executive director and otherwise. so what we had attempted to do in our conversation was essentially begin a conversation about how -- at least from my perspective, some of the microissues -- how some of the neighborhood affecting issues, the smaller, more micro-hassissues in terms whether it's a stop sign, whether it's a traffic calming, whether it's pedestrian safety, whether it's vision zero or under all of those principles, whether it's permit parking, meter parking, some of the bike stations, residential permit parking. these are the things that i have heard about the most more frequently than any other issue that comes up as an elected member of the board of supervisors, but the frustration lied in the fact that we ultimately had no say or authority over any of those decisions. some would say that's good, some would say that there needed to be some reforms. so supervisor peskin and i got

together and first we started this conversation with a charter amendment. and we've put that on hold, but essentially, the charter amendment would say we would keep members of the commission, but we would split the agency into two parts. one that would be more the department of sustainable streets that would deal with more of these microissues, one that would deal with a taxi and muni issues, and then, the two agencies would effectively report to the same governing body, and i want to recognize some members of the sf mta commission. we started conversations with them recently, and i appreciate the fact that they've come here today to be part of this conversation. but kind of bringing it full circle, we decided to pull back. we've asked the sf mta, and we've heard for them to make some reforms. they are going to present on those reforms today as to how it relates to each member of this board of supervisors will interact with the sf mta, in terms of staffing, in terms of engineers and planners, and so

on, as well as what they see going forward. and then, we'll get into some of the details of this legislation. but essentially, it allows us to have some review over some areas of concern that often come up the most when -- when they are highlighted to us as members of the board of supervisors. so we have the review under this legislation to discuss green, blue, yellow, white zones, street sweeping, parking restriction, taxi stands, shuttle zones, tour bus zones, so essentially, some of the temporary stopping zones. parking time limits for meters. also, the residential parking permit program, stop signs, as well as car share parking and vanpool parking and on street parking restriction, motorcycle parking only, and then some vehicle size over height of

6 feet, oversize vehicle restrictions which is a big issue in my district. motorcycle parking only, compact vehicle parking or marking stall designations, and then restrictions of iscot permitting issues. those are some of the things that already -- and i just want to be clear, the voters of san francisco already gave the members of the board of supervisors the ability to exercise this authority, but we never exercised that authority. and so this is an attempt to move that forward and essentially balance out some more of the -- now, that doesn't mean we're going to be hearing all of these things. there still requires there be a threshold of the members of the board of supervisors to sign onto hear an issue that's maybe a decision that's been made in the last 60 days, but i think that's an important authority then to transfer over to the members of the board of supervisors, and so that's why we've put this forward. i want to hand it over to my

colleague, supervisor peskin, if that's okay, chair tang, to allow him to say some opening remarks. >> supervisor peskin: chair tang, supervisor safai, and soon to be joined by supervisor kim, thank you for that introduction, and i've enjoyed collaborating with you and your staff and my staff on this matter. i just want to start by thanking the sf mta and particular particularly ed reiskin for engaging with us as this has evolved over time as well as individuals and organizations ranging from the san francisco riders -- transit riders union, walk sf, save muni, the bicycle coalition, and the hundreds of people who have weighed in in -- with varying perspectives on the matter. i want to put this into historical context, which supervisor safai touched on. in the beginning, muni was a

property of the public utilities commission of san francisco, not to be confused with the state public utilities commission that has allowed tmc's to run rough shod today over san francisco, but the purchase var of our water, sewer and municipal electricity, and muni was a property of that organization for many, many years. if you'll recall mayor willie brown's contest where he attempted to walk down market street faster than the underground got there in the late 1990's, the issue du jour, while homelessness was still up there, was on time muni arrivals, and at that time, in a moderately unlikely progressive coalition, the then

supervisors tom ammiano and gavin newsom then collaborated on what was proposition e which creates the san francisco municipal transportation agency and gave it a level of autonomy, a level of funding, and made it quite independent from the board's budget process insofar as it required a super majority of the board to prejekt t prereject the budget and did not give us line item authority over that budget. when i was first elected and took office on january 8th of 2001, i don't think there's anybody around who remembers it. maybe jim lazarus does from his days as a deputy city attorney, we used to have at this committee, at the land use and transportation committee, a huge number of items related to increasing a yellow zone 20 feet, adding a stop sign, all of which in those days went

