transportation code. this item proposes to amend the transportation code to reflect these existing lanes accurately. the exception will be folsom street lane which is approved but not installed transit lane. to summarize the legislation before you today, staff is recommending the board make temporary transit improvements on the 19, 27, 43, 44 and 1 routes permanent as shown here in the calendar item. staff also recommend corrections to the transportation code to accurately reflect existing transit lanes installed or improved over the last decade. with that, i'll turn it over to michael who will preview some of the upcoming transit priority work.

>> tetl program is concluding now. the next major round of muni forward projects starting in 2022 will include the j church, the n judah as well as continuing with the transit hot spot program. we're under way with outreach on the geary boulevard project. we'll cover more detail in the upcoming board workshop. i wanted to provide a preview of that. that concludes our presentation this afternoon. we're available to answer any question us may have. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you i see that director lai is first for questions. >> director lai: thank you. thank you for the presentation. i want to ask some clarifying questions first. can we go back to the one

california route diagram. thank you for slowly explaining this to us. there's quite few changes that are layered on. for the record, i think i heard you mention that the proposed terminology is really for what we have already been testing since the summer of 2021. what we're proposing to formally adopt permanently today. with the exception of the two green circles and the x where we're removing the block. >> that's right. rescinding the general traffic tow-away lanes on sacramento. >> director lai: there's one block on clay as well? >> this is reference to a traffic lane restaurant a -- rather than transit lane.

>> director lai: hour changes. as opposed to the restrictions essentially are to add afternoon peak hours. then also generally changing the hours of restrictions from 3:30 and moving that up to 3:00 p.m. that's what we've been testing in the tetl? >> yes. some of them added afternoon or extended the afternoon peaks. some of them added morning peaks on the eastern end of sacramento. >> director lai: could you help remind us of how the conversion works in terms of minutes saved versus capacity growing our transit capacity. i know jeff and others, julie have mentioned that conversion before.

>> i would say that, it depends on the specifics of the route. if a route is just shy couple of minutes, then couple of minutes can save a whole bus. we typically try to over the course of the corridor, save about the equivalent of the headway. one california comes about every 7 minutes. we would be aiming to save about 7 minutes in order to save a whole all day bus. >> director lai: thank you. that's helpful. i did notice that staff highlighted for the one california, the time saved so far it's about 15% from this

tetl experiment. could you convert that into minutes, how many minutes we're saving there? >> depending on the time of day, each direction that will be 2 to 3 minutes. >> director lai: we're not quite saving the 7 minutes in headway. the shifting from the 3:30 to 3:00 p.m., could you help clarify what benefits we're seeing or what we're trying to address by shifting the timing of the p.m. restriction from 3:30 up to 3:00 p.m.? >> we're seeing that in general, we've seeing lot of our lines are nearly slow and after school period than traditional p.m. peak. without a transit lane on some of the narrow streets downtown, if there's a single vehicle

stop, whether it's shopping or picking up students, that means we're obstructed. ideally we have a transit lane earlier, we wanted to strike a balance between merchant parking availability from 9:00 to 3:00 and little bit more of the transit priority as sort of after school people out shopping and picking up kids, low things down in the late afternoon. >> director lai: what are we seeing in terms of the headways or gaps that we are experiencing between the hours of 6 to 7? i know that lot of businesses around these parks are closed by 6:00 and i'm wondering what kind of benefit we're trying to -- what kind of issue we're trying to address between the 6:00 to

7:00 restriction. >> i can speak to that. we tray to take little bit of balance on that. some places we only went to 6:0. part of this was on feedback from merchants particularly in chinatown. they did feel that 6 to 7 was an important time to have parking availability. in other areas, 6 to 7:00 p.m. is still sister much the p.m. peak period. we trying to ensure we still have protections for traffic during that time. >> director lai: do we have data to suggest whether we're experiencing one california delays between 6 to 7? >> we have that from pre-covid. we can look into it and more details. that's still the time that one is typically impacted by traffic. >> director lai: thank you.

>> chair borden: director heminger. >> director heminger: if we can leave this slide up. i have to say, it's sort of producing a flashback for me for the better market project where we made so many congestions and caveats and compromises, we sort of made everybody mad. i do wonder whether this is really a workable scheme. i noticed that we different time periods in effect in the space of 10 blocks. i'm still not sure i understand the red x that we're chopping a block out of the project. i note that in the survey work you did, the other two projects were much more popular with all users. whereas, this one i don't think

achieved 50% support level. that included all users. i know you guys are trying to deliver a project here. i wonder if i can just get your assessment of whether there really is a project we're saving here or not? i think the other two, the cases is pretty clear. this one seems is a closer call. >> in general, if we're saving 3 minutes on route with this highest frequency with one california, we feel pretty good about that. it's not going to be enough by itself. we do plan to come back to do additional muni board

