all day at r.p.p. spaces as long as they can afford to pay, something they couldn't do before. staff is saying meters are used for parking management, not revenue generation. how does overriding time limits encourage turnover, how to support transit first policies. it was just said there are no areas in line for this paid plus permit overlay. that's not true. there's an area in show place square in line for just this and also internal memos of theirs talking about rolling this out citywide. so what do we do when mom and dad come to visit out of town for a night or few weeks. the answer is something already in existence, visiting parking passes. the one recurring issue brought up ad nauseam by workshop attendees and acknowledged by staff over and over again as something they would fix is an easier online process for obtaining and printing visitor passes. we don't want, we don't need

meters plus r.p.p., get the visitor passes online. thank you. >> thank you, next speaker, please. >> gabriel thurmond, mark miller -- hooper. >> good afternoon, i'm gabrielle thurmond, these proposals were the result of almost three years of efforts. parking staff could have used this time to reach all account holders by using survey customer satisfaction and receive input for improvements. instead time and effort was spent on household survey. 362 out of 54,000 customers. next, in a communication planned for this project m.t.a. set a goal, achieve 60% support from key neighborhood associations and business groups. unfortunately this goal has not been achieved.

represents 35 neighborhoods across the city. you received a letter regarding their concerns. c.f.s.f. performed studies on non resident impact on r.p.p. parking. two, have traffic engineers reviewed the studies already done. i support small business and non-profits, they can evaluate for possible wider use. one better enforcement. this is the number one issue for your r.p.p. customers. input around this issue could be found in the controllers office audit on enforcement. two, one hour r.p.p. allows one hour grace period for non-permitted cars to improve r.p.p. near meter zones with high demand. three, r.p.p. otherwise known as r.p.p. only parking allows enforcement with just one pass like meters and four, evening

hours r.p.p., this is worthy of study and would be needed near any evening metering. the above mentioned supports transit's goals and are measurable. [buzzer] >> thank you for your consideration and attention. >> mark miller, followed by david hooper who is the last person who has turned in a speaker card. >> if sfgovtv could put the overhead on, please. my name is mark miller. this is the last of our group comment. we support the proposed per-household and driver limits. we support adding a definition but suggest a strange in language. the phrase primarily abuted by residential property is vague, not measurable and open to subjective interpretation. we don't know what is being measured, total square footage per block. number of residential units, we

request to amend that language to abuted by property occupied by one or more households. i should be clear we don't support adding language for paid plus permit parking, there's no data to support this and will invite additional neighbor parking. this with a suggested change to the laing wamg. language. the term commercial property. phrase separate entrance is unnecessary and vague. the suggested change reads defined by a separate address where address is also defined in the code. we further request you add a definition for address which is not in the code presently to apply for both residents and businesses. the city has an authoritative database for use. we strongly oppose removing all references to the role of the

city traffic engineer in the code that covers how r.p.p. areas are added deleted rescinded or modified. we consider significant not a minor change yet is not mentioned in the slides or staff report at all. neighborhood wide parking planning, especially for new r.p.p. areas requires more engineering expertise to be involved not less as would any r.p.p. modifications or rescission actions. thank you. >> thank you very much mr. miller. next speaker, please. >> clerk: david hooper, the last person to turn in a speaker card on this topic, madam chair. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. >> my name is david hooper. my neighborhood is mission terrace is considering putting in residential parking permit, between glenn park and balboa park station. we get a lot of commuters, a lot of people from excelsior in the overflow parking because it's available. i'm here to say i support a

particular part of the proposal. the idea that future residential parking permit areas are limited to two per household. i think that's a valuable step. the point is, we have to do something. we haven't done anything in a while, it's gotten worse and will get worse yet if we don't start to present to people considering the residential parking permit area, if we don't give clearly defined options. households is a problem, i don't know how to define that. we have homes in our neighborhood that have apartments down below, those are two households, frontage is 25 feet wide, you have a garage i will assume used as a garage, yet if it's possible for people to have four automobiles for two households on what originally was rh-1 planning, that's a problem. the last thing i would like to say in our community we are

considering having increased density, this is planning. increased density in terms of the two big developments, where the mortuary was and where the safeway presently is. at ocean and cayuga we are looking at as many as 300 new units. when we have these units with increased density bonuses for one reason or another or having less than one-to-one parking. i would like to see the sfmta address the idea of excluding these new bonus density buildings from any future working permit area -- just to finish the point [inaudible] thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. >> clerk: madam chair, that's the last speaker. >> chair c. brinkman: do i have any more public comment? if so, come forward. seeing none, public comment is closed. sounds like we will have a couple questions. i know i have a few.

