we move forward. and also i think that as he was mentioning there, later in the presentation there's some of the things that you're talking about that i think will be addressed. >> yeah, i think that my -- my part of the presentation is by definition reactive. we are reacting to where a fatality happened and we're reacting to problems but we want to also make sure that we get on the proactive side which we'll talk about shortly. and then finally the last fatality was at 36th and slope which is also a caltrans facility. this location that had a major project that is just wrapping up which activated a number of new pedestrian beacons, they're called hawks, which help the vehicles stop when a pedestrian is present. i attended a meeting yesterday at oakland caltrans headquarters

with high level manager there is and we talk -- managers there and we talked about doing additional outreach and making sure that the project wraps up which i think that the last two hawks have been turned on i was told yesterday by the project manager. and making sure that we follow-up as we learn more information about it. so the state and the city are working in partnership to make sure that we follow-up on, and this was a project that the state sponsored and followed up on in terms of providing all of these different crosswalks on slope with additional traffic signal devices to make sure that the incidents like this don't repeat themselves. if there's -- if there's no further questions i want to introduce megan weir with the department of public health and a leader on vision zero, to talk about data and analysis. >> supervisor yee: thank you and stick around, because i do have questions.

good morning, megan. >> good morning, supervisors. thank you so much for your attention to vision zero and the opportunity to speak today. my name is megan weir, the co-chair of vision zero with haba, and i also lead the data systems work for vision zero and work closely with my colleagues at d.p.h. also to advance the community engagement and equity through this work. so i'm going to be sharing some of our work on that. and just to reiterate, again, that the increased risk of seniors, particularly to fatalities, 50% of our pedestrian deaths last year as people have noted were seniors. and we know in looking at the data from the hospital that seniors are almost twice as likely to have a severe injury compared to younger adults. so in our medical population we see seniors disproportionately represented. this was a national study that

looked at senior pedestrians with the risk of dying relative to younger adults. what we see is that across all speeds, when seniors are injured in a traffic crash that they're more likely to die and speed is really a focus of vision zero for this reason. it's physics and then it's the inherent vulnerability of seniors that contributes to them being disproportionately represented in our fatalities. this national report also recommended a number of things that we could do to reduce this risk. these are all being implemented as a part of vision zero and you'll hear some of them today which includes traffic calming, increased enforcement, by police and also automated speed enforcement. and the reduction of the speed limits which is part of our vision zero bold ideas policy agenda. i want to note that people with disabilities are also of particular concern and we know that these are distinct populations but there's also a lot of overlap and we're also

fortunate to partner with a lot of the people, people representing both seniors and people with disabilities as a part of vision zero. 6% of the people that come to the trauma center with a traffic injury and a mobility or a visual or a hearing disability have underrepresentation of the overall breadth of disabilities that people experience that could contribute to vulnerablity. but when we look closer at people with disabilities that were seen at our trauma center we also learned that 60% of them had mobility limitations which, again, we can understand how that could increase the vulnerability when people are crossing the street. and 70% of those people were injured when walking and half were seniors aged 65. so there's a lot of synergies that with these two groups that we need to protect in our transportation system. the seniors have been a focus since vision zero was initiated as a d.p.h. leads our safe streets for seniors education program that focuses on educating seniors as well as

service providers about vision zero and bringing feedback back to the city family. this includes a lot of multilingual outreach and presentations to seniors and senior centers. and so far they have reached 1,300 seniors and staff at over 40 facilities to date. on this slide is the recently released safe streets for seniors brochure that i'm happy to have copies that i can leave with everyone today that is going to be a critical part of the outreach conducted for this program. and i want to acknowledge our guest here in the audience today and the community-based organizations that are here with us as well. and we know that community engagement is really critical for achieving vision zero and so safe streets for seniors has funded in the first year seven and in the last year eight, and hopefully everyone received a recently released request for applications for our next two-year cycle. it will fund senior organizations and people to work

with seniors, again, to help advance an understanding of the critical need for street safety improvements for seniors. and i wanted to highlight which ricardo modestly alluded to in his presentation an important policy change that was made to increase the pedestrian crossing times city-wide. this was in response to a really amazing concerted action by a senior and disability action and in coordination with community partners to bring attention to this issue and working with seniors not having enough time to cross the street. and it consistently rose to the top as issues of concern. this work that was funded by safety for seniors really elevated the issue to city staff that critically reviewed and considered, you know, increasing the crossing times, and as a result it is increasing crossing times now city-wide. this is a real example of the