improvements. we think it's a good very first step and it's substantially moving the needle and other corridors where we have similar time savingses. we seen increases in ridership. people are pretty sometime sensitive as it affects reliability. there's a lot of nuts and bolts, tradeoffs, block by block made and pushback. we did see transit rider had a high level of support for this. they were little under represented compared to the demographics of the line. that may have kind of set off the survey results little bit. understand the concern there. >> i support this project. it is completely in alignment with our transit first values. the reason this project is controversial is that this

project unlike the others, forces us to address the trade-off between car storage on our streets versus moving our buses. 3 minute travel time savings on the one california may seem like not that much. that is a substantial improvement in transit service. both in terms of efficiency and reliability but also in terms of capacity. three minute travel time saving allows us to expand reliability, speed and very importantly in a crowded line like the one california capacity. it's allowing us to manage clay streets to move more people as the city is growing. it's controversial because it deal with park removal. this is a hard tradeoff for us. in terms of the number of people, small reduction in parking is resulting in a tremendous benefit to thousand

of riders who are using the line. it's also very important time for us to be doing this work. as you know, congestion is coming back. we're expecting that while office utilization in downtown san francisco that recovery will take some time, downtown san francisco is going to be fully occupied. we need to make sure that we're supporting the recovery of both chinatown and the financial district. making sure that people can continue shopping and visiting chinatown as well as commuting to downtown san francisco by stockton and clay streets to focus on the movement of people that is what this project does. >> director heminger: jeff, you are right. the three minutes doesn't sound like a lot of time. can you give me a sense of the range of time savings we're seeing on all these temporary

lanes? i'm interested in the middle or bottom. >> director tumlin: i sawed this is about in the middle. it is more useful rather than thinking about minutes. three minutes in this span of your average day, that's not that much. >> director heminger: when this road gets congested, you can lose three minutes. >> director tumlin: the way michael described it earlier was in terms of percentage travel time savings. 15% means 15% more capacity on the bus. similarly, 15% travel time savings can translate into 15% improvement frequency with no change to the budget. all of these improvements are exactly what we need to do in order to make the system work.

we don't have opportunities to get 20 minute travel time savingses in san francisco. we have 100 small projects like this that each add 2 to 3 minutes or 20%. cumulatively add into a whole lot. this is our work. it's the fine tuning of the overall transportation system in order to prioritize the movement of people and to particularly prioritize the movement of people with the fewest mobility choices as well as support the city's economic recovery. that's what this project is about. >> director heminger: i'm with you on the agenda. that's for sure. i think you indicated that this was probably going to be the last of the temporary lanes program and we're going to transition back to sort of usual order. that brings a broader question to mind.

obviously, these transit lanes are an attempt to save time for the buses. after couple of years on the board now, i think i can boil problem statement down to a sentence. the cars going too fast and buses going too slow. this is the buses going too slow part of the agenda today. if we're nearing the end of the transit lane program, are there any more rapid buses to be found? that's another way that we devised of getting some time savingses to users of our syste.

>> part of what's confusing about the diagram is the complexity of the hours and subtle changes block to block. if all we cared about were buses, we would make the transit only lane program very simple. staff worked very carefully with community stakeholders, particularly in chinatown and in nob bill in order to get as much parking and particularly, chinatown commercial district parking shoe horned in this without impeding transit. all the complexity that you see is staff responding to community concerns so we can get the greatest benefit for transit while at the same time, minimizing negative impacts particularly on parking for chinatown. i wanted to mange sure that point was clear.

>> we have about four or five corridors that we think could lend themselves to rapid. they have some pinch points like the one california. we think would be a great rapid corridor is going to be not as easy to pass in sort of narrower section of the downtown corridor. the 29 rapid, we're very excited about. although, it's very expensive. we think it has huge potential to help with travel other neighborhoods and school travel. as a teaser, i know we're not supposed to overly sell our board workshop session, at the service equity session, one of

the things we'll be talking about is service expansion like the rapid network and where that should factor into other service demands like north-south connection, express service and things like that. we very much welcome boards back on this topic. >> director heminger: is the constraint on that just your ability to think through all the changes you need to make route by route, is it the number of drivers or the budget or all three? >> it's all three and it depends on the corridor. a corridor that does frequent as dense as the one california, you can do a little bit of reallocating plus some additional service. on the corridor like the 29 sunset, we wouldn't want the local service to come less. it already comes about 10 to 12 minutes. rapid will be almost like a whole extra line.

it really depends on the corridor how expensive it's going to be. what i'm excited about, sean's team, the transit plan team, they are pairing these corridors with rapid treatment so that if we're going to have lot more service on the 29th, we want all the service to be quicker. it's going to be more reliable and more cost effective. >> director heminger: thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. director yekutiel? >> director yekutiel: thank you. my brain hurts. i'm going to acknowledge that for everyone. my questions are about california one. you mentioned that reach to the small business community in chinatown. can you tell me more about what that looks like? did you go in the shops?

