>> chair c. brinkman: we will go ahead and get started. i would like to call to order this san francisco municipal transportation agency october 16th 2018, ms. boomer please call the roll. >> clerk: [roll call] madam chair, directors, you have a quorum.

>> chair c. brinkman: thank you. >> clerk: item 3, announcement of the prohibition of sound producing devices in the meeting. you may be asked to leave the room, phones set on vibrate do cause microphone interference so the board respectfully request they be turned off. approval of minutes september 18th. >> chair c. brinkman: any comment on the minutes? seeing none, public comment closed. motion and second. all in favor? minutes approved. >> clerk: we have an overflow room should this one reach standing order, it is standing room only, it will be in the north light court today. >> chair c. brinkman: i do have a few communications about the meeting. first i want to say we are going to adjourn the meeting in memory of two people. jerry robbins.

and i'm just going to read from the lovely memo that tom mcguire sent out. it's no exaggeration to say jerry's work helped formed the foundation of everything sustainable streets did, he was a leader in san francisco in his time with the mta and other agencies and he was a mentor and friend to so many throughout this agency who were lucky enough to know him and work with him. we will also adjourn in honor of milton james, 38-year team member of the sfmta and 31-year safe operator. our thoughts are with the family and loved ones and we remember their dedicated service. i want to welcome amanda eakin who comes with a fantastic background. in this time of increased urgency around responding to climate change we are lucky to have director eakin join the board, welcome. i want to thank mayor breed and

the board of supervisors. director eakin would you like to say a few words? sorry, i didn't warn you i was going to do that. >> commissioner a. eaken: happy to. thank you all, it's wonderful to join such a board of directors and a real pleasure to have an opportunity to dive into the key issues facing san francisco, the city i live, where i have lived almost two decades and to bring knowledge and expertise that i've learned and to offer that back to the city. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, and welcome. i want to also announce we are going to rejigger the agenda a little bit. we have a full agenda. we have a lot of people here interested in the items. we have an overflow room. we will move your director's report to the end of the meeting. we will move general public comment to the very end of the

meeting as well. i know, no matter what order we call the other items in we will have members of the public here for a long time and wish the item they are speaking about is earlier, it will be a long meeting. i ask for everyone's patience and brevity in your comments. state your name when you start. make sure if you tell us if you support or oppose, sometimes you forget to do that, so it's super helpful to let us know. i know after you have been here a while it could be tiring, you forget that key piece and we are left to wonder where you stand on it. that will allow us to hear your concerns as effectively and efficiently as possible. the first items we will call after special recognition 6th and taylor called together. they are similar items, pedestrian safety items. and then howard street. we will call taxi -- sorry 6 and taylor are 12 and 13.

howard street item 11 and taxi is item 15, we will call that as close to 3:30 as we can, after we finish the item before it. and i'm sorry, but after we hear taxi we will move on to the great highway. it will be item 12 and 13 together. and then 11. then 15 and then 14. >> clerk: madam chair, i assume you want to do the citizens advisory council and consent before you call the regular agenda items. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you for that reminder, indeed. that's how we stand. >> clerk: item 6 introduction of new or unfinished business. >> chair c. brinkman: directors? >> as many are aware b.a.r.t. will begin their retrofit in february of 2019 and as a result b.a.r.t. will be opening one hour later in the morning. i know they have been working with all the different transit providers through the bay area to ensure the early morning workers are able to get to work and i know they have been

working with m.t.a. and thrilled they originally everyone was going to be going to the salesforce transit tower and finally a shuttle at the b.a.r.t. stop. there's an interest for a b.a.r.t. shuttle from the transbay to the district, that is only served by b.a.r.t., those stops there. i just want to get a report from you guys on how this is going to affect all of our other service in general because of the market street lines people need to access in the morning and also how we are partnering with b.a.r.t. to keep people coming from sometimes very far distances to get to work in a timely fashion. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. vice chair heinicke? >> >> vice chair m. heinicke: unfinished business either today or next time can we get a report when we next hear about the rv issue we recently put

