companies. it's worth knows that there are other scooter manufacturers who have not entered into our public rights of way right now and are waiting to see mow this plays out and maybe that should be considered when we see who is allow allowed to operate instead of the compas -- the companies tha

opted to move fast and break things in our city. i'm very much forward looking forward to extensive public comment here. thank you for indulging my comments as well. >> thank you and please thank your boss for his leadership on this issue. we appreciate. so order of show is clarifying comments. this is just if you have a question about what something means. board members will do that now, other wise we have a plot of -- a lot of members of the public here to speak about this and i would like to hear about them before we get into a debate. director torres. >> director torres: we will get into a debate later; is that correct? >> i guarantee it. >> director torres: clarifying questions then. on the fines the companies would be fined how much for violaties

violations? >> it depends on the violation. violating the terms of the permit is subject to an administrative -- let me find -- >> director torres: of how much? >> one of them is -- just a second. the fine of $100 for being unpermitted. so you were a scooter company that had 50 scooters deployed in san francisco over a course of days then that would be 50 citations. >> director torres: these companies are worth $4,100 -- are worth $400 million. $100 is nothing to these people. they will continue to laugh at us. we have to look at that number one. number two, section 916 which supervisor peskin's aide talked about in terms of past behavior,

can reconsidered putting that into regulations? >> we would offer input from the board on past behavior. i think there's some discretion that already exists in the language as proposed and maybe during public comment i can ask our attorney and staff to explore the ability we have to do that and if not i would certainly be open to that. i think it would be appropriate. >> director torres: i've been hearing complaints from bart they they are left in access to transit. are we conversing with bart as to their input? >> we have not been in touch with bart yet. there are a lot of agencies who are interested to work with. we've worked with the port and public works. we can talk to bart for sure. >> director torrez: these people are bad actors. san santa monica had to file a

criminal complaint until they got their attention and settle for $300,000. we are having the same problem in san jose, in san diego and in washington dc and now we are having it here. i guess it goes back to what we said earlier in terms of past behavior. we should not be rewarding people who have stuck their fingers at us dealing with cease and desist orders. those on the panel believe in the rule of law. what are we going to do to that and where's the insurance policy? i think that you sited that earlier. is it included in these regs? >> the legislation doesn't specify the detail, it says the city risk manager will. >> i have full confident they will negotiate. i will reserve my comments. >> very good. thank you director torres. >> i understand the cap of $2,500 at the end of the -- or eventually and 1500 interim. what's the thought behind

capping the number of permits to five? >> probability management. we wanted to allow more than one and have a few but having eight or ten per mitt -- permits we think that's beyond the capacity of staff to manage. it's something that one an appropriate number for users of the systems if they were divided. if you had an ina infinite perm then you would only get a few per company and it wouldn't work. >> if the legislation didn't have the cap we could limit the number of permits we are issued? >> that's correct. >> clarifying questions? yes? >> that was the end of my clarifying questions. thanks. >> director ramos? >> what happens at tep the end in pilot? what happens at the end of 12 months? >> we would need to come back to you with new legislation.

so we'll be, you know, working on whatever kinds of changes we think need to happen to make these programs a success. or earlier if it's clear. >> i think the idea would be a revised program that learns from what happened in those 12 months. >> uh-huh. >> thank you. >> okay. seeing no other clarifying questions from this board i will ask public comment. how many speakers do we have? >> 25, mr. chairman. >> okay. two minutes a piece, folks. that's a long time. you don't have to use all two minutes. you can align yourself with the comments of other people. that's a great way to endear yourself to the board but you all have two minutes. >> i know there are some people in the over flow room and if they have not turned in their speaker card if they could do so now so we can make sure they get called.

i'll read you three names in a row so if any of these people are down in the over flow room they have time to come upstairs. >> line up here so you can speak. two minutes. >> i just think that the 2 500 cap -- i mean, do we have a cap on the amount of cars or bicycles in the city? >> we should. >> we probably should. i agree with you. you know, if the problem is with financing why don't you just charge more for the permits and

allow more scooters. >> very good. >> that's it. thank you. >> thank you for being the model of efficiency. i hope that everyone was watching. >> jack strong -- >> if i may with just a question for staff just that question on the title of the permits, is there a cost recovery? i think the answer is yes, this would fall under state rules. >> yes, it would. it's a cost recovery program. >> our next speaker. >> jack strong, rodney hampton, s sam. >> thank you. welcome. >> thank you for hearing me. i'll try and be brief but probably not. for me to see the joy and laughter as groups of young and old adults going by on these means of transportation.

it's priceless for me to take time off of work to come here to defend. it's time to let the people of san francisco enjoy the city again. we the people of san francisco deserve to enjoy our city again and these little birds can make that happen then you the supervisors need to make that happen too. i don't know from anything but first impression social securiti securities -- impressions is what the american people go by. i think it's full of great, motivated hard working individuals. as a native of san francisco for 55 years i appreciate the relationship i now have developed with the bird industry and hope to continue working with these open minded and hard-working group of people. if you limit the amount of the small means of transportation you will take away the ability for me to continue to be motivated in collecting and charging these scooters and getting them off the streets at night. also you limit my ability to make a living and you limit the ability of the general public to use these scooters as short but

necessary transportation of the downtown corridor. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker.