to a separate entity, which was the -- what the heck was it called? the parking and traffic commission, which was a separate entity. and all of those items had to be approved by this board. the 1999 prop e experiment went on for a controversial decade, and in the late 2000's, 2007, to be precise, we were at a turning point, which came to me as president of the board in those days, and we could go down two very distinct roads. one was to take all of the power back and reinsert the legislative branch, and the other was to make it more autonomous and take away the powers that the lengtgislative branch had. i chose the latter, it was

proposed as a proposition a on the 2007 ballot. it was very controversial in those days. in fact one of san francisco's leading civic likes, a gentleman named don fisher with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the theory that it was going to advocate against car traffic and for public transportation. mr. fisher, god rest his soul, lost in that matter, and the theory that i think many of us had at this time, including spur and transportation advocates, as supervisor safai said, was that we were going to depoliticize the transportation options of san francisco, and we were going to take out the meddling supervisors and mayors, and that, while it's

counter intuitive for elects officials to give up power was the theory that i subscribed to. as it turned out, the board of supervisors exempted itself from the process, but as mr. reiskin, you can -- i'm not going to put you on the spot -- attest to, it became a solely owned branch of the vicissitudes of whoever owned it at the time, and checks and balances be darned. i watched that in many inkarnations. i mean no ill will towards or former mayor, accommodating all too readily google buses or tnc's, and none of that, regardless of what we heard from taxi drivers who were being driven out of work or whatever was in the realm of the legislative branch to

discuss, have any influence over. so when supervisor safai came expressing these concerns, i said something that's a little unlikely. i said help break it, i want to help fix it. and that resulted in the charter amendment. >> supervisor safai: that was the cleaner version. >> supervisor peskin: having said all of that, i want reminded that a decade ago, i actually introduced an ordinance which but for the bell ringing on my then-two-term limit would likely have been passed, which used the specific carve outs proposed in proposition a, the 2007 charter amendment, that would have allowed certain items to be appealed to the board. that item never came forward for a hearing. here we are a decade later, and that is before us today. interestingly enough, it is in some ways modelled on a

provision that the board passed a decade and a half ago -- more than that, 16, 17 years ago, on how conditional uses from mr. cider's department could be brought before this board. in the old days, and this was manifestly unjust, only property owners within 300 feet of a project receiving conditional use could appeal to the board of supervisors, and subsequently, i passed legislation that actually gave the board the authority to be proxies for people whether they did not own real property, whether they were residential tenants or not residential tenants or neighbors outside of the 300 foot zone. and that required a certain number of members of the board of supervisors to approve that

before that could be heard. i was actually talking to supervisor safai today, and he and i were trying to recall how many times since he had been supervisor, which has been how long now? >> supervisor safai: year and a half. >> supervisor peskin: seems like forever. sorry. that was a joke. and i think we could only think of two times that the board had actually used that authority in the last year and a half to bring an appeal forward. but those have actually been very important policy matters that have actually -- are now leading to changes in the way, in one case, that we deal with demolition controls. so i am hopeful that this is seen in the way it's intended, which is not to go back to the days of micromanaging everything that you, mr. reiskin, everything that you and your very competent staff do, but in order to reinject

the kind of dialogue that a, makes us healthier, that reinstills the checks and balances, that if they're done right, make us better. and b, also allow our constituents who think that they are electing people who have a modicum of influence over these decisions to realize that we actually can insert ourselves in the process when it's manifestly important. to that end, i think there are a number of changes that we want to make today, and i want to speak to those. but i -- i really welcome this conversation. this is not in any way, at least coming from this supervisor, meant to walk away from or in any way undermine our transit first policies, which i absolutely adhere to, and the voters have spoken on. it's about really making this dialogue more fruitful for everybody. and i do want to say one thing that i've said to director

reiskin repeatedly, which is actually this conversation has in many ways already achieved what it was meant to achieve, which is that the level of dialogue between you and your staff and this body has, mr. mcguire, thank you, has been so much better in the last few months. and i get it. it's not that you were ignoring us or belittling the board of supervisors. you've got a really tough, complicated set of challenges in a world that is evolving very quickly, whether it's, you name it, electric scooters, chariots, google buses, and central subways and vanness e.r. t.'s. but this has gotten your attention, and i think it's been extremely helpful, so i want to acknowledge that. i do have a number of specific

questions and i'm happy to bring those up when the time is right. >> supervisor safai: and through the chair, i just want to jump back in. i just want to make a couple more points. i want to hand it over to supervisor peskin because i think we came together on this from two separate angles, and i appreciate it. i want to thank him from the beginning because i went and talked to him, and he said, to take responsibility for some of the -- and sometimes you can't anticipate how things will ultimately come out. but i will say literally daily, i receive e-mails, kaulds, concerns, and when i'm -- calls, concerns, and when i'm out in the community, people come up and talk to me about the issues that we've been talking about today. for the past year and a half that i've been in office, it has been extremely frustrating to say to people, we have no authority. that's not the say the structure is setup. i think people don't understand, and that's been the consensus of many members of