was in language. tell me what that outreach to the small business community in chinatown was for this particular tetl? >> amy fowler will give a quick overview about that. >> this is amy fowler public relations officer. at the very beginning of the project before we brought the initial proposal to the board, the temporary proposal that you voted on last april, we met with chinatown trip and merchant groups. we had a community meeting on both sides of the corridor. with did make some changes based on the feedback that we

received. we did three roundeds of multi-language mailers. i reached about 24,000 addresses. it's four rounds of posters in english and chinese. we have had several meetings with stakeholder organizations including the chinatown emergency united association. as part of our evaluation, we had digital outreach. we included paper surveys that we had translated into chinese that we distributed to the chinatown ymca food bank. >> director yekutiel: those meetings that you did specifically, were they well attended? how many people showed up? >> the initial meetings were

kind of the representatives of the merchant groups. we also in august, we had a walk through with the merchants. we walked the corridors. this was after the temporary emergency transit lanes had been installed. they pointed out their concerns to us in person. that was about 20 or 30 merchants there. >> director yekutiel: the way in which we understand how the public feel is a combination what you all report to us, what people say public comment phone lines and our e-mails. for this particular tetl, we didn't receive e-mail in chinese. we don't have automatic translating services for our public comment line on the phone. i don't think. that makes it hard if you have an opinion.

i guess my question, i saw in the review most folks concerns were. do you feel like this proposal, the concerns of chinatown merchants have been heard? where are you -- there's been some e-mails back-and-forth. do you feel like the concerns have been adequately addressed in this proposal? >> as michael said, we believe that we struck the right balance between maintaining transit results for people who depend on transit. which is two thirds of people. this is an incredibly complex project. i don't know if there's a total understanding of some of the

parking that we're proposing to release back to the community. that may be some of the issue. >> director yekutiel: there's one portion mr. rhodes mentioned, we're moving it from some 24 hours. one california. doesn't run late at night. why we moving it to 24 hours? >> i spoke of 24-hour transit lane. i misspoke. i don't think there's anywhere proposed. california street -- >> there are no existing transit lanes that are part-time that are being extended to 24-7. the newer lanes were nonexist further west in the corridor will be 24-7. there are few hours at night where the one california doesn't

operate. >> director yekutiel: why restrict these transit only lanes more than we're going to use them for our bus lines post-rush hour or whatever? >> for a number of reasons. one of which is that we can't paint it red. it's not 24 hours. we move all of the benefits. while this is not a 24 hour line, it runs about 4:30 in the morning to about midnight. it has some very de facto 24-hour characteristics. lastly, because the other demands for parking and travel through a lane is equally low at those hours of the night. we typically start with being a 24-hour lane so we get that

24-hour stop enforcement. >> director yekutiel: i support -- i've been really glad that we've been able to utilize this time to implement these transit only lanes. we've all seen these -- buses be stuck in traffic. at the same time, it seem like painting it red, we should be able opaint it red even if it's not 24 hours. i feel like people can read a sign. it should be a transit only lane as long as we believe there's enough congestion it wouldn't impede bus lines. people want to be able to park after 9:00, we don't need the transit only lane, why not let it be used that way.

i worry that making a 24 hours for the reasons you just mentioned might be over kill. do you not agree? >> just a clarification. we have the 24-hour transit lanes. it doesn't come at the expense of parking. we have two travel lanes in both directions. there's no parking impact to it. we have a question of 2:00 a.m., do we have two general purpose traffic lane and come back. that's why that's the case. >> director yekutiel: that makes sense. >> i said there were no places in the corridor that has part-time lanes that are going to full-time. >> director yekutiel: in your

presentation, you mentioned there's no substantial impact to traffic congestion or whatever. i find that hard to believe. i'm not calling you a liar, or anything. i wonder, how do we take away a lane of traffic and it doesn't increase congestion? how is that possible? i'm not saying that it's not a tradeoff that i'm willing to make. our buses which are fairing loss of members to the public will be able to go faster. >> i can speak for some of the other corridors by not worked on one california closely. i think what we saw in some of the other dor -- corridors is

time frame which the project was installed. traffic was not fully back. patterns hasn't resumed the same way as they were pre-covid. at the time, even though we reduced capacity, we didn't see the capacity was reduced so much that it created congestion for the volume of traffic that was there. as traffic volumes return, there probably will be more congestion but the lanes will serve their purpose of protecting transit customers from incurring delays because of it. >> director yekutiel: we should be honest with the public. i think we lose faith in people if we make -- if we say to them, it's not a big traffic at all. then covid over, everyone back. all of a sudden, you can't drive on california street. i think we should be prioritizing our buses. these are people who rely on our

service. they should in the be stuck in traffic. if we do believe there's going to be impact on congestion traffic, i think we should let people toe that. be honks that we're making a trade-off. we think it's a right thing to do. >> at the same time, whenever we have added a lane of traffic with the intention of reducing traffic congestion, we have never succeeded reducing traffic congestion. in many respects it's self-regulating. we're being very strategic making sure that when we're making changes to the street system, we're thinking about the entire transportation grid. in many cases, these projects will not result in additional traffic congestion, even if we're taking away a traffic lane. what they will result in is the ability of the street system to move for people without demolishing neighborhoods in order to widen it.

