>> good morning everyone. you guys sound as excited as i am. i am so happy to be here today. this is a project that so many people, who came together to make it happen, the masonic street scape improvement.

how about a hand for the beautiful plaza. this project is a transformational redesign of what most of our streets in san francisco will be looking like. so many beautiful amenities. you can see the plaza back the nice stonework. you will hear about that today. you can see the new cycle track which is raised for cyclists. you know, it is beautiful. the street design itself. all the landscaping. all the beautiful things that our city is evolving into. this is a model street. we have been doing these projects all around the city. a few weeks ago we were on broadway. we have done in the mission and we have many more of these projects to come. all of the agencies involved, you will hear from them. the beautiful art behind me. how about some applause for the san francisco arts commission. all that beautiful work.

we will hear from the m.t.a. and we will hear from planning, you will hear from p.u.c. at all of us. this is a way that a project should be done. all of the agencies working together, along with the community and the community, most important, on behalf of all of us, i want to say thank you for all the patients. all of those phone calls, all those concerns that we went through, you know, today all that is over and we will be enjoying this beautiful street. i can also tell you that the leadership has always been involved. sometimes when you call me or you call one of the agency heads, when you don't get the answer you want to, you always go to the top person. and the person i am about to introduce to someone who is very familiar with this project. someone who was the supervisor of district 51 this project was

active. and now our mayor, london breed. welcome her. [applause] >> mayor breed: thank you, mohammed. first of all, let's give it up for the sombre band which is led by public works employees. thank you so much for being here. they don't just deal with infrastructure and clean the streets, they are artist too. how cool is that optically let me just tell you. when i was supervisor for district five, and i first started in 2013, i got so many complaints from my constituents, probably throughout my entire career, more complaints about this masonic boulevard street than any other place else. and i am so -- i am probably more happy than anyone else besides the people who live on this block that it is finally, finally done. how exciting is that?

i want to be clear. this project is about safety. we no kak sadly, this was one, and probably still is, we are hoping these improvements will change that, one of the most dangerous streets in san francisco. and part of getting to vision zero, where we don't have any fatalities as a result of the conditions of our roads, is making the hard decisions to make the changes necessary to make our streets safe. this is about making sure people who are walking the streets feel safe. this is about making sure people who are bicycling feel safe. this is about making sure people who are driving and being safer. this is about bringing the community together for the purposes of creating a road that hopefully will lead to less problems than before. the number of challenges, the number of complaints, we hope

that this will lead to the kind of results that will make this a safer and better street for all to use throughout san francisco. throughout the process, i want to thank so many people who have been actively engaged and patients. especially the people who live here. the people who have businesses along masonic. those are the people who have had to endure many of the challenges that existed. i also want to apologize to many of the drivers who consistently complained about their wheel alignments to me. this smooth road with clear direction will make it possible to avoid that on this particular street, at least. this project includes separated bike lanes along the corridor. i know there are some concerns about protected bike lanes and it is something that we will address. newly paved roads, sidewalks and

curb ramps. leiter sidewalks and pedestrian lighting. which is absolutely amazing. but this project also included much-needed infrastructure improvement. a new water main. on both sides. now, sometimes it is the things we do not see that are the most exciting thing is to complete a project and make a city where it could. a new sewer line that now runs on both sides as well. also, this new and beautiful public plaza. applause for everyone to enjoy. i want to thank so many people who made this possible, and clearly, you see that there are so many trees. more trees than we probably need. but i want to thank the public works department for the work that they did in doing this project but also the future work that they will do in maintaining

those many trees along masonic. i want to thank the public utilities commission, the san francisco m.t.a., the san francisco planning department, the county transportation authority, and when i was on the board and the county transportation authority, i hope to leave the efforts to secure the additional funding we needed to get this project on. i want to thank the san francisco arts commission and so many that have made it possible. this project, overall, improves public safety, creates new open space for our community, and strengthens our infrastructure for years to come. when i was supervisor, high, michael, one of the leaders who basically helped move this project forward, thank you so much for being here and your advocacy of getting this project done. when i was on the board of supervisors, one of the persons

in my office to help deal with many of those complaints and challenges from the folks who lived here and work here was, at the time, my legislative aide, vallie brown. she is now the supervisor to represent this district. ladies and gentlemen, district five supervisor, vallie brown. [cheers and applause] >> thank you, mayor breed. i was told by someone, when i am riding my bike and i have photos, to put my helmet up front so everyone knows that yes, i too wear a helmet when i'm out there. kids, where your helmets. i just want to thank everyone for coming today. this is amazing. i started working on this masonic boulevard at the issues that we were having, to safety issues we were having, in 2005. there was a group of us, michael, dug, a bunch of us who came out at night when it was