the board of supervisors that i've talked to, supervisor tang, supervisor peskin, and president breed. i do want to acknowledge since we've proposed our charter amendment, there has been a significant change in the behavior of the sf mta. and i really appreciate mr. reiskin and others to try to change the behavior and be more responsive on these issues. but it goes to heart the heart what we're trying to accomplish today, if you take on all of the criticism, if you take all of the heat and all of the concerns, but yet you have no authority, you and say that over and over again, people don't understand that. it makes sense that we have limits authority that supervisor peskin had worked on back in 2007, and it seems this is the time to exercise that. but he acknowledged, and i do want to say the sf mta has definitely made some changes, and we're going to ask them to

present on the changes today. through the chair -- >> supervisor tang: supervisor peskin, do you have a statement? >> supervisor peskin: i want to say that proposition a, which only could have gotten on the ballot by the board of supervisors, actually created another legislative brank ch o government. so when we gave the mta commission or i should say the voters gave the mta commission the ability to legislate, that was a pretty amazing thing. i mean, it's very rare that a bunch of elected officials actually cede power to a bunch of unelected officials. it's important for me to say that. there are second acts in american life, because here i am a decade later getting to talk about it, and i'm actually -- i'm saying that on

the eve of this board being asked tomorrow to reconfirm because the mayor appoints, the board confirms two members of the commission. and this is not -- i'm not pointing this at staff -- who at least in this supervisor's case, these individuals have not even reached out to my office. they may have reached out to other offices actually after i brought this up to the mayor's liaison to the board today, which i didn't have to do, but i did. one of those two members reached out. but we are the confirming authority for a shadow legislative branch of government, and those members feel so autonomous, that they don't even have the courtesy or respect to reach out to see whether or not they're going to be confirmed. which -- and again, this is not pointed to staff because i

think staff has made marked changes in the last few months, but it does speak volumes about the attitude of some of these individuals who think that there are no checks and balances, so i just had to get that off of my chest. >> supervisor tang: okay. we're back to supervisor safai. >> supervisor safai: i wanted to talk about a couple of changes that were made, and i wanted to read them into the record. one was we removed the approval of 50 residents living near the location in the final decision. we added the review of final decisions on stop signs, and we added in an exemption of class two and class four bike lanes from board of supervisors review. so those are what you have in front of us today. and then, we have a few more amendments. and so i don't know if the chair would like us to talk about amendments now or you wanted to go to public comment

or presentation. >> supervisor tang: maybe you could talk about what you're talking about in emergency room its of changes. >> supervisor safai: one of them talks about amending a project and amending the decision of a final mta decision. so -- and this is a specific case because the -- in development projects that go before the planning commission, there is the opportunity for planning commission review, planning department review during the entitlement process, and then, the ability to appeal already to the board of supervisors. and once that has happened and we make a final determination, we probably need -- we don't necessarily need an additional review from this body again. so that was something that the planning department worked with us? just the last 48 hours. i'm okay with that amendment. and the other one, i think supervisor peskin's office highlighted that. we were working with lee from his office and cathy from my staff has done a tremendous staff.

but the idea that the planning department would have a filing fee of $600, and they agreed to remove that fee. so we will be talking about that amendment. those are the only two that i have at this particular moment. i know that supervisor tang might have something, but i'm happy to proceed with the presentation or if you wanted to -- >> supervisor tang: well, it looks like if the supervisor peskin -- >> supervisor peskin: i'm happy to hear the presentation, and i have not actually talked to supervisor safai on this, but i assume that what you're talking about is on page one, inserting a definition of bicycle lane. >> supervisor safai: correct. >> supervisor peskin: and at line 18, that would be the insertion of bicycle lane, period. this is definitions, a class two bike way or class four separated bike way or cycle track. >> supervisor safai: correct. >> supervisor peskin: and insofar as as that would be defined on page two at line 12,

we would actually capitalize bicycle lane, capital b, capital l because it would be a defined term. >> supervisor safai: correct. >> supervisor peskin: i have some other terms i would like to suggest, but i'm happy to hear the presentation. i just -- i concur with regard to the filing fee, in particularly insofar as as what supervisor safai suggested, which is that only a number of members of the brs as with tbo i -- members of the board could bring the appeal. i think the motion of eliminating the language at page four, line 20 with regard to the -- page four, line 20 with regard to the requirement of a filing fee in the amount of $597ship strickehould be --