>> director yekutiel: help understand. i don't know that adding lanes doesn't reduce traffic congestion necessarily proves the point taking away lanes doesn't increase traffic congestion. do we have evidence of pre-pandemic project. i'm asking honestly. >> traffic is a complex system.

it operates with more complexity. many of us understand. fortunately here in san francisco, we've got excellent data from and after effects of the projects we worked on over the last couple of decades. >> director yekutiel: okay. the way i think about this, owning a car is a privilege. not everyone has that privilege or is able to do it financially they should not suffer. if we can make it easier for people to get around the city using these lanes in a way that is net positive for everyone, i think we should do that. those are all my questions. >> chair borden: thank you. director hinze, welcome back. >> director hinze: sorry for starting so late.

i did get briefed on the transit lanes before the meeting. my question about the one -- i wanted to chat little bit about some areas that were identified for improvement if your report. specifically enforcement of the tow-away enforcement of the transit lane where that can be improved. >> i can start. we can monitor where the

enforcement issues are occurring. for example in a certain building or certain business, we can reach out to the business owner and try to find loading program that works for them. similarly like individuals or t.n.c.s, we can target that with an informational campaign that reinforces parking and driving in the transit lanes is not allowed. michael is there anything you wanted to add? >> in general, we often do see -- it will show up in the transit data if we have recurring issue. we can see this particular block is really slow. just taking the bigger picture, we can see why isn't this working the way we thought. we can go back and we can talk to merchants. we done that in corridors. let's talk about what your loading needs are and a solution

that might work better for you and work better for us. we've seen that in general, when folks get a parking citation, they don't get a second one. it's a pretty good indicator, we'd rather get that information to people before they get the citation. we are as part of our general efforts to improve the plan. we are working on information campaign and raise awareness that you could get a citation. we'd rather you don't. >> director hinze: that works. thank you. my last question on the operator feedback survey for the one california way. there were eight responses which given the number of people that

operators operates the line. are we confident that these improvements are benefiting the drivers and they are enjoying them? >> one thing i can mention, we do have monthly meetings with the divisions that are planners attend. we tend to hear about the granular issues where things aren't working. we tend to get lot of feedback. sometimes we'll get feedback from that. they may not have chosen to fill out the operator survey. they passed it on to their division leadership. we tend to hear about lot of these problems. we're looking to proactively ask operators about where they're seeing transit lanes not

working. we're still making adjustments. things can change. new business can open up and things can be a new issue. it's ongoing process. >> director hinze: based on everything, they seem to be meeting objectives. they done fairly decent job

trying to accommodate everyone needs in terms of loading and unloading, etcetera. that's where i stand on these issues. thank you. >> chair borden: director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: i will try to be brief. i know it's getting late. i really love that these lanes save our agency money. major challenge over the last year that we're talking about. if we can provide the same amount or more service for the same amount of money, remember all the people from the public who turned out, we were talking about 2020 and called on us to bring back more and more service. if we can bring back more service with the same amount of money, i feel like no brainer to safer our agency money. it does mean a lot to me that the operators feel like this is making their jobs easier. these operators have shown up

day after day. they have been heroes throughout this pandemic. we can do something to make sure jobs easier and they prefer it, that means a lot to me. i think we talked about this several times, remind everyone, these transit only lanes also has ancillary benefits improving pedestrian safety. there's number of studies on that that the staff reminded us about. one question is, i have the same concern director heminger raised this feeling like a patchwork in terms of one california. i want to ask the question, can the staff verify in our efforts to meet the concerns of the stakeholders, do we feel like we can sign this and set this up in a way that the public can understand it and the operators understand this approach?

>> we pay lot of attention where we place signage. part of goal -- as much as the changes look like a patchwork, there's more continuity when the lanes are in effect. the existing condition pre-covid was a patchwork. we'll keep that in mind as we think about signage and how business owners and everyone else. >> vice chair eaken: i will be happy to approve. >> chair borden: is there a second?

>> second. >> chair borden: i'm completely supportive. i'm a big beneficiary and i seen the difference on the transit lanes. i do think we need to be honest with the public about the tradeoff we're making and the process letting them know that. it does mean other streets have more congestion. i think we should be honest with people. people like we're flying to them when we don't acknowledge these things. obviously, traffic is complex as we all know. if you still have the same number of people driving, you still have the same number driving. our goal is that what we can tell people, if we make it so that the trip on the bus is so comfortable, you won't drive. it will be faster to take the bus. in new york city, people will

never get cross town not taking the subway. subway is fastest. we want to get to that place. we have to get out there. i think it's really important when we're doing this outreach, we're clear on our goals and objectives and acknowledge and hear like, you're right in some ways, it will change things. they don't trust you, when you don't acknowledge what seems logic to them. with that, we'll open up to public comment. this is time to comment on items 12, 13, 14, the emergency only transit only lanes. if you like to speak you can press 1, 0.

