well. i understand that it's been said the process has been a little opaque. i think it was pretty clear application process, and i think there were some clear factors that were asked by this board for a director riskin to take into consideration, namely the past act of scooter providers. and whether they were providing scooters at the time, they interacted, such as lyft and uber, or bird and lime, these actions should be taken into consideration. if they are not, the city runs a risk of inviting more companies like this and preventing companies like skip from obtaining permits through a process that is set up by m.t.a. and by the board of directors. that is all. thanks. >> thank you very much, mr. moore. next speaker, please.

>> kathy da luca, rachel highden, and then may lig. >> good afternoon, chair brinkman, directors, policy and program director at walk san francisco. here to share my grave concern about the balaise. i sat down with staff and action group to look at plans for mission street and the excelsior for improvements. mission street is high injury corridor and right before this meeting dimitra had been killed crossing the street. walk sf organized a walk audit. get the community involved in forming this project that we were excited and knew was urgent. and there was a clear outcry for the community for pedestrian safety improvements.

so, that was february 2016. rest of that year, 2016, the project was delayed. rest of 2017, project was delayed. here we are getting towards the fall of 2018 and still no project. it's sort of fits and starts, fits and starts. and we know when safety projects get delayed people die and that did happen on mission street last year in the excelsior. julie yang was killed, and 20 some people have been injured on that corridor since that initial meeting i had with the m.t.a. staff in 2015. 20 some people injured. and there was a motorcyclist the other night, friday night, not even included in those statistics hit by a car at mission and geneva. so, i'm here today to say we cannot wait anymore. as directors of this agency, i urge you to do what you can to make sure that project moves forward now before anyone else gets hurt. thank you.

>> i know you are in the midst of a heated public shaming about your service delivery, rightfully so but i don't want to lose sight of what voters asked of you when passing proposition a, which is to build transit priority streets in support of our city's transit first and vision 0 policies. my frustration when i learned a traffic circle is on tap for removal. blatant and smack in the face. lousy compromise in the first place, it should have been a signal. moreover, i learned as kathy just mentioned the excelsior safety project is delayed yet again. this carries tens of thousands of people every day. every transit rider is a pedestrian, too, and we deserve a safe way to get to and from the bus and reliable service. so, echoing kathy, do not want

any more delay and i want to point out that the project has already been compromised. i saw the scope a couple weeks ago and the transit only lane removed. your own data shows that transit lanes make the streets safer, they calm traffic and keep the bus on time. so, no more delay and no more compromises. >> next speaker, please. >> may leg, charles minster, and tarik malug. >> i'm here to congratulate you on the successful implementation of the muni back walk program. my favorite piece of the program to rachel just talked about the removal of the traffic circle which is fantastic example of how minority can make the life of thousands of riders

miserable. thank you for the personalized service, announcing the removal yourself, director. i also want to congratulate the trains, to -- to -- as the closed, and slower trains, and 3.2 miles of round tracks on the tral subway, glenpark turn, too tight for busses. bike share program, covers only one-third of the city, authorizing sidewalk parking when the car is not on the pedestrian right-of-way. downsizing of the irving street, switch backs on the n trains, the islands back pedalling, operator -- the busses on the

two-thirds on time, unspent 500 million, the bike lanes and a list of bike lanes i don't have time to say. all of them, the back pedalling and the safety improvements. this morning the 27 minutes service gap at 8:00 a.m. on the seven bus, and engine broke down on 19th avenue, and four months to make a decision on shared scooters. keep the good work, it's really fantastic. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> charles minster, followed by tarik mahmood. >> charles minster. s.f. muni is a municipal corporation, has been for over 100 years, means it's owned by the residents of the city of san francisco. but it is not operated by the residents of the city of san francisco. it's operated by the corporations. which obviously drive every decision you make.