off for a short amount of time. >> it will be at the next meeting. >> vice chair m. heinicke: good. that's excellent. and a little further out, we have had some discussions and i wanted to get board member reaction, or at least your reaction, director reiskin, feedback on the seat configurations. you are smiling because we have talked about this. on the new trains. and whether customers like the new new york-style seat configuration with slippery plastic seats not to advocate yet or whether the old seat configuration is popular, i know we have several trains still in the production process, i think it would be good to get input and base our next moves on that. >> can i add to that the seat height? because my feet don't reach the floor. >> chair c. brinkman: so then you really slide. >> there's one piece of feedback. >> we have heard some of that feedback, new york style is

labeling them -- >> your objection is sustained but i guess you get the idea. >> i do. [laughter] we have been looking at alternatives. we can come back to the full board as information or policy and guidance with summary of feedback and recommendations, if that would be -- >> chair c. brinkman: would you prefer full board or policy and governance? >> i think, eventually, this is an item, perhaps i am misperceiving it because i'm on there so many times a day. but i do think this is an important issue and i want to make sure however we do it there's a chance for the citizenry, whether through the advisory committee or through an actual hearing here. certainly through public outreach for request for comments. i think this is something we should do on more than word of mouth. we should let people know we have several trains in the production line and we want to hear back now that folks have experienced options what they feel. my preference would probably be

outreach campaign, the results of which are presented to this board. >> chair c. brinkman: [off mic] >> do we interactive focus groups for a demographic review of people living in san francisco, or other areas where we need input rather than hello, give us a call. >> when we come back on this, we can give you an overview of how we did the outreach for the first round. how we got to the configuration that we did. there was various types relative to the disability community and seniors. i don't remember how we did it. we can include that in the report back. >> vice chair m. heinicke: i don't mean to suggest that, you know, comfort is the only factor. obviously how many people we can get on the trains influences but just an overall reaction to something new and has significant impact on the riders before we finish the run of trains. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you.

any others? seeing none. >> clerk: item 7, director's report. >> thank you, madam chair, members of the board, director eakin, welcome. as the chair said, we will do a recognition first and i'll return back later. i would like to ask director of sustainable streets tom mcguire to come back and recognize one of his outstanding and retiring employees. >> tom mcguire, director of sustainable streets here to ask you to recognize frank markowitz. he began in 1983 as transportation planner in maryland and we were lucky enough to lure him to the west coast, he has worked in the private and public sector. as director brinkman was reminiscing before the meeting, he was one of the first who focused on pedestrian safety and planning. it's the most common mode of transportation in san

francisco, of course. many of you may remember the old band of frank, peter tan nen on the bike and jerry robbins in-house transit advocate who helped form the multimodal core of what we do at the m.t.a. frank spear headed efforts like pedestrian countdown signals, the scrambles we see on the streets in chinatown and helped launch the first walk, the vision zero campaign you will hear about at this meeting in fact. frank led the approved development agreement moderating team. when developers sign a development agreement with the city, frank's job is to make sure they are held accountable for their commitments and the transportation benefits promise today san francisco are being carried out, on our streets and transit system. it's been great to take advantage of growth in san francisco to provide people with better transit service.

i'm sad to see frank go but happy to be able to recognize him here for his service to the city. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. mr. markowitz, frank. thank you, i first met you back in 2004, i'm not quite sure what year it was. thank you so much for all your years of service. i think i see some of your colleagues in the office. if people would like to stand up who came here to support frank in his retirement. thank you very much. thank you all for coming down. [ applause ] thank you again, on behalf of the board, m.t.a. and entire city. would you like to say a few words? >> owe -- okay. thanks chair brinkman and recognizing your long agenda, i

will keep it very brief. i know part of that long agenda includes the 6th street project. and as i was packing some mementos to take away, it included a photo of a 10-foot banner that was hung in a store front window on 6th street near minna where we, around 2004-2003, we had marked a crosswalk and put in ped crossing signs. i look back and that was sufficient that a non-profit group put up a 10-foot thank you, d.p.t. department of traffic and parking banner. i know more needed to be done,

needs to be done. and you have to grapple with those complexities. let me just thank you to the board, so much for the excellent leadership and to director reiskin who has been an inspiration and so much appreciated working with the many meetings where he was always very careful listener, decisive, but thoughtful. tom mcguire, i certainly appreciated so much and i feel very lucky i was able to work in the sustainable streets division that you head up and to be able to work with such great colleagues and to benefit