>> caller: i wanted to speak in strong support of all of these transit lanes. i was actually getting off the 28. i have to run to get off the bus so i could call in. going down lumbar street. we were flying past the traffic. it's great to see. just this weekend, i was riding the 1, i was like, oh my gosh. if only we had the lanes on the weekend. i can just imagine for all of the riders who are riding on the weekdays, many of them are supporting these businesses in chinatown. this is the much more safe and lot more people coming from these buses to go support

merchants in chinatown. i've been taking the 44 after school a lot now. these lanes, even though they are like small improvements, they do add up to make a difference. it can really make lot of difference for raiders, including me. i hope you will approve this project. thank you. >> caller: hi, live about 100 feet from one california. i love the transit lanes. absolutely should be made permanent. it lines with rider coals, equity, climate. what can make more sense to have bus go to people fast. you should give it a parking

along the whole route. get rid of those 93 parking compromises. today is an encouraging. getting rid of parking is a good thing. no need to apologize about it. make the transit lanes permanent. let that be the start. thanks for approving this. appreciate all the work you're doing. >> caller: we urge you all to approve the proposed transit

lane along one california, 27 bryant -- [ indiscernible ]

thank you so much for your time tonight. i hope you will approve all of these projects. thank you. >> caller: good evening. i'm christopher peterson, a district 7 resident, regular rider of the 43 occasional rider of the 1 and the 44. i wish you approve all the proposed transit lanes. in order for muni to restore ridership and for the city to obtain climate goals, muni must make its bus service faster and reliable. for muni to overcome the budgetary challenges that much provide service much more efficiently. the proposed transit lanes are necessary for muni to achieve those goals. also, to comply with voter

approved transit first mandate, the city charter. there's been fair amount of discussion about time saving achieved by these projects. another thing is reliability. not only how many minutes you save on an individual bus route, you get greater consistency so you can avoid gas service. finally, i urge the sfmta to pursue additional low cost and implement -- improvements. 43 is painfully slow.

>> caller: my name is mark. i live in district 8 and i'm a frequent muni rider and member of san francisco transit riders. i'm just calling to strongly urge the board to make all of these transit lanes permanent. these red lanes has been very successful in san francisco since they were used. given the climate emergency, the more we prioritize transit and make it reliable, so that people choose it over driving, the better. as far as one california goes, it's time to stop prioritizing parking space. we're in a climate crises. the four other routes are

affected by this. none of them run at a high frequency. reliability is that much more important. this will make them more reliable. all four of these routes are more south component. that's also very important because patterns will be different. downtown is less east-west patterns because downtown is the destination now. these are really good choices for transit priority lanes. i urge you to support them.

>> caller: i'm actually a driver. i don't really take the bus much. i can't remember the last time i did take the bus. i think it's imperative that we pass all of these and make all these bus lanes permanent. we don't have time to wait here. traffic is at full capacity. we can't add more streets. we can't add more car capacity. adding bus lanes and making buses move faster is what we need. i would ride bus more if it was more reliable. i would stop driving. it's kind of -- it's a shame that we have to have this discussion in such a major city

that we're in. i find it upsetting to be frank that there's -- [ indiscernible ] this was a fixation on how many minutes does it take. can we eliminate a bus if we do this. oh, it's only take 3 minutes instead of 7. eliminate a bus. three minutes makes a huge difference. it means more reliability. it's what the experts suggest we do. to have a board that doesn't know much about this bring up pretty bad questions that makes me fearful about the future of public transportation in transportation as a whole in the city.

makes driving better. >> caller: good evening. my name is parker day. i'm a muni rider and resident of district 3. i want to say as a nearby resident, i received ton of outreach from m.t.a. staff. i want to thank them for that. i'm calling to urge the board follow the staff recommendation and approve all of the transit lines proposed. i live close to intersection of 119 and 127 line. i ride these frequently.

director tumlin talked about the equity of city streets. i think that making these transit lanes permanent is an opportunity to make it a relatively small change, tips the scale slightly. i agree with director heminger and eaken.

>> caller: i'm i'm a muni rider in district 2. i'm calling to echo all the previous comments in support of the transit lanes. i depend on m.t.a. i think we should prioritize sfmta over cars.

we have to expand not only transit only lanes but expand more of them. when muni is stuck in traffic, it discourages ridership. it's a unique time for muni to bring riders back and make us transit first city. i look forward to a review and making these transit lanes permanent across the city. thanks. >> caller: hi, i live in district 10. i'm rider of 19 polk. i really enjoy the special transit lanes on 7th and 8th street. you should pass these lanes and every lane.

i'm a driver sometimes. i rather ride the bus more. it makes it possible for me and other people who drive time sometimes and ride the bus to make the right decision. thank you. >> caller: hi. i'm a district 5 resident. i'm a member of the san francisco transit riders. i'm calling to urge the sfmta to approve all the transit only lanes and make them all permanent. if we seem to be transit first city, it will be good idea to behave in accordance to the policy. especially considering our climate emergency. probably the line that would have had the biggest impact on

me was the 19. i used to work -- i used to live and work in petror hill. this is what we need to prevent me from getting stuck in traffic. i'm looking forward to see muni prioritize all these transit only lanes approved and made permanent. >> caller: i appreciate bus lanes. when i take the metro or the

bus, i think with we only have one planet. there's no planet b. when we prioritize moving cars, that means we're not supporting the planet. you support moving people over cars, you support protecting the planet. thank you all you do every single day for one of the world best transit muni. thank you.