van ness corridor, any corridor, any subway to chinatown, and of course the politicians bought and paid for by the corporations pull the strings when they need to make you move the way they want you to. now, uber and lyft are taking over the city, as far as clogging the streets. certainly that's more, more cars on the streets, more accidents, more people are going to get hurt. it's long pastime, this is a municipal corporation, that the operators of the system and the residents of this city should be sitting up here on the board running this, not taking orders from the corporations down on montgomery street. that's going to take a little more work. but that's the only thing that's going to fix things in this city, and keep the corporations from telling us when we should

get up and when we should go to bed. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> tarik mahmood. >> if anyone wishes to address us, please stand up and line up. >> good afternoon, directors. taxi driver. first of all, i thank you very much mr. ed riskin for the taxi driver fund distributed. that made a lot of leave, thousands of bad things, complaints, somebody going to suicide, somebody going to do something wrong, change. thanks for doing a great job on that part, and that's what the good thing, we admired. now, going a little further, you guys have called your taxi director a town hall meeting, 5,000 taxi driver invited, fantastic. we don't know what for this meeting is. the no document is given to us, no package information is provided to us, we are begging,

we are calling them, we are e-mailing them, we say hey, how you going to get all these people in the meeting or coming to the meeting when we don't know what you are going to talk. would you please go to office today and tell them to email us what is the package to talk, at least some idea, so we can prepare for the discussion. going further about things, about san francisco city streets, some of the changes in the city street, some bad, it happens, you have added too many busses, too many everything, so the delay happens, it's natural. the traffic is jammed, it's natural. now, going further up, i requested before investigator your taxi department and a black sweater, giving the tickets to the people passing through the bus stops and other thing. 19,000 tickets issued, that's wrong. talking about london bridge,

100% wrong, should look at the san francisco airport. 20 million public people are given the travel and the congestion every year, and i will send out an email to the community today, thank you. >> do i have any more public comment? on matters not on the agenda. do i have someone, public -- yes, go ahead, please. >> good afternoon, board of directors. my name is mary claire, transit justice organizer for south of community action network, born and raised in the tenderloin and currently live and work in the south of market. i'm here today to talk about the red transit lanes. my whole life to and from work, school, so on, and if you have ever taken the 38 gary in the morning and 5:00 p.m. you would understand there is a need for a transit only lane there. however, what we don't agree

with is allowing privatized busses -- >> that's an item on the agenda, this is for items not on today's agenda. i'm sorry, we'll have to ask you to wait. >> no problem, thank you so much. >> do i have any more public items not on the agenda under general public comment. seeing none, general public comment is closed. do we have one? >> thank you. all right. let's move on. >> consent calendar, routine unless a member of the public or the board wishes to have an item severed or considered separately. 10.2s through x be severed. is there any member of the public that wishes to severe another item on the consent calendar? madam chair, that would be it

then. >> only -- consent calendar minus 10.2s through x. that's all. ok. so, let's go ahead and take the rest of the consent calendar, minus item 10.2s through x, sorry, i'll say for the board members, i don't think that's an earthquake we had this happen before. something about the podium shakes, i don't think anybody else is feeling it but if we look distracted, that's why. us talking too much, isn't it? all right, so a motion to approve consent calendar minus 10.2s through x. all in favor, opposed, hearing none, consent minus 10.2s through x approved. >> i'm sorry, is herbert wiener still here? >> yes. >> mr. wiener. do we have -- no, he's not. ok. oh, there he is. madam chair, he did ask 10.6 be severed. >> ok.

rescind the vote -- can i have a motion to, and a second all in favor to resigned the vote aye, opposed, all right. so, we have not done any of the consent calendar yet. so, let's go ahead and redo it minus 10.2s through x and 10.6. motion to approve. >> i had a question, actually. 10.8 with the bus -- i thought a member of the public asked to remove that. >> i don't think anyone has asked it to be removed as here. it has to be somebody here to do it. but you can do it. >> i'll remove it. >> 10.8. >> 10.8, advertisements. >> motion to approve consent calendar. >> so moved. >> second. >> any opposed? hearing none, consent calendar approved. let's start with 10.2x through x. >> one speaker has asked the

item be severed. >> this time, west side best side, community organization for neighbors for better transit in the sunset. we were created a little less than a year ago and we have already 200 members. they sent me here today to support the items of known as the la playa safety and improvement, to tell you this is not enough. originally this was a community plan, designed with neighbors, with a lot of supports from the neighbors. it was supposed to be approved or sent to you on december 5, 2017, but a few people said they were losing too much parking, so once again, we have been