. >> -- that are isolated from a mobility perspective to take advantage of this -- of this

option. we've detailed this and other recommendations in a letter delivered to you, the board, and other staff yesterday, and in support of this program, we've also met and shared information with mta staff over the past couple weeks through full-time employment. this is a great thing, and i'm

here to ask you to support that and allow line bike to help you assist this situation and help you to come up with more safety ideas so they can be a part of this family of the city and county of san francisco. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> james, johnson casey seran, brian hopper. >> yes. good afternoon. my name is james spingola. i work for a developer for the west mission. this morning, i wanted coffee, and i sent a young man that i knew from the western addition. i don't know if you know line maps, but i actually took a picture. can i just put it under there? >> well, i don't know. >> well, i took a picture.

he was actually standing them up. i said what are you doing? he said i have a job. so just the expression on his face, and saying he had a job. i have to give kudos like line bike who came into the community. i looked up and jobs were out there, so when you have a young men, 18 to 24 year old, actually being able to get up and go to work every day and happy about having a job, that is my passion. i am a san francisco native, born and raised in the western addition, and i spent all my time in the trenches down there. the more jobs we can give to these young people, the better we are. if line bikes brings jobs to the community, then we should support what they do. it's not everybody that comes in with active organizations and say hey, there have been actually people that dropped in -- and i don't know that who does the job now. i know that he have taken up a lot of our space, and they have

never said nothing. i have never seen a young man actually working on the bikes on the racks. so thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> john gacy, eric, brian hopper. >> thank you for having me, and this is my first time here. >> are you mr. seran? >> john casey seran, and i go my casey. i just want to say i live and nearby. i go to work however. there's a lot of times where i cannot find a scooter today, so i do not think the cap is a great way of understanding what is good usage and how we're going to actually optimize this. i think if we have not even 12 months of not even full usage, it's going to be difficult to make better decisions. i also think the requirements of the scooter companies, they're technology companies in my mind, and i think they have the ability to access data around misuse of their own

probabl products. we heard some of the technology around sharing this information. i think they are responsible for tracking and identifying how people are misusing them, as well. we've heard testimony of them left in inappropriate places. i think it would be not too chaling to share these users or nonusers that are moving these scooters after being used, and use getting smarter about using technology and making better decisions, instead of saying we'll do it later and putting off the cap. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> good he is tradies good mor. we applaud the sf mta creating this permit process, and we would be honored to

participate. i had ache li i'd like to start by correcting the record. i understand that we should have worked more cooperatively with the city and the sf mta. i'd like to focus on we have followed the law. we met with the city attorney and he believes that our issues were some of our users were not following the law. we think we can solve all of the issues with parking and riding with education and enforcement and some simple things like painting squares on sidewalks for parking. what i'd like to focus on is bird trips can solve car trips. 40% of car trips are under two miles. the average bird trip is 1.5 miles. a bird trip is a fraction of the ride share trip. it's accessible transportation for those who need transportation with zero

emissions. we add scooters only when they're used on average three times a day, and every night they're all moved. i read a column in the chronicle on sunday entitled road rage by willie brown and it said i was one of the thousands people stuck in traffic in downtown san francisco this week, and the numbers are growing daily. it took 15 minutes to go three blocks. finally, i started to work. it ended, no wonder those people are picking up the electric scooters. it's becoming the only way to get around. we agree with them. there are over 200,000 ride shares on a typical friday. let's look to electric scooters as a solution, but we don't need it to be unlimited. we can have it scale according to usage, and we can supply you a constant stream of data. thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. estrada. next speaker, please. >> brian hopper, brian noe,

queena chen. >> mr. hopper, good morning. >> good morning. i think this is a good product, but only if it has teeth. i wheeled vehicles are constantly riding on the sidewalks, often at high rates of speed, and there are already laws on the books prohibiting these violations. i'm speaking of bicycles, skate boards, and often at a high rate of speed, often darting in and out of pedestrian traffic, and the only solution i see is you put more emphasis on citing people for all of these violations. now i think the scooter people probably feel entitled because they see this thing ignored. so i would say in closing, if

you had a task force today, citing everybody riding their scooter skate board or bicycle on the sidewalk, i could probably, say this half jokingly, balance the budget of san francisco fore the year. thank you. >> thank you sir for taking the time to share that with us, we appreciate it. next speaker, please. >> brian noe, jerry depp, queena chen, nanny mcnally, andy blue. >> hi. my name is brian oh, and i'm here on behalf of spin. we're super excited to continue working with the sf mta, which we're very excited of, and we're very excited about common sense rules. t