[ indiscernible ] >> caller: i've been a regular muni rider for 30 years. i'm a member of the san francisco transit riders. i'm calling to support approval of all of the transit only lanes. i'm a regular rider of the 1 and the 44. the changes on the 1 are particularly transformative. although, i will say someone who generally leaves downtown at around 6:00 not having the 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. window set aside for the transit lane is problematic. it does make a big difference. i'm not sure how many of you all members of this board ride muni

regularly. any regular muni rider will tell you that a three minute change is a significant improvement to a commuter just getting around town. here's how transit only lane helps lift congestion. if you're on a bus without the transit lane. buss are blocked by stopped cars and double parked cars. it slows everything down. without that, everyone moves faster. with regard to chinatown specifically, i'm hoping that you all took into account that at some point, the central subway project has to open to riders. given the time and money spent on that project, specifically to bring people to chinatown on transit, we should be able to give up or almost all of the parking in favor of better bus service.

>> caller: hi. i'm a muni rider. tenderloin resident and member of san francisco transit riders. i'm calling to ask m.t.a. approve transit only lanes.

thank you for your time. >> caller: my name is anthony. i'm call in support of approving all of these transit lanes. live only few blocks away from the 43. i know we talk a lot about getting people downtown. that's super important and that's usually where i go for work. last year, i remember there was a big discussion in the golden

gate park. i use the 44 to get to the park. that's how i prevent from driving my car over there. i feel like these lanes really provide a great way to use the resources better. i wanted to say, i'm in support of all of these bus lanes. thank you guys for doing great

work. recovering from the pandemic is going to require addressing these divisions in our neighborhoods. these buss are great way forward to help business them. thank you for your time. >> caller: i'm scared about the climate and transit riders are climate heroes. i'm urging the sfmta to approve the transit only lanes along the one and 19 and 27. transit system that works well is so crucial to reducing the climate pollution from gas cars. that's over half of our climate pollution right there.

strong transit system is so you important to our economic recovery. the transit only lanes which speed up the bus service, make it more reliable for the riders.

prioritizing roadways for buses, that's wait to live up to san francisco's transit first city policy. i look forward as a member -- i look forward to working with you to making the lanes permanent in my district and across the city. >> caller: this is maggie from

chinatown. i wanted to bring up a section on clay street between basically after stockton. the businesses on that particular block are still not doing well despite different rules and regulations during covid. i wanted to point that out. i think there was an effort to change the time for the transit lanes for that area. i wanted to bring that up since that is still a concern. thank you for your time. >> caller: hi, i'm a muni rider. district 2 resident. i lived for a very long time in

district 1. frequent user of the one california. i urge sfmta to approve all of the transit only lanes that we're talking about today. we prioritize our buses in important ways for san francisco to live up to our transit first policy. i also as director tumlin pointed out, not only do transit first lines make service quicker but also more reliable. 43 and 44 go to or near golden gate park and the museum.

we liability is important. they can get people from the south to the museum. it really helps with that. thank you all of your time. thank you for director tumlin for giving us basic one-on-one class time. >> caller: i want to say i will be doing a brown act violation. each item actually is whole different type of project. base the upon the needs of the route. i will be filing a sunshine complaint first thing tomorrow.

david pilpel, please call me. we will talk about this. it's not fair to those workshop -- those impacted by all three items. first one california street one, is it a benefit that i am concerned how they do enforcement. i think it's important to get the word out to the numbers of violations. tell the public that the buses are enforcing the violations they see along their routes. you're not really reporting any of that. it's not easy for the public to get access to those numbers. it's important to report that also to report an example of how lousy enforcement has been. you look around the mission street corridor between 24th and 16th, there's a lot of double parking in the transit lanes. especially in the 2500 block of

mission street and enforcement is horrible. along geary as well. regarding masonic after 9:00 at night, you should allow the left turns particularly at turk and fulton. buses run so infrequently between 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. it's important not to make the 24 hours and not force people to break the law or something that's not enforceable. last but not least, 7th and 8th, you're sitting like 30 seconds before you make the rake turn at mission. you're costing my taxi riders

another 55 cents by going down 8th street by costing me more time to get to a passenger by sit act the right turn arrows. they shouldn't be operational at night. bicycles and pedestrians are so minimal. you're hurting people like me that's part of transit as well to sit at those right turn arrows. i appreciate you looking into that issue and how you can make exceptions for very low peak times. thank you. >> caller: hi, i'm a muni rider. i'm calling to urge sfmta to approve transit only lanes as

well as the 19, and 44 o'shaughnessy. transit only lanes speed up the bus service and making it more reliable for riders. i use the 43 and 44 to get to classes. i really like it if those two lines would have muni only lanes. [ indiscernible ]