prioritizing safety on one of the most dangerous intersections in the city, where you have families living. people going to the beach. they are crossing this intersection where cars speed and don't stop at the stop signs. so, a few of the things that were removed were the partial 1-way streets on la playa. also the parking was removed for parking. and rerouting also removed from that. the no car access at the turn around, which is very dangerous when the n train is parked, stops there, and what brings me is that another project that is linked to that, the lower great highway parking, pedestrian and safety improvement, remove only 2.5% of the parking, also been delayed, 10:00 a.m. friday

meeting at city hall. so, please, the community is very involved, please stop delaying this very important project, thank you. >> thank you. to clarify, you are in support of it but this end more is what -- thank you very much. director, do i have a motion to approve? >> move it. >> second? >> second. >> all in favor, aye, aye, opposed, hearing none. a note the neighborhood is still looking for more pedestrian calming, traffic calming, pedestrian safety. all right. let's move on to 10.6. >> environmental findings, light rail program phase two, to compensate for direct and indirect costs, different work, time impact costs related to delays and additional work, extending the contract amount by $3.6 million, extending the

contract term by 100 calendar days, not to exceed 1818 days, and authorizing to approve, up to additional aggregate of 10,000 more in future amendment contract 1300. >> severed at the request of a member of the public, herbert wiener. >> mr. wiener. >> one question i have about this, they have been cited so many times and so many court cases, and this is a choice of a poor contractor. now, how are contracts being vetted? and this is an internal -- reflection on the agency as a whole. we do not see the internal

operations. they are not transparent enough for us. and this is -- this is the overall problem of m.t.a. the public does not see, and i really think transparency is important because then you can get public feedback and public feedback actually is a corrective, it's preventative, and prevents disasters like what m.t.a. is facing right now. you cannot ignore the public and cannot rubber stamp decisions anymore, and this has been a bad contractor, thank you. >> thank you, mr. wiener. i see we do have albert ho here, directors, anyone have a question for our program manager, acting director of central subway or a motion to approve? >> i have a question, i guess. mr. ho, thank you for joining

us. my understanding, we owe this amount to the contractor and that's why we are to approve the amendment. >> that's correct, our analysis. >> and to the member, to the public members' point, a reason of bad acting or anything like that? any reason to question these amounts? >> no. so, basically we have been as a large scale complex project like this, a lot of changes, unforeseen conditions, you know, some design issues, so -- as we progress with the project, we have been making adjustments and wherever we determine merits for the contractor claim, we have actually been going through and putting in efforts to do the corrections. this is what it's here for. 87, so -- 86 prior to this, this is the one that triggers the board authority given to director reskin, but part of the course, part of the program

developments. >> thank you. >> thank you very much, mr. ho. any more questions, or motion to approve? >> motion. >> second. >> it is approved. madam chair, 10.8, acting as both the m.t.a. board of directors, authorizing exercise a five-year option to extent contract with intersection for advertising on the municipal transportation vehicles and other property. >> director borden. >> a member of the public sent an email and a question about this. i know in the contract, limited number of, we typically don't have many bus wraps of windows but do allow for some wrapping of windows. and i do personally find it, especially on routes where i'm not as familiar, i can't see out of the window and the bus is crowd, it's very difficult to know where to exit. especially for people with disabilities. there were concerns. i wonder, how do we determine which busses or routes we do

allow the windows to be wrapped and do we take into consideration whether or not we might have a larger percentage of the people who could have disabilities or issues that would make it very difficult for them to be able to read the signage. i know we have to think of this with the new changes in the system. >> let me ask gail stein who manages the contract to try to answer that question. >> misstein, good to see you. >> thank you, gail stein for finance. i manage the agency's advertising program. generally we have wraps on both busses and the light rail vehicles, and they go on busses based upon the yard. [please stand by]

people take bus at random times but they tend to take at the same consistent time. i'm not sure how the schedules are different but i just want to be mindful of that and look how we are impacting our riders with the wraps on the windows and make looking at how often, like how the distribution is happening across the lines and in lines where we are having any major service or rerouting