rainy and cold. we had our signs up to reduce the speed to 25 miles. because if you remember before then, it was a lot faster. it was our little mini freeway. we were out here it, day and night, going across the street, up and down masonic and working on the state level to reduce it to 25 miles an hour. and then that happened. we are excited about it. we knew we needed to do more. and then we had the tragedy of a bicyclist getting killed. he was riding riding his bike in 2010 and he was killed by a car. it made everyone sad, furious, and also, gave us the power to keep moving. we needed to make sure that we needed to change masonic. needed to be changed not only for people who rode their bikes on masonic, not only for the kids that are at san francisco day school that walk around masonic, and the people who live

here. they were also complaining that the noise and the pollution of the way masonic was was across a freeway. so we worked on that and we have these amazing community meetings. and michael and doug and tim and the others were at these meetings. we had 80-100 people at a planning meeting for masonic. we had m.t.a. who would lead to them. they were amazing meetings. we were there, probably, we had 6-8 meetings that we had the community, everyone coming together to work on what will make masonic safe and what we felt good on whether we are walking, biking, driving or coming out of your home. and then back the next phase was funding it. and then mayor breed, who was supervisor breed at the time, puts the funding funding through t.a. so we could get realization

that we have this beautiful boulevard. but we are not done. if you are a cyclist, we have a few blocks that need some work. as mayor breed said, we are going to do that. i was at first, a little bit where each. we will be celebrating a boulevard that we are still working on? and then i realized, and i actually called my og, michael and others, to say why kate do we support this as it is now? and we really do. we support it because it is absolutely beautiful. when we first did -- name to the bike lanes on bell and oak, we had to change those. at first we put the bike lanes and nsa move forward we realized we have to tweak it this way and we have to tweak it this way to be safe. that is the way i look at masonic now. i want to thank everybody who has been here for the last 15

years, really working to change this. at all the departments that are involved. d.p.w., m.t.a., p.u.c., that came together and said, we will change this boulevard, not only for the people who live here, but for the people who walk, visit and bike here. thank you and i will bring up my colleague, supervisor catherine stefani because this area, we have three different districts that intersect. we cross all the time. i would like to bring up catherine stefani. supervisor stefani? >> thank you supervisor brown. it is so great to be here today. i love that we shared this area. san francisco faces many challenges but we know that we can solve the dangers of the roadways and the city vision zero mission to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2024 is a vital one to every resident. i don't think many people notice about me, but before i was

appointed supervisor, i was training for a triathlon. i was training for the escape for -- from alcatraz and i biked all over the city. one of the scariest moments on my bike was on ocean avenue, or actually, on the grey highway. i was riding my bike, at the car started to come into the lane as they were turning bright and i had to pound on the side of the fan so as not to get run over. i understand how important bicycle safety is and how important it is to make sure we are implementing changes in our roadways a cyclist feel safe and pedestrians feel safe so that our kids are safe. so to see this unravel today, to see all of this today is a very -- it is a long time coming. we have to do more of this all over the city. this project enhanced safety for pedestrians, cyclist, motorist and transit riders and it made it more beautiful. we have a newly planted -- wanted median and street trees

in a public plaza which will be great to. especially for the target shoppers over there. and i think residents will also be able to walk safely down the streets and enjoy this new area. i just want to say that the collaboration of all the departments has always said we are all of the table. i want to thank public works planning, the sfmta and of course, all the residents and businesses that endured. in the end, everyone is truly proud of what has become here and we want to thank everyone for participating and creating this beautiful new space. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. now we will hear from our m.t.a. director, director risk in. he is responsible for making sure that all the walkways and bicycle lanes and transit works around here. all right. welcome. >> that's right. thank you, mohammed to be a good morning, everyone. it is so great to be here at this point in time.

i think the mayor and the supervisors said it well. this has been a long time coming. but do very well worth it. it is really a great success story from my standpoint. you heard from the mayor and supervisor brown. this really started from the community. before the city adopted vision zero on before we identified the high injury network, we had people from this community come forward and say this street is not working for us. it is not working for people who drive on it and not working for people who ride a bike and for people who walk, for people who are getting on and off transit and driving the bus is. the street wasn't working well for anyone. we were having close to 20 traffic crashes a year just on masonic avenue alone. we had two fatalities and we came together as a community, with the community and city agencies and said we can do better than this. we can redesign the street to make it work better and make it safer and make it more inviting and that is what we have here