>> kathy and i will tag team hopefully. >> chair c. brinkman: i just want to sort of separate what i want to discuss. sounds like we had two different distinct tracts of the questions. sondes like we have area aa workers, mostly, who still don't feel their concerns have been addressed. so can we just talk briefly about that one first before we dive into what's in front of us today? i do remember when we approved the area aa, which is the bernal, correct? that we had talked about the teachers and we had talked about the non-profits. can you quickly bring us up-to-date with what's going on? are those r.p.p. signs in yet? are the r.p.p. stickers available and what's going on

with the non-profits and the schools? >> sure. first thing we did, we brought right back to this board per director heinicke's suggestion, including leonard elementary school eligibility for rpp aa, that was approved. we did that right away, everything will be ready by the next school year to get teacher permits. we have talked with the executive director, i think we need to continue to talk, obviously, about the issues they are facing. i think when this came up, when we presented r.p.p. aa for consideration and some concerns with expressed, director reiskin said we would be happy to talk with these folks how to get their employees to work. i want to put out there, if we are sort of expecting everybody to be able to park for free on the street all the time, that's going to be a challenge.

there's just limited parking. one of the main themes we have pulled out of this rpp reform project in general is more cars than spaces across the city and there's no way to provide free ing for everybody. it touches on something that came up frequently during our outreach. lots of different groups saying we would like permits. we have a good reason why we need to be moving around, all sorts of groups from realtors to p.d.r. workers to non-profit workers to workers who work late at night at restaurants and things like that. if we give parking to everybody who has a reasonable story why they need them then the permits become less effective. i think one of the things not captured in the transportation code revision but we have taken away from this reform project is exactly what a lot of the

folks expressed, this is a resident-driven process and focused on the residents get to sign the petition. it says it there in the code. if they gather enough signatures and the other require. -- requirements are met, like high occupancy, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room for staff in terms of our recommendation about whether there should be an r.p.p. area here or not. we are trying to address that by adding this fit criteria and it says let's look at other parking regulations that might be effective. we also tried to bring in other parts of the neighborhood. r.p.p. a.a. was the last area we created based on resident petition. e.e. came later based on robust neighborhood engagement process had a lot more support and also included lots of different regulations and included input

from lots of different people who represented workers, businesses, commuters, all sorts of different things and i think that is the answer, trying to move away to something more revenue driven. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, that is helpful. i guess my concern is, still talking about a.a. not talking about the actual proposal ahead of us yet. what do we have left in our toolbox to address the concerns of the businesses in that area of a.a. >> i think one of the speakers said, the 2-hour limit won't work for me, paid plus permit won't work for me. in terms of most parking regulations, most are quite frankly aimed at getting people to move along and not stay all day. we don't have a lot of on-street parking regulations geared for making space for people outside an area to drive in and park all day.

we have a great t.d.m. team at the sfmta and i don't want to sign anybody up for more work but this is where management are looking at other ways getting people to work. there are some that won't work. if you have a 1-year-old and 3-year-old, riding a bike won't work. in a busy congested area like the mission and bernal heights some other alternatives will have to be explored, i think. >> chair c. brinkman: i want to address the concerns. i do understand we can't work magic, we can't make enough free parking for everybody, it just doesn't work. if what i'm hearing is that none of the tools that we had available when we institutes a.a. seem to have helped address their problems, should this board approve the proposal

that's ahead of us that does include that paid plus permit and this is kind of delving into the second lean of questions. -- line of questions. is that something that could be implemented at the request of, i don't know, a group of merchants or on a limited area in a corridor because it seems like yes everybody prefers to park free, if it's all free parking, there's no parking available for anybody. if some have to pay something, it would start at 25 cents an hour, it would be dynamic like our other pricing, reviewed once a quarter, go up or down by 25 cents an hour, is that something that could maybe be applied to that area to help people out so there is some way for people to drive there and park and pay, keep the turnover, keep some parking available or is the door completely closed on a.a. for that new tool that could be in the toolbox? >> i don't think the door is ever completely closed.