of stops and others, really trying to avoid having those wraps, because i think it's very difficult when you can't see out the window and not familiar with where the stop is going to be. i understand it's a small decision overall for busses and i know in the grand scheme of things, it's not significant but because we are allowing people to choose the sites, we have a big weekend this weekend, we bought advertising and you pick areas you have the most traffic of the people you want to impact so i imagine there's disproportionate amount. >> can you remind us why the number is capped at such a small amount of the fleet? >> well, because many customers don't like them so we try to

figure out a number that will have a minimal impact but at the same time trying to bring in more revenue. i'm sure the contractor would be happy to sell more if we allowed it. >> right, and we have been doing this for how long? >> 7-8 years. >> and in that 7-8 years we have no identified safety issues, driver visibility or anything that's flown from wrapping of our vehicles or anything like that, right? >> that's correct. >> thank you very much. >> it's my understanding even when there's the full wrap, signage isn't covered, like the bus number and things like that. >> that's correct. the contractor isn't allowed to do it in the contract. and certainly a rider can announce a driver to announce a stop. but i think the concerns director borden are raising are real and i appreciate you looking into how we can address those. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. any more questions from ms. stein? do i have a motion to approve? second? all in favor aye?

any opposed? hearing none, it is approved. thank you, ms. stein. >> clerk: ms. chair, moving onto your regular agenda. ask the board to make environmental review findings, designate transit only lanes on gary boulevard and approve various traffic modifications, along the 38 geary, r corridor between market and stanon street associated with the rapid corridor transit project. >> chair c. brinkman: ms. bryson. >> good afternoon, chair brinkman and board members. i'm liz bryson, i'm the project manager for geary project, improvements between market and sandyon street. there's been a huge team at sfmta working on this and i

want those helping me to stand up so they could also be recognized. so with that, you may recall that about a year ago we came before you to make findings under ceqa and since that time the project has transitioned from the lead role being sfcta to sfmta and sfmta has conducted significant outreach on the detail of the design of the project to be able to take action today. so what i will cover today is a little bit of background on the project and the scope of the project as well as some of the outreach we did and some of the areas where there are some challenging trade-off decisions before you. first context, the geary corridor is one of the most popular bus routes in the city and country with about 54,000

riders each day. one of the things we hear customers really appreciate about this route is how frequent it runs and in recent years we have added substantial service to the line back in april 2015 that's been very well received. when we do hear complaints from riders on the service, it's typically related to reliability and crowding, which are related issues. and the issue on the top illustrates what we call bus bunching, which i'm sure every rider is familiar with. what we are trying to do through the project is give the bus transit priority infrastructure such as bus lanes and bus bulbs that make it less likely for the bunching to occur. there's also a very important need to improve pedestrian safety on the geary corridor. it's part of vision zero network of the city and you are actually 8 times more likely to be hit by a car when crossing the street on geary.

what are the improvements we have planned to address these needs? there are a suite of improvements for performance. one of the big ones we would be extending the existing transit-only lanes from terminus from box to stanion. another aspect of the proposal includes improvements to bus stop locations, consolidating closely-spaced stops as well as moving from north side to the far side of the street, i will be talking about a few of them later in the presentation. and finally, there's several locations where we would be adding new transit bulbs. i believe there's nine locations.

the illustration indicates, where you extend sidewalk at a bus stop which means the bus doesn't have to pull out of traffic and back in and less people waiting for amenities at the bus stop. we have a lot of improvements planned to address that key pedestrian safety need. one of the big ones is the project includes pedestrian bulbs at 18 different intersections throughout the corridor. in addition, we would bede lighting every intersection in the corridor so pedestrians are more visible as well as pedestrian countdown signal at locations that don't yet have one. there's also some additional safety treatments focused on the stretch of the corridor between goth and scott streets, this is 4 lanes in each direction and functions like an expressway. in this part some additional improvements include reducing

total number of travel lanes from four in each direction to two regular lanes and one bus only lane in each direction and new opportunities for pedestrians to cross the street at signalized intersections, including buchanan and webster street shown in the rendering on the left and right. we want to make sure the project design would accommodate business loading and access needs. we did a door-to-door merchant survey and made refinements as we uncovered them. in terms of on-street parking, there are some locations where the proposed safety or transit require removal of on street parking. for daylighting or to build a bulb. there are a few locations there are more extensive removal particularly near the fillmore and masonic service roads