safety improvement that will advance the safety for all of our vulnerable populations that vision zero and our dedicated staff are really bringing to everyone's attention. and i also wanted to talk about the injury analysis that we conducted in response to some of supervisor fewer's comments. this was really our work to develop another tool that could be used for vision zero that could help to inform more proactive improvements. so i think that everyone familiar with the network that is based on linked police and hospital data and so we have more comprehensive injury surveillance and it's also hospital outcome data that helps us to better assess injury severity. we're proud to be the first city in the country that has analyzed a map of that data to inform vision zero. this is another analysis that we did with that same data set. so we're bringing in the hospital, the hospital information and for the first time the data on where people with disabilities are injured on

our streets. hospital data being our own data source for that information. part of this analysis we though wanted to understand where our seniors and people with disabilities, where they live and where they're traveling. because from a proactive step, they're more exposed and vulnerable to injury. so we started with our internal short list but then we did a lot of outreach including through surveys to better understand where our locations of concern for seniors and people with disabilities are and that added notably public libraries to the list for attractors. it makes intuitive sense i think for a lot of our more vulnerable citizens in san francisco, that libraries are an important resource. and we got para-transit drop off and pickup locations from the sfmta and we're able to expand our priority areas to important locations for seniors. and so this is a map that we were able to create. on all of the segments that you

see highlighted on the map that's where the seniors and people with disabilities -- it capture where is they were injured from 2014 to 20 sa 2015l of those locations. and we looked within the priority area and that captured three-quarters where seniors and people with disabilities were severely injured. so we see this as another important tool to share with our city colleagues to, again, to help prioritize a proactive improvement moving forward. and drilling down into the richmond -- on gary, we can see some of the more specific locations and segments that are, again, another priority tool that we can share this data to help to focus our vision zero efforts. so, again, our recommendations are really to use this as a way to address concerns specific to seniors and people with disabilities and also to consider locations with injury,

histories and project prior tiswraigz of planning and i'm excited to say that mark dregger from sfmta will be up next to talk about how the traffic calming program is using this tool and also deputy chief jacqueline will share a campaign that used these locations to also inform where we have highlight banners. >> supervisor yee: what do you call this -- >> i'm an epidemiologist and i'll talk to john about what we call this -- i would call it the senior and people with disabilities prio pritoriza tirn tool. >> -- disability prioritization tool. turning over to mark. >> good morning, i'm happy to be here this morning to discuss

with you the natural extension of what megan just presented which is an infrastructure program that is largely the result of the transit analysis that was conducted to date and looking at collisions involving seniors and those with disabilities. so san francisco, we have several initiatives and we discussed a lot today about our vision zero program which is largely focused on this high injury network and has had tremendous success in recent years. it's a data driven process and it focuses on arterial and collector streets, the larger streets in san francisco. we have a very different program which is our residential traffic calming program. and you submit an application and you say that there's a feeding problem on your street and we take a look. if we find that there is indeed a speeding program we recommend a speed hump, but for many years we have looked to bridge the gap between vision zero and our traffic calming program to look at more residential streets to

take a more proactive approach and to still bring the community involved into this process to look at that hard data and a lot of the information that particularly the department of public health has helped to produce for us. but also to discuss with the community and to work with the community to understand where their priorities are for safety in the neighborhood. so i think that a lot of what we have presented today have shown that our senior groups and those who have disabilities in san francisco are particular populations that we need to pay particular attention to in san francisco. so the focus of this infrastructure program is indeed to reduce disparities in traffic injuries and deaths for these populations and neighborhoods across san francisco. to address the safety issues both on and off the high injury network. and to improve the safety and comfort for particular for those folks who are traveling in unprotected means, so to speak, who are walking or bicycling and don't have that protective shield of an automobile as we

have seen through the data that our pedestrians in san francisco are most at risk to traffic collisions in san francisco. and we want to also look at land use, and very important land use for the people in san francisco where they're trying to go between home and work and cluster where is there's more senior who live. and looking at schools, parks, transit areas, our commercial corridors, libraries. so the approach is to combine this hard data looking at our collision history and looking at speed and volume data as we do in the traditional sense with proactive engagement with the community to really understand where they see safety and comfort issues in their neighborhood. and perhaps there's something that we missed. perhaps, you know, collisions are not happening at particular intersections because people see it so uncomfortable and unsafe that they don't travel through that intersection. or people avoid that intersection all together and that's likewise important information. and in terms of the input for this program as i have mentioned, of course, it's one of the major ones that will be

the collision data that we have. looking at the locations where these collisions are happening and do we see patterns year-over-year. left-turn patterns and things that are correctable? and looking at land-use analysis so looking at senior centers and looking at parks and looking at health clinics and looking at locations where people are frequenting on a regular basis and that we should connect between home and, you know, some of these places where people are going. and we also want to look at this through a lens of equity. so with our traditional traffic calming program this is something where people reach out to us and they say we see speeding on our street but we are likewise interested in working with the neighborhoods that haven't traditionally reached out to our agency to say that there's a traffic problem. so for us to go into these neighborhoods and say, well, this is what we see with the data, what do you see and to have that dialogue and to have that conversation. and we also want to see what we can do to leverage the xa capitl