we would want to talk with neighbors and other folks who run businesses and run non-profits to see what makes sense. i think dogpatch is an interesting analog, that was a place we thought paid plus permit would make sense in some areas. the neighbors didn't think it was a good idea so we didn't move it forward but we created some zones with low -- that was a way to keep spaces available, make spaces available for people who needed

them and provide flexibility for people who may need them for a few hours at a time and move along a few folks who are parking there, using the fact there's free unregulated parking to leave their cars for days and weeks at a time. i think i last time made a joke that i was one of those people who didn't move my car because it was free. >> chair c. brinkman: that's area a.a. i would like to hear from other directors with any questions to sort of clarify the area a.a. questions and concerns we had brought to us, as opposed to what is actually ahead of us. go ahead director. >> thanks. i want to thank people for coming out. this is a really tough issue. thanks, staff for tackling this. i know you articulated very well the problem. i thought i heard from kerasen part of their objection they are asking us to put in the

process of r.p.p. consideration of impacts on non-profits. i want to get your input. >> i would refer back to the dogpatch as an example, there were certainly some neighbors who thought there should be a lot more residential parking than there was in that plan and by having neighborhood meetings, open houses where everybody could come where we could have people who work there and who own businesses there and who ran non-profits come to talk about their needs they can push back and say if you cover the entire neighborhood and residential permit parking our folks won't have anywhere to park.

if you have the petition with signatures then it moves forward. >> chair c. brinkman: is there a place we could put that in somewhere. that solidifies, formalizes that process, or that consideration. >> we can certainly try. we tried that back in october. we had tried to move away from a petition process and toward an application which starts a neighborhood planning process. there was push back from the residents saying we like the petition process, we don't want to lose that ability to put forth, control our destiny and our own blocks we could come up with some language that might be better and might help.

>> adding this additional criteria, this is one of the few things m.t.a. does that has written in the transportation code the fiendings that must be presented to you before recommending approval. we would ask you to consider other on-street parking management tools in addition to by r.p.p. having to do that now in addition to tracking occupancy rate and non residents parking there and access to on-street parking etc., this will be actually in the code and we will have to present that to you any time an area wants to be established.

>> if there's a way we could make sure we are paying attention to the needs of everybody in the community, given we have this resident-based process, i think that would be important. and i won't stop harping on this point because it will hold up the process but i want to go back to kerasen in particular, because when we approved that, we certainly sounded like we were going to address, or try to address their concerns, i understand their concerns might not be able to be addressed but i'm wondering if there's anything we could do moving forward beyond just generally like let's look at t.d.m. >> i do want to be careful because we aren't getting the full picture of area a.a. we don't have everyone who might

have an opinion on a.a. here. thank you, staff, for continuing to work with them which i know you will do as much as we have things we can still try to propose and still try to do that we will continue to work with them. unless i have any more feedback on that, i do want to move onto sort of the meat of the proposal that's ahead of us and not take too much more time looking backwards. first question on that, the co-homes, i believe it was one of the speakers who lives in a co-housing situation. co-homes in new areas will still be able to petition to get more than two r.p.p.'s >> the hard cap is four, soft cap is two. you can petition for more. that's how we do it.

>> chair c. brinkman: we do have precedence for excluding r.p.p.'s for new development. because i believe the dogpatch area there were a couple buildings in there excluded from getting r.p.p.'s because they are built with a certain amount of parking, it's assumed the other residents won't have cars, the parking is unbundled so they are excluded from getting r.p.p.'s, correct? >> most of the time that's done on a direct neighborhood association negotiating with the developer basis where the developer agrees to do that on their own. we can also draw r.p.p. areas strategically, like we did in dogpatch to exclude new buildings. >> chair c. brinkman: excellent. vice chair heinicke? >> vice chair m. heinicke: thank you. thank you for the presentation. one thing that's a part of this, or at least summarizes a part of this is the streamlining of the issuance

modification and rescission aspect of this. a decision has to come before board this can't be done by staff unilaterally. >> that's correct. streamlining -- not the process. [please stand by...]