from the tremendous support and energy and expertise through the whole agency and especially for me, the sustainable streets division and the planning dpruep i work in. -- group i work in. and the colleagues who do such terrific work. thank you you very much. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you again, frank. thank you, director reiskin, we will get back to the rest of the director's report at the end of the agenda. >> clerk: we have the c.a.c.'s recent recommendations. >> good afternoon, directors. i'm going to be really brief because of the packed agenda. i'm going to go over our

recommendations, read some, summarize some. so these were from our october 4th meeting. the first one was recommending that the agency undertake a public relations campaign about sidewalk parking to try to discourage sidewalk parking. that's kind of a pet issue of the c.a.c. and we were happy to get a presentation about that last time. we would like a motion, we made a motion to restrict transit-only lanes including red lanes to vehicles defined as transit vehicles by the california vehicle code. we had a presentation about the third street transit and safety project. we passed a motion in support of that. it looks good. we had one piece, a

recommendation about it which was that right turns be prohibited an the third street transit safety project corridor. but other than that, the project had our stamp of approval. so that was all of our motions. we had a couple requests for information. and i won't go overall of those. i just want to say that one of them lines up with what director heinicke brought up about the seating arrangements on the new streetcars. fully in support of having an informational session about that. i think that will be a great idea. and the last thing i want to bring up is that we, i requested a presentation about the state of harassment and the hostile work environment conditions, how those issues are dealt with. i really think that a comprehensive approach is

needed and seeing some progress on that is essential to the state of the agency. i can't underscore enough how important this is to the agency. without employees feeling safe and protected and heard, you might as well not have busses and trains running on the street. it's all about the people that work for that agency and i trust that you will take it as seriously as we take it at the c.a.c. thank you so much for your time and i'll be over there. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, mr. balliard and thank you for your continued service on the c.a.c. do we have any public comment? >> clerk: no, madam chair. sorry, i think we just had supervisor kim join us. >> chair c. brinkman: supervisor kim in the interest of respecting your time do you want to speak to us now or wait until your agenda item comes up? we have to go through the

consent calendar so it could be a couple minutes. why don't you come up now, thank you. >> thank you so much, chair brinkman, for allowing me to speak to the board and always squeezing us in since we have our board meeting which begins at 2:00 p.m. i want to thank the board of directors for your strong support of the townsend improvement plan in july. our office and the neighborhood is incredibly excited we will finally put these improvements in the ground by a corridor utilized by so many workers, residents and tourists. i'm here to voice my really strong support for three critical safety projects in my district. the safer taylor project, sixth street pedestrian safety and howard street near-term improvements for our cyclists. these are three of our most dangerous corridors in san francisco. and i'm preaching to the choir,

i know, but 13% of our streets account for 75% of all of our injuries and improving the safety of a very small minority of our streets will vastly improve safety for our entire city which means less people injured and less people killed and we know these injuries and deaths are 100% preventable. on sixth street someone walking is injured by a car every 16 days on average. that's 37 times the san francisco average. on taylor street between 2011-2016, my first six years on the board of supervisors, 53 people were injured walking on taylor. and on howard street in the last five years we have seen 76 people get injured. i can keep quoting the statistics but we know there are real faces and names and families and communities and friends that are forever impacted by these serious

injuries and fatalities we see on our street. gregory blackman, age 65 who died at the intersection of taylor and terk just two months ago while riding his bike. ernesto died last month at 9th. kate flaherty. these are three out of the hundreds of people with real names, real family, real friends. this is what we could do by improving the safety on our streets. i'm coming to ask the board of directors for your strong support again for safety improvements throughout our district. finally, i want to thank the sfmta board, our director ed reiskin, tom mcguire and livable streets staff, and this board.

it's not easy work and in fact there's always a lot of conflicts and priorities and i think it's important for us to prioritize the lives of our residents and workers first above all others. but i know this is always a difficult decision. so i just want to thank you in advance for standing so strongly with making san francisco a safer city for all of us. thank you, director. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, supervisor kim. we appreciate you coming to talk to us. [ applause ] >> clerk: madam chair, moving onto the consent calendar, these items are considered routine unless a member of the board or public wishes to have an item severed and considered separately. there's been no member of the public who wishes to and i've received no notification that a board member wishes to. >> chair c. brinkman: do i have a motion to approve? >> move to approve the consent calendar. >> second. >> chair c. brinkman: all in favor aye. any opposed?