projects already underway in san francisco and to easily add on to the programs that we can move forward with progress on safety improvements efficiently and not need to necessarily hold this up year-over-year. so the planning process is, again, largely bringing together the hard data with input from our senior and disability groups to have this nice synergy from the hard data and community engagement. and the idea is to focus on a single neighborhood at a time to have comprehensive solutions in place for this neighborhood to look at it as a whole and not just a block-on-block basis. megan shared a snapshot of what these collisions are in this neighborhood involving seniors and those with disabilities. that's one area. but one might also look at visitation valley and we have hot spots in that neighborhood as well. to look at an entire community and seeing what can be done in that particular area. so this is a new program and

we're still working through some of the details but i'd like to walk through the typical process for looking at a single neighborhood. so the first step would be determining the focus area of study for that particular year and this involves a ranking process, a priority process, which we take into consideration. such characteristics as what is the collision history, what are the important land uses. do we have high concentrations of seniors? or senior centers? or disability service providers in a particular area. and all of these are considered when determining which neighborhood to look at first. and we would then do a process of data collection analysis. so combining the collision data that we have shared in the previous presentation but also collecting additional information. to nearby and approximate to these locations what are the speeds and the volumes looking like to capture a complete picture of what is going on in this neighborhood. and going into the community and working in direct communication with certain groups using workshops, using stakeholder

interviews to really discuss with people as i have mentioned previously what they to see in the neighborhood. so maybe there's some things that we have missed and intersections that people avoid all together that are nonetheless important to look at. and we then have a draft proposal to bring back to the community and including the larger broader community bringing together open houses and just continuing to reach out to a lot of the same groups that we conducted outreach to in the first process. and we then lead to a project proposal, legislation and eventual construction. so we would see this as taking about nine months to a year to do in a single area comprehensively to really take that time and similar efforts -- i will share one in a moment -- on this is how long it takes to engage with the community and understand these efforts. when we do reach a culmination of a particular focus area and we then move on to the next in our priority list. >> how do you choose the neighborhood or the community to focus on?

>> priority. so these are one of the details that we are working through and we launched in 2019 so we have more thinking to do in early its of how we prioritize the neighborhoods but some of the inputs would be the number of collisions and the important land uses that the department of public health has determined to be important, particularly for senior and disability groups. i can't share the exact details at this point but these are some of the inputs. >> an early plug in for the neighborhood... >> take note of that. >> thank you. >> in terms of the tool kit that might be proposed i have a few things on the slide here today but this is not necessarily all that we would consider. i think that the takeaway point here for this program, the infrastructure program, is that the tools and the measures that we would implement on streets or in a particular neighborhood are

going to really vary tremendously, determined on the collision patterns that we're seeing and hearing from the community. so what we might do in visitation valley could look very different than the proposed measures in richmond or in the sunset district. but on the table are not just the traditional traffic calming measures that you see as part of our residential application-based program, mid block speed reduction tools such as speed bumps and cushions and a crosswalk or a speed table, those would be under consideration but also looking at intersection level treatments. so what we have seen with looking at the data thus far is that these coalitions are happening at intersections and in crosswalks. so what can we do to extend the sidewalk and corners and have a refuge in the middle of street if it's a larger street and turn restrictions are also a possibility. a lot of collisions happen when beapeople are looking at oncomig traffic and not looking over their left shoulder to see someone in the crosswalk possibly traveling in the same

direction they are. so really the takeaway here is looking at the data and making sure that we're praching the solutions to -- matching the solutions to what we see on the street in terms of collision activities and what the community tells us where they feel unsafe and what are the patterns where they see issues. i want to end with an example project -- >> supervisor mandelman: supervisor fewer. >> supervisor fewer: just one question about the roundabouts. so we have installed, m.t.a. has installed a lot of roundabouts and i have heard from pedestrians that people who are driving actually don't know how to drive in a roundabout. so they're really distracte disd they feel as though it's actually making it more unsafe to cross as a pedestrian because their eyes aren't on the pedestrians but, rather, on how i drive around this thing. so can you mention a bit what you think that m.t.a. can do to put an extra eye on pedestrian