>> the other reason as that parking management and as a part of that, rpp is no longer within the traffic engineering department. that was moved out in 2014 to the parking department. that was another reason for th that. >> okay. so, i understand now that in the process for establishing a new rpp program, one of the criteria and we will be looking at is whether there is an alternative way to address parking, and presumably that means, let's clarify. does that mean that this department could hold up and r.p.p. issue instead is otherwise tasked or satisfied the criteria? you know, the neighbourhood support and that sort of thing? >> i think that certainly, you know, again i go back to the dogpatch example of aware there

was certainly does the dogpatch was unique going forward because i did not involve a specific petition. involving two and half year neighbourhood planning process. but again, there were some requests for r.p.p. regulations on blocks that we didn't think were appropriate because they were in front of a bus yard where they were on the commercial strip in the middle of the job -- dogpatch. we invoked that idea before it was embedded in the transportation code to say it looked, this is not -- again, both the residential area definition and this extra criterion are trying to get at this idea of r.p.p. is appropriate for residential areas and we to focus on these areas. so much of the growth is moving into other areas and the need for parking regulation is moving into mixed areas, where we are looking at all of the tools, and not just r.p.p. when we are

trying to create parking mobility. >> residential support is no longer going to be enough because it will have to be balanced over the overall transportation needs of the city. >> yeah,, as cathy was saying, just resident petition support was never enough. we also have to go out and see there was a parking problem here on the parking problem was caused by people coming from outside the neighbourhood and there's not enough offstreet parking to accommodate all the folks that need to park. there has been some criteria that have been required to be met just beyond getting the signatures. and i think, dose i don't think does the intent of the extra criterion was not as broad. it is more like, in this neighbourhood, on these blocks, is there is something that would work better than r.p.p. in terms of creating the availability and serving the needs of the people who actually live here? >> i appreciate that.

let's jump ahead. i think this will be even better addressed, where the modification, the concern, whether it's valid or not, that's coming from residents in these areas. so, could you, under this proposal, determined that there is a better alternative to parking and an existing r.p.p. area? and rescind the r.p.p. area as an agency? >> well, i think it's also important to remember that embedded within the transportation code has always been this provision that says the mta can institute new policies on its own initiative. so we've always had that power. we don't exercise edge. we have always worked with the neighbourhood and got petition signatures in order to know whether this is something that is going to work in the neighbourhood. the only example of an r.p.p. area that was rescinded was

through a petition. folks that were in the old area gathered up signatures and said this isn't working for us and said they didn't want to be part of an r.p.p. area. we rescinded the area. that was almost certainly how it would work in the future. the idea is not to sort of -- again that his the power that the m.t.a. already has. it is not something we would use lately. >> right. ok. i think that's a concern. that this is incremental. again, i'm not saying its valid, this is the concern that i am picking up. this is incrementalism, that existing r.p.p. zones which people bought their homes, ordered their lives upon, are going to be sacrificed, i won't say the altar, but at the very good, you know, policy of overall transportation. we've seen this debate happen everywhere. in a red zone, removing -- it's every time. if there is a local community against the greater transportation good. but it's a little bit different

when you are taking away something which people built as a community and rolled in and then ordered their lives on. so i heard you just say, it almost certainly won't be the case that we will resend an r.p.p. zone or significantly modify an r.p.p. zone without neighborhood involvement and support. that just won't happen. we remain committed to the programs neighborhood that exist. and nothing will be modified or rescinded without approval neighborhood. >> even if staff, we, or the future r.p.p. implementers decided that getting rid of an r.p.p. area was a good idea, we have to bring that to the board and i imagine you would hear from the folks who live there

saying we did not hear about this and they did not tell us about this. this is not a good idea. that will not have the power to implement that without the board approval. >> i appreciate that and i'm glad this board is here. again, i don't want to get too deep into this, there is a palpable concern from people in the neighborhood and across the city about this. it is incrementalism. it is that this big program, and kudos to you for excellent outreach. i mean i read the memo. you guys were everywhere. this was well-publicized and you did will what you were supposed to do. this program gets adopted with a sort of, you know, rather generic ways in which changes can be made, and then one by one r.p.p. is get ticked off and it becomes harder for people to object. i am comforted by your response. i want you to understand what i'm trying to channel, which is people are wary this is a divide and conquer, and the next time there is some ground transportation idea that will come of the cost of their r.p.p.