should be stricken, and then, i have one additional amendment and then i have some questions. >> supervisor tang: so should we hear from the department staff now? >> supervisor safai: we can probably do that. >> supervisor tang: okay. director reiskin. >> thank you, chair tang, members of the committee. supervisor peskin, i appreciate the opportunity. i also appreciate the context and history lesson. i learned a few things that you might have thought i would have known, but i learned something just sitting here today already, so i appreciate the opportunity to speak on this proposal. i'm -- i will try to stick to really what the focus of today's hearing was, although there was a lot of discussion already about kind of larger issues and the proposed charter amendment. but i do want to set the stage a little bit and ask mr. mcguire to speak on some changes we've made and then

specifically with regard to some changes to the legislation. so just to start the legislation -- and part of this is for the benefit of the public. i know you all know much of this. this legislation would open up a broad range of sf mta decisions to the board of supervisors for review, and we recognize, as we've already heard, that the city charter endows the board of supervisors with the authority to exercise these additional review powers. and in some cases, we feel review of this type may be valuable to ensure that the sf mta is working in unison with the city's elected leadership toward a shared vision of the future, and supervisor peskin referenced private transportation issues a number of times, and we think that is an area where this kind of review would be especially valuable because these private transportation functions which largely i would say were not anticipated when prop a or prop e were created certainly beg a

lot of much larger city policy discussions. we are, however, concerned about the breadth of decisions that would be subject to another layer of review and the implications that this might have on our ability to deliver vitally important transportation projects on schedule, and in accordance with the policy objectives, i was pleased to hear the reaffirmation by supervisor peskin of the transit first policy and perhaps some changes in what's proposed could help us make sure that that affirmation is realized. and that's in part because the transit first policy i'd say has never been more important to the city than it is today, as the city is growing and the ways people get around are getting more complex. there is -- the streets aren't getting any wider, and we have

more people competing for space on them, and we need to figure out how to move people more efficiently, moving more people and fewer vehicles. thus we're concerned about unintended consequences that review as proposed, and there's been some amendments already -- what that layer of review -- how that could impact transit projects in particular. as we're working toward our new city goal of achieving 80% of trips in the city made by sustainable modes by 2030, concerned about the impact that this additional layer of review will have on our ability to provide high quality, efficient transit service to muni riders in particular, providing an attractive alternative to driving will be vital for us to be able to achieve this 80% goal, which is necessary for a lot of reasons, including the protection of our environment. furthermore, residents and merchants of san francisco rely on the sf mta when it comes to

issues related to curb management and what is already seen as some, including many of you, as a long process could potentially get longer by this legislation, which i don't think is the intent, but would be a practical implication of it. i do want to note that -- or just to, i guess clarify for the record, if it -- unless it doesn't go without saying, the decisions that the sf mta staff and ultimately its board of directors are tasked with making can be complex and often technical in nature. they regularly demand difficult tradeoffs which can stir strong emotions by people who are impacted, people in our community. these decisions have implications that relate to mobility, economic vitality, safety, accessibility, equity, and numerous other equallily valid considerations: but ultimately making streets safer

for our most vulnerable road users, which are people walking and biking, young people, old people, people with disabilities, they require making difficult decisions, and making the streets work better for muni, for -- to perform better, its reliability and its safety, likewise require difficult decisions. these decisions, which we make based on professional judgment by trained staff and in accord with our charter responsibilities and city policy, they have impacts that not everybody likes. so recognizing that -- and want to be clear, that we get that. i think it was with the recognition of this and not to talk about a history lesson, the grand jury urged that the operation of the agency be separated from the political process as much as possible. that's advice that i think is still relevant today, and i

would very respectfully take a little bit of different perspective on the agency that the agency is subject to only input from the executive branch and not from the legislative branch. i've made it a part of my work and policy to engage with members of the board of supervisors on district related issues, on citywide related issues, and that input by the board as a whole have significantly changed projects, have changed policy. i would go so far as saying everything that the board of supervisors for the most part has asked us to do as a body, we have done, whether it was free muni or reduced tow fees. i don't believe i've brought a major projector recommended a mainly project to the sf mta