because they are more constrained there but overall we would be retaining 98% of the parking within 1-2 blocks of the corridor. and in the locations where there's greater removal, there's an increased supply of parking so we don't think it will have an overall impact on availability. pedestrian safety, one of the aspects of the project involves removing some of the travel lanes in the corridor. as you can see in this picture there's quite ample capacity in much of the corridor today. and the analysis that was done through the environmental review process actually found that there would be better traffic with the project than without doing the project. so throughout locations where the new transit-only lane would be installed only one removed and through the stretch from goff to scott there would be an additional lane removed. so our outreach builds on years

of outreach that the sfcta lead. in the last year we have done a pretty comprehensive effort to reach stakeholders through a variety of tactics as shown here. i will highlight a few of them. one of the most effective ways to reach people is to go to where they are, not asking them to just come to our meetings but go to existing stakeholder organizations and present to them we have done over 60 stakeholder meetings during the design phase and photos here are a couple examples, the one on the left is a meeting we did at the russian american community services senior center conducted in both russian and english and the one at the right is at the saint francis square cooperative. we also have two major rounds of public events this summer. the first ones were in june and they were open houses. the purpose of those events was

to share the draft final design of the project for input. and we wanted to be consulting with the public. after receiving the feedback at those events as well as through other outreach tactics we followed we did choose to make a few refinements to be responsive to what we heard in the community and we had events what we called project showcases earlier this month, the purpose was to inform the public about the changes that we made based on input as well as to display the staff recommended design that you now have before you today. overall those events were both well attended and well received. we heard positive feedback about the information available and opportunities provided. we did have in both series meeting east of van ness and one west of van ness and we have both a week day meeting and saturday afternoon time. so some of the key things we heard in general most people are really excited about

transit-only lanes. the chart on the left is the result of an intercept survey we did a little more than a year ago. of people that were familiar with the transit-only lanes that already exist in the eastern part of the corridor, the vast majority, almost 70% found they were improving service fehr them. we also heard support for pedestrian safety aspects, these photos illustrate a few examples of the challenging situations facing in the corridor and approach to safety in this project was very data driven. based on where our data is showing collision factors that need to be addressed. and we really did take the outreach seriously. you may recall that during the environmental review stage of the project there were several changes made to the project to be responsive to community input. those are shown at the top of the slide and then more

recently as a result of the outreach we did this summer we made several more changes. a couple examples of that include the proposal was originally to remove the local stops at stanyan and commonwealth. but based on the feedback we heard we decided to retain those stops and deseen e dee sign of the rapid stop at laguna, we changed to a bulb based on feedback we heard there. now to some areas we heard feedback we were unable to address. the first one has to do with business access in red lanes. we did hear from some people, predominantly merchants west of masonic avenue who raised concerns with red lanes and businesses on two different angles. the first is there was concern that red lanes could be bad for business in general. and the second is that there with a concern that people driving wouldn't understand the

way to access businesses. there's not a ton of research on this topic but there was some research done in new york city on a project that had a similar scope to the geary project and actually found an improvement to retail sales after the project went in. in the same intercept survey i mentioned, people in the corridor, how they access businesses and we actually found that people walking, biking and using transit actually patronize businesses more frequently than people driving and we are also committed it doing a before-and-after evaluation that will improve metrics on economic health of the corridor. and related to that, as part of the legislation we are planning to do an education campaign to make sure drivers have the information they need. the next topic is for rapid

transit at spruce street. a little bit of background on this one. originally during the environmental review phase there was a proposal to move these bus stops from their current location, near side bus stops, move them to the far side of the street between spruce and cook street and build bus bulbs that would have been entire bus lengths and remove parking on those blocks. as a result of that proposal there was quite a will the of opposition from merchants. there was a compromise made to eliminate rapid service and then there wouldn't be the parking removal. so, since that time, in our own outreach we have learned a lot of riders do have concerns about this elimination. the chart in the top left shows the result of a survey we put out and of people who commented on the top, 87% of them were

not in support of its elimination. there are a lot of factors we are trying to solve for on this one. unfortunately the existing condition of the stop is the bus zone is actually shorter than our standards. and when, say, three busses pull up at the same time it creates quite a bit of delay. on the other hand this is actually the lowest ridership of the stops in the geary corridor, the difference when the bus doesn't need to stp there at all versus the delay, the reliability that creates the bus bunching we are trying to address. while there are riders who use the spruce street who would have to walk further or use the local there are also riders who would benefit from this proposal bau they would experience a faster travel time and better reliability and there's actually about 9300 people who pass through spruce going further onto the corridor.