program. but the assurance i've received, which will leave me to vote for this in general, subject to one other issue, i want to talk about, is there are no plans, and that is indeed the intent of this legislation. especially given the other criteria besides the one we are adding, that especially with respect to modification and rescission, we will not go against the wishes of the neighborhood. >> that's right. there are no plans to change anything about current r.p.p. areas. >> then, the second, and that was sort of a follow-up question. are there any plans to change r.p.p. areas, and you said no. that is comforting as well. ok. the pay plus permit. [laughter] you have to make it exciting, right? good for you. what into be fun otherwise. i think the concern here is -- was really well articulated by

its the members of our neighborhood groups. that, you know, when you were talking about how do we go beyond accommodating just a school and accommodate a nonprofit group, or this, or that, there are so many worthwhile things out there and you have to draw the line, otherwise there is no parking and the program falls apart. so, but doesn't that same logic applied to the pay plus permit? that if you put in a residential permit program to make sure the residents have a decent chance to park, if you go ahead and build on a layer where people can pay to park there, especially for a significant amount of time, doesn't that undermine the whole purpose of the program in the first place? >> it is a good question. obviously it is a question that members of the public have had and kathy has responded to dozens and dozens of e-mails trying to sort of explain where we are going with this. i think and the idea is dose it is to address two issues that came up over and over during the

hour. there are visitors that we want to accommodate. visitors are always welcome in r.p.p. areas and they just have to move their cars after two hours and there are visitors who we are trying to exclude. people who are commuting in. typically what the program was created to do was discourage people from coming in and parking on neighborhood streets. and so what we have, and what we've seen in some areas, whether they be current r.p.p. areas or not, there are people who are willing to do the two hours shuffle. they will take the necessary coffee breaks, come out, move their car, it may have parking on campus next to the school to where they work or the hospital, but they move their car to get free parking. we talk to neighbours who live in those places and they say they see it all the time. there are people who come to us and say i have a legitimate visitor. i have a plumber, a grandmother who is coming for lunch, and these people don't have the ability to run out every two hours and move their car.

they want to stay for three or four hours. what this does is it provides flexibility to hopefully accommodate dose to discourage people who are looking for free parking from using it and encourage people who are legitimate visitors want to stay longer than that time limit to use it. and one more point on that is we did try, with the s.f. park program way back in 2011, we removed time limits at a lot of metres around the city, especially on fillmore street at the mission bay and the soma area. we found that people didn't actually say that much longer. you know, we wanted them to stay longer because again we got word from merchants saying people tell me that the one hour or the twaddle our limit is too short. dosage dose dose. the price encourages them to move along. >> i apologize if i missed it, but if we essentially adopt

this, we would provide the authority for the paid plus permit to be grafted into a new program or an existing program. it would go through the same process whereby it would have to be board approval. is that all correct? >> that's all correct. >> i did not see anything that suggested a limit. so it could be a pate situation where it could be for eight hours or something like that. i mean it could be a long period of time, correct? >> yes the idea was to remove the time limit. >> my concern, to get back to it, and as always, your answers are thorough and direct and most appreciated, as you have talked about the people who come out and do the two hours shuffle, which includes, unfortunately, a lot of teachers in the city. thank you for addressing the school there. i appreciate that personally. second, you know, grandma and the plumber where the examples you used. we will call the good visitor, but i think you left out a third group of people.

which is people who aren't willing to do the twaddle our shuffle but would be willing to pay to take what is otherwise in r.p.p. spot. the concern we are hearing from some of the neighbourhood groups is if you allow people to essally by their r.p.p. permit, there is fewer parking spots available for the people with the r.p.p. permit. >> that is another great point. i have a couple of responses. that is exactly what we heard when we removed time limits in s.f. park areas. everyone will just come and, you know, dose people will come in with money and park all day and take all of the spaces and they'll be know where to park. that is not what we saw. people came in and did what they needed to do and they moved along. the pricing is what gave them that all along. second, that being said, we are not content to take that data and run with it. we would certainly test this out and find out whether this is actually true. i think we will have a good test

of that with the dogpatch, again it is a low price all day metre. we will see how people respond to that in terms of how long they stay. anywhere that we would proposed that permit we would be testing it out. i mentioned there is an idea to try this out on one block which is right next to some existing twaddle our r.p.p. we can test from one block to the next, how do they work differently? which one works better and which one provides more availability. you know, i am sceptical. >> that led me to a very specific question and i'm sorry i'm taking so long but it is important. i believe it was said during the staff report that there is no pay plus parking things in the pipeline, and then at the very next presentation, it was there were some ideas where this could work. i'm gathering that there are some ideas where this could work.