safety and the roundabout situation? >> of course, yeah. so in terms of traffic circles or roundabouts, there's a lot of the nuance to the describe. so we have some where they're stop controlled and so it's traditional stop control intersection and you traditionally go around this circle. but we have others where there's two intersecting streets that have the stop controls and the others don't and some suggest that is not as intuitive. the idea with the traffic circle is that you're proceeding through that intersection at a slower speed and it's easier to react to issues. so even if sometimes it feels that there's perhaps a little bit more conflict or confusion sometimes, by being a little bit slower you have that stopping distance to be able to react to things. but, nonetheless, we have heard and particularly on the ones on euchlid and we have heard and made changes to the signage and we are keeping a keen eye to those locations. and i will reiterate that

there's not one type of traffic circle or roundabout and there's a lot of nuance in the design. when we do put something on the street, especially something new to a neighborhood, it's important to then listen to see how is that being received and are there things that need to be adjusted and are there educational pieces that maybe should complement the infrastructure. >> supervisor fewer: thank you. >> and my last slide here is just an example project in district 11 which is not yet the product of this infrastructure program because this is still under development but it's a model and something that we have looked at just in development of our program. this is looking at traffic safety in district 11 and what they've done here which we think is great is combining a lot of that hard data, that information about collisions and speeds and volumes which is very important to feed the project proposals but to actually then go out into the community and listen to folks. so the planners involved in this project have spent over a year really going in and targeting groups that wouldn't otherwise reach out or be involved in

various processes and for folks whom english is not their first language or perhaps don't speak english at all and still bringing them in the fold and asking what they see on the streets. and so at least from what i have heard from this project it's been tremendously been fruitful in terms of really -- and they're still working on the project proposals about developing a set of projects in this neighborhood that respond to the issues that the people are seeing on the streets, people are talking about, and also what the data is sharing. so we very much look forward in the next year to bringing this program to fruition and picking our first focus areas. and bringing some improvements. >> supervisor yee: thank you very much, and by the way this last slide on district 11, it's great that you are covering that area. hopefully you're looking on the other side of geneva, going up south hill. there's crazy intersections

there. and people are racing up and down that hill and yet it's almost like 150 feet just to get across. >> um-hmm. >> supervisor yee: that's a plug for my daughter who lives there. >> i'll take note of that, supervisor. thanks. >> supervisor yee: thank you. >> i would like to introduce our next person to speak to our communication needs. >> good afternoon, with the fsmta. the chair of the vision zero and education and communication sub-committee. i'm going to be very brief. you know, as you saw we have a very collaborative and comprehensive senior safety effort underway and as megan pointed out with the data, what we're finding is that seniors are not overrepresented in collisions happening. what they are is overrepresented

in the impact of those collisions. so what that means as we communicate to people about how they drive safely and how they get around safely is that we need to -- all of our efforts in reducing the collisions and unsafe behavior are really having an upside impact on reducing senior fatalities and severe injuries. so from a communication standpoint we are really focusing on raising the visibility of seniors in our efforts. so you have -- first the department of package health safe streets for seniors which megan mentioned to engage seniors and to help to identify the problem areas around the city and near attractions and near places where seniors are traveling. and then also helping them to understand things they can do to help to keep themselves safe which isn't to say that our senior safety efforts are asking the people who are being

impacted by this keep themselves safe, but it's always a good pleasure. and i have the pleasure -- always a good practice. and i have the pleasure to remind people that seniors are out there and that driving slower is something that we can do to keep our elders safe in our city. so with that -- oh, i guess that the last thing to the point of unsafe turns. we have a very large effort about unsafe turns that is underway. we are engaging with national leaders and behavioral psychology to address -- to look at how we can better address the issue of unsafe turning behaviors because there's so much going on there. and as we develop that campaign it will be a focus of looking at the impacts but also a focus of visibility within that campaign so people are aware when we're talking about street safety that we're talking about keeping our

parents, our grandparents, ourselves, safe on our streets with. that i'd like to introduce -- there she is, jackie artis from the district attorney's office. and i would like to highlight supervisor yee as the one person that was here when we kicked off vision zero. one of the issues at that point in time is that we were all siloed across the city. and we are all excited and we have been partnering on the efforts with the program that she'll talk about today is the first public communications program that they have brought to the table that we worked on together and i'm very thrilled to have it. thank you. >> supervisor yee: thank you. >> good morning, everyone. i would like to thank the board for having me here today. i am jackie artis and i'm with victim services and i would like to thank vision zero to have the opportunity to speak here today on our senior pedestrian safety campaign. last month the san francisco

district attorney's office announced an initiation of the safety campaign for seniors. the campaign seeks to decrease seniors' risk of pedestrian injury and increase safety. protecting the most vulnerable members of our community is part of our civic duty. although seniors constitute approximately 15% of the city's population, they suffer 50% of pedestrian fatalities in 2017. many seniors have independently -- many seniors live independently in san francisco and our office wants to prioritize the safety of the increased senior population. a joint campaign with the district attorney's office victim services division and the san francisco municipal transportation agency, and vision zero s.f., aims to reduce the mortality rates by raising awareness about high injury areas. as it stands, 62% of all senior