next topic is inbound bus stop at gough street. it would put it next to st. mary's. there were some good reasons to consider putting a stop in this location. it's relatively flat and visible where the other location is on a hill. it provides better access to st. mary's. we heard quite a by the of support from stakeholders who would benefit from having the stop in that location. but on the flip side we also heard from stakeholders who travel east tore the unitarian church and saint marks who were concerned about longer walks to the stop and concerned with the high value of eastbound right turning vehicles turning from

geary onto gough street. in the morning rush hour it's not uncommon for the q to extend back. this is where the bus stop would have been located and we have concerns about the delay that would cause to our busses. we had feedback, we went from division safety meeting from operators who drive this route and they had concerns as well. for these reasons, we are recommending to leave the stop in its current location. the next i don't have a slide for pertains to the question which vehicles are allowed to use the transit-only lanes. staff's recommendation is they be for bus, taxi and right-turning vehicles. and per the california vehicle code, a bus is defined as a vehicle with 10 or more passengers. so recently we have heard from

many stakeholders who are concerned about that would mean certain vehicles such as commuter shuttles or private transit would be allowed to use the lanes and that is true based on how the item is before you. there's a few things i wanted to clarify. the first is that this is a typical designation that much of our transit-only network has. so it's not unique to the geary corridor. second is that this is a recommendation for a portion of the geary b.r.t. project you have before you today which is a portion that has side-running lanes. but the side running lanes would seek to legislate those as muni and golden gate transit only. another thing to keep in mind we already have in place regulation in place to ensure

they don't slow down muni. those programs mean there are no places these busses are allowed to stop at geary bus stops. so we think that actually is the way that we are currently preventing these other services from competing with the muni busses. and there are also many other types of vehicles that have 10 or more seats that some of whom there may be interest in continuing to allow using the lanes perhaps the hospital shuttles of which there are many different hospitals who run shuttles in the geary corridor. i think those were all the clarification points i wanted to make and i'm happy to answer any questions. speaking of which, this is my last slide. i want to mention quickly in terms of next steps, after approval of the item we would move quickly to implementation, the sfmta scope we would be working in coordination with work sponsored by public works

and p.u.c. including roadway repaving, water and sewer work. we are expecting to be able to do the near-term implementation later this fall and then the heavier construction also would begin with utility work later this fall. the total duration of the project is expected to be about two and a half years into early 202. -- 2021. with that i would be happy to conclude my presentation. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, for a thorough presentation. i know there is a lot we want to respond to, but we have 26 public comments so unless there's a clarifying question for ms. bryson, i would like to move to public comment. i know we have a legislative aide from the supervisor's office, mr. donnelly. did you care to come up and say anything, or did he leave? nope, i guess he left already. all right, let's go ahead and start with public comment. ms. boomer, let's do two minutes.

since we probably have new public commenters, 2 minutes when you have 30 seconds remaining you will hear a soft tone and when you hear the second louder phone your two minutes are up and i will politely but firmly cut you off. thank you. >> clerk: ms. kuhn? is ms. kuhn here? k-u-h-n? >> hi, thank you. good afternoon, chair brinkman, directors. my name is brook kuhn and i live at 2nd avenue and balboa, two blocks south of geary. i'm here today to urge you to approve the geary rapid project. because of all the important pedestrian improvements it makes for safety it will make

to this high-injury corridor. i take the 38 and 38-r along geary and walk frequently along and across geary with my 21-month old son. as a mother of a young child i can tell you it's intimidating to try to cross geary. the signal timers are barely long enough to cross, streets are very wide so they take a long time to get across and traffic, as you know, is fast. i believe the geary rapid project will add important improvements for pedestrians, thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, ms. kuhn. >> clerk: cathy deluka, rose hilton, tom barton. >> good afternoon, my name is cathy deluca from walk san francisco. i'm here to share support of the geary rapid project and urge you to approve it. it's an exciting project for walk sf, the whole geary b.r.t. project has been thought of as

a transit project but every single transit rider is a pedestrian. people riding transit need safe passage to and from the bus. so we are so excited this project really prioritizes people walking, who are also taking transit. we have, i think there are 20-something intersections with pedestrian bulbs or transit bulbs, unbelievable. we are excited about it. we would love to see this level of safety in all projects. we think it's a great model for that. i think the community learned transit-only lanes are accessible to private vehicles. i will share walk sf has a great concern with that. please approve the project, work on the transit-only issue and thank you.