>> yeah. apologies if that came off wrong. there is a proposal for a few blocks northeast of the story places where area that includes pay plus permit on one block, i think. we have an open house tonight about that with businesses in the area to see if this is good. it is not something new to that group. again, it is an example of something we would do if we had neighbourhood support and if people said no then we wouldn't do it. >> okay. that would be considered a modification that have to go through the same sort of process that we are talking about. there is a lots of procedural control. and my final question, you will be thrilled to know, when you say that neighborhood support for the pay plus parking, excuse me, you pay plus permit approach, how do you define the neighborhood? as of the people who would actually use this?

are they included? is that the businesses there? or is it only the residents who are a member of the r.p.p. program in effect? >> it is a great question. it is when we struggle with a lot. i think again, the dogpatch example is illuminating in that that the neighborhood is the people who live on the blocks who are voting on whether to have r.p.p. on their blocks or not. in the dogpatch we had a much broader definition of the neighbourhood. we are trying to do the same thing. >> same thing by taking a broader view? >> taking a broader view and saying we understand it is not just residents who park here. it is not just residents to use the streets. so we need to talk to everybody who does and make sure that it works for them. defining exactly what the neighborhood it means its always a challenge. it will depend on how many people speak up and say that they supported. how many express their support and neighbourhood meetings and

come to these kind of meetings. >> in this particular case, it is just one building. and hoa on the corner of seventh and barrie. that is the one we are talking about, right? they already have r.p.p. there. they have asked for additional r.p.p. we extended the conversation to the nearby businesses including reecology and some others, and partners of the industrial development and commercial development that is filling and down the street. we wanted to reach out before doing this. it is not a real proposal. it is being discussed. like hank said, there is a meeting tonight to discuss it. >> okay. thank you very much. you have answered my questions. i appreciate it. >> director hsu? spee what i just want to chime in because i remember back to the original -- original date -- days of s.f. park and your point

that it works. it may seem like pricing and sort of a blunt tool, but any price changes the behaviour of the drivers who are going to go and park there. whether it is 25 cents an hour, whether it seven dollars an hour, which i'm not even sure we have anything that tie except maybe civic centre. it does. it changes the nature of the use of the parking. again, through s.f. park, i remember those original surveys that it was availability of parking that was the number 1 concern. ease of payment was a second concern, and place was the third concern. when you were going somewhere and you want to do something, you just want to park the car and you want to get your task down or get your visit done or you want to have your dinner or your lunch and then you move onto the next thing you will do. i'm not as sceptical as vice chair heinicke. i think this permit plus paid is a tool that could work quite well in areas like that.

it takes me to this whole thing. the r.p.p. is a blunt tool. and what we are talking about more in the neighbourhoods is parking management which is a fine tool. and set up saying it is all about you, residents and we will try and solve imperfectly, for your problem, now we will be able to take a finer tool to it and solve for the entire neighborhood and their parking demands. thank you so much for the work. i do know, and we are aware of it that every time we bring up the words parking and bring up the idea paid parking versus free parking and we bring up r.p.p., it opens up a bigger discussion. it is a really difficult challenge for people in this city. to your point, people build their lives around the way the parking is in the area that they live or work. when a change is looming, it can be really scary for people. i do have confidence that we will continue to work through all of these changes that look really scary and they will actually end up being really

helpful for people and allowing people to go where they want to go and park and help merchants by having turnover. if nobody has any other questions,. >> i don't have a question but i think you summarize the issue very well, which is -- and what is at the core of what people is concerned about, is we -- is are we prioritizing the neighborhood or the residents or are we prioritizing the broader community and sort of analyst -- balancing views? either way, it is noble. it is what perspective you are looking at it from. to me, i am going to vote for this because you have given me assurance that rescissions, modifications, including paid to plus parking, are going to be considered of that residents there and that is still going to be the foremost goal of this. and i, you know, fortunately for you won't be here that long, but if that -- i want to say for the record, if that changes and it becomes a process where these

things are being proposed over the wishes of the residents, that's not in the spirit of what we are voting for here today. >> chairman brinkman: unduly noted. thank you for thinking -- for calling that out. i want to thank all the people who came down for letting us know what your frustrations are around parking and your frustrations in your situation. i hope that staff will continue to work through this. some of them sound not solvable with some of the tools we have right now and some of them sound like there are solutions that we can work towards. thank you everyone who came down to talk to us. thank you for the outreach you did and do i have a motion to approve? >> vice-chairman heinicke: you do. >> chairman brinkman: and all in favour? and he opposed? hearing none. approved. thank you for the work. >> item 12. presentation of discussion regarding the planning department rail alignment and benefit study. >> chairman brinkman: and i see we have a presentation., sss