hearing none, consent calendar is approved. >> clerk: thank you, madam chair. per your earlier direction i will call item 12 and 13 together. let me get to item 12. howard street. item 12 making environmental review findings and adopts parking and traffic modifications along 6th street between market street and bran nan as part of the 6th street pedestrian safety project. and item 13, approving the safer taylor street project parking and traffic modifications to improve traffic safety and provide community desired street enhancements on taylor from market to sutter. >> i'm not sure i could say it better than supervisor kim but this board has charged us since i got here in 2014 with taking

on the issue of traffic injuries and deaths on our streets. you did that with your historic commitment to vision zero in 2014. the first objective i want to remind you is achieve vision zero by eliminating all traffic deaths and you have done that through adopting a capital plan that focuses our scarce resources for improving streets and the dollars we spend for streets on the high injury network. today is an opportunity to meet that challenge you and mayor breed and others have given us, by bringing you an opportunity to reshape three of city's highest injury streets. you have also been challenging us to improve our outreach and communications to san francisco communities and focus on equity. we have been working with a wide range of community stakeholders with strong support and guidance with supervisor kim to make sure it's wide ranging and authentic. the people hit by cars are

disproportionally seniors, low income, people of color and disabled. at the same time we acknowledge there's a challenge moving traffic north and south across market street. it's been a challenge that i've wrestled with and my predecessors for decades have wrestled with and we take it very seriously. we have modified the proposal on 6th and taylor significantly to allow two northbound lanes of traffic to continue to flow across market street as an important traffic flow feature and that will compliment the additional capacity once we open smooth movement from stockton. construction closures are in fact one of the reasons you see so much traffic on 6th street today. and on the topic of congestion we learned interesting from the san francisco county

transportation authority which released a report that shows the growth in congestion is probably a lot more due to growth of tnc's and population and employment growth. you don't need to make a decision between traffic flow and safety. we can prioritize our vision zero commitments and followthrough today. with that i will turn it over to our livable street staff who will walk you through the 6th and taylor street projects. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, mr. meyer. >> good afternoon, my name is chada magu, i'm a planner. i'm here to speak about the 6th street pedestrian safety project. the number one strategic goal

at this agency is to create a safer transportation experience for everyone and to engineer our streets to meet our vision zero goal. 6th street falls under the 13% of city street miles where 75% of severe and fatal injuries occur and has consistently been on this list since the city's vision zero policy began. in the past five years, 200 collisions occurred along the three quarters of a mile span of this corridor. between the two long blocks from market to howard where the crashes are most concentrated, half of them involved a pedestrian. our crash analysis show that vehicles turning or failing to yield and pedestrians crossing at unprotected intersections are the most prevalent crash types. while the trends have gone downward since 2014, pedestrians make up 70% of the

city's fatalitis. seniors make up half of those deaths. traveling at unsafe speeds or like 6th street failing to yield to pedestrians are the most common collision types causing over 50% of the city's traffic fatalities. so many of the city's communities most vulnerable to traffic collisions live around sixth street. just a few ways the sixth street community stands out. one out of every 3 residents are seniors, mobility impaired or both. half the residents are people of color. half the population, primarily speak a language that is not english. and half don't own a car. in other words some of the most marginalized communities live around 6th street. 6th street is a critical location for our agency to focus our commitment on equity and inclusivity with safety improvements. since 2007 25 safety improvements were made to the

corridor. these include installing traffic signals at minna, the city's first painted safety zones at howard and mission to protect pedestrians as they cross intersections. we also installed wayfinding improvements and reminded drivers to slow down through speed limit signs and street paint that guide vehicles to the 280 onramp all of which aim to address the most prevalent collision types, turning vehicles, failing to yield or non protected and non dedicated pedestrian crossings. despite these changes a person walking or biking gets hit by a car on 6th street every 16 days. and with 40% ending in severe injuries or fatalities it's

clear more work is needed on 6th street. two goals, improve safety and create a safe and inviting public space for all street users and community members of 6th street. the major elements are between market and howard. this is the span where the crashes are most concentrated, making up 32 out of 41 collisions. the key elements of this project are first, removing a southbound lane to calm traffic and accommodate wider sidewalks. second, upgrading all intersections between market to howard and also at fulsome and harrison, which include installing new traffic signals that include accessibility and signal timing upgrades, upgraded curb ramps, marked crosswalks and bulb outs. third, enhancing pedestrian lighting to improve personal safety and walkability.