>> caller: living on the mason i can makes such huge difference. i feel so much safer just walking down my street. i love to see this expanded upon to prevent illegal and very dangerous left turns. hopefully the transit only lanes can return in future discussions of the masonic corridor. i love that all these improvements save taxpayer money. i support all of the proposed improvements under these items. thank you. >> caller: this is martin munoz. i'm calling in support all the transit lanes to be made

permanent. i think they are slam dunk and it will help hundreds and hundreds of riders who have been stuck behind traffic unfairly when they made the choice to get out of cars and ride in carbon mutual buses. which is great. we are in a tough climate crises. it's imperative that we improve these lanes and continue experiment with temporary lanes elsewhere. to make it truly a system that moves people faster than cars do currently. i also like to say that in the case of one california, i was disturbed by the board's discussion regarding parking and making traffic worse elsewhere. the idea with these transit lanes to get people more in buses. when we have multiple coming

into buses, there's only a amount of people that can possibly onen the road. some of those people, would move from cars to buses i think it's really an improvement for everyone involved. another side note, i love to ride in a taxi with a one of the transit lanes. thank you. >> caller: this is herbert wiener. i realized lines have been passed in support of these alterations of service. adding transit lanes may create more problems after the pandemic than people realize. i proposed that these

alterations with the transit lanes be made temporary with the provision that they are annually reviewed to see the impact on traffic. there's a general sentiment on the board in management and the people who are calling in that on the deals are horrible. they should be hated and eliminated. some people rely on automobiles for transportation. not everyone can use a buses to their advantage. if you are going to approve this, make the subject to annual review because it make disastrous. you trying to make it impossible for people to drive automobiles. because you despise automobiles. you will make it difficult to

drivers as you can. that may not be real in the long run. you may be creating problems of congestion and outrage that you cannot believe. think carefully. >> caller: hi, i'm in district 7 resident, member of the san francisco transit riders and regular rider of the 43, 44 and the 1. i want to call in and say i enjoyed the changes to the 1 to chinatown and 43 northbound towards presidio as transit only lanes really improved performance as a rider. one of the best ways to get cars off the road to is to create well functioning transit system. it's faster, cheaper and there's

no parking anxiety, there's no driving anxiety. you're just on a bus and you're enjoying life. transit lane are a powerful tool that creates a powerful system. i urge the sfmta to approve the transit only lane and continue to roll out additional transit lanes of urgency. >> caller: i want to talk about one california line. larkin street going towards chinatown. the three minutes saving time that the m.t.a. is fictional three minutes. i don't see it. i live on the block. i can provide video that shows there are no cars in front of the bus or behind the bus from 7:00 to 9:00 in the morning.

at night from 3:00 to 7:00. there's no cars in front and behind. that three minutes savings that they mentioned is not real. also, since i -- since you implemented the transit lane between larkin and the hyde. that lane has not been used since august, your bus created a sinkhole that has not been filled. it had red cone in front of you for the past five months. that number they keep bringing up, three minutes of saving time is not real. it's something that m.t.a. made up. i have lost faith in the m.t.a. board and m.t.a. you need to have trust for the people that live in the area. i can't trust m.t.a. you guys have not been truthful. i never received any information

when you guys worked temporarily put up the lanes. you have mentioned you sent it out. we never received it. the chinatown people, majority of people you guys talked about send mailers too, if you know chinese people they do not respond. they will not respond. you can send mail and posters. they will not respond. all your surveys are inaccurate. all the stakeholders that you mentioned you suffered do not live in the area and they do a blanket approval of all your temporary lanes. thank you. >> caller: i live in district 7. i'm calling in support of sfmta

approving all of the transit only lanes. we're in a climate emergency by improving service time, this will incentivize more people to ride public transit. you should priority this. thank you for your time. >> caller: my name is jim i live in district 3. i want to make a comment that might help in the decisions. [ indiscernible ]

there's a confusion about elimination of block between powell and stockton street. i believe that reason is, if you live on that block, there a very massive grammar school mid-block. it has a cross walk that takes out one lane of traffic. that creates a pinch point in that block. it's probably in addition to restoring some parking for the chinatown merchants. it's one of the reasons you can't accommodate additional transit lane. one of the board members questions about how can the fact that there was no disruption to the traffic flow. i think on a large part of the route, especially from eastbound

from larkin street and over to stockton and on return route going from powell on sacramento over to larkin, they are eliminating parking lanes. which then constitutes the bus line. it leads the traveling for traffic unaffected. i think that's one of the key things that is not that necessarily playing fast and loose with the data. they are not removing the transit lane they are just removing parking. if you can look into the issue of the biggest obstacles are not the residents parking there. it's the biggest obstacles always blocking the lanes.