pedestrians' injuries and 71% of fatal or severe injuries occur on 12% of streets. known as the high energy network. the office has raised bright yellow flags in all high injury corridors with messages to drivers to drive slow, seniors crossing. and drive slow, give seniors a break. because many seniors in san francisco are not english speakers the flags are available in three languages, english, spanish and chinese. depending on the demographic composition of the neighborhood. the senior pedestrian safety campaign is awarded by the district attorney's office victims services division, by california governor's office of emergency services. in addition to displaying flags in high injury corridors the d.a. office victim services in partnership with sfmta have worked to have the campaign on

buses and bus shelters. a large portion of the grant also goes towards conducting outreach to the elder population regarding financial scams and fraud. for this campaign the sfda office victim services division worked to implement vision zero, the city-wide policy adopted in 2014 with the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities by then and to have a protocol towards more work with the families affected by pedestrian incidents and the sfda's office is hopeful that this campaign will continue our history of success. in 2017, combined initiatives led to the lowest number of traffic fatalities on record in san francisco. to help to make the roads safer for seniors drivers should pay special attention to the yellow

flags and the high injury corridors that are marked. >> supervisor yee: excuse me, i know that you have talked about the yellow flags. have we shown it yet? >> oh, -- so -- i'm sorry, they're up here. >> supervisor yee: can you show it on the screen so people will know what we're talking about? i have a picture of it but the public -- >> can you please help me. >> supervisor yee: here. >> there it is, okay, great. okay, thank you. most traffic fatalities occur when the drivers run red lights, fail to yeelg yield to pedestrir speed. the damages of speeding in particular can be underestimated. doubling the speed of a travel from 20 miles per hour to 40 miles per hour reduces the survival rate of persons hit by vehicles by more than four times. by acting more responsibly

drivers can give seniors and all other pedestrians a safer walking environment. these flag poles will be up for a whole year and i believe that also on the bus shelters and soon on the buses. i also want to mention our recent justice seven-by-seven podcast. we will be releasing on august 3rd our second segment and megan weir will speak on vision zero and the collaborative work between our agencies. do you have any questions? >> supervisor yee: not at this moment. i think this is the end of the presentations and i know that there are some specific public comments or speakers that would like to make some public comments. so before we take questions i'd like to hear what their concerns would be. and there's a person here today from the commission who actually reached out and wanted to hear

about this. in fact, we were almost going to have a 4:00 committee meeting but they came to this earlier time. so to open up public comments right now. so to bring up mary clear amable. >> amablay. i am mary clear amablay as a district 6 youth commissioner. i would like to thank supervisor yee for putting this item on the agenda today. pedestrian safety was one of the budget priorities represented to the budget and finance committee this year where we recommended that the board of supervisors have a hearing on this item. so, thank you, you know, for doing so. the youth commission decided to take on pedestrian safety this year after a group of young people from district 6 came to us to talk about a campaign they started in response to not feeling safe walking around in their own neighborhood.

we have a representative from that group here today that's going to speak on public comment and it was brought to our attention that streets are more designed for vehicles than they are for pedestrians. and that in the nighttime the lighting on the streets isn't bright enough. and 12% of the city's pedestrian fatalities happen on fulsom upon e and howard and the tenderloin school district and they are in the top schools for the most pet destian collision collisions and fatalities, schools that i attended as well as my family members. our senior village next to a freeway entrance has just installed a mid-block crossing which is great to address the traffic that goes on in the area in order for the cars to get on the freeway. it's unacceptable for our residents to feel endangered when they're walking the streets of their own neighborhood and it's unacceptable to wait until someone gets hit in order to install or take action.

sorry. i lost my place. so for us to reach vision zero by 2024 we need to favor seniors and children and people with disabilities. thank you again, supervisors and the city departments, for the update on vision zero and other recommendations specific to street designs and further recommendations can be found in the youth commission's 2018 budget and policy priorities. >> supervisor yee: thank you very much miss amablay. i can bring up natasha alfel. come on up and after that bob... journey. >> hello, supervisors. i just wanted to first and foremost thank the department of

public health and their safe streets for the great work. we were able to reach 200 seniors at nine different senior centers in our safe streets for seniors advocacy training. we go to senior centers and work with seniors to find what issues they have to get to and from their senior citizen and we bring out staff and local politicians and teach them how to advocate and ask for the changes they want to see on the street. we also facilitate the senior disability work group. and we're working on making protected bike lanes more accessible for seniors and people with disabilities. walk s.f. is very eager that the department of public health is finally ending their research and developing the senior and people with disabilities kind of area map, the hot spots where they're hit in the city. we want to know how the city is going to use this map to really prioritize these areas. we have ideas but not a

strategic plan for that, so walk san francisco wants to push the city to do that as soon as possible. especially with the death of dimitri stockkin this past week on 36th, we really need to push to make our streets safer for people who are seniors and people with disabilities as soon as possible. thank you. >> supervisor yee: thank you. >> i'm bob planthold. i have been working on this issue for over 30 years. so thanks again for the attention that you're paying. i worked for different agencies in the city, regional and state, and i still don't see enough of an emphasis on i will say some simple changes that can be done. not to put down or to delay or to suggest changes in any of the research and the data, but my comments flow from the pictures,

the slides that we saw today. even though the numbers have declined of fatalities, that for seniors has stayed high, in fact, is still the highest proportion of any fatalities and higher than last year's proportion. i think that's a problem. but within the slides that you saw notice how many of the even broadly marked crosswalks were faded. that means that it's less likely for a driver to see those crosswalks. and i'm also going to say that if you take a look at some of the seniors pictures you will notice that they'll be looking down. so they're not able to quickly, easily look to the left or the right, to see an oncoming car. i'm just going to suggest accelerate the monitoring and the painting of crosswalks. there should be more broadly painted crosswalks but somebody has to monitor those to make sure that they stay highly visible for one thing. beyond that, why can't there be

more red light cameras if that is still a feasible alternative. why can't there be acceleration of the numbers of intersections that have the walking speed slow down. i'm surging things that already -- suggesting things that are already in process that could be sped up to make it safer while these studies are going on. that's still -- i still consider that bold and innovative. don't throw away what has been working. thank you. >> supervisor yee: san itch lee here? -- sanich lee here? no. anyone from sun can? go ahead. >> good morning supervisors. my name is ramon. and pedestrian safety is very important because i was -- i want to make sure that myself and the people they care about are able to walk safely in the soma no matter what time.

we are currently -- or currently the soma area with the highest pedestrian fatality are the seniors and the community are also in danger. it is why you have created the pedestrian safety campaign to push for safer streets. in the south of market we want to advocate for brighter street lights that are for the pedestrians on the streets to reduce the traffic incidents and other issues. thank you. >> supervisor yee: any other public speakers that would like to come up and go ahead and line up on this side. come on up. >> supervisor mandelman: if you could state your name and if you fill out a speaker card after you have spoken it helps. >> my name is tyra and i'm a

senior and disability action. i have been in this pedestrian safety business abou not as lons bob but at least 25 years of it. the reason that i'm coming up here is to also to mention how great a certain program that we have which is through the d.p.h., safe streets for seniors and people with disabilities, as we always say. it was because of that program is why we have now street crossings. that was the funding with also the department of aging adult services which we used for our training, pedestrian training, we used that money in order to do the approach that we have been asking for for many years. this is why it actually worked it. took only 2 1/2 years to promote this campaign and actually get a great response and success for it. is that we go through the community first. we organized the people in the

neighborhoods, train them on pedestrian safety and train them on how to organize, and then have them to go out and collect the data and have them talk to the neighbors. then from that they come up with their own priority of what they feel needs to be addressed. from their perspective. because we are spending a lot of time which is very good on collision data and on injury data, but that doesn't really paint the full story. so we go to them first and have them to do the work. and then bring it back to the city and says, yes, this is what we found and this is what we want from that. and then work with the city. and that's the type of approach that we have been promoting for many years and as you saw with the latest campaign that we got more crossing time, it worked quite well. so, again,...

>> supervisor yee: thank you very much and thank you for your advocacy. come on up. move up closer if you're going to speak. >> my name is fran taylor and i was interested had to hear from john white knox involving the behavioral psychologist to find out why drivers drive like such jerks. and one thing they would suggest is contempt for pedestrians. this starts actually on the sidewalk and in parking situations. and i'm worried about how data gets manipulated. i have been concerned that residential parking permit violations get ticketed like five to seven times more often than sidewalk parking violations. which do harm, especially to people who have trouble getting around, maneuvering around cars

on the sidewalk. and i think that this breeds contempt for pedestrians that is then manifested in a failure to yield. and we're just regarded as these sort of large wingless pigeons that are supposed to flutter out of the way of the more important vehicle. when i complain to m.t.a. about this discrepancy in ticketing because you have sidewalks everywhere, where only some of them are under r.p.p. and only certain hours of the day and the traffic control officer has to come twice to catch the time, it's a lot more work than just seeing, oh, there's a car on the sidewalk, let me give it a ticket. why this discrepancy? and the answer that i got, well, there's a lot more violations out there. of course, if you're not ticketing you're not counting the violations that you're not ticketing. so this circular logic and sort of down the bureaucratic rabbit hole of manipulating the data i think has influenced the