today. we have taken what used to be a mini freeway as someone said that was really dividing the two neighborhoods in our city. at dividing the neighborhood in the city and replaced it with a beautiful safe, inviting street, that mixes together the community, and as the mayor said, we will make it much much less likely that anyone would be hurt or killed on the street. it is now truly a neighborhood street. that happened because we had leaders like michael and others in the community that work with the then it supervisor aids, vallie brown, and with the support of the den supervisor breed tact to bring forward this planning process at -- it culminated in a recommendation for a project that we brought to the board of directors in 2012. i want to acknowledge the great leadership of the vice chair of

the board and now chair of the board of the sfmta who has been a staunch advocate for safety improvements in the city. with their approval, in 2012, we got to work with public works and planning and with public utilities and with the arts commission. all working together to design and build and implement this project. i think it is a great transformation of a city street and as mohammed said, is one of many that we have seen and will be seeing in the coming months and years. it is a great day for this neighborhood. for everybody who uses this street. whether they live here or travel through here, they walk or bike or take the bus or drive here. is a much better street and a great lesson for all of us on how to do things. we need to figure out how to do it a whole lot faster. i will acknowledge, we have heard from supervisor brown some concerns. this project is not perfect.

we will continue as we do with every project to evaluate how it is performing at identify ways to make it even better. we will work with supervisor brown and the community to make sure that we make the street work as well as it was intended from those first days of protest back in 2005 and 2006. thank you to everybody. the leadership and support we have had from the mayor and the supervisors, pass supervisors, by particularly the leadership from the community to make this happen, in partnership with the city agencies. it brings us to where we are today. congratulations to the community on making this happen and getting this done. >> thank you, edge. we will now hear from the public utilities commission, as the mayor said, some of the important things that go and a project that a lot of us don't see, but have to be part of a project are water, our power and our sewer. come on up.

>> so, mohammed, i want to thank you for inviting us. as you say, out of site, out of mind. we actually have about 70% of our infrastructure is 70 years or older, especially the sewer and water mains. we are trying to prioritize them based on joint projects. so this was a prime project where we can come together and work with other departments to get into an area one time, dig one time so that we can invest in our infrastructure. so this was a great opportunity to work with mohammed. we actually have watch what water mains and two sewer mains running down the street. so that is something that we want to make sure that we really invest in new infrastructure. we can provide vital service to everyone. we worked on the streetlights as well. so you can see the beautiful pedestrian lighting here, i

don't other projects were looking at investing in green infrastructure. one theme i want to make sure, when mohammed asked me to participate in a project where we have aging infrastructure, we are definitely there. thank you for inviting me to say a few words about my hidden infrastructure. thank you. >> thank you. you all know it takes a village. we will talk here a little bit. i know you are not on the program, but this is so beautiful and i want you to talk about this art. thank you. >> thank you, mohammed. it is great to be here today on this incredible community projects. the artist here that was selected through the competition is scott oliveira. he is originally from reading and what is incredible is he spent over three weeks on the plaza interviewing many of you, three questions. where are you headed right now?

where were you born? and where would you like to go? i think for a transit hub like this, it makes a perfect conceptual concept to share this incredible story of the people that use and inhabit the space here and what is really exciting as all of the arrows point to the real place to. they are actually directional signage if you ever need to find yourself at the corner store. or to lands end, or the department of motor vehicles. we want to congratulate scott oliver. there will be a little celebration here on saturday night. we encourage you to come back and celebrate this great work of art. congratulations to all of our colleagues in the city and for the committee champions who made this possible. >> thank you. thank you. and it takes a lot of people to do these projects. the community, all the city agencies, all the nonprofits pick one of the nonprofits that

we work with very closely, we meet regularly, we really advocate for cycling in the city. we really advocate for making the city a better place. the san francisco bicycle coalition. speaking on their behalf is brian. come and say a few words. >> thank you. i want to thank the city partners that are here. special thanks to supervisor brown and supervisor stefani for your support of this project and your support of vision zero across our city. i want to say a very special thank you to mayor london breed for your support in securing funding for this project during your time on the board of supervisors. we wouldn't be standing here if it weren't for that leadership. this project exists for a reason. it exists because of the leadership of folks sitting up here in the hard work of our city staff. but it is also the grassroots energy of every day san

franciscans who would not settle for less, that brought us here. four too many years, masonic avenue was a speedway. cutting through the heart of our city. for some of the most storied neighborhoods. for too long, it has been a place for cars and not for people. i want to thank the city and our members for their dedication over the last decade to make masonic avenue a friendlier place for people. in particular, i want to thank the folks at six masonic and some of the members who have been mentioned. their energy under tireless advocacy and years and years of patients have made this day possible. it is also important to honor those who have been injured or worse on this street. in particular, i would also like to mention a man who was hit and killed by a drunk driver on masonic a few blocks from where