these improvements will signal vehicles to yield or slow down as they turn. they will also shorten crossing distances for all pedestrians and encourage them to go to locations that dedicate time and space for them to cross. we propose to remove the southbound lane between market and howard. removing it affords the opportunity to improve pedestrian safety particularly the widening of the sidewalks. widening sidewalks across a livability concern of the neighborhood. limited public space and narrow paths of travel, especially for those who use wheelchairs. sidewalks serve from limited living space available at s.r.o. where the 6th street residents live. while some you see along 6th

street are experiencing homelessness, they are still part of the 6th street and san francisco communities. widening the sidewalk will continue to provide access to these residents and will also allow a clear path of travel for pedestrians traveling along 6th street. we fully recognize that removing a travel lane for two blocks will have implications on vehicle traffic. to organize traffic and provide designated space and time for turning vehicles, turn pockets will be added at howard, harrison, bryant and brannan streets. southbound throughput will be through left turn restrictions at jesse -- for north and southbound traffic. the project elements proposed are a result of five public meetings, dozen of community outreach events where we spoke

with hundreds of residents. like mother jones and -- alicia. they have been fighting for pedestrian safety for over a decade. they told me they are tired of seeing seniors getting hit or almost getting hit. sentiments like mother jones and alicia's were heard. they told me it's about time we invest in their community and we need to put in the same amount of prioritization and investment in public safety improvements as we do in other places like valencia street. s.r.o. tenant leaders expressed it's clear their community comes second to cars when lamp posts are directed away from sidewalks and toward the street. we met with community groups like so ma youth collaborative.

they work with children stating the strong need for pedestrian visibility. it was welcomed by businesses along the corridor. however, as someone has gone door to door and spoke with over 50 different businesses i have hearded the most mixed reception when it came to land removal and widening of the sidewalk. katerina dmitri welcome sidewalk widening and improvement to allow a clear and comfortable path for deliveries and their patrons but the biggest theme of feedback we have heard from them and other businesses like split pea production and beauty supply was a real concern about construction impacts and how it may affect the well-being of their business. we have also heard loud and clear about the congestion drivers experience at golden gate and jones. the following are safety improvement on golden gate. livable streets commits to exploring new options as we move forward.

reflecting the community's transportation needs is what our project elements aim to achieve, the project team will commit to keeping the members of the community informed about construction and look into how we can minimize the impacts. these relate to san francisco's most pervasive issues. cost of living and doing business. criminal activity. homelessness and general increases in traffic congestion. as we move toward the next phases of this project we will continue to reach out and to welcome partnerships with any and all city agencies to further improve the well-being of this neighborhood. we have met extensively with groups who oppose this project and with groups that support this project and as a result we have made extensive changes to our project design. the decisions were difficult and the trade-off is this proposal we are asking you to approve today prioritizes pedestrian safety. something that needs to drastically improve along 6th street.

i would like to close this presentation with a representation of how we envision 6th street from market looking south. this vision includes wider sidewalks made possible by removing the southbound travel lane. traffic signals at all street crossings, marked crosswalks, bulb outs and improved pedestrian lighting. to achieve our goals of improving safety and creating an inviting public space for all street users we are asking the board to approve this project. the resolution includes a parking protected facility and we recommend the board strike that clause when approving this item. if this item gets approved we will continue informing community members with project status and closely partnering with public works as part of the street surveying and implementation of streetscape improvements. thank you. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. yes? director torres? >> commissioner a. torres: yes,

a few questions. who was the source? >> the federal highway administration. >> commissioner a. torres: when? >> they did a study with land reduction and they actually provided the information of 29% reduction to be applied to overall land reduction -- >> commissioner a. torres: so it's not specific to san francisco? >> no. >> commissioner a. torres: secondly, when you widen the sidewalks, what guaranty do we have you won't put more bicycles on them to make them even more crowded? >> i'll take that question. right now the sidewalks are not wide enough for a person in a wheelchair to pass safely, the sidewalks are substandard right now. by widening them we can allow the normal sidewalk life i think every neighborhood in san francisco expects to exist on 6th street. just as you may know, we built

terrific bike facilities on 7th and 8th street in may 2017 those were about creating a north/south bike route through this neighborhood. >> commissioner a. torres: so there's no intention to put these bikes and bike stands on the sidewalks once its widened? >> this is not a plan to create space for go bikes if that's what you are asking. >> commissioner a. torres: so there's no plan on these expanded sidewalks? >> no. >> commissioner a. torres: will they provide more accessibility for homeless encampments? >> well, right now, the sidewalks are hardly wide enough for people. >> commissioner a. torres: if your proposal is to widen them which is why i asked, what have you taken into account to make sure that doesn't happen? >> we have been working with other property management agencies, like episcopal community services and they let us know about construction at stephen street which will include six stories of

affordable housing, including senior housing and formerly homeless, along with a recreation center on the bottom floor and emergency services. my response to you -- >> commissioner a. torres: your response is these people, if they encamp on these widened sidewalks will have a place to go, is that your response? >> chair c. brinkman: i think director torres, these sidewalks will be treated the way any other sidewalks in our city are. >> commissioner a. torres: that's my problem. we are treating these sidewalks as homeless shelters rather than directing -- >> chair c. brinkman: director torres, can i get us back on track, please. we have a busy agenda. >> commissioner torres: then my answer is no, if i can't ask questions.

>> chair c. brinkman: does anybody have clarifying questions? >> -- >> we will be including signal timing upgrades so i think they will be governed by more traffic intersections like mission and market street, so we are hoping that be included as well. >> my only concern is the timing, because we already have blocking of market street, so just making sure the timing of the signals work so you don't have traffic backing up. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you, director borden. director eakin? >> commissioner a. eaken: the intention of the project is clear, to improve vision zero outcomes. are there certain objectives we have elimination of pedestrian fatalities, how will you measure the success of the project and how will we get a sense whether it was effective? >> i'm the pedestrian program

manager and i worked with shada on this project. i think your question is how do we evaluate the projects we are doing. we actually have a global streets evaluation program funded by our county transportation authority and we have been doing consistent evaluations for the past year on every single streetscape project. so recently we are finishing data collection on the sonic right now. so we commit, of course to evaluating our 6th street project as well. just like we would evaluate any other project. of course our goal is zero fatalities and reduced injuries. and the real goal is prevention. so we hope, not only to see fewer collisions but when collisions occur they are happening with a less degree of severity they occur on and we have a robust program to continually look at our trend and reduction in severe injuries and we would be happy to report back on that.

but yes, 6th street is absolutely where we are focusing our attention. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. districtor hsu. >> commissioner l. hsu: do you have a sense where traffic will flow to? that's a straight shot to 280. cars will adapt, i will cut over to 7th or 5th. >> yes, so this project will start construction 18 months and will be complete in another 18 months following. but in the meantime the next six months following the central subway opening we are anticipating stockton will provide southbound lanes into fourth street. we have no idea how it's going to look in the meantime. but we are also believing the stockton street reopening will provide another avenue for people to take and 4th street provides onramps to the 280 which runs parallel and 280 itself off king street. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. director borden? >> >> commissioner g. borden: i have one more question.

did you consider moving the parking on that block. >> between market and howard street? >> commissioner g. borden: yeah. >> there are a lot of commercial businesses, especially stevenson, we are seeing pinnacle coffee, home skillet. we aren't going to. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you. any other questions before i ask her to move onto taylor street? thank you. >> thank you. >> clerk: madam chair, directors, there was a typo. the board is not approving a parking protected bikeway for 6th street. >> chair c. brinkman: we will make sure to call it out. >> clerk: that would be deleted.

>> chair c. brinkman: excellent, thank you. at what point have we not got the collision numbers down far enough and at that point would we consider further changes to

the street? >> of all our projects i don't believe we ever consider them completely done when they are safety, because we want to monitor. traffic and performance patterns as well. typically we want to get a couple years of crash data before we make major changes to a street. so we certainly wouldn't be seeing something like after three or six months. >> chair c. brinkman: we look a year or two out. >> i will try to keep this super concise. i will be sharing a proposed design, giving a little

background on the project, talking about our unique and powerful outreach process. sharing some of our findings from that process and then finish with the most important take-aways about taylor street. so today taylor street is a three-lane northbound with sidewalks and parking on both sides. the project corridor stretches about a half mile long around 7 blocks from market to sutter streets, so there's an image of that in the presentation. this is the culmination of intensive outreach. we are proposing widened sidewalks, shortened crossing, protected turns, better curb management to support businesses and residents, a unique parking to support paratransit bus loading and mitigate parking issues

dedicate today landscaping, public art and reinforcing neighborhood identity. to enable all of these improvements we are proposing a lane reduction from three lanes northbound. from market to ellis, one through lane plus one turn lane, two total at every intersection. three total at intersections similar to what we have today. for a little background, safer taylor street is a major pedestrian safety project whose planning began last spring and continuing now. this phase had an original allocated budget of $300,000. which is typical for a project of this size. which we were actually able to double by winning a grant from caltrans for an additional

$300,000 in order to conduct unique and deeper outreach for the process. over the next two years we will be working on our sidewalk activation plan, doing civil survey work and detailed design and we hope to start construction by 2021. from a vision zero perspective, taylor street is on the city's high injury network and in fact one frt worst for pedestrian industries, there were more than 100 collisions from 2011-2013 involving walking or biking being hit by a car. that amounts to happening on a monthly basis. the number of travel lanes and the unused capacity on taylor was a factor in 95% of injury crashes involving people walking. a little bit about our neighborhoods surrounding taylor street. the tenderloin and knob hill is dense with families, non

english speaking immigrants, customer of small businesses, tourists hosted by many hotels and there are many people struggling with major socioeconomic issues like homelessness, sub -- substance abuse and mental health issues. a lot of the bullets in this presentation speak for themselves but i wanted to call out specifically the bottom two bullets. basically one third of the city's single room occupancy housing stock is within a quarter mile of this area. for those who don't know what those are, essentially a single room connected to a single common space shared by all of these rooms by different tenants. in fact, there is no front yard for a lot of these folks. there's no backyard. there's limited private space. on taylor street especially the sidewalks function as a front yard for many people. all of this is essentially to

say while we have a strong sense of urgency in improving traffic safety on taylor street it was clear early on any changes propose for taylor could have profound impacts for daily life for people on taylor street. we needed an understanding of street life to produce the best design possible. so to that end we partner closely with residents and leaders of this diverse community and partner what we know from them with national best practices. as proposed design evolved, we met with the community every step of the way. we worked hard to listen. we empowered them to have a strong voice in our process and we made several major revisions with all of us at the table together. what were some key outreach accomplishments? you could go to the next slide, please. we established a community working group that met regularly always open for

anyone to join to go over technical findings at key milestones along the planning phase. this group played a major role making decisions. it was our job to make sure we set up an even playing field and gave our stakeholders all the information to make choices. we made sure we were as transparent as possible with all of our work and we did all of our homework on the engineering side. there were times we heard things from the community that were difficult for us to swallow and understand and we made changes where ever necessary to make sure we were protecting the neighborhood's trust in that sense. we did tabling session. we spent time at regular neighborhood meetings happening regularly, tndc, land use, regular monthly meetings at apartments, national night out. we also held workshops purely just to educate community

members why street safety improvement and what tools we have at our disposal. we set up corners with free coffee just to hand it out and have conversations with people walking about about our project. one of the hallmarks was our pop-up event we held last summer. it was a one-day demonstration on a single block where we replaced one travel lane and one parking lane with widened side walks, a protected bike lane and floating loading. it was made available during the morning rush hour and there was no visible impact to congestion. we partnered with the rec and parks department to have street trees line the block. the tenderloin community benefit district provided cafe seating. the ymca held a youth art class. the bar piano fight connected us to local musicians that played music throughout the day.

the tenderloin neighborhood development corporation and healthy corner store coalition set up tables to help connect visitors to vital neighborhood resources. this event was a way to demonstrate what these types of improvements can do for the community so people can get a sense beyond looking at a drawing. and this event doubled as our open house. on top of this live demo we showcased three alternative designs for taylor street using 3d interactive models like die ramas. we interacted with more than 1,000 people. the vast majority of whom supported the improvements especially the widened and activated sidewalks. another outreach was the photo

essay project with youth 5-17. we provided cameras and training to the youth to learn how to take photos and we walked together on taylor street taking photos of things that inspired them and things they thought needed to be improved on taylor. afterwards there was a workshop to learn how to articulate their feelings in short essays. we used it as a final gallery exhibit in our open house. the purpose of this photo voice project was to one, to get younger folks included in these types of civic processes they are typically excluded from. two, provide critical soft context for the work we do, it's not just about signals and curbs, it's also how streets make people feel. and three, most importantly, their work, the work of the youth is the springboard into the next phase we will directly use their input and everything we learn from them for landscaping, art, furnishing plans for that streetscape.

in summary we engaged over 1500 over the last year across more than three dozen outreach events. that averages to more than two outreach events a month. you're design evolved more than ten iterations in response to public feedback we were getting on a regular basis. our overall findings was with the existing three lanes on taylor street, only 45% of that available vehicle capacity is being used during the most congested times during the day. our collision analysis shows strong correlation between collision patterns and excess number of travel lanes. we know reducing lanes isn't only possible with minimal effects on conjust -- congestion but it's a really good idea. we need today work close with the community to best allocate that to better uses.

we heard loud and clear people favoured wider sidewalks and shorter more accessible crossing and desired neighborhood amenities like street trees, trash cans and street art. we found loading and parking needed to be optimized to serve business needs and encouraged allocating rather than the protected bikeway which is one reason we removed it from the proposed design. so to finish, i just want to talk about a few key take aways. number one safer taylor street has focused on elevating the voices of folks typically under represented. we worked hard to empower them to shape their own future in addition to meeting citywide vision zero goals. two, with such a dramatic proposal we know we had our work cut out so we worked our butt off to make sure we did all of our engineering homework

and we stand by our design. we continue to do analysis to make sure this is still the best design by the time we get to construction. three, we iterated often and focused on being responsive to community and internal stakeholders, we make sure we continually built respect mutual trust through our work every step of the way. and finally safer taylor street has been about thinking big all the way. this project was a demonstration of just how much value we can squeeze from every dollar. we may not be able to do all this stuff for every project we do but the success of taylor street shows just how valuable these can be. we are also making it clear in the ongoing fight against extremely difficult and complicated socioeconomic issues especially the tenderloin, the sfmta is a partner and we will do everything we can including

street safety. with that i hope we could move this legislation forward and hope safer taylor is a reality for the neighborhood and i want to give thanks to all of our project partners, there's a huge list. >> chair c. brinkman: thank you for both you have done such a good job with inclusive and empathetic approach to the planning. i appreciate you recognizing everyone who lives in the neighborhood is a neighbor whether they are housed or not. i would like to have clarifying questions from directors before we move onto public comment. do we have any? yes, director eakins? >> commissioner a. eaken: this comes back to the comment i think director torres was making earlier. you have flagged both 6th street and taylor street are struggling with homelessness and substance abuse. i wonder, and you spoke a little bit, i caught the phrase this is really about how streets make people feel, this isn't just about street safety and preventing collisions, this

is a sphere of public life. i wonder if you could speak about how the specific design responds not only to vision zero and safety mandates but to those community concerns around homelessness and substance abuse. lighting and design could be proactive ways by the community as a way to address safety and other concerns, other challenges we see. >> sure. thank you for your question. i think that's a really good question. something we actually had internally very early on in the process and we heard a lot from community members throughout this whole process. we are transportation experts in the sense m.t.a. is but this process has been for us gaining cultural competency what happens in the tenderloin on a daily basis, so to some degree we are working hard to learn about those things. but we have had those

conversations with folks and we kind of already made it clear, it seems like encampments and drug use and the way wider sidewalks are utilized those are critical questions we can't ignore. i think one thing we have heard from our community advocates is encampments is an issue, certainly, but a street project is not going to solve that problem by itself. and it's not the cause of that problem by itself. one of the things about street projects they last for decades. we aren't going to touch this street again for many years. this issue with encampments and things that have come into play we have to be thinking not just about immediate issues we are dealing with but how do we think long term for future generations.