thinking that should put the pedestrians first and maybe the psychologist will come up with the same answer that i did. >> supervisor yee: anybody else? come on up. >> my name is paul bajaka and i live if district 7 and i'd like to address more to the sfmta and i would like to emphasize supervisor yee's statement that we need to be proactive and not reactive. in the last four years i have been trying to get a two-way stop sign changed to a four-way stop sign. and in a rejection the sfmta says, well, there's been no history of accidents there and that's like me saying that i won't get auto insurance because i haven't had any accidents. it doesn't make any sense. so i think that needs to change. and also at this intersection there's a children's playground just a block away. it's a blind intersection.

so i don't see what the problem is and maybe if somebody at sfmta is here we could talk after and i can provide more information. i'd be glad to meet with people or whatever it would take. thank you, and thank you, supervisor yee. >> supervisor yee: what intersection are we talking about so we have it on record? >> excuse me? >> supervisor yee: what is the intersection? >> oh, 10th avenue and pachecko street. >> supervisor yee: thank you. >> thank you for giving me the opportunity to come up today and to talk about this. and in addition i'd like to thank the department of public health for giving us the funding for -- to educate seniors on how to cross safely and to talk about pedestrian safety. i would like to introduce myself, i'm danny and born and raised in san francisco. i am part of the c.d.c.'s youth

program and i have been working with seniors around ever since i was in sixth grade. and also usually when i talk to them about like crossing, they don't usually have enough time to cross because they don't walk that fast. and then the lights change too quickly. and from campaign academy works on advocating for that. and we also have been working on educating seniors this past two years to also like -- to also like go inside of the community and ask where changes are needed. and also one thing -- one comment that they told us is that when there's engineers -- like engineering to kind of fix up the streets sometimes it causes them -- the changes force them to go outside of the crosswalk because of the construction that's going on. so i think that it's possible that maybe to make that safer also. and to also change it better. and overall i'd like to thank you guys for giving me this

opportunity to talk. and i hope that we do achieve vision zero. thank you. >> supervisor yee: thank you, any other public comments? i guess not. chair -- >> supervisor mandelman: if there are none i'll close public comment. >> supervisor yee: commander ewins? thank you for sticking this out. you mentioned in your presentation that when there is a collision -- >> yes. >> supervisor yee: that within 72 hours the team, i guess the -- not just -- the police department, but there's a team of you that would look at the situation? >> what we go over is the preliminary findings and it is

mtadmph and so it's just preliminary so m.t.a. can go out and look at the location and a lot of times they'll just respond out because we do notify them in regards to the collision and so they'll send people out to look at the intersection or the area. and they evaluate it. >> supervisor yee: okay. i'm glad that we're doing this because in the past it's pretty uncommon that all three departments would actually be able to look at one situation. and then do you actually discuss anything, do you meet as a group, or do you go out -- >> there's a conference call between my investigator and the other members. >> supervisor yee: when did you start doing this 72-hour coordination? >> we started that i'd say four or five months ago. >> supervisor yee: okay. have you found that to be effective? >> yes. >> supervisor yee: i can imagine. >> because instead of coming from me they get to talk to the

investigator and the lieutenant directly to ask questions. >> supervisor yee: and has -- has it been successful in regards to that 72-hour time frame that you set, i mean, or is it sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't? >> no, we try to stick with the 72 hours because, you know, a lot of times we're still searching for video, witnesses, and interviewing witnesses, and you know, trying to interview the family. there's a lot of elements that go into putting the picture together so we can have that conversation. >> supervisor yee: i deeply appreciate that we're doing this. i know that my office has contacted you about patterns and so forth, but it seems as a presentation was made that m.t.a. plays a big role in looking at some of these patterns also and doing analysis. >> yeah, it's an enormous role everyone plays. and the meetings that we have

really everybody's input really helps each other to build your own processes. and so it really helps in tackling the different issues throughout all of your districts which i have met with most of you in regards to different -- i haven't met with you yet but i will -- but, you know, the complaints about the areas and it's really important because i take that information back to my partners and explain to them what is happening in the complaints. >> supervisor yee: thank you. any other questions from the colleagues for the commander? thank you very much. keep up the good work. mr. alaia? i want to say something about those hawk signals. as you can imagine this is very confusing, at least for the feedback that i have gotten, is for people that just all of a

sudden see it when they're driving, they don't get it. and, actually, it took me a little bit to get it and it was explained to me how it should work. so i'm just curious, like, it seems like in other locations where they have used that -- i forget, al meadeo or san jose, they used this system, they actually get caltran. maybe this is a caltran question. >> the deputy is here and he'd be willing to talk about hawks. and the signals that were installed are relatively new to san francisco but they started out in arizona, tucson, arizona, actually developed them. and then they got adopted for national use by the hscwa and they spread across the areas. and there had been some issues