returning shortly. we talking at the rail alignment and benefit study. >> good afternoon. doug johnson from the planning department. i just wanted to give you a quick overview on the rail alignment and benefit study. it is wrapping up after a lengthy process, which we will talk a little bit more about as we go on. as the state and region modernize and improve the heavy rail system serving san francisco, san francisco is a strong supporter that seeks to

improve the current plans to maximize the benefits for visitors, workers and residents. as we look forward in california, we are aware of the fact that there are very large growth projections coming for the city, and for interstate trips. essentially, we find there are two ways, three ways we can curb those trips. one is by increasing capacity up to 115 gates combined with thousands of additional lane miles into and out of the l.a. region on the bay area or region and connecting in between. clearly we don't see those as goals that are consistent with the state's planning goals nor the bay area's planning goals. within the region, we are aware there are very consistent growth

projections. again, just over one% per year, but obviously, pushing long-term growth projections up to 10 million for the region. with a goal of, again, maximizing the opportunity to travel in the corridor on rail as opposed to trying to find ways to expand 101, 280 and other freeways. perhaps, though, as we did get a closer to san francisco, we know that we want to really look at and leverage the opportunity that is being created downtown in san francisco with the trans- based centre, the planning and zoning work that has occurred there already, the soon to be adopted central soma plan as well. and really look at the way that

we are going to serve san francisco going forward. at the same time, we see a very acute impact in a very high growth part of the city. as we really think about what the rail alignment does in san francisco, one of the things the rail lines have done throughout the decades is divide cities. at this rail line is no different. however,, this is a very high growth part of san francisco. which would mean 1,000 new households, 35,000 jobs. hundreds of acres of parks and open spaces that are planned in this part of the city over the next 20 years. the good news is, there is a very big opportunity. there are at least three major infrastructure projects that are currently in development.

first up is the electrification of the caltrain fleet. next up, is the ongoing development of the caltrain -- of that high speed system, and last up is the new transit centre, and the current plans to reach it via the downtown extension. so the red is set forward on the process to look at these three huge individually -- individually huge and their collective impact on san francisco. to ensure san francisco is a well queued up to, i think, identify the shortcomings and maximize the benefits of these projects within the city and county of san francisco, serving the region, and the state.

these processes are occurring at different levels in a different agencies. we were concerned on the potential impacts. one of the ones we have zeroed in on is the possibility that, under the current plan for the extensions, and service improvements in the downtown of san francisco, we would see 16th street need to be placed into, likely need to be placed, into a very deep trench. sixteenth street is one of only two or three streets that provide direct access into mission bay at this point in time. obviously, 16th street is both an ambulance a route, future bart route as well, and provides a critical link between the different sides of the city. it also perhaps highlights the option for a higher opportunity. instead of just maintaining a couple of streets across the

tracks, the opportunity perhaps is there for us to consider establishing half a dozen or more new connections between the east and west side of the city along the tracks. as you can imagine, like with any planning process, there are many trade-offs to consider. cost is certainly a very important one that we've been faced with, but we also are looking at trying to make sure that the fundings do not interrupt any of the existing construction schedules. it creates new opportunities and maintains capacity for residents and local circulation. potentially also creates new opportunities for transit connections within the city serving these new stations, with that, i will handed over to

susan who will walk you through some of the highlights of the key components of the study. >> thank you. my name is susan. on the project manager for the project. it is comprised of five major transportation questions that have to be answered independently sometime between now and 15 years that will affect san francisco for the next hundred. understanding how they interact with each other, and understanding, as we go forward with any of the decisions, how we are affecting the future of san francisco and in respect to these five major pieces, is really important. the five components are the rail alignment to the salesforce transit centre, the railyard reconfiguration and/or relocation, the urban form and land use considerations, transit centre extension and/or loop, adds the fifth isabel of those boulevard i-280. the most important is the

component number 1. we looked at a bunch of alignments, and specifically around the idea of what do we do -- the alignment itself does a self does it self effect so much more than other the alignment. understanding how it reacts to the rest of the city is important. when we started to lay her on the projects by the other agencies that were running projects in san francisco, it became apparently clear, very early on that we would end up either trenching the streets that cross the existing tracks, as you saw in the previous graphic, we would move the trains underground. the three alignments we looked at, the one in green, we call the future with surface rail. it includes building the downtown rail extension in an environmentally cleared area. and trenching our two streets. we cannot cut mission bay off from the rest of the city for