[ inaudible ] >> since we've done our pilot in the soma area we've seen at least 20% of our trips being used for first and last mile transit, and we've been working very closely with the mtc in terms of bringing some of our scooters to different locations to help our commuters reach their final destinations. we've been working with local groups to help push for perbike lanes and a better network. at the end of the day, we thank you for your leadership. we're super excited, and we hope to do our hometown proud. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> welcome. thank you for coming. >> thank you. good afternoon, board of directors, our local transportation advocacy group, chinatown trip, supports this program for the power scooters. however we suggest a few points of amendment for your consideration.

first 2500 scooters is a rather large number for our limited sidewalk space. sf mta should consider limiting the number of scooters stocked perblock or suggest that companies must proactively clear and declutter the sidewalks to maintain a clear walking pathway. two, companies should require users to complete a user education piece so that users are held to the same accountability as everyone else. third, power scooters should be restricted to bike lanes only as to not impede on the safety of pedestrians on the sidewalk. and lastly, i do want to agree with dr. torres which is $100 is absolutely laughable. thank you. >> thank you very much as director torres laughs at that. next. >> chen, welcome. thank you for coming. >> good afternoon, directors. my name is queena. i'm an sf native, and i'm also

part of chinatown trip. there's some things that we would like the board to consider. the scooter permit pilot is really similar to how scoot the moped company is working currently. i'm a personal scooter user. i love them. what they require us to do is watch training videos, take quizzes, complete an inperson training class, and have a 2k mv background check before any members could actually rent these scooters. so since electric scooters are considered to be motorized vehicles, they should follow the same laws. it's really important that riders know how the traffic law works before jumping onto an electric scooter and riding onto traffic 'cause cars are very dangerous, right? electric scooter companies needs more in place to ensure the safety of scooter riders and the general public. our next comment is as some of you giet might now, chinatown

is the second most densely populated neighborhood in the u.s. most of the residents in chinatown are seniors. if you guys have ever been to stockton street, you know how crowded it is, and it's like a football field. you can't get through. there have been instances where we've seen grandmas and grandpas holding groceries, and there is a scooter in the middle of the sidewalk, and they just stare at it, what is this? and they have to walk around it with their heavy groceries. they're just trying to get home to make dinner. so it's really important to us that community stakeholders should have a say of where scooters could be parked, and we hope that these electric scooter companies will work with the community to make sure that this program fits san francisco's needs. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker, please. welcome. thank you for coming. >> thank you.

i'm nancy mcnally chl i. i'm representing four generations of natives, and i was run over by a scooter rider april 18th, and i was coming around the muni overhang protection thing to avoid the scooters on this side -- on the sidewalk side, and i walked this way, and the guy on the scooter came up the sidewalk right in front, facing the street and hit me, and i asked him to stop very politely, and i flipped me the bird. so that's not the reason i'm here. i'm just saying that this kind of thing is going to happen again, only somebody's going to get really hurt if not killed, because a lot of these young guys don't follow the rules at all. >> nope. >> so that's all i have to say. >> thank you, miss mcnally. >> somebody is going to get

killed. >> very good. glad to see you well here today. next speaker. >> andy blue, mary sore enson. >> good evening, board members. i'd like to thank the sf mta staff for working so hard on this after you've been ambushed once again. the one way to guarantee that you're never ambushed again is to refuse permits to bird, line, and spin. companies coming to the city with no permit, no warning, beyond this behavior, this business model is terribly problematic, not proven, doesn't pencil out. from the production of the scooters and oversees sweatshops to the landfills and toxic e waste dumping grounds

they are defendastined for aft their two month life span, this interest is to serve the community, not public corporations. we've seen it before. where have i heard this before? oh, yeah, uber, the company that did the same thing exactly about seven years ago, when it ambushed our city with this same model. remember how we had to accept them with no conditions because they were going to relieve the congestion on our streets? here we are seven years later with 30% more cars on the streets because of uber and lyft. thanks. no more rewarding recklesserant law breakers for their behavior. we have evidence that the scooters are not carbon neutral. contract workers drive around all day picking them up. they may drive seven miles to

pick up scooters that went four blocks. you want a solution? make this city one like co copenhagen or amsterdam. no more rewarding reckless, arrogant reckless law breakers. zero. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. welcome. thank you for coming today. >> of course. i'm not seeing a lot of scooter hatred. i don't know. is that a thing? but i'm seeing an mta that must be taking massive amounts of many from tnc's and ford and all the others that are stealing our infrastructure. it's ridiculous that something like a bike plan has to go through ceqa and environment

san francisco but it's a give away like scooters. then it's treated as an emergency modality and given a permit. what are the jobs? running around, picking up the scooters that died? assembling them? those don't seem like full-time jobs to me, and i just want to know, who am i going to sue when i get knocked down because i've seen a lot of people get hit by these scooters on sidewalks, and i don't understand how anybody's going to enforce them. don't kid yourself that there's going to be an enforcement on this. it's a joke. you're going to let them go, they're going to go on sidewalks, they're going to throw the scooters down and they're going to hit people. so do i sue mta or do i sue the scooter companies, because if you hit me, i do break. >> just to be clear, mr.

speaker, there are no speakers in the overflow room or waiting outside. >> good afternoon, board members. peter papadopoulos with the mission environmental agency. we do think that this is a time to set a new precedent where we do in fact say we're not going to continue to reward or bad actors, and we don't think it's accepting responsibility so say oh, no, this unpermitted rollout is not the problem, it's our people are the problem. it's the neighborhood impacts are the problem. it's all one system, and they're responsible for all of it, and we're all responsible for all of it. so i think that the other thing we want to think about is let's -- let's take our time and do this right. we don't need to keep moving on the planning schedule, right? these are not our urban planners. you're our urban planners, right, and the planning department's our urban planners. we want to move on our

timetable and do things right. this is going to be a pilot program, typically, it paves the way for what comes next pretty thoroughly, right? we all see this over and over, so what we want to do is start with what is our real overall equity framework on every level. let's not hurry forward a program before we know where we're headed. let's think about what are those elements that we want to put into it, and what are not. we're hearing ceqa and environmental concerns. we'd like to see some studies on why is this program operating? what does it mean for two workers to be racing a route to pick up a scooter that only one of them gets that night. we'd like to see what social impacts, so we don't mirror some of the problems that we had with our more recent programs. we'd like to see this low income program rolled out, and more importantly we'd like to see it culturally competently rolled out and more in

conjunction with each of our neighborhoods. we'd also like to see high enough rate of fees associated with it that we're recapturing a true equity to put back into the program. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> sir. welcome. >> good afternoon, directors. thank you very much for being here today and looking over this issue. i just wanted to take a quick few of my minutes to go ahead and readdress what was mentioned by mr. blue. i think it's very important that we think about the precedent that we're setting here, and that we should not and cannot wawe cannot award c who come in and break the law and then be rewarded subsequently by being granted permits. i think we have to think about what we're doing not only for the city but for the citizens,

as well. i don't think that that's a message that we want to be sending as a see citcity. in regards to the companies that have been coming in and invading our streets for six weeks, i don't think they should be rewarded with permits. it is it should be given for t -- to the companies that have been patiently waiting on the out skirts to begin with. even though we have a current transit first policy that is engaged in the mta, it doesn't mean that we have to ignore equity completely. in the report that was listed, the status quo was that there would be an inequitiable distribution in what i would call the scooter share program and scooter rental programs would be implemented. well, i would say that -- i would say that there's not going to be equity and uneven

distribution if there's not property community engagement. when looking at the organizations that were outreached by the mta, i saw the sf bike coalition and walk sf. i did not see any organizations that engage with low income communities and communities of color on the regular. so in terms of bringing out a low income community program, how do you know that this low income community program is going to benefit low income citizens if you're not engaging organizations that engage with these people. that's essentially just taking an outlook of saying if we're american citizens we're going to -- >> thank you sir. you get to finish your sentence. that was a remarkable long sentence, so i was letting you go, but thank you for your passion. >> good afternoon. my name is eric arguella with kalle 24 in the latino district, and we're asking to deny the permit for bird, line

and spin scooters. outreach should be done before that. they should meet certain requirements first before the companies are out on the street. some of the programs that should be developed is an equity program, cultural competency review, plan with communities. make sure it works and respects neighborhood planning, and planning through a social justice lens, recycle and reuse policy, privacy policy, fire safety, labor harmony provisions. we tend to permit these -- we tend to permit these deals and then deal with the problems later. the permit itself should be the incentive to get these other programs in place before. if this is approved, this will continue the animosity with the company, the mta, and those who use them. this has happened before with

forego bike, uber, and tech lanes. let's not repeat the behavior and learn from the mistakes in the past. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. sir, welcome. >> good afternoon. i'm a native of san francisco. i'm going to keep this brief. i'm going to use whsome brevit here. i've only encountered actions with line bike in my neighborhood. since then, they've been given workshops to the people on the ground. we have to keep in mind that people in the bayview are aspiring engineering, and we can't just have day jobs. when things do start to get on the different fold for them, we didn't rust only have ground jobs and be underground, so let's hope up other options and possibilities to the folks that are working to