we stand in 2010. he was 22 when he was killed. he would be 30 years old today if he was still with us. i think of the years of lost life that will never be given back to his family and friends and i particularly think about his mother and his sister who are in germany and who wanted to be here today, but couldn't. so there is no doubt that these improvements that we are celebrating today on masonic will make it a safer place for people biking and walking. but our work is not done here. like many new projects of this scale there be a period of adjustment as people get used to the new street designs. these designs, let's not forget to, what they are first planned in 2007 and 2008 to, and in 2010, they were considered revolutionary. it is now 2018 and we have some other ideas about what makes a great street to bike and walk on. so we look forward to working

with supervisor vallie brown and the sfmta and our members to address those problem spots, particularly as masonic approaches other streets. we know for people biking, if they are not very confident, that can be a stressful spot. let's get to work quickly to fix that. as we celebrate a decade of effort that brought us here today, we need to remember people who have died on our city streets. of san francisco and streets like masonic avenue and streets across our city are going to be transformed, we are going to achieve vision zero and make this city i just avenue's a place for people, we don't have another decade to wait. let's finish fixing masonic and get to work on the rest of the city. thank you to everyone for your leadership. i am really excited to ride my bike on these new bike lanes when i we leave today. thank you. >> thank you, thank you. so we will cut the ribbon.

before we do that, i want to thank everyone for coming and especially the team from public works. our city engineers sitting right here. the project manager, our communications department to, all the engineers who worked with the rest of the city agencies to make this project possible, and of course, the team that looks after the city every day, the street cleaner said everybody. thank you for everything that you do and thank you for coming. let's get ready and cut the ribbon of this great project. and another one down. come on up. >> doug, come on up. come on. should we say hop on up. [laughter] >> maurice, come on in. they want you in the picture.

[laughter] >> it is multiple cuts. make sure you cut on zero. come on up. >> ok. we will go. countdown. five, there you go. all right. five, four, three, two, one. [cheers and applause] [♪] .

>> neighborhood in san francisco are also diverse and fascist as the people that inhabitable them we're in north beach about supervisor peskin will give us a tour and introduce is to what think of i i his favorite district 5 e 3 is in the northwest surrounded by the san francisco bay the district is the boosting chinatown oar embarcadero financial district fisherman's wharf exhibit no. north beach telegraph hill and part of union square. >> all of san francisco districts are remarkable i'm

honored and delighted to represent really whereas with an the most intact district got chinatown, north beach fisherman's wharf russian hill and knob hill and the northwest waterfront some of the most wealthier and inning e impoverished people in san francisco obgyn siding it is ethically exists a bunch of tight-knit neighborhoods people know he each other by name a wonderful placed physically and socially to be all of the neighborhoods north beach and chinatown the i try to be out in the community as much as and i think, being a the cafe eating at the neighborhood lunch place people come up and talk to you, you never have time alone but really it is fun hi, i'm one the owners and is

ceo of cafe trespassing in north beach many people refer to cafe trees as a the living room of north beach most of the clients are local and living up the hill come and meet with each other just the way the united states been since 1956 opposed by the grandfather a big people person people had people coming since the day we opened. >> it is of is first place on the west that that exposito 6 years ago but anyone was doing that starbuck's exists and it created a really welcoming pot. it is truly a legacy business but more importantly it really at the take care of their community my father from it was formally italy a fisherman and that town very rich in culture and music

was a big part of it guitars and sank and combart in the evening that tradition they brought this to the cafe so many characters around here everything has incredible stories by famous folks last week the cafe that paul carr tennessee take care from the jefferson starship hung out the cafe are the famous poet lawrence william getty and jack herb man go hung out. >> they work worked at a play with the god fathers and photos he had his typewriter i wish i were here back there it there's a lot of moving parts the meeting spot rich in culture and artists and musicians epic people would talk with you and you'd get

sustainability mission, even though the bikes are very minimal energy use. it still matters where the energy comes from and also part of the mission in sustainability is how we run everything, run our business. so having the lights come on with clean energy is important to us as well. we heard about cleanpowersf and learned they had commercial rates and signed up for that. it was super easy to sign up.

our bookkeeper signed up online, it was like 15 minutes. nothing has changed, except now we have cleaner energy. it's an easy way to align your environmental proclivities and goals around climate change and it's so easy that it's hard to not want to do it, and it doesn't really add anything to the bill.

>> president kwon: good afternoon. thanks for waiting, folks. welcome to the san francisco public utilities commission meeting. today is tuesday, july 24. before we take the roll, let me just say one thing. we have a number of speakers here today. we have a lot of speaker cards. to give everyone time, we're going to hold strictly to the 3 minutes. when you hear the second chime, that's when your time is over to make time for the next person. so hold it to that time or you will force me to sing to you and that will get you off quickly. the roll, please? [roll call]