>> caller: my name is hamilton carter. i'm a muni rider. i'm district 11 resident. i'm calling to urge sfmta to approve transit only lane along the 1. transit only lanes speed up bus service and make it more reliable for riders. we use the 44 a lot. the 44 is always packed. as we continue to have surges in the pandemic, anything that can make these buses move quicker to cut down on congestion inside the bus it will be spectacular and help keep all of us

healthier. if muni is stuck and in traffic -- [ indiscernible ] >> caller: hi, my name is dylan. i'm a muni rider. i live in district 6. i'm calling in to urge sfmta to approve all the transit only lanes that are being proposed today. an earlier caller said that sfmta is doing everything it can to make things inconvenient to drivers. it's really the opposite. i think sfmta needs to be doing

lot more to make driving inconvenient with the exception of delivery vehicles and transit and things like that. sfmta should be doing all it can to get people out of cars ace buses. these transit only lanes is one way of doing that. it should be vastly expanded but these lanes are great start. looking forward to seeing more of them throughout the city. >> caller: this is david pilpel. first question is it two minutes or three minutes are you taking them together? >> chair borden: we are taking

them together. go ahead and -- i think we've been doing three minutes. not sure. i think we're doing three minutes. >> caller: on the one california on item 12, i have no specific issue with the proposed parking traffic changes here. i do want a copy of the january 7, 2022 city planning ceqa determination. in general, i think that all of these items should have been heard at a friday engineering hearing prior to a board meeting. it is useful to get public feedback at the fried hearings and include that in the stakeholder outreach section in the staff report combining public hearing with the board meeting, i think does not serve us well. i'm against doing that here in the future. it's confusing reading the transportation code amendment because that includes changes

from all three of these calendar items. i prefer that transportation code -- those amendments written in separate actions because there are three separate resolutions. again, it is confusing reading the transportation code amendments. i agree with the comments about fewer 24-hour parking and traffic restrictions. i support more consistent peak hours in general. i think for the peak hour restrictions, 7:00 to 10:00 and 3:00 to 6:00 makes sense to me. i understand some corridors see different traffic patterns. having more consistent hours and having real enforcement would help all of us. moving on to item 13 on the 19 polk and 27 bryant. i have no issue with those particular changes. i do want to see transit back on 5th and 6th street south and

market. i hope the 7th and 8th reroute on the 27 is not permanent been out additional corridors that we referenced, i doubt there was any notice or outreach. i like copies of ceqa determinations. i think something is wrong with the judah street item it says eastbound in one place and westbound in another. somebody needs to reconcile that language on the judah street change from 19th to 20th. on item 14, i oppose the proposed changes on the 43 and the 44 overall while some of the left turn restrictions may make sense during certain hours. the 43 and 44 operate on more narrow streets. than the 19 and the 27 and less frequently than the one california on balance, i think the transit benefits are not significant on the 44 and 43 at this time.

i didn't see in the staff report, may be it's there somewhere, what the time saving is on the 43 and the 44. i'm sure it's not particularly significant and they do not run that frequently. again, please send me the ceqa documentation. having different ceqa documents and different basis under ceqa is challenging and i can always pursue a ceqa appeal here. please don't make me do that. i urge you to support some versions of items 12 and 13 and reject item 14 at this time. thank you for listening. >> caller: i'm a district 3

disabled resident. i'm not able to take muni bus. i can't walk i need assistance to get into the transit to take me to hospitals and doctors appointments and they're all over the city. there's no way that i can take a muni to all these doctors appointments and make it all in one day. i have family that drive me there and they pick me up in front of the house and they drive me to these doctor appointments. also, these bus lanes are full of amazon trucks, post office trucks, ups trucks, food deliveries and everything else. these buses don't really use that lane when they're all full of these trucks delivering stuff.

that's kind of defeats the purpose of that lane. i can look up and down clay street and they're all filled with amazon trucks and delivery trucks. along this corridor, in this neighborhood in nob hill, the buses don't use this lane. they are swerving in and out just to get around the trucks. i can't see how that saves time. also, peak hours, i see some traffic but majority of the day, i don't see much traffic at all. especially at night time. after 6:00 or 7:00, there's hardly people on the buses going to financial district. nobody goes to work at night down there. i don't work, i can sit out there all day and send you videos every day. i can prove to you, there's no

need for bus lanes in that area. may be down towards morning commute will be okay. throughout the night and 24 hours, i don't see a point in that. >> chair borden: we'll close public comment. we'll come back to the item. it's been brought to my attention we should do separate motion for each item. i know manny, seconded it. director lai? >> director lai: i do have couple of additional. i know that we've motioned and seconded. >> chair borden: we need to take this as separate item.

>> director lai: i want to provide little bit of may be additional context for the record. i did participate in quite lot of community outreach. quite a few public comment that wasn't to the entire board packet. it was addressed to the board. it was only addressed to supervisor peskin's office and staff generally. i know that staff engaging with the community deeply. i do want to acknowledge that i think in this particular case, it is very evidence from the number of responses we received in the survey numbers.

there are lot of tensions sharing of roads. it is ones of the neighborhoods where it's the most robust transit ridership and usage. there are some personal vehicle

users as well. i think from my firsthand experience engaging with this community, deeply, the concern is not so much about being able to door-to-door every single person riding their own vehicle but it's about sