good morning, and welcome to the september 29, 2020 meeting of the vision zero committee. i am commissioner norman yee and i will be chairing today's meeting. i'm joined by vice chair commissioner stefani and commissioner peskin. the committee clerk is britney

milton. and will you please call the role? >> yes, commission peskin? >> commissioner peskin:% present. >> vice chair stefani: present. >> chair yee: present. >> we have quorum. >> on behalf of the committee i would like to acknowledge the staff at sfgovtv who records each of our meetings and makes the transcript available to the public online. clerk, madame clerk, do you have any announcements? >> yes. i would like to make an announcement about public comment. public comment will be -- item via telephone by calling 1-415-655-0001. and when prompted, entering access code, 146 771 7365 # #. once you join, you'll be able to listen to the meeting as a

participant. to make public comment on the item when the item is called, dial star 3 to be added to the queue to speak. when it's your turn, you'll hear your line is unmuted. when the two minutes are up, we'll move on to the next caller. calls are taken in the orders received. best practice to speak clearly, slowly. please allow for a lag time during the course of the meeting. that concludes my announcements. >> chair yee: okay. thank you, madame clerk. before we get started, this is a friendly reminder for all the commissioners to mute your microphone when you are not speaking to avoid audio feedback. before we get started, i wanted to start -- state that the vision zero committee is set to expire at the end of this year.

it will come up to all commissioners to reauthorize this committee and vision zero has to remain a top priority for our city. we've made significant progress, but we have a long ways to go as -- at the end of august, people have been killed on our streets, 18 of them have been killed. again, we started off the year very poorly in terms of the number of fatalities that were recorded. it's slowed down somewhat to get this number. and hopefully, we can keep it at 18 for the rest of the year. this is really absolutely a tragic and these are lives that have been cut short and families that will never be the same. we have so much more work to do

to literally save lives on the streets of our city. these deaths are preventablprev. i keep saying that and will keep on saying it because they are. the 463 severe injury collisions reported this year were also preventable. we need to be forward-thinking and creative in our approach to education and enforcement strategies to improve pedestrian safety. and we need to ensure that there are clear time lines and measurable goals in place to keep us accountable. we absolutely cannot let up now. madame clerk, will you call item number 2? >> yes, item 2, approve the minutes of the june 25, 2020 meeting, this is an action item. >> chair yee: okay. so is there any public comment

on this item? >> clerk: let me check, chair. this is a reminder to everyone on the line that you press star 3 if you would like to comment on this item. and seeing the call list, there is no public comment. >> chair yee: okay. seeing none then, can we -- i'm sorry. i'm having a hard time -- >> commissioner peskin: mr. chair? i'll make a motion to approve the minutes. >> chair yee: okay, motion made. do we need a second for three persons? >> vice chair stefani: second. >> chair yee: roll call, please. >> commissioner peskin: aye. >> vice chair stefani: aye. >> chair yee: aye. >> we have three ayes, minutes are approved.

>> chair yee: okay, then motion is passed. madame clerk, please call the next item. >> item 3, vision zero progress update. this is an information item. >> okay, ryan reeves. >> good morning. >> good morning. britney, can you confirm that you can see the power point? >> i can see a white screen. >> can you see it now? >> yes. >> okay. when i have a full screen, i lose it. so hopefully, the slides are large enough for you to see. okay. good morning, my name is ryan

reeves and i'm our vision zero task force co-chair. and i will be sharing with you today a progress update on vision zero. really focused on the work over the past quarter. so through august of this year, we've had 18 traffic fatalities, including eight people walking, two people biking and nine people killed riding in vehicles. this is similar to the five-year average in fatalities, but we know even one is too many so we have much more work to do. although the goal is eliminate fatal crashes and reduce severe injuries, we have seen a 50% decrease in injury crashes during shelter-in-place as compared to the same time period last year. this is just comparing police data year over year, so it's not comprehensive because it doesn't include serious injuries that

are only reported at the hospitals. it includes all injury reports, so without hospital data, we're not able to obtaject obtain the- obtain the severity of the injuries. we did want to share this trend information which has been requested in the past. so next i'll provide a few highlights of our recent work across our program, starting with our legislative agenda. so in terms of our legislative work, we continue to work towards our transformative policy agenda, focussed on how speed limits are set and getting state authority for automatic speed enforcement. our third is pricing which is led by our partners and will be

reported on by walk sf later in the agenda. we continue to participate in the task force. this was convened by the state to identify how to change how speed limits are set. we've been working with other members of the task force, including oakland, sacramento, san jose, l.a. and others, to really continue elevating the recommendations from this report. and we recently coordinated with the partners on a policy letter to the secretary to encourage prompt action on these recommendations. so the recommendations are focused on changing how speed limits are set, including moving toward a safe system approach that would go outside our current 85th percentile speed limit setting process. they released a guidance document that charts a path forward toward a safe system

approach and we participated in the guidance that again reaff m reaffirms these critical recommendations. we've also been monitoring news from seattle that found recently that even speed limits, even without additional enforcement or education, they were able to reduce crashes. we're looking at this to reinforce how these legislative policies could change how speed limits are set. lastly, with automated speed enforcement, we're still in exploratory conversations around legislation for next year. again, looking at how we can reduce dangerous driving behavior, especially with a racial bias and equity lens. we've been participating in the u.s. department of transportation work to update the federal guidelines for implementing speed safety programs. so we're expecting the guidelines in the next six

months. next, for brief highlights from our streets team. so we continue our work on our quick-build program. we've had 14 projects that have been completed and the remaining 17 are on the way. including 14 in design and 3 in construction. and the projects that are under way are implemented in neighborhoods that have historically been underrepresented in traffic safety such as the bayview and excelsior. they'll account for 50 miles of quick-build improvement. in terms of completed projects, just to share a few highlights. on 3rd street, we added a two-way protected bikeway connecting the protected infrastructure. and the san francisco bay trail. and on townsend we completed a multimodal project, including a

new walkway, transit bulb and bikeway. there are others under construction, including 5th, 7th and embarcadero. we also have 14 projects in design, including our work in the bayview for the hunters point boulevard. we recently completed an open house. and while the design is still in process, the project will include increasing pedestrian visibility and safety as well as slowing speeds. and other projects include alemany and beale street. a key part of the safe streets work has been the evaluation to assess pre-and post project data and understand the impacts and effectiveness of our work. my colleague will be giving a full presentation in the agenda on our results. so you can see here, highlights from our recently released 2019

year-end report which includes data. in terms of quick-build moving forward we're committed to investing $20-30 million over a five-year time period, including prop k and the new tax made available this year. we've looked for new ways to conduct outreach. for projects that are in the public outreach phase, we have started to use features like story maps, survey tools for people to learn more about the project and provide feedback. you can see a few images here of the recent outreach conducted in both the folsom and bayview. in addition to the quick-build work, we've been working hard on our covid response work which has including, our slow streets

program, our shared spaces program, including full lane closures, and our emergency transit-only lanes. so looking ahead for our safe streets work, we're continuing our quick build and covid response work, but we wanted to share other updates. we're planning to advance a city-wide daylighting program on the network. we've submitted a $500,000 request for prop k funds that we expect will achieve about 500 in our intersection on the hydro network. and the approach will be corridor-based, building on the lessons learned from our recent work in district 4 as well as the work in the tenderloin several years ago. we'll be focusing our daylighting work on areas of high crash.

we're going to be implementing speed reductions near senior centers, building on some analysis that identified senior-serving facilities. there are about a dozen locations we've identified that meets the criteria to reduce to 25 miles per hour which we company to m.p. by the end of the -- implement by the end of the year. we've identified the prop 8 location for your red lights and listed here on the approaches that will be prioritized. based on the data for injury crashes. so we've committed $2 million to expand our existing camera program and designing of the expansion will begin this year. >> commissioner peskin: mr. chairman, if i may jump in on

the camera program. ms. reeves, mr. chairman, is it okay if i hop in, or do you want me to hold my questions until the end? >> chair yee: how much more do you have? >> just a few minutes. a few more slides. >> chair yee: why don't we finish up, because i have questions, too. >> commissioner peskin: okay. >> okay. so a few quick highlights. in terms of our safe people work, our vision zero outreach is largely on hold due to shelter-in-place. that includes the street team outreach and post fatality outreach, however we do have updates for looking ahead. for safer intersections, by the end of october, we'll be launching our safer intersection campaign which focuses on reducing left-turn collision and this education campaign is funded by the active transportation program grant.

we also are coordinating with the youth art exchange which is a recipient of supervisor yee's participatory budget grant, so we'll be working with high school students to develop vision zero-related visuals to run on transit vehicles. and last we received another office of traffic safety grant to continue our motorcycle safety program, so we'll be partnering with the police department to provide safety training next spring and summer. and then finally, our -- just a brief update on the data systems team. we've expedited our data process to share more quickly the commission information. it's been updated to reflect data through the beginning of this year, which is an accelerated schedule. you can search for information and this is something that our planners and engineers use.