>> chair c. brinkman: thank you. i see supervisor stefani's legislative aide is back. if you would like to address us, please feel free. >> hi, i'm [off mic] legislative aide to supervisor stefani. i just wanted to say we are in support of the project, we had concerns about the stop at spruce and we would like some further consideration of that stop but we support the project and thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you very much, mr. donnelly landolph. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, chair brinkman, members of the board. rose hilson. i have a concern, overhead please, sfgovtv? what we have is intersection of parker and geary. i know you will have the red zone there 26 feet on the north side for daylighting and i think this is a very good idea.

i'm in support of that. the only thing i have a question about early on it may become a safety issue. there's an island there, the two dark stripes left and right of the island are red ling and with 26 feet taken out, i notice a lot of these trucks go around the corner and maybe there might be something that might happen especially with 26 feet being red laned but maybe the distance could be changed. i'm not sure. that is a concern. i will turn that in. what i do have is another issue regarding the bus red lanes only being used for busses and i understand from rumors in the community there's a california vehicle code section under 233 and 668 and san francisco transportation code article 100 private bus section 601, busses taxes, etc., section 914 regarding shuttle busses. so what i don't support is having other busses other than

muni busses and taxis who are currently using them to be using the red lanes. and i don't think these other non-muni vehicles have been factors in the air quality impact in the e.i.r. needed for the state prop k funding. how could they not be allowed, sunshine serks 67.16 to be included in the minutes and here is a picture too for the minutes. thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> clerk: tom barton. peter rinosa. >> good afternoon. my name is tom barton. i have been a resident of the richmond district for over 45 years. and the muni is my primary source of transportation. i am here to address removal of rapid service and retention of local and express service inbound and out bound spruce stops which is a part of this item 11. i'm aware of the muni wanting to remove that stop to speed up transit.

removing that stop as a rapid and leaving only as a local is a mistake for anyone wanting to use that stop. as the closest stops will either be masonic or aguello, both five blocks away in either direction. muni says the removal of the rapid stop at spruce won't cause delays in arriving busses. that might be true. but the 38 geary local is unreliable. as it doesn't arrive often enough. i did a survey recently and there was over 40-minute gap between the local busses during a period from 4:30-5:30 at rush hour i waited 30 minutes or more while the local busses go by. if i'm traveling from downtown to use the spruce street stop and i can't use the rapid it's going to cause a big delay. plus i will have to wait a long time. there were several community

meeting about the geary b.r.t. but this report doesn't show any public comments about the spruce stop and the report does say there was 87% of the people against removal of the rapid stop at spruce. but this report supports the removal. i'm in favor of the geary b.r.t. project but asking you vote no against the removal of the rapid stop as part of this report. thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, mr. barton. next speaker, please. >> clerk: peter rinosa. hold on just a second. sorry, and merle easton. >> chair c. brinkman: go ahead, sir. >> good afternoon, my name is peter rinosa, we are concerned, that is greystone hotel located at 46 geary street. and the bus stop at kearney and geary right now goes to the 30, almost 30 address, 4630, we

don't want to extend. the extension of the existing transit at kearney and geary we don't want to extend because it will make a lot more noise for us. we are urging you not to extend on kearney and geary. that's it. thank you very much. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, mr. rinosa, next speaker, please. so, mary ellen. >> i'm here to speak for a bus stop right in front of st. mary's cathedral. i think that's a very good place for a bus stop especially for seniors who live in the area and people who want to take the bus to church every sunday or everyday for -- i would like you to put a bus stop there, thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. next speaker, please.