about people not understanding what all of the signals mean as i think that caltrans is undertaking an educational campaign. the first one installed office at forestview due to a fatality there as you recall. so i think that i can defer to caltra in everyone s on the specific comments about the slope boulevard improvements. >> supervisor yee: before they come, i might have a question with right now we're installing those hawks and we're installing also those flashing yellow pe destian cross lights. -- pedestrian cross lights? >> yeah, there's two types of beacons that we're installing. san francisco is also installing rectangular rapid flash beacons. those are the beacons that you sometimes see that flash rapidly and they're installed at crosswalks to, again, to emphasize that the pedestrian is present there for a crossing. >> supervisor yee: i actually like those.

but i also know that in -- at the peninsula those same type of flashing lights is activated automatically when someone is crossing rather than having to push the button. is there any reason why we don't have that? because what i have seen also again -- i want to be thank half that we have installed quite a few of them on several roads, and on westportal, what i have seen is not everybody pushes the button and they're crossing anyways and they are running into the same situation as we did have before. so is there a reason that we don't have system? >> i guess that there's two ways toac activate such a device. and one is the pedestrian pushes the button and the other is a passive device that picks up the presence of a pedestrian.

the passive devices are more experimental so there's a concern if it did not pick up the pedestrian there would be a liability concern on the part of the city that a pedestrian thought they would be picked up. so it's a technology issue and we want to make sure if we're going to a device that would automatically pick up the presence of a pedestrian and it would be reliable and not pick up other things so that the device is on and it loses its effectiveness. i think that it's a technical issue that the profession is working on and as we get closer to a situation where passive detection works reliably that it is something that we perhaps should pursue so we don't have people not using a device that was installed for their benefit. >> supervisor yee: the person from caltrans, i don't know your name but would you like to... >> good morning, supervisors, i'm sean gazari, with the

district director for it here in the bay area. i am here to answer any questions that you have. with regard to the very last question you asked, i'm not in favor of any pedestrian warning devices that are automated as you described. i have our signal operations person here and, i don't know, do we have anything like that at all? >> (indiscernible). >> okay, the one problem that i personally have with that is that it lessens the burden on the user. if the pedestrian -- if the user -- assumes that they're being picked up they can enter the crosswalk without, you know, checking for themselves to see if it's safe or not. and i think that all of our users which include pedestrians, transit users and bicyclists and auto drivers, they have to recognize that we have to share

the road and we each have a role in protecting ourselves and everybody else on the road. so the ones that we have used are activated by the pedestrian. you mentioned the ris rectangulr activation beacons and we use them on typically two-lane roads when you have one lane in each direction. when you have a multilane highway and when you have two vehicles in adjacent lanes we rely on the overhead lights that make it more visible for the, you know, for the drivers that are following the initial call. and so there's different kinds and each have their own advantages and the rectangular beacons are more effective on the city streets and they're cheaper and they're quicker to install. and the hybrid beacons that we use on state highways are typically a little more

elaborate. >> supervisor yee: so the question on the education for people to understand what these hawk -- >> sure, certainly. so basically, you know, we talked about being proactive. we learn from our reactive actions to be -- to be proactive and how to be proactive. the very first pedestrian hawk beacon that was installed on a state highway in california was here on the boulevard and it came as a reactive action and we all mobilized to install that hybrid beacon in a very short time. >> supervisor yee: we call that a collision. >> a collision, yes, that's a better way of describing it, a collision or a crash. because accidents normally have a different connotation. so, certainly, what we did with that, what we learned from that

crash was that we can install these kinds of traffic control devices elsewhere where we have marked uncontrolled crosswalks. we initiated the project in san mateo and in san francisco counties on highways 84, 82, and so known nomesonoma boulevard -- >> supervisor yee: i guess that i want you to get to my question which is what are we doing to educate the public through how it's used. >> so, yes, with that we have -- when we activate these pedestrian hawk beacons we reach out to the local community. we have prepared a video that we have shared on the internet that can be used to, you know, to further educate in san francisco

and we have a draft plan that we can share with the city staff and the community and we want to be able to work with you to disseminate that to all of the respective ven venues, including senior centers and schools and communities. >> supervisor yee: i'm just a little surprised and i don't want to point fingers but it seems like you are prepared to give it to us but now the one that we talked about has been there and yet we haven't activated any education activity around that and so you're talking about letting people know how to use this over a year after it's in usage. >> well, i have our p.i., public information officer, who can get into the details of the communication plan. i want to remind that the first