board of directors over the objection of a district supervisor, so i totally get that you all are battered day-to-day by issues, as we are. i just would ask that we recognize that we, even before this latest round of charter amendments and legislation was voted, have always engaged in working with the board of supervisors. however -- >> supervisor tang: director reiskin, i'm sorry. supervisor peskin, real quick, did you have a question at this moment? >> supervisor peskin: no. i don't want to interrupt him. i'll hop in in a second. >> supervisor tang: okay. >> i don't mean to debate the point, just offering a slightly different perspective. that being said, i think we all are clear on the pressure that you are under on matters in your jurisdiction, and we certainly want to work with you better so that we can get to better outcomes for everyone,

hopefully without delaying the implementation of the work that we need to do to achieve the goals of the city. so we'll speak to the work that we've done in recent months to -- really, in recent years, but more so in recent months to improve the transparency, engagement and responsiveness for our agency. i will be the first to say and accept responsibility for that. i do want to thank you for engaging us in this process. i think we all share the same ultimate goals. i think the idea or the challenge for us collectively is to figure out how to tailor this legislation in a way that gives the board the engagement and voice that it wants, and

it's certainly within your purview to have that without jeopardizing the goals that we all have for the city's transportation system. so i'd like to ask mr. mcguire with -- with leave from the chair to present to you some of what we've been doing and to speak to some of the issues regarding the legislation as we understand it as it's been proposed. >> supervisor tang: okay. supervisor peskin. >> supervisor peskin: thank you, madam chair, and i'm not being argumentative in any way. and i absolutely, director reiskin, agree that when the body has weighed in as a whole, the agency has been responsive. and as i said earlier, since supervisor safai went down this path, the level of communication has gotten even better. but i -- i did want to -- and

we're all learning together, and not to put too fine a point on it, but there used to be things that used to be in our jurisdiction, that we've warned you about publicly -- and again we're all learning together in a rapidly evolving field. but when the issue around permitting of dockless stationless bicycles came around, there was a warning made in this committee to you guys that you needed to make provisions insofar as jump bike was about to enter into a partnership. i think i said at the time was about to be bought by, and i turned out to be right, and that you needed to have provisions to deal with that. which ultimately, and granted, and it's only an 18 month pilot, and so we'll get there. but ultimately, the level of response was less than adequate. i am sure that we will learn as we deal with part two or part

three, if you want to go back to segways on you can swa -- sidewalks. i really hope that as an sgs -- i think that as a matter of policy, you and i agree, but as an agency, you will send a message to these companies that it is time to stop asking for forgiveness and start asking for permission. and the best way you can do that is to put permit conditions in at the front end that say if you transfer your interest from the start-up to some massive multibillion dollar corporation that we know even though they won't divulge to us, we have done our own analytical work to know that

one of four cars on the street congesting san francisco belong to uber or lyft or are uber or lyft drivers. in the same way, you can actually send a message to bird and lime and spin that when you go out with your procurement tomorrow, may 1st, as your commission votes on division two, that you will not reward the bad actors. had this been in our shop, we would figured that out when i gave you that warning about jump and uber. so i just want to get that off my chest. done. >> supervisor tang: all right. now. i'm wondering if we can hear about some of the process improvements that mta is proposing. supervisor peskin and safai owe us dinner for how long we're here. >> i just want to say i concur fully with that. if we missed the opportunity on that one specific issue, it will come up again, and we're fully committed to making these permit conditions.

we learn from each successive one to make it as strong as possible to protect the city and the people that we serve. so tom mcguire is going to make a presentation quickly speaking to the comment amendments and then some comment on the legislation. >> okay. good afternoon, supervisors. tom mcguire director of the sustainable streets portion of the sf meat. -- sf mta. i will try to move quickly through this. as supervisor peskin said since i was here before you last fall, when we first started talking about legislation and charter amendments, you certainly have gotten our attention. i promised i would come visit each of your offices, talk to you and your staffs about ways we could be more nimble, transparent, engaged and responsible in some of the

things that we did with you, and some of the internal changes that we did in the mta started to change the expectation of responsiveness in the board. the first thing i wanted to mention was the reorganization of our planning team. supervisor safai has pointed out the importance of organization and prioritizing the needs of this board in our -- in our organization. we've dedicated senior staff as part of a community response team that is there to give focused attention to priority issues of the supervisors, not issues that are our priorities, not issues that are the things that are necessarily part of our capital plan, but the issues that -- where you've asked us to get unstuck, get to yes and get to issues on the streets that are important to you and to your constituents. we've dedicated this, we've dedicated $100,000 in each district to this master plan to

make sure this gets implements as soon as possible. a few of those are on the screen. and i'll move onto the next slide. >> supervisor tang: i'm just going to jump in real quick on that slide, for work completed, the two examples in district four took years to be implemented from our office. >> so our job is not just to get to yes, but to get to yes faster. so next slide, just a few things we've been able to break ground on in the field. supervisor safai and i were out in district 11 on friday, and it was great to work with you to install a stop sign at delong and wilson, but also very important for me and my staff to see the interaction with your constituents and see how important it is to your residents that they see you getting results, and they see the city family being responsive to their needs, just

a few more examples, district one, district two, district six, we've been out several times throughout the spring, that we want to find some win-wins. we want your constituents to know that we have their attention. in addition, there are some systems in the mta that we're working to make more responsive. in the 311 app, we're taking double parking reports. when customers write in, when they see double parking, whether they're driving, cycling or walking around the city, it helps us build a source of data that we can use to deploy our parking control officers so whether we have streets that are congested by double parking in rush hour, we can make sure our scarce enforcement resources are going to places where double parking is endemic. >> supervisor tang: supervisor kim, did you have a question? >> supervisor kim: by the way, i did not know that we did this

within 311. this is great. do we actually issue a ticket? >> so we do not issue a ticket. we started this about three weeks ago, and we're using this as a crowd sourcing data so we can make sure that officers are in a position to go to places where double parking go there again and again and again, and issue tickets. >> supervisor kim: so we'll start to get a trend or overall picture of where double parking is happens, and then we'll get a trend of what happens in those neighborhoods. >> yes wran jane doesn. >> supervisor kim: does not double parking happen all throughout the city? >> it does, but it happens in some places more than others. we want to find the places where the most people are affected by it. >> supervisor kim: is there a -- i'm sure there's a set of

legal issues around ticketing based off of the -- a phone camera photo but could you explain that to me? 'cause you know, he see the license plate clearing blocking the bike lane or double parking. what are the circumstances around issuing a ticket in this instance. >> there are very limited circumstances where a picture can be used to issue a ticket. the cameras that are mounts on muni buses can take pictures of cars that are parked in bus lanes and issue tickets but that's only because special legislation allowing san francisco to do that has been passed. >> does the law explicitly state that we cannot issue a ticket? >> i would be happy to research the specific supervisions, but my understanding is that we cannot issue tickets based on photographs skbl bein photographs. >> okay. i'd love the answer.

i'm sure the answer is exactly as you stated, but if it was vague or unclear, i would be very open to issuing tickets where there's clear violations of traffic laws, but glad that this is moving forward. >> so another dimension of 311 is making sure that we are staffing and resources appropriately the engineering teams that respond to the high volume, over 3,000 times a year, we receive a request from the public for traffic engineering services. these are everything from localized traffic congestion, safety, parking issues. we have a standard in the mta that we need to close out or 311 cases in 90 days. that's not just acknowledging that we've received the message, but to bring it to some sort of resolution. three years ago we were only meeting that 50% of the time. our standard is 85% of the time. by targeting staffing, but using some of our best engineers to the teams that

close out 311 cases and respond directly to constituents, we have since late 2017 been closing 311 cases within our service standard over 90% of the time, and that just again speaks to not just the staffing resources but the culture change and the expectation that we will be more responsive. and then finally there's some little things that i want to point out. many people, many members of this board and your staff have noted to us that our public hearing posters are very hard to read. it's often hard for people in the neighborhood to understand just what's going to be heard at an mta public hearing or an mta board meeting, so starting this week for the engineering public hearing that will take place in this building on friday, we're shifting what you see on the left side of the screen, which is the black and white heavy text screen to a more -- to a full color, plain language with a map flyer so that people who are interested in engaging with us and coming down to making public comments

or e-mailing us public comment actually know what we're proposing. all of this is wrapped up in our public engagement process, and poets is about raising the bar and setting a higher standard for mta to engage members of the public on everything from neighborhood level parking and traffic changes to multilevel and million dollar traffic projects. >> supervisor tang: supervisor safai has a question. >> supervisor safai: yeah. i just want to say we can come back to this at the end of the presentation, but when you do the postings, are you doing them in multiple languages. in my district, we have a significant population that speaks chinese only, spanish only, tagalog, so want to make sure you're doing your information and postings in multiple languages. so any way, we can come back to

that. thank you. >> okay. so that's a very quick summary in the ways in which we have over the last couple months tried to heed the challenge that you put in front of us in november , and that -- to supervisor tang's point, honestly, you've been putting it in front of us for years, to really take that challenge to heart and change the culture of the agency, dedicate resources, dedicate money and staff to solving the kinds of neighborhood scale problems that as you've all said today are the things that your constituents expect you to be able to be accountable for and to help solve. we'd like to offer a couple of comments on the legislation before us today just in terms of how it fits into some of the those efforts to improve our processes. first of all, i won't repeat what director reiskin said, but we are -- i hope we've conveyed that we are fully on board with supervisor peskin's point that the private transportation pilots and programs in the city do require a level of input

from the city's legislative body, and they're often not simply transportation issues, 1k3 we g and we get that, and we support an increased role of the board of supervisors in those programs. as we looked through the legislation, we concluded there were between 5 and 600 decisions made in 2017 that could potentially fall within the purview of the review by the board of supervisors described in the legislation. the majority of those decisions are decisions to install or not install a stop sign and decisions to install or not install a color curb treatment in response to a constituent request. so while we -- we certainly are mindful of the desire to have more accountability -- >> supervisor peskin: madam chair, can i just -- can we go back to the last slide. and i -- i'm not trying to be argumentative, tom, but this is

what we call lying with statistics because each stop sign actually is an action. but when you look at that little slice of commuter shuttle or private transportation program, that one decision affects a thousand things. so it looks like a little slice, but it's actually relative to impacts on people's lives, a much larger slice. so i'm not accusing you of lying, but it's a bad -- it's a bad pie chart. i mean, if you did it relative to what we hear about or at least in my district, which is ground zero for all of the emerging technologies, nobody complains to me about stop signs. that happens to my colleague from district 11. nobody complains to me about stop signs. but everybody complains to me about the other stuff, and you make one -- it's not like you

did 575 decisions on which google bus stop. any way... >> okay. point taken. the point of putting this up here was not to try to minimize any individual slice of the pie, and i suppose i get your point about the graphics, but rather, to say that there is a -- there's a large volume of decisions that moves through our board, and many of them are -- many of them are the kind of bread and butter things -- and i think you've asked us to make sure we accelerate and don't slow down, so i just want to make note of the volume of decisions here. and i also want to point out that some of these decisions are tied up in tactical but very important efforts that we're undertaking to improve transit reliability in ways that don't appear to be exempted by some of the exempts that you've drafted into the ordinance. so specific examples of that would be something like the conraflow transit lane that we

installed on sansome street, which is helping connect chinatown south of market and the neighborhoods served by that bus. the project costs less than $10 million, so it doesn't fall under that major transit kpejs. it's not by any definition a major transit project, but it does include some pretty significant changes to the way that parking and unloading is done on those streets. it's included because when we plan a project like this. we don't want to say bus lane here, stop lights here, we want to meet with the constituents and citizens. just a little concern here that having the -- the ability to review the -- the detailed building blocks of a project like that without -- without necessarily the entire project could put you in a position of -- of being asked by your

constituents to kind of make changes to an overall project that really isn't about improving transitri liability. so one of the -- transit reliability. so one of the suggestions we had was to exempt public transit projects. and some of the kpamps that we had in mind are just listed here. these are all projects that have been legislated by the mta board to improve ridability of some of our highest ridership routes, and muni is gaining ridership in these areas because of the way we're managing the streets. and then, the last thing i just wanted to offer a couple of comments on the stop sign issue. i think stop sign issue has been something that has certainly been the bulk of many of the conversations that i've had with some of you and some of your colleagues with respect

to this legislation and responsiveness in general. i just want to say that every time there's a stop sign requested, that -- that you or any of your staff show any interest in, we are already within the mta elevating the review of that, our city traffic engineer and i are personally reviewing the staff decision. and again, really trying to contextualize those decisions, make sure it's not just a black and white engineering decision, but it's also a serious decision that takes into account the issues that your constituents have brought to you. so we are already putting a much higher standard of review on stop signs that you've shown an interest in. [please stand by for captioner switch]

-- so for that reason we also strongly suggest that perhaps the stop sign review might be handled better in a way that we are doing it all right, which is a higher level staff review of the request. when there's an interest from the supervisors. >> thank you for that presentation. and so i know that we have lots that we can talk about but i want to jump over to the planning department really quick because i know that they also have some thoughts about the legislation. so if we could do that real quick and we'll have a robust dialogue.