>> clerk: merle easton, allison jacks, cheryl york. >> hello, board members. thank you very much. i am a member of the unitarian church at franklin and geary and i am asking you to keep the starr king stop in place. i am in favor of the staff report. and i wanted to say that i have been taking this bus for oh, probably 20 years. i have stopped at that stop at least twice a week in that period of time and i have not encountered any particular problems there and feel perfectly safe doing so. the unitarian church is a very busy center. we have homeless shelter, montessori school and about 1550 people coming to church during a one-week period.

and i think that instead of consolidating stops we should have more stops and the churches should all be serviced there and my big reason for encouraging this is the hospital is going to be opening in 2019 and it is going to change absolutely everything in that area. there will be so much traffic. we will need more bus stop. the other thing is for our handicapped people in walkers to come up and down that hill is a very challenging thing, as well as crossing. but a handicapped ramp has railings on the side, this street is twice as steep as a handicap ramp. also in front of st. mary it's flat, that is true.

i thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> clerk: allison jacks. sharon york. winston parsons. >> hi, good afternoon, my name is allison jacks, associate minister unitarian church and i'm also in favor of keeping the bus stop at starr king way. i appreciate there are competing needs and a difficult decision. as merle spoke we have over 1500 people coming to our site with various mobility needs so having that stop there is definitely making it safer for our folks including the kids in our montessori program. i also want to speak about the gough street location and if the bus stop was to move, the crossing over to come down starr king way, i would just

have a huge concern about that, i think people are safe going in that direction at night it would be extremely challenging. i appreciate the needs of everyone in that area as to where the bus stop is and i agree having two bus stops is better than one. thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, ms. jackson. next speaker, please. >> clerk: sharon york. >> thank you very much. i first want to say thanks for the free clipper for seniors for muni. i am not in support of the staff recommendation. i support putting a stop at st. mary's and i recommend that we figure out what to do about the right turns. i think that could be worked out. and in the future i hope we could make that whole area no right turns on red because

there pedestrian traffic at all those churches. and there have been accidents there with seniors. so thank you very much. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, board members, director reiskin, my name is mr. parsons, former geary -- member. i lived on or near geary my entire life. i'm here to support the project in its current form. as we heard earlier today you are eight times more likely to be hit crossing geary and there are people recently who have been killed crossing geary, so this is long overdue from that standpoint alone. further more these improvements will also make geary a more inviting place to walk. when places are nicer to walk

that's a boon to our businesses. the area drastically improves reliability of transit along the corridor and that's the key issue for many people whether or not they take muni is if they can trust it will show up and show up reliably. i understand there are concerns about what vehicles can go in the transit-only lanes. i'm not personally a big fan of chariot and i think this agency should look at charging them and other charter busses far more and other solutions. but, i don't think that's a reason to preclude this project from going forward in its current form. as a reminder, other seniors serving youth agencies and hospitals also use the transit-only lanes and that's not what is impeding muni right now. the project is decades overdue. i would love to see it roll out as soon as possible and i would appreciate your support for it. thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you very much, mr. parsons. and thank you for the service

on the geary c.a.c., i know you all put a lot of hard work into that and it's much appreciated. >> clerk: adrian leafer, michael chronback. >> good afternoon, i'm adrien lifer, i live near the geary spruce stop. i am here to ask not to remove service from this stop. service is simply not reliable enough to serve that stop. i think most of the plan is a great plan. it's going to improve the speed in the western neighborhoods, more importantly it will improve safety. but removing geary rapid will not improve reliability. it will not improve safety. it's just taking service away from our neighborhood, it will not improve the over crowding situation. 3400 feet between stops between masonic and arguello, it's too

far a distance for people with strollers, people with disabilities moving around, with shopping carts, it's just too far a distance. please approve the rest of the project, if you will, but please reject the removal of the 38-r from geary and spruce. thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. next speaker, please. >> clerk: mike chronback, gene barish, tony delorio. >> good evening. michael chronback. former muni employee for 28 years at the corner of geary and masonic, for what that is worth. when i first started one issue was, and i was pretty green, i didn't understand things very well. a project paid for by b.a.r.t. called the northwest extension analysis. or n.w.x. at that point the idea was to look at alternatives from extending b.a.r.t.