more than 20 minutes during every peak hour. the two great crossings at 16th and mission bay drive would be trenched. the fourth and king railyard would remain as it is today. for passenger operations and storage and maintenance. and we would get the trains into the salesforce transit centre. the other two options are moving the trains underground instead of moving the streets and the vehicles. the orange alignment is considered avenue alignment. it is the d.t.x. extended tunnel. that means that we build to the d.t.x. at the same time, we can environmentally clear and defined the pennsylvania avenue extension portion and we move the trains underground. somewhere between 22nd and cesar chavez. when we move the trains underground, we remove the surface tracks. now you get not only the 16th

and mission drayton ocean mission bay drive, but we connect a lot more streets between mission bay and the rest of the city. because we've moved the tracks underground, wheat because remove the trains underground, remove the tracks of the surface. the railyard which is currently used for operations, storage, maintenance and staging, the operations will move underground in the two be built forth and townsend station. the box in the green. in the downtown rail extension. the storage and maintenance, moves south and we'll talk about that in a moment. the staging is combined -- staging is like after a giants game where they load and go around three trains so that you can move people out of very very quickly. that would be an operations conversation. and the fourth and king railyard

will be repurposed. push that off for a second. the third alignment is the blue alignment. we call it the mission bay alignment. the d.t.x. is not built. we move the trains underground from the current alignment. we veer off to the right, and we go under the third street alignment. under the tee third line. it is incredibly deep. he would get a new station in mission bay somewhere. you have to be below the mission creek waterway. this puts us incredibly deep and it includes the largest or in the united states, currently. there is a lot... as you are coming over mission creek, you are climbing pretty significantly. in fact more than recommended by the standards of high city rail. in any case, we access the salesforce transit centre as it was built in the southwest

corner, and in the orange and the blue alignment, we get all of the trains from caltrain and the salesforce transit centre. the second component that we looked at is the railyard reconfiguration and/or relocation. in any of the options, we can reconfigure and/or relocate portions of what happens at fourth and king. in the orange and the blue line, and the pennsylvania avenue extension and the mission bay alignment, we actually get the entire railyard. it is 20 plus acres. we can reconnect some of the north-south connections. but, you caltrain and a height the rail are going through does caltrain is going through the business line and heisey rail and caltrain are going through the blended service operation so they can understand where the trains are at all times. we will be able to understand

the needs of the fourth and king railyard. what we did is we looked at criteria provided by caltrain. we looked at a bunch of options. there are two at that make sense to further analyse. one is in the city. one is not in the city. the city does not own all of the land in either of the respects. until we understand, from the limits of this operation and the business plan from caltrain and the high-speed rail, we can't move forward on that piece. but we do have good options. the third component is the urban form and land-use consideration. looking at the railyard in and of itself, we can fix the streets. fifth is interesting because we have a bicycle pedestrian bridge over mission creek that is planned. being able to connect that to that bridge, reconnects not only the bicycle pedestrian network within the city, but also provides for much more access to that area.

we can eliminate the rail hazards, and then we can add housing open space and retail. the fourth and fifth components are long term items. the salesforce transit centre will open this year, august 12th, i am promised. and we will get trains in at the lake dose at a later date. at some point, we will want more trains than the salesforce transit centre can currently accommodate. because it is a terminal station, that means that trains come in and they take a certain amount of time at the platforms. the only way to decrease that time is to move the terminal activities someplace else. so if we bust out of the east aside and go to the east bay or return to the south, we get more capacity out of the transit centre. by identifying potential locations at this point in the study, or at this point in time,

we make sure that as we move forward, we are thoughtfully thinking about these. so case in point, we have the seawall conversation coming up. if we ever want to extend to the east bay, understanding where we might need a punch out panel, so that as long as you access the coordinates in the seawall at that punch out panel, then you've already designed to the seawall to accommodate a future connection to the east bay. the fifth component is what gets all the attention and not the love. originally we thought about getting the last 1.2 miles of i.-280 and whether or not it should be brought down. early on in the process, we realized that -- unlike our other two we have removed, it is a usable freeway. the other two havee