that concludes my presentation. i'm happy to answer questions. >> chair yee: thank you very much, ms. reeves. commissioner peskin? >> commissioner peskin: thank you, chair yee. i just want to drill down a little bit into the light enforcement and if by way of background, how many cameras are there now? my recollection is that there is about a dozen. we had an old program that used to be done with the old thing called film. that took a long time to develop. then we went to a digital system a few years ago, but can you just remind us and the folks who are listening what the current state of the digital red light camera program is? how many we have? and what the numbers are? and both as to enforcement and

as to reduction of crashes? >> sure. so i don't know -- i'm going to pause for a minute and see if my colleague is on the line that leads our red light camera program. i don't think he is. jamie, i just want to invite you in, if you have any summary of behalf of ricardo. i believe we have about a dozen or so cameras and that we have moved to a digital program. >> commissioner peskin: and those things are true. >> yes. so jamie, sfmta, so ricardo, the city traffic engineer would have the most detailed information, but i can provide a little information as well. commissioner peskin, you're correct, i think it's 13 cameras we have and the transition to the digital system was completed in 2019.

so that was a fairly capital intensive process and the red light camera program is capital intensive. it's like building a new traffic signal next to your new traffic signal, it's about $300,000 for each intersection we do. we have committed $4 million. so that is the list of locations that ryan shared earlier. >> commissioner peskin: so through the chair, mr. parks, what i'm really looking for is data as to those 13 intersections relative to the improvement of pedestrian and vehicular and bicycle safety. we have 2020 year to date numbers.

that's what i'm trying to drill down into. do we have a map as to where those 13 are? i assume that those were the same locations where we had the old lane things that used to stick out and flash. i assume we replaced those at the same locations, which is primarily on the east side. many of them in the corner of the city that i represent. >> >> chair yee: i think there was an earlier slide that indicated the locations. can you pull that up? >> yes, let me figure out how to get back to the -- >> and, yeah, i think this is the list of the eight -- >> commissioner peskin: that's the expansion. >> of the 13 we have out now, we do have a list on our website

that we can send out. but around eight of those are pre-existing locations, already zone-based systems. and i think four or five were candidates for new locations. and for the previous ones, i think we did do a presentation maybe last year on kind of crash data so we could share that again and we'll be doing a similar analysis on the new locations once we have one year of full data. >> commissioner peskin: presumably, when in 2019 did the 13 digital cameras go in? >> i don't have the exact date. it was toward the end of 2019 that we finished it. >> commissioner peskin: presumably, we have one year of data as we're toward the end of 2020. >> this is ricardo. hi, can you hear me? >> chair yee: yes. >> yeah, we have the data for the locations that are now

active. we activated the last few locations this year. this system as a whole is giving about over 800 citations every month. and we'll be looking to see how that impacts safety in the next few months because crash data typically lags a little bit. so -- but i think that my colleagues have covered most of the details. we can provide more information to you, commissioner, on the locations. and the data of how many citations are given by each location. >> commissioner peskin: yeah, i think -- if chair yee will indulge me, i think it would be really helpful to have that particularly as we're talking -- we're all 100% in on automated speed enforcement and have vested time to get the state of

california to give us that authority and try to get law enforcement statewide and in san francisco to get out of the way and allow that bill to pass in the state legislature. but, as we are deciding what to do with our ever increasing amount of capital money -- as we're expanding by eight intersections, which intuitively sounds like a good thing, i really would like to hear what the data is -- 800 a month across 13 cameras sounds robust, but if that could be broken down? and insofar as the vision zero committee doesn't meet that often and insofar as the champion of the committee for the time being has been my colleague, commissioner yee, if commissioner yee would indulge

me, i would love to have that at our next full transportation authority meeting in october. just an information item on red-light cameras. i think that would be really helpful. and relative to the crash data that lags, i still think we should have a snapshot of data as to how it is improving or not pedestrian or bicycle safety. i would really like to drill down in that and if chair yee would indulge me, i would ask our staff to calendar that as an information item at our first meeting in october. >> chair yee: i definitely support the motion here for your ask. knowing that vision zero doesn't meet all that often and opportunity for the next one.

i'm also interested in the effectiveness of these cameras. i'm going to go further with this discussion. it's not only -- so you have the intersections where cameras are at and a lot of these streets -- at least the ones that i can see for the expansion -- are on streets where there are a series of signals either before or after the signal where they actually have the camera. is it possible to even go further in terms of the analysis, whether that one camera, let's say -- i'll take a golden gate at franklin -- does that impact other intersections?

because you know, slow down possibly? cars that might be running the signals there, it might also have impact on drivers not wanting to run signals -- a few signals away. so the question is, can we actually figure out if there is impact on the particular intersection? >> one thing i want to add is that the red light camera program is within a larger safety program that emphasizes the use of other engineering methods to reduce red-light running, so the cameras are a measure of last resort when we've tried everything else. one thing we can also discuss is other tactics we have to reduce red-light running. some we've done engineering

improvements, so the idea is that the red light camera as an investment and enforcement mechanism is kind of the last resort to make sure that people obey the traffic signals. >> chair yee: so which is the same question then. in regards to effectiveness, it's the broader strategy using the red light signal cameras as part of the strategy. can we measure the impact of that particular strategy -- overall strategy? >> yes. i think we can make a presentation to discuss the overall strategy, overall red light running in the city has declined relative the trend. so i think we have a successful approach in terms of engineering and enforcement as far as red-light running is concerned.

obviously, we can do much more, but as commissioner peskin pointed out, we have limited resources, so in choosing to make enforcement for engineering improvements, we want to make sure we have the right mix. the expansion we're proposing i think is a relatively reasonable approach to the locations we've singled out. they've already had engineering improvement. we have a capital project where we continue to make signals upgrades, make them prominent. removing that element of i didn't see the signal, i was distracted, i ran the red light. that is something we can explain how cameras fit into the overall safety program. but again, there are safety measures, they're not a revenue measure. we're always looking to make sure the program is basically foundational on safety.

>> chair yee: thank you. i mean, that would be very interesting to hear. commissioner peskin, anything else? >> commissioner peskin: i do have other questions, particularly as it relates to the quick-build program which we're all very pleased with, but also want to drill down into understanding data relative to the success of those programs, particularly at it relates to pedestrians safety. so i wanted to drill down into that set of data, too. >> chair yee: is that a question for right now? >> commissioner peskin: well, to the extent that it can be answered right now, yes. and to the extent that it can't, we can also make that part of the item for the first full t.a. information item in october. >> chair yee: great, okay.

staff? can you respond? >> sure. so i would actually suggest that we -- i think we can cover a lot of that through item 5 on the agenda, on the safe streets evaluation program. so we do comprehensively collect before and after data for the quick-build and evaluate the safety benefits for pedestrian safety, bicycle safety and people driving. so hopefully we'll cover questions as item 5 and if we can drill down into more there. if that's okay, commissioner? >> commissioner peskin: that's great. >> chair yee: that's fine. commissioner stefani? >> vice chair stefani: yes. i have -- [inaudible] >> chair yee: you're breaking up a little bit. >> vice chair stefani: can you hear me now? >> chair yee: yes. >> vice chair stefani: i am

wondering why we have not included or i'd like to know whether or not it's being investigated whether or not to have a red-light camera expansion geary and gough where one of my constituents was recently killed. and we just had a huge zoom meeting with this with m.t.a. on that and i believe jamie park is on that. i want to know if it's something that was brought up, and it's very necessary, so if someone can respond, i would greatly appreciate it. >> the locations we're looking at are based on five-year crash trends, so we have the outliers. i'm aware of the geary and gough incident. it was a horrific and tragic

event. the locations have not been selected yet. we're trying to do other improvements there to improve red-light running, including making signal improvements. so we have other measures we could do short of a red-light camera. they're already in construction. so like i said, there is various approaches we can take to reduce red-light running and what we can do is make sure all the signals are prominent and we feel there are changes that we need to do at geary and gough that would be short of a red light camera. >> vice chair stefani: thank you for that. would you stay in touch with my office, what improvements will be made and when? >> yeah, we can inform you about the schedule of the improvements at that location. >> vice chair stefani: thank you. >> chair yee: thank you. so in regards to the seniors'

zones that we were talking about, can you provide us with -- at least provide me with a list of where they are? >> yeah, ricardo, i think that is something we could send after this meeting, is that right? >> yeah, we can provide the details of the location for this first round of lower speed limits around seniors' homes. >> chair yee: when is that going to be implemented? >> i believe we're -- >> we're hoping -- >> go ahead. >> i believe that our team is planning to implement those by the end of this year. >> chair yee: and basically, posting speed limit signs around the area? or what would you do?

>> ricardo, i'll let you answer that. >> yeah, the signs would be posted on the street with the speed limit over 25 miles per hour and it would be a 25 mile-per-hour posted speed limit, similar to what is done around schools. so it's a lower speed limit allowable by the california vehicle code on the street that is affronting the senior facility that has a speed limit over 25. >> chair yee: i know that commissioner fewer had mentioned several times in terms of connected to the senior zones would be implementing a program that would be similar to safe streets to school or something. and is there some similar we're doing with maybe making a pathway for seniors that would

be safer than not? >> i'm not aware -- i think that the project that ricardo is doing the signs is focused specifically on signage. i'm not aware of any other type of other efforts. so, no, i don't think we have any. >> chair yee: okay. i'm curious if there is any thought at all. i think it's called safe passage to schools. talking about safe passage to senior centers. maybe it was not emphasized as much as i thought. i'm going to ask one. so in regards to the daylighting and rolling out the next many,

is there a plan? what are the plans? what are the locations? has this been determined yet? >> no. that's going to be the project that started. we'll work with the supervisors to identify corridors in each of their districts. so we have not identified an initial set of locations yet. we're working right now on getting the funding lined up with t.a. and we are planning other locations. like i mentioned, the locations will be selected based on the network, but the locations have not been selected yet. >> chair yee: these are the 500 intersections that was part of the legislation that was passed last year? is that correct? >> so in response to that resolution, we have continued to

make progress on the daylighting since that resolution was issued in 20 -- i believe it was may 2019. and we've done about 500 since then, so these are a new set of locations. >> chair yee: fantastic. thank you very much. any other questions? seeing none, is there any public comment on this item? thank you very much, ms. reeves.

>> yes, this is good morning, everyone. i'm from m.t.c. i hope you're all doing okay in this these challenging times. in terms of an introduction, i oversee two areas, one is the regional safety program and the other is the region's asset management program. and if i could call on my slides to be put up, please? great. so i was requested to talk about the recent adoption of the vision zero policy. the m.t.c. moved unanimously in june for the first time ever.

apart from the policy itself, my presentation today will discuss m.t.c.'s role in providing regional leadership to promote safety. the need to apply a data-driven approach to inform regional safety policies and the importance of promoting equity in regional safety policies. and i'd like to start with the quick background, please. so this slide is mainly to give you an understanding of the severity of the problem at the regional level. this is something that most of you may already be aware of. over 400 people are killed and more than 2000 people are seriously injured on the bay area roads each year as result of traffic crashes. now, traffic deaths and life changing injuries impact the lives of friends, family, neighbors and community members, but us as policymakers, they

have a major economic cost estimated to be at least $4 billion for the region. and this was a long time ago, so i'm sure the amount of $4 billion has gone up considerably. triple-a found that costs resulting from crashes are three times more than that have of congestion. unfortunately, these traffic deaths and serious injuries in the region, disproportionately affect those in communities of color and low-income communities as well as our vulnerable population, which is those biking and walking. what this shows is that our active mode as community are concerned are disproportionately -- accident zones, are disproportionately represented. to again make things worse, these fatalities and serious injuries in the region have been

increasing. over the last decade, the bayview fatalities have increased by 50%. as a practical matter, they are down this year because of covid-19, but we expect the traffic safety to return as soon as it increases. it is important that we continue to plan for the future. by the way, when the shelter-in-place order was issued around mid march, as of the end of april, fatalities had plummeted to zero in the bay area. but they've been increasing over the following months and increased over 50% so far. now, this is not just a regional problem. it is a national problem. and jurisdictions across the nation are adopting the goals of

vision zero. you all know that vision zero means that the only justifiably traffic fatality number is zero. san francisco is a leader not just in the state, but around the region as well. now, m.t.c. believes that safety should be a top priority for our region. safety is very much a regional issue. and we wanted to supplement the -- by the vision zero in the region, but help the smaller jurisdictions that do not have a safety program in place or resources to have one. in talking with stakeholders, it is our belief that a strategy and approach can promote improved safety and potentially eliminate costs among the jurisdictions, allowing cities to redirect the dollars towards implementing engineering

projects and policies that enhance safety. now apart from this main reason, there are other reasons why it's important for m.t.c. to take a role. there are some things we're qualified to do under federal and state policies, under the fast act and bills required to adopt. m.t.c. has adopted three rounds of targets so far to be adopted. our 2018, 2019, 2020 targets in line with the -- by 2030. these were aspirational targets to send out a message that safety is important to the region. now there is also increasing focus on safety at the state level as well. cal translaunched a second phase. and has added safety plans as a

requirement for receiving funds which are major source of safety funding. m.t.c.'s role is very important here to work with the state and federal agencies to help us focus on safety, as well as in our region, as well as to bring in additional response to our acts. additionally, the regional transportation plan has been the goal for 20 years. there are lots of benefits with m.t.c. taking the role in regional safety as safety is definitely a regional issue. the basic idea is that dramatic results in roadway safety are more likely to result from a collaborative effort among stakeholders than from a single agency. and we also believe that collaboration with many minds across the city and our regions. and tackling traffic fatality is

a major equity -- and ask that m.t.c. can strive to keep focus on equity in the regional safety report. now it ties into key planned areas by encouraging active transportation if it can make the region safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. reducing greenhouse gas and addressing the significant equity issue hopefully. so one of the first steps. this is new to m.t.c. one of the first steps and mainly what the presentation is about today, is we wanted to take this step, this first step, of adopting the vision zero policy for enhancing safety in the region. this would be a foundational element as it would help us establish a vision for safety

for the region. and make sure that regional leadership is on board, as political will is very important. now the statement listed here. so the regional leader establishes a policy of -- for m.t.c. to work with partner agencies to create and support equitable and data-driven action toward eliminating traffic death and serious injuries in the bay area by the year 2030. 2030 is in alignment for the safety targets. now the focus here, as you can tell, is working together. m.t.c. taking the leadership role and encouraging and supporting actions toward enhancing safety in the region. as self of the safety policies and projects have to be implemented by the cities themselves. and this would also help m.t.c. to prioritize the safety lens in the work that we already do.

now, this policy also establishes a framework of principles and actions to guide m.t.c. staff in working toward these policy goals as summarized on this slide. the first is regional safety leadership and the hope is to promote safety to foster a culture of safety and engage and incentivize to prioritize safety and work to aligning funding policies with safety goals. later, the main focus, data driven approach and strategic use of the available funds and resources. equity will be under the -- as i've been mentioning and we will focus on promoting regional safety policies by analyzing impacted communities of concern. then m.t.c. would hopefully go on to support these safety

policies and legislation that advance evidence-based solutions to safety problems. and finally, the education and engagement piece recognizing that this needs to be collaborative process, m.t.c. will engage stakeholders with safety policy implementation and collaboration and safety best practices. so the hope is to provide education and technical assistance within budgetary constraints. and overall, we're hoping to do as much as we can and it will depend on the availability of resources. this is a starting point and we plan on coming back with specific proposals to help achieve the goals. so to complement this vision zero policy, m.t.c. staff is working on establishing a regional safety program that would rely on a three pronged approach to inform or enhance

safety in the region. now data would be the critical and foundational piece since vision zero and best practices around safety and data driven. we need to have data to make a systematic approach to safety. we're working on building out this data system that would integrate multiple safety data and how regional safety data at m.t.c., so that local jurisdictions can benefit from consistent and reliable -- actually, if we could jump to slide number 10. that's the next slide. i can show you a quick visual, sort of similar toward safety visualization would be like. but hopefully, this would integrate safety-related into a single data depository. the smaller jurisdictions can rely on this for making informed

decisions. they're also hoping to use this local map to better identify isolate and analyze these critical safety issues. and apply specific targeted investments. if we could jump back to the earlier slide, side number 9, please. thank you. so secondly, so that's the data aspect. secondly, m.t.c. is hoping to use data to integrate the regional policies on safety and hopefully support legislation that has proven to be effective. such as lower speed limits. and also aligning funding policies -- you know, safety goals and hopefully leverage federal and safety and bring in additional dollars to the region. finally, on the resources available, we hope to support the jurisdictions that are providing technical assistance around safety planning. the safety data would be a key aspect of the technical

assistance. maybe provide training, resources like consulting and assistance with smaller cities that are adopting their own safety plans. again, this may be useful to smaller cities that may not have access to the data of large cities. we're hoping these three combined websites, the leadership will be a huge step for traffic safety around the bay area region. if we can move on to slide number 11, two slides, please. great. thank you. so as we worked on the developing the vision zero policy and program we've been engaging partners and collaborating toward this end. in terms of steps taken so far, we organized the exchange a year and a half with regional, state and national stakeholders to learn from and share best practices. we presented the regional safety

program, a policy concept and framework to state and regional stakeholder groups and convened in the cities as well to identify how to support their ongoing efforts. and the framework for this policy and program that i presented today is informed by those meetings. we applied for and received funding for the development of the data system i was talking about and developing the state of safety in the region report. so we received half a million dollars in the fund. and then we, as i mentioned, we adopted regional safety targets in line 2030. we've done one more thing. up until now, it was convincing our leadership to adopt a regional vision zero policy to develop a brand new program. and i'm glad that we've seen

that now, but we also have to take steps to enforcing safety policies around the region. and then recently, we awarded a contract to develop the safety and we will be forming a regional vision zero task force, a working group that focuses on enhancing safety in the region x needs of the regional level, but then we would also be focusing on sharing best practices around the region and working on policy and legislative initiative that will be most useful. next slide, please. i think that brings me to the

end of the presentation. we are hoping that we can leverage this time of public health in the region to prioritize safety and equity on the roads in a long lasting way. i'm happy to answer any questions and take any feedback on this. thank you. >> chair yee: any questions from the colleagues? first of all, i want to thank -- for the presentation. i'm getting a lot of feedback. are you hearing feedback? echo sound? okay, just me, then. i wanted to also commend m.t.c. for the work around vision zero. and i'm kind of glad that we're going to take a regional approach on this.

not everything that happens in san francisco and elsewhere are done by the local drivers themselves. people coming in and out of town. and people from san francisco throughout the bay area. and to me, like everything else we do in the bay area, it's always best to have a regional approach. one of the questions i -- seems like wasn't covered. whether or not m.t.c. could use their influence in asking the other bay area cities and counties whether or not they would consider maybe making a policy statement or a resolution to support our san francisco and san jose attempt to allow us to

use automated speed cameras for enforcement? i think that the time is right. we have not been able to get through state legislation. but my feeling is that if we were to re-introduce it again to our state legislator david chiu, there is probably a little more support at this point and hopefully we can get it going. >> yeah. that is definitely noted. and one of the areas that we wanted to again make progress in once the regional vision zero policy is adopted, is to have our commission lend to the initiatives. and then through the vision zero task force we're convening soon, hopefully these issues, or legislative ideas can be brought up to the group. we're hoping that several cities and jurisdictions will attend. i'm seeing a lot of interest

around the region towards something like this. and hopefully we can combine our efforts in order to make something like this happen. so i've noted that as well. >> chair yee: okay. that's happy news [laughter]. once again, thank you for your presentation. i don't see anybody else on the roster. so, madame clerk, anybody for public comment? >> clerk: there is no public comment. >> chair yee: okay. so public comment is now closed. this is an informational item, so it's closed. madame clerk, the next item? item 5, please. >> item 5, safe streets evaluation. this is an information -- >> chair yee: hold on a second. commissioner stefani, i'm sorry,

did i miss you on the roster? >> vice chair stefani: no, that was an old -- chair. >> chair yee: thank you. continue, please. >> clerk: item 5, safe streets evaluation, this is an information item. >> chair yee: okay. kalia from sfmta will be here to present. >> yes, hi, everyone. i'm sorry, i think i'm showing up as someone else because i had technical difficulties. and i.t. got me in the back door, so i'm showing up as s.h., but i'm kalia wang from the sfmta. hopefully, you can see me. i don't know if we have the presentation up? let's see.

lang. i'm on livable streets in sfmta. so, hi, everyone. thanks for listening to this presence today. -- presentation today. i wanted to cover today, first of all, i'm the manager of the safe streets evaluation program which tracks performance as our bicycle, pedestrian and traffic-calming project. so commissioner peskin, a lot of what you were referring to earlier, we're going to cover today. and we had a year and report that covered some of this stuff you brought up and we continue do this every year. this is a continual process and this is findings that we are

summarizing for 2019. so today i'm going to go over some of the top -- for 2019. and i'm specifically going to talk about our project that prioritized pedestrians, people. some of our projects that really helped increase a lot of the safety for biking and bicyclists. some of our projects that pushed the envelope and put out innovative designs. we're going to talk about how people feel about our project. some of our public perception surveys. >> commissioner peskin: you're frozen, ms. lang. >> chair yee: you're back.

ms. lang, when you get frozen again, try turning off your audio, maybe that would help -- not audio. video. >> video, sure. i think someone else is projecting the slides. so i'll take off my video so it helps. so here we go. key findings over the last year. very similar to some of the things we found out in 2018. our protected bike facilities are increasing ridership, reducing the blockage of bike lanes. our safety projects are reducing vehicle speeds and improving our loading experiences. same goes for some of our proactive neighborhood traffic calming which is leading to reducing vehicle speeds in the residential neighborhoods. the separated bike signals, reducing close calls between through-moving vehicles and

right-turning vehicles and turning bikes. and our quick build projects have been successful. they cost a fraction of the large capital projects and can be quickly implemented and are effective. lastly, we heard from a wide range of voices and while we have some things to improve on, our new and improved facilities are making people feel safer and more comfortable. we also started to learn about some of the things that we need to improve on. this is really important because we need to tweak our designs continually and get better and better with how we put forward our projects. so we learned that our partially raised projects, especially in commercial corridors, may still require barriers to stop vehicles from entering. some of our sequential bike

signals have issues. we're still finding they help with avoiding the interactions between bikes and vehicles, but some of the compliance isn't there when the timing isn't right. left-turn restrictions need enforcement and our large capital projects have long time lines and high price tags. they should be accompanied by quick build efforts to make changes as soon as possible. lastly, we need more reporting on equity. while we've better represented a wider demographic, our program can go further to report on our process and our projects and how we're doing with the most vulnerable communities. next slide, please. so first, we'll review the projects completed in 2019 that prioritize pedestrians. some of our major capital wide

projects, like polk and second street. sorry, i have a dog next to me making noises. sorry. different world right now. sorry. so back to this, some of the major capital projects, resulted in lowered vehicle speeds. so on second street, we saw a 13% decrease in 85 percentile speeds and on poke, we saw 80% decrease. one of the quick-builds we saw 20%. that shows you that both the capital and the quick build projects are having major effects on vehicle speeds. >> commissioner peskin: if you could for this ignorant commissioner, explain what an 85th percentile speed means.

>> 85th percentile is different from the average vehicle speed because it is looking at what the vehicle is moving within an 85th percentile. -- [inaudible] >> commissioner peskin: oops, we've lost you. >> [inaudible] >> chair yee: so you were breaking up as you were making the last couple of sentences. we still cannot hear you. you're still frozen, i believe.

>> commissioner peskin: you might want to log in and log out. or log out and log in. chair yee, would you like us to move to the next item and come back? >> chair yee: i think so -- >> this is jamie, given the issues, i can try to give an abbreviated version of the presentation. i don't have as many details, it would be slightly shorter. if that is acceptable, i could give the rest of the presentation as she works on the

technical issues. >> chair yee: i appreciate your offer. we're going to be asking a lot of questions. talia, are you back yet? >> i am here. i can see you, but i don't know if you can see me. >> chair yee: i can see you and hear you. >> okay. great. so i'm going to keep going. sorry, guys, for the pause. not sure what is happening. >> chair yee: commissioner peskin had asked a question in terms of 85 percentile? and you were trying and we didn't hear anything. >> okay. yes, so 85 percentile basically is what is used to determine the speed limit. it kind of looks at the higher end of the egregious and takes that into account, rather than average speeds where it looks at the lower end and higher end. i don't know if it can be

explained better, but i can come back with a detailed definition. what it is getting at is the higher end of the speeding issues rather than an average speed that looks at the whole range. >> chair yee: if you could explain on the 8th avenue neighborhood -- neighborway. >> commissioner peskin: the previous slide. that works, too. >> chair yee: yep. it has parentheses, 5 miles per hour. >> so the excelsior neighborhood traffic calming there was 18% reduction in the average number of vehicles traveling over 20 miles per hour. that gives you an indication of what is happening at the higher end of the speeds and the reduction that is happening there. then it gives the 1% in the 85th

percentile speeds, so the 10 different streets. what it is telling you, overall the speeds went down significantly in excelsior. for golden gate park traffic safety, it's similar. we put in crosswalks and speed humps and saw the vehicles traveling over 30 miles per hour fall 42% park-wide. in 8th avenue, we saw 18% decrease in 85th percentile speeds and that was a decrease of 5 miles per hour. so that is -- john muir boulevard we put in three raised crosswalks and we saw 85th percentile speeds full by 14 miles per hour, or 43 to 29 miles per hour. that's a significant drop. and i just wanted to note that vehicle speed is perhaps the most single effective thing we can do to make pedestrians

safer. even small reductions in speed can dramatically affect the severity of the collision. the greatest thing to do to increase pedestrian safety is reduce speeds. what we're seeing is the projects where we removed the lane of traffic and those really helped to reduce the speeds. and then our neighborhood-wide traffic calming projects are really doing this. they're really making a dent in reducing speeds and that's going to help with pedestrian safety. >> commissioner peskin: mr. chairman, if i may, through the chair, is there any cross correlation to data relative to actual numbers of reductions in those thoroughfares or neighborhoods as it relates to crash data, injuries and fatalities? >> so, our program specifically doesn't look at much at the collision data because that

takes a while to come through. usually look at a five-year span. so we're trying to look at the immediate before-after effects of the project and understand right away what is happening so we can make tweaks and changes to the next project or the same project. but, yes, as our projects have been in the ground for longer, we will go back and start to look at the collision data and see what is telling us well. sometimes -- as well. sometimes it's inclusive of many things going on. for instance, the pandemic and the drop of vehicles out there. so some of our metrics that we use in our program really look at the specifics of what is out there, speeds before and after, and then some of the conflict data, so that we can understand in realtime what is happening and what the effect is.

>> i can add to that as well, that while it may take a little time to get into the crash data to have a full picture, we know that reducing speeding is the number one thing we can do to improve pedestrian safety. if a pedestrian is struck by a car at 40 miles per hour, they have something like a 95% chance of being a fatality. at 20 miles per hour, they have a 95% chance of surviving. so when we see speed reductions on the project, we know that is going to result in a safety outcome as we look at the crash data down the line. >> chair yee: by the way, i personally have witnessed the slowdown around john muir boulevard as i go around it all the time. it's substantial in terms of the slowdown, so this data supports what i've seen. >> great. next slide. so looking at more loading

behavior, in looking at one of our quick-build projects, in the before condition, we saw 40% of loading occurring through double parking and after that, we saw 100% reduction in double parking due to the ample loading zone. on 6th street, we saw 9% reduction in double parking and 76% reduction in loading time. again, another quick-build project. as we've implemented the innovative projects, including our bike lane -- protect d like lane projects, we're monitoring to make sure there is safe access to the curb for safety -- [inaudible] >> chair yee: so you're breaking up again. >> okay. sorry. is that a little bit better? >> chair yee: yeah. >> okay.

sorry about that. okay, so just mentioning that with a lot of our new projects and our innovative design, we're making sure to continue to monitor how they perform in terms of access to the curb for our most vulnerable populations, including seniors, children and people with disabilities. and in light of that, we looked at valencia street closely to understand how that new boarding island worked with the school children and the cyclists in terms of any conflicts. we observed no close calls at the new boarding island and we observed those during the peak times of the school hours. while the number of interactions did increase, the parties still yielded to each other, with pedestrians yielding to cyclists. we're continuing to look at that

in detail. and starting a study to look at specifically our transit boarding islands and other features of accessible design and how they're working with our new projects. and we'll have some more information about that over the next year. masonic avenue is another project we looked at the transit boarding island and saw that the -- observed that bicycle-pedestrian interactions were insignificant to the overall volume and there were no close calls observed. a close call, so everyone -- [inaudible] -- is a near-miss. we've tried to delineate how to observe certain interactions and a close call means there is something close to happening between a pedestrian and vehicle or a pedestrian and a bike. next slide, please. so again looking a little deeper

at safer taylor and the pedestrian yielding behavior happening there. we made some changes in the west crosswalk at taylor and ellis where we put in a new signal and we saw that the number of vehicles yielding to pedestrians during the morning peak increased by 58%. and close calls dropped from 14 to 0. overall, the number of vehicles yielding to pedestrians increased by an average of 25% on both taylor and ellis greets and taylor and greery streets where we made signal changes. next slide, please. so, when we incorporate a lot of our large corridor projects and we -- which usually include some sort of lane reduction, one significant impact is always vehicle travel time.

and so understanding that and understanding the needs of the -- the balanced needs of the communities. we're trying to just understand what this does to travel time when which put in our improvement. and so on polk street, we saw that the vehicle traffic time increased by 3.4 minutes during the morning peak. a note there, though, is that polk street was under construction at the same time that van ness is, so that increase could have been due in part to the van ness construction. on safe route taylor, the quick build, we saw a 35 second increase which is only a slight increase. on 6th street, we saw a vehicle travel time increase -- [inaudible] [inaudible] -- -- >> chair yee: um.

so -- so kalia is -- has a bad connection. can you go ahead and complete? >> i can step in. we're running short on time. my lack of detailed knowledge will run through the additional slides quickly. so on the -- one of the things we were measuring for in the evaluation program is travel

times, so even though our primary goal is safety, we want to make sure that the streets are working and not creating massive congestion. while we do see some increases in travel time, they're pretty moderate. and far outweighed by the safety benefits of the project. next slide. so i'm going to talk a little bit about some of the -- some of the specific findings from our bicycle project as well, because we've been investing a lot in protected bike facilities. one of things we've found, not surprising, when we put in protected bike facilities we see more cyclists using those streets. in particular where with eupgrade -- we upgraded from standards bike lanes to protected bike lanes to valencia street and 7th street, we saw

increases of 50% in cycling over the next year during commute times. next slide,: one of the reasons we're seeing that is because the experience of riding a bike on protected bike lane is much better than on the standard bike lane. we can see that in terms of the number of times you have to swerve around a vehicle that is blocking the bike lane. in valencia, 90% of the loading is taking place in the loading zone where it's supposed to, where previously a large portion of loading was happening in the bike lane. similarly on second street, we saw 90% reduction in blocking of the bike lane after we installed the protected facility on 2nd street. because of -- partially because of the improved loading

behavior, we're seeing significantly reduced bike and vehicle conflicts. so on valencia street, a 99% reduction in interaction. if you were in the middle of the block, you had to worry about the double parked car, or the ups van, now with the protected facility, it doesn't happen. the close calls have been reduced as well. >> commissioner peskin: if we can go back to the last slide on polk street. the one thing that i am seeing is the delivery vehicles actually pulling into the bike lane through the starchens. i see it a lot, but on the lower part of polk street and it kind of raises enforcement questions. what is happening relative to enforcement of that kind of

behavior? >> so, okay, first, we try to lead by providing appropriate loading goals. so on polk street, providing additional white and yellow zones. but where that does work, certainly enforcement. during shelter-in-place there was a reduction in april to july in terms of what our ppos, our officers were out doing. i think they are enforcing double-parking again now. so i don't have data if that changed behavior of polk. >> commissioner peskin: all you have to do is walk out of this building that i'm sitting in and walk three blocks up north of turk street and you will see it all the time. they just pull right through the stanchions, park in the middle of the bike lane and it happens

with impunity all the time. >> yeah. we can certainly pass that along. i'll say one thing we learned from valencia where we increased the number of tickets by 400%, that didn't see a significant reduction in double parking, it's a design issue. so it's either providing loading zones somewhere where people can use them, or changing -- maybe we need more posts on top. i don't know what it is, but sometimes it's the importance of the flux of the design. we can look at that as well. >> commissioner peskin: commissioner haney and i are happy to do a site visit with you. leave the building and walk up the street. >> yep. one of the things that we've installed with a number of our recent bike projects is bicycle-specific signals. while they're not perfect,

they're significantly better than the mixing zones we've installed previously. so we've seen over 80% of people biking complying with the signals. and over 90% of people driving are complying. and more importantly, we're seeing a 90% reduction in the close calls that were observed at the signals through the mixing zones. the mixing zone suggests, you're mixing bikes and vehicles. you end up with a lot of close calls. so we found that the bike signals have improved things significantly. next slide. so we're continuing to tweak things and add innovative features where we can. octavia, we closed the block.

we put in a two-way facility on indiana street on the strained intersection there on 25th street. that is working there. we've seen less illegal riding there. and we put special bike slots in on 8th avenue and observed that most cyclists are using them. and going forward we'll be using the bike slots as a standard feature. one thing mentioned earlier, in add to data, we want to understand how people are using the facilities and how they feel about it. we want to build streets that people want to be on. generally we're finding after the project, most people report feeling better on the street than they did before and that is regardless of whether they're biking, walking or driving and that's true on valencia, as well

as masonic. so going forward, this is an annual program we run for vision zero, so we want to continue building on the work that we've done and kalia's team has done to evaluate every project we do. we're also challenged in 2020 to figure out how to do that with covid-19, because it's changed so many things. so we're trying to figure out how do before-after data there. on our surveys, we wanted to make sure we're getting a diverse cross section of all of san francisco. and what we found is that maybe the people who are more transportation geeked than others are likely to fill out the surveys and we want to make sure we're getting to everybody and getting true results of how

people are feeling. including new metrics on how we're dealing with equities and serving the communities. next slide. i think that's maybe all the slides. so i did my best there. i'm happy to take questions and if talia is back on, she can help you out. >> again, i apologize, i'm not sure what is going on with the connection. thank you, jamie, for taking over. and i'm here to answer any specific questions and i can also follow-up individually with anybody that needs more information. we have a lot more detail than what is shown in the presentation. we also have our yearly report which is on our website which was listed in the last slide. so i'm happy to get you any more information if you're interested. >> chair yee: first of all, i want to thank you for the

presentation and certainly in regards to these are concerning bike riders and traffic, a great presentation how it impacted that. maybe i'm missing something here, but for the report, i felt like the discussion around pedestrians in general was kind of lacking. it talked about it a little bit, but it doesn't really indicate what kind of impacts any of that stuff is having. and so hopefully in the future when you do such a presentation, that it can be balanced a little more with some of the things we're concerned about in regards

to pedestrian safety. i think part of it is when you talk about all these projects, it doesn't really -- i don't know. i'm not getting a sense that -- it's almost two-thirds of the presentation is about bike safety. and so i didn't get much of a sense what we're doing for pedestrian safety. are there things you didn't report on that you're doing? would you know about? >> so i can try to speak to that, commissioner yee. thank you for the comment. yes, so you know, one of the major aspects of helping with the pedestrian safety is what i had mentioned before about decreasing speeds. so some of our projects are

really -- our pedestrian focused projects are focused on that, the traffic calming work and the lane reduction work where the major move was to reduce the lanes of traffic to help reduce speeds. and that is probably the most significant thing we can do toward pedestrians. however, i hear you. there are other aspects we're working on. i just wanted to remind, if you haven't seen it, we did do a lot of work on evaluating painted safety zones and r.s.b.s, rectangular flashing beacons in our previous report. and daylighting as well. we looked at daylighting in the tenderloin and we continue to do so. as i said, this is sort of an iterative program, we're continually evaluating things. we're going to look at

pedestrian scrambles and how those are faring. and just another note is that some of the things that we have gotten asked to evaluate, such as leading pedestrian intervals which gives pedestrians a head start crossing the road, those are great features and we're definitely incorporating them in our work as much as we can, however, those have a lot of nationwide research backing them up already. and so we can do some work to look at countermeasures across the city here, but we already know nationwide through in-depth studies and that give us a wide range of statistics, that have a big sample size, that those kind of features really do work. but, yes, to your point, i mentioned this before, probably went in and out, but we're

looking at access to the curb in the next year. and in terms of how that affects seniors and people with disabilities. and seeing how our projects relate to that work and, you know, how they're performing and how people feel about them. so we'll have even more information to come and we can take that note focusing more on pedestrians and specific features and try to improve on in the next year. >> chair yee: one of the comments that you made was that when you looked at some of the -- these situations where there might be close calls with collisions between bicyclists and pedestrians? and you said that the majority were -- you said the majority of

the situations were -- there was a conflict, that the bicyclist -- >> yield to the pedestrian. >> stop fort pedestrian. so i'm wondering when you say majority, is it 50% versus 95%? and the question then, do bicyclists that pedestrians have the right of way? >> well, so that number varies from project to project, but it's usually a significant majority, so not 50-something, but something like in the 70 to 80 range if not higher. generally speaking we see bikes yield to pedestrians. almost all of the time. so we can do some more work in terms of understanding exactly what the education is around it, but what we're seeing in our

data, bicyclists do understand that they need to yield to pedestrians. >> chair yee: i would appreciate we do more work on that. i'm seeing bicyclists go through and they know that pedestrians are crossing the street and it can get a little bit dangerous. one last question, i see that commissioner peskin is ready to ask some questions also. in regards to the streets that you did a lot of engineering and you saw there was a slowdown in the movement of traffic, were the signals -- in particular the oneway streets -- were they actual lly timed to slow down t traffic at all? >> so we did have some projects that incorporated signal-timing

changes. either to just help movement along during congestion periods and they sometimes make changes just to help the progression of the street, both for slowing down and helping with congestion. the project managers for those projects can answer that more specifically. but, yeah, usually there are signal-timing changes that occur as part of our larger corridor-wide projects. >> chair yee: you may not have the answer for this, but i certainly would be interested. would you make those adjustments on these signals in terms of how fast we're timing things for? are we seeing any difference in terms of vehicles trying to run or speed up to make these signals? or is there a reduction?

that information would be really important for me, because i'm thinking of some policy around signal-timing. >> got it. so you want to understand if people are making sudden movements because of the signal-timing changes. >> chair yee: yeah. they've always done that, but has it increased, decreased or what? that's what i'm curious about. >> we did do a study i think two or three years ago of how changing the signal-timing affected speeding. and we found that there was a measurable, but not huge benefit to it. so we can share that information. i think generally you one of the challenges i'm hearing from the program, data over years, but we're presenting just one year of data. so i think we need to find a way to present the full body of what we learned and not just a year

at a time, but we'll share the data on the signal timing changes that we have. >> commissioner peskin: thank you. actually, the discussion just had was exactly where i was going to go, which is i think it's very important to kind of standardize these reports as we gain more information. and to look at this longitudinally, because as this entire field is evolving, we're getting snapshots and it would be really helpful to see if over a period of time. we saw some of those graphs that went back ten years, but if we could standardize that and start moving that forward with 2020 evaluation, i think that would be remarkably helpful. so it would be a gamut of things from daylighting to the the

assessment of traffic signal upgrades. if we could see that longitudinally, that would be really helpful. but the reason that i put my name on the screen, mr. chairman, is that it is possible, but unlikely, that we will have another vision zero committee before you retire from this commission and this board of supervisors. so i just wanted to use the moment to thank you as a matter of personal experience that you survived, that you have really led the commission and board of supervisors on and have personally imbued into my policy thinking and came at a great personal tragedy to you, chairman yee.

so i just really wanted to thank you for being a champion of vision zero, holding us all accountable. and i wanted to note that today, as we reach the third quarter of 2020, i just wanted to thank you for your leadership. >> chair yee: i appreciate it. okay. any public comments on this item? >> yes, chair, there is public comment. >> chair yee: go ahead and invite the speaker. >> welcome, caller. your two minutes begins now. go ahead, caller. yes, your two minutes begins now.

yes. go ahead, caller. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> chair yee: could we go to the next call? hello? >> hold on just one second, chair. caller, can you please hold on a second?

>> okay. thank you, caller. okay, the caller has moved on.

>> chair yee: any other callers? >> no, chair. >> chair yee: public comment on this item is closed. this is informational item. so madame clerk, go ahead and call the next item. >> clerk: chair yee? sorry for the interruption. this is the director of the t.a. given the hour, i wanted to see if you wanted to continue the item to the full t.a. board in october? i think this might be actually of interest to many colleagues, walk sf, deep outreach and engagement work on the congestion pricing topic. and i wanted to check to see if that was an option you'd be interested in? >> chair yee: i think that is an excellent suggestion. i think others would be very interested on the topic. i will ask my colleagues.

do you feel we can move this item into the full board meeting in october? >> commissioner peskin: from one chair to another, actually, when i saw this on the agenda earlier, i think this actually transcends vision zero. i think it is a much larger area of public policy discussion. i really want to thank walk sf for the outreach work they've been doing, but this goes well beyond vision zero and i think the appropriate forum -- even if it wasn't the late hour, i was going to say this earlier, would be the full t.a. i think this should involve all 11 members and the public at large. so, yes, i would be absolutely happy to accommodate that on our calendar for the first meeting of the t.a. in october.

>> chair yee: okay. >> commissioner peskin: i see executive director chang giving me the actually second meeting, or it's the peace symbol. so whatever staff thinks. >> vice chair stefani: i concur, yes. >> chair yee: we'll go ahead and move this to the full t.a. meeting. all right? move on madame clerk. call the next item. >> item 7, introduction of new items. this is an information item. >> chair yee: thank you. there is no new items. so we will -- any public comment on the no new items? >> there is no public comment. >> chair yee: okay. let's move on then. let's go to item number 8. public comment.

>> clerk: there is no public comment. >> chair yee: public comment is now closed. madame clerk, are there any other things -- any other agenda? >> that is all, chair. >> chair yee: the meeting is adjourned. thank you, everybody. really going to miss you two on this committee. [laughter].

. >> president yee: of the 26 neighborhoods we have in west portal, it's probably the most unique in terms of a small little town. you can walk around here, and it feels different from the rest of san francisco.

people know each other. they shop here, they drink wine here. what makes it different is not only the people that live here, but the businesses, and without all these establishments, you wouldn't know one neighborhood from the other. el toreador is a unique restaurant. it's my favorite restaurant in san francisco, but when you look around, there's nowhere else that you'll see decorations like this, and it makes you feel like you're in a different world, which is very symbolic of west portal itself. >> well, the restaurant has been here since 1957, so we're going on 63 years in the neighborhood. my family came into it in 1987, with me coming in in 1988.

>> my husband was a designer, and he knew a lot about art, and he loved color, so that's what inspired him to do the decorati decorations. the few times we went to mexico, we tried to get as many things as we can, and we'd bring it in. even though we don't have no space, we try to make more space for everything else. >> president yee: juan of the reasons we came up with the legacy business concept, man eel businesses were closing down for a variety of reasons. it was a reaction to trying to keep our older businesses continuing in the city, and i think we've had some success, and i think this restaurant itself is probably proof that it works. >> having the legacy business

experience has helped us a lot, too because it makes it good for us because we have been in business so long and stayed here so long. >> we get to know people by name, and they bring their children, so we get to know them, also. it's a great experience to get to know them. supervisor yee comes to eat at the restaurant, so he's a wonderful customer, and he's very loyal to us. >> president yee: my favorite dish is the chile rellenos. i almost never from the same things. my owner's son comes out, you want the same thing again? >> well, we are known for our mole, and we do three different types of mole.

in the beginning, i wasn't too familiar with the whole legacy program, but san francisco, being committed to preserve a lot of the old-time businesses, it's important to preserve a lot of the old time flavor of these neighborhoods, and in that capacity, it was great to be recognized by the city and county of san francisco. >> i've been here 40 years, and i hope it will be another 40 years.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s..

>> my name is angela wilson and i'm an owner of the market i worked at a butcher for about 10 years and became a butcher you i was a restaurant cook started in sxos and went to uc; isn't that so and opened a cafe we have produce from small farms without small butcher shops hard for small farms to survive we have a

been a butcher shop since 1901 in the heights floor and the case are about from 1955 and it is only been a butcher shot not a lot of businesses if san francisco that have only been one thing. >> i'm all for vegetarians if you eat meat eat meat for quality and if we care of we're in a losing battle we need to support butcher shops eat less we sell the chickens with the head and feet open somebody has to make money when you pay $25 for a chicken i guarantee if you go to save way half of the chicken goes in the enlarge but we started affordable housing depends on it occurred to us

this is a male field people said good job even for a girl the interesting thing it is a women's field in most of world just here in united states it is that pay a man's job i'm an encountered woman and raise a son and teach i am who respect woman i consider all women's who work here to be impoverished and strong in san francisco labor is high our cost of good ideas we seal the best good ideas the profit margin that low but everything that is a laboring and that's a challenge in the town so many people chasing money and not i can guarantee everybody this is their passion. >> i'm the - i've been cooking mile whole life this is a really, really strong presence

of women heading up kitchens in the bay area it is really why i moved out here i think that we are really strong in the destroy and really off the pages kind of thing i feel like women befrp helps us to get back up i'm definitely the only female here i fell in love i love setting up and love knowing were any food comes from i do the lamb and that's how i got here today something special to have a female here a male dominated field so i think that it is very special to have women and

especially like it is going at it you know i'm a tiny girl but makes me feel good for sure. >> the sad thing the building is sold i'm renegotiating my lease the neighborhood wants us to be here with that said, this is a very difficult business it is a constant struggle to maintain freshness and deal with what we have to everyday it is a very high labor of business but something i'm proud of if you want to get a job at affordable housing done nasal you need a good attitude and the jobs on the bottom you take care of all the produce and the fish and computer ferry terminal and work your way up employing people with a passion for this

and empowering them to learn

. >> good afternoon, everyone. my name is naiomi kelly. we are joined here today with adrien adrian pawn, and dell seymor and mario pause. we're all here today because we want to make sure everyone fills out the census. it is our s.f. accounts campaign

is a multi-lingual, multi-cultural outreach that is canvassing many businesses, residences, and everyone to make sure that they fill out the census. we need to reach every corner of san francisco to remove barriers for your participation. i want to thank you to our partners. the self help for the elderly and all those who are helping us making sure that every san franciscan fills out the census. time is of the essence. completing the census in 2020 is more important than ever. census data informs our community mental health, child care systems, emergency services, nutrition programs, and education and healthcare resources. if we don't get counted, we won't get this important money that we need to serve our most

vulnerable residents. this means more accountability and representation to make sure our most vulnerable communities get the funding they deserve. the census is ending september 30, in one week. this is earlier than originally planned. it means there is a greater risk of an under count. we need to get the message out today. this is a call of action. do the census and do it now. it is easy. you can complete the nine questions in less than five minutes. i completed my household in three minutes. you can do it on -- you can fill out the census online at my2020census.gov or you can call by phone at 844-330-2020.

remember, the 2020 census is safe and confidential. your response to the census are protected by law and it cannot be shared by anyone including other governmentings a -- government agencies. do the census and do it now. we have a call of action and we are kicking this off which starts at civic center plaza. i would to address adrian pawn to tell you about the events coming up for the next week. thank you. [applaus [applause]. >> thank you, naomi and thank

you for your leadership. let's give us up for ms. naomi kelly, the city administrator. hi, everyone. thank you, first of all, for coming out and being present here today and helping us help our residents participate in the 2020 census. a lot of people in san francisco face barriers, language barriers, digital barriers, and physical barriers to doing the census on their own. that's why we are so grateful for all our community partners, the immigrant rights commission. i want to give a shout out to the immigrant rights share. everybody pulling together, every community, district, neighborhood, to do this for the san francisco family. so we are happy to launch today's event. we've already had more than 50

households participate in the census. that's going to help san francisco get its numbers up. because, you know, for every person who participates in the census, it brings in $2,000 each year for things that are important to the city, your pot-holes and p.p.e. for first responders, your hospitals and schools. every person that participates means that 400 seniors or little kids get to eat before their daily meal every single year. every single person can make a difference. as ms. kelly said, we need everybody to go online before september 30, the last day of the census, and do the census. it only takes a few minutes. for those who need the help, this is why in the next days we are going to be out in the community, starting at civic

center and tomorrow in chinatown, and on saturday at mendel plaza in the bayview and capping it off on tuesday, look for the big census bus, a lot of arts, billboards, a lot of lowriders and cars going all through the city to get everybody to participate. we can do this, but we can't do it by ourselves. we can't count on the census bureau to do all the counting. we have to do it for ourselves in san francisco. we have to do it because there are a lot of people depending on us. i want to thank our community partners, they are the awesome people out here volunteering with our city staff from the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs. with that, i'm going to introduce somebody who doesn't need any introduction. he is the mayor of the tenderloin, he is our hero, and has been doing it for the

tenderloin and the south market and district 6 since july of last year when we all started this, mr. dell seymor. >> hey, good afternoon. i will not be long. until a couple of years ago, i thought the united states citizen count was the most boring thing, but now i want to find out who cares and what matters. if the people who are standing here today, if each one of you all will go and recruit 10 people to come and sign up for the census, that will be about $100,000 to the city. you could bring $100,000 to the

city. do you know how many shelter beds that is, how many showers, how many meals? ask someone across the street what that $100,000 could mean to this city. they don't have any idea how many people are out here and on the streets and in need. they talk this b.s. that the african-american population is less than 4% of san francisco. tell me we are only 4%. that's one of the biggest myths there is. we can bust that mist by telling those people who we are. let's stand up and tell sacramento who we are and city hall and stand up and tell washington and number 45, i will not mention his name, let's tell

number 45 who we are, what we don't have, what we do have and what we don't have. it's all about our folks right now. we're hurting real bad right now and no one understands how many people are in need on our streets. come to the tenderloin and walk down the streets. watch people go in and out. go to some of the shelters in the morning where people walk out, not knowing where they're going, not having any idea where they are going for the day. i don't know if you account for it. you know where you're going and going to be tomorrow, sunday, and next week. our folks don't know where they're going to be at 6:01. we can change that to get more

funding for our communities in san francisco, but we have to be counted and stand up. one of the shirts over there says "i'm not invisible." we all need to be advisable. . we are our brothers and sisters keepers. thank you and thank you, folks, for inviting me on the program. god bless. i'm going to bring up mario who will give you his spiel. thank you. >> good afternoon, everyone. i want to acknowledge naomi kelly and adrian pawn, and

everyone behind me has been working so hard to make sure we get a complete census count in san francisco. 2020 is a year we're all going to remember. so many in our community have been beaten down by the pandemic and the economic fallout. right now in the city hall are the mayor and the city leaders trying to figure out how to navigate us through this crisis. it's not easy. it's hard. we want to make sure that we get through this crisis where no one is left behind. the only way we can do that is to make sure everyone completes the census. we need every federal dollar we are entitled to. we can't do it alone. we need you to tell your friends, family, make sure your children are counted. they are the most under counted. make a challenge in your own

family to reach out. this is critical. we've got 10 days left. there are events in the city if you need help completing the census, you can get the help. again, there is a lot at stake here. this is a year we're never going to forget. this city is resilient, strong, and has always been a national leader. we don't leave people behind in this city. we care about every resident. that's what we're asking san francisco to do, to care for every resident. stand up and fill out the census and be counted. thank you. >> let me do my cleanup duty her. >> this concludes our press conference. i want to thank everyone for being here today. fill out the census.

thank you. we need you. [♪]

welcome, city attorney herrera. >> good morning. thank you to mayor breed, chief scott, supervisors peskin and haney for joining me this morning to highlight our collective commitment to combating an all too familiar problem. open air drug dealing in the tenderloin. we're all created to solutions to make sure we combat this epidemic that is taking control of the tenderloin neighborhood. this morning, my office sued 28 known drug dealers, file. they do not live in the

tenderloin, but sell deadly drugs there. the drugs that are fueling the drug crisis in our streets. this is to stop the brazen drug-dealing that has plagued this neighborhood. last year alone 441 people died from drug overdoses in the city and the tenderloin had the highest overdose mortality rate of any neighborhood in the city. enough is enough. these injunctions are carefully crafted to simultaneously safeguard a defendant's due process while targeting with precision, the problem of drug dealers coming from outside the area to prey on tenderloin residents, housed and unhoused. this prevents the 28 named defendants from entering the tenderloin and part of the adjacent south of market neighborhood. roughly from van ness to ellis

and geary to mission. the tenderloin would become a protected zone and these defendants, none of whom live in the tenderloin, would be allowed to go there unless they had a lawful legitimate reason to be there. we're focused on the predatory repeat dealers selling the most dangerous drugs, including those leading to the most deaths. we have rigorous criteria. he or she was arrested at least twice for drug sales or possession of drugs for the purpose of sales in the tenderloin in the past year and a half. one of those arrests must have been in the last nine months. both of the arrests must have led to either criminal charges by the district attorney or a motion to revoke probation. the drugs involved were fentanyl, heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine.

and the defendant is not a tenderloin resident. has been given the opportunity to present their defense in court at a hearing and the court finds there is sufficient evidence to warrant the injunction. in other words, an injunction is issued if the need for it is proven in a court of law. demographics or group affiliations were not considered when putting together these lawsuits. violations of the injunctions will have civil and criminal consequences. violations carry civil penalties of up to $6,000 per violation. perhaps just as important, violations can also be pursued as misdemeanor crimes and subject to the defendant's immediate arrest. an arrest leads to the search and confiscation of drugs or contraband a person has in his or her possession. these actions are aimed slowly at criminals coming to prey on

the people of the tenderloin. we know who the predators are and we will not allow them to victimize tenderloin residents. our message to these dealers is simple. if you come to the tenderloin, you'll be arrested and your drugs will be confiscated. this is not a silver bullet. more needs to be done, including drug treatment options, expanded mental health and a focus on major narcotics suppliers, but this gives one more tool to the law enforcement to help keep the tenderloin residents safe. we need to stop this neighborhood from being used as the open air drug market. our goal is to keep the dealers out of the tenderloin. the kids, the parents, the seniors, the workers, the business owners of this neighborhood have suffered enough and deserve nothing less.

the tenderloin has the highest concentration of children in the city. it also has the highest number of overdose deaths and that is not acceptable. once the pandemic improves, the kids of the pandemic deserve to be able to go to the school, playground, go see a friend without being caught in the middle of a drug deal or a person overdosing on the sidewalk. this won't solve the problem, but it's a step work taking. i hadn't to thank the hard-working men and women in the san francisco police department. their diligence laid the ground work to put together this creative approach to public safety. i want to thank the team in my office that worked hard to come up with a way that will deal with a longstanding problem. i also want to thank our mayor for her tremendous support and leadership during this incredibly challenging time for our city, as well as supervisors peskin and haney, for their

commitment to combating this problem. with that, i would like to introduce our mayor, london breed. >> mayor breed: good morning, everyone. thank you, all, so much for being here today. i want to begin by thanking dennis has rare kerrera and the attorney office to deal with one of the biggest challenges in the tenderloin community. not so long ago we set down a path to address what we saw as a significant increase in homelessness and tent encampments in the t.l. and we made a lot of progress. over 400 tents removed with over 600 people. we're now down to less than 30

tents. and we drive around the tenderloin, we walk around the tenderloin, and you would think that nothing has ever happened there. that no progress has been made. you see hundreds of people on blocks throughout the t.l. who are dealing drugs openly, in broad daylight. you see people pushing strollers, mothers, who have to go out on the streets to go around the drug dealing and the drug using and the challenges that exist there. i grew up in this city. i grew up not too far from the tenderloin in the western edition. and the tenderloin has always had its challenges, but it has never been worse. it has never been worse. and we can't do this work alone. we need to make sure that, yes, we address the challenges that exist with people who struggle

with addiction. this is why i'm fighting so hard to get safe injection sites open. why i'm fighting to get expanded mental health support, because those of you who have family members who suffer with addicti addiction, you know how challenging it is to get them on the right path. we have to do more as a city to provide alternatives. and then we know the challenges that exist. the people who are being trafficked to sell drugs on our streets from other countries. the folks who are coming from other bay area cities because they know san francisco is a place where they can make a lot of money. san francisco has become the place to go to sell drugs. it is known widely. and that has got to stop, because there has to be consequences. look, i understand there might be financial challenges, but the fact is, we can't tolerate what

we see happening in the tenderloin or any other neighborhood in our city. people have got to be held accountable for the destruction they are causing to these communities. and when we talk about destruction, we're talking about the people who are dying in record numbers from drug overdoses right in the tenderloin. this is a commonsense solution to a very, very complex problem. and i really want to, again, express my appreciation to our city attorney, dennis herrera, for not only putting together a unique plan, but for caring about this issue in the first place. and i want to thank him for working with the san francisco police department to actually use data to inform this decision. we know that there is a lot of

work to do. and we can't continue to let the tenderloin be the breeding ground for all that is problematic and challenging in our city. it's going to take helping with homelessness. it's going to take drug treatment. it's going to take supporting low-income families and people who live in that community. and, yes, it's going to take holding the people who are holding this community hostage with the rampant drug-dealing that is completely devastated this neighborhood. we have to do better and we will do better. this is a step in the right direction. and i'm looking forward to seeing the results of this work. and i want to thank all those who have been involved and supportive of this issue. and we have got to get the job done and that's what this is about. with that, i want to introduce the police chief of san francisco, chief scott.

>> good morning. thank you, mayor breed. first, i want to start off by thanking our mayor london breed for her relentless leadership when it comes to this issue. as the mayor stated, this problem is pervasive and i also want to thank our city attorney dennis herrera for an innovative strategy that really gives us a much better opportunity to turn the corner on the drug dealing in the tenderloin. i would like to thank supervisors peskin and haney for their support and leadership on this issue. you'll hear from them as well in a second. the men and women of the san francisco police department and those say sign -- assigned to the tenderloin, have been

working very, very hard to address the rampant drug-dealing in the tenderloin. during a recent three-month operation to focus on narcotics dealers, the tenderloin officers and the narcotics detail officers arrested over 267 individuals for drug sales. 267. and although that number may sound high, it's just a drop in the bucket. our officers seized over $144,000 in u.s. currency and a combination of over 7,000 grams of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, fentanyl and other drugs. 210 of those arrests had prior arrests in san francisco and 55 of the 267 arrests were in violation of court-issued stay away orders where they were prohibited from the area where

they were selling drugs. 58 of those arrested live outside of the city of san francisco. now our efforts to combine or combat narc sales in the tenderloin are ongoing as of today. and today's announcement of injunctions filed by our city attorney will help us address the concerns and complaints of tenderloin residents and merchants. and those complaints come pouring in daily. these dealers prey on a vulnerable population and contribute to the drug degradation of the quality of life who work and live in the tenderloin. these injunctions give law enforcement officers another tool in our tool kit. violators face up to a $6,000 fine, misdemeanor arrest and

officers can potentially seize money and drugs along with other contraband. with the combined efforts in the drug treatment and other public health strategies, we hope to have a positive effect on the quality of life in the tenderloin area. as was stated by the mayor -- i can't emphasize this enough -- we have to do more, we have do better and we will do better. we cannot and will not further tolerate drug dealers coming into the tenderloin from wherever they're coming from throughout the bay area to ruin our community. the injunctions will make coming back to the tenderloin have more serious consequences. and, drug dealers, if you're out there watching this news conference, know that your actions will not and cannot be tolerated any longer in the city and county of san francisco. with that, i'd like to turn the

mic over to supervisor aaron peskin. thank you. >> supervisor peskin: chief, thank you, city attorney herrera, mayor breed, for what is truly a creative solution. this is not a silver bullet. it must be coupled with mental health services, with drug treatment, with the addition of sorely needed affordable housing in and around the tenderloin. a year ago supervisor haney and i went to a meeting together just up the street in the tenderloin wherein we witnessed an individual who was literally dying of a fentanyl overdose. we were able to locate some narcan and that individual is alive today, but that should not be happening on our streets. this is not only a creative solution, but it is one where city attorney herrera has

crafted it very carefully in conjunction with my office. has done so in a way that honors the civil rights of individuals in our community. it is structured fairly and will be supported by the board of supervisors. i want to thank the city attorney. we're going to make a difference in the tenderloin. and if this works, this is a model that be exported to other parts of san francisco because when you look at those 441 deaths, it is true a disproportionate number of them are in the tenderloin, but those individuals who are preying on weak individuals in our community are not just operating in the tenderloin. and if this is a success, i look forward to working with the city attorney office, the chief of police and mayor to export this model to the rest of the city and county of san francisco. we are available for questions and comments.

thank you, supervisor peskin. we'll begin with the q&a portion with city attorney herrera. the first set of questions are from kate wolf. the aclu and other community groups have said injunctions like gang injunctions used in the past don't address root problems and violate people's civil liberties. can you address how these injunctions will be different from those? >> one thing you heard uniformly, both from the mayor, from supervisor peskin and from the chief of police, this is part of a -- has to be part of a comprehensive approach that focuses on drug rehab, mental health and the like.

so there is no doubt that we need to also get the root causes which are contributing to our problem. however, this is different from gang injunctions. this is not based on affiliation or status, it is based on going after individuals who have been known to engage in criminal conduct that has been charged by the district attorney and arrests by the police department for known activity that has occurred in the tenderloin. the fact of the matter is, we carefully crafted this to make sure it was based on conduct, not on status or affiliation. and there is also the opportunity for if people have a legitimate reason to be in the 50-square block area, the protected zone, courts, city hall, have all been exempted from the limitation of movement. so this is very different from gang injunctions. i think it is something people need to be aware of.

this is based on conduct, not status. and demonstrable conduct from individuals who don't even live in the tenderloin and 27 of the 28 don't even live in the city and county of san francisco. >> thank you, city attorney. the next question is from joe with bay city news. why would civil injunctions be used instead of criminal actions if the city knows who the dealers are? >> it's another tool in the tool kit. certainly, there are criminal penalties that can accrue, but the fact of the matter is, if someone is going to suffer a financial penalty of a significant dollar amount, that is something that dissuades individuals from engaging. with respect to these injunctions, you have two tools, a criminal sanction as well as a civil sanction which did not

occur previously. this encompasses the whole tenderloin, where something that the chief referred to earlier, the stay-away orders in other criminal cases were designed to be with respect to one particular corner or block. it was not nearly as comprehensive as what we're seeking here today. >> thank you, city attorney. that concludes today's press conference. thank you, everyone, for joining us.

>> we are providing breakfast, lunch, and supper for the kids.

>> say hi. hi. what's your favorite? the carrots. >> the pizza? >> i'm not going to eat the pizza. >> you like the pizza? >> they will eat anything. >> yeah, well, okay. >> sfusd's meal program right now is passing out five days worth of meals for monday through friday. the program came about when the shelter in place order came about for san francisco. we have a lot of students that depend on school lunches to meet their daily nutritional requirement. we have families that can't take a hit like that because

they have to make three meals instead of one meal. >> for the lunch, we have turkey sandwiches. right now, we have spaghetti and meat balls, we have chicken enchiladas, and then, we have cereals and fruits and crackers, and then we have the milk. >> we heard about the school districts, that they didn't know if they were going to be able to provide it, so we've been successful in going to the stores and providing some things. they've been helpful, pointing

out making sure everybody is wearing masks, making sure they're staying distant, and everybody is doing their jobs, so that's a great thing when you're working with many kid does. >> the feedback has been really good. everybody seems really appreciative. they do request a little bit more variety, which has been hard, trying to find different types of food, but for the most part, everyone seems appreciative. growing up, i depended on them, as well, so it reminds me of myself growing up. >> i have kids at home. i have six kids. i'm a mother first, so i'm just so glad to be here.

it's so great to be able to help them in such a way because some families have lost their job, some families don't have access to this food, and we're just really glad to be