>> supervisors, good afternoon, the planning department. thank you very much, chair, for this opportunity. and in deference to your time i will acknowledge the additional potential exemption for development project that would be incorporated into the ordinance if you so choose. as you know oftentimes our department can require under condition of approval a loading zone and this is done in order to minimize the conflict in the street. similarly a passenger zone could be asked to introducing an additional appeal avenue for housing project or a commercial project or a mixed-use project. would potentially be a third or a fourth bite at the appeal apple. i'll leave it at that and happy to answer your questions,

supervisors. >> just through the chair -- >> commissioner safai. >> we're aminable to that and i think in this instance particularly because there's already an avenue that the particular appeal would come to the board of supervisors or potentially have come and there's really no reason for that to happen -- an additional time. >> so we're aminable and we can read into the record the particular language and work with deputy city attorney john gibnor on that. >> i'm happy to hear that we're on agreement on that and so not having the board of supervisors weigh in on loading zones nor passenger type loading zones. okay. >> so as part of a development project, yes. >> that are part of, yes. okay, so i think that concludes the presentations. is that correct? okay. and i'll just chime in real quick and say that i'm glad to hear, yes, in the last couple months some of the changes that m.t.a. are making.

as staff know from the private conversations over the years i wish that these changes had occurred more quickly and it wasn't after the threat of a valid measure that they were made. and as you know we have a legendary excel tracker just for issues in our office because there's so many that come through our desk and we have to respond to them. so i hope that what you have outlined here is going to happen and i do believe that there's a good faith effort to really respond to our needs. now with that said i absolutely agree with the goals and the intention behind the legislation. and as stated by supervisor safai and peskin. to be honest, i have been very torn on this because a lot of times the issues that i had from our residents, yes, while they may be about safety and stop signs and so forth, a lot has to do with making sure that muni is

running efficiently and reliably and that it's safe for people to get on and off the trains and i don't see how this legislation will actually help with that aspect of it. with residents who travel from the western part of town where it's very far and very difficult to get to the other side of town and we see issues when there's blockages or delays on the eastern sign or there's a giants game or so forth, i would like to see more in terms of how it is that we can ensure that muni service is actually better and improved for our residents and our riders. but i will say they agree with the sentiment that we as supervisors often get a lot of complaints and comments and i'll take for example the project that took a lot of heat for things that i stood for, such as i agreed with the agency that we should have boarding elements because i think that safety is number one. i do not want to see anyone get killed getting on or off a train

and i wrote a letter stating as such that here are the things they agree with but this is not what i agreed with, the transit only lane in our district didn't really make sense. that was not a decision that the board arrived at so i'd say that i tried my best to weigh in very respectfully but sometimes that didn't always translate into the act by the board to reflect the fact that i very carefully weighed all of the different comments that i received from the community and went out on a limb to agree with certain things that -- with the department -- that my community fought me on. so, you know, i want to just make that comment that when we weigh in i think that it's really important to take those comments into consideration. but, you know, looking at what the board of supervisors would have to weigh in on -- for example, i don't know that i want to weigh on adopting time limits for parking meters, nor if there are -- sorry -- parking

impacts for athletic events, parades, school bus, like sfud, and street -- block parties. i don't want to weigh in on those things and i don't know how that will improve the experience for our neighbors. however, i think that, yes, there are things that are important such as car share parking spaces and those were blanchested throughout our district without consultation with our office and it only happened afterwards, after the board approved them. and commuter shuttle bus zones i think are important so, i mean, in a nutshell there's some things that i agree with on this list and some that i don't and i don't want to see the stop signs even though it's sometimes been very frustrating working with m.t.a. to get a stop sign approved in certain areas where there's a the lot of high traffic and the potential for injuries. so this is where i am definitely a bit torn but i would say that i really home this is a point in time that they realize that

we're serious about trying to better serve our public. so we hope that you'll join us in doing so. supervisor safai? >> thank you, supervisor, tang, and thank you for allowing supervisor peskin and i to go back and forth. but i just want to say a couple things. this is a compromise piece of legislation. we were going to go to the ballot. it was going to be a much more aggressive proposal and i can tell you that even though i have been only on the board for a year and a half i have never seen a more positive response for something that i have proposed than that. >> and we received close to 500 emails collectively and it was an 80% to 90% -- people are angry that we're not going to the ballot. and this proposal today and there are things that we have taken out and we have taken out and we wanted to mirror the

c.e.u. and we had taken out of the review -- and it doesn't mean that all of will this come with us. where the supervisors sign on, since i have been on the board for a year and a half we only had two of those. we have no intention to do that. but when we proposed our charter amendment in november we started talking about and i think that tom and the agency has every best intention, but we have been talking about a community response team for five, six months and i still have yet to meet that person. i have no idea who that person is so i think that dillon does a great job of reaching out to our staff but part of the negotiated response and the response to our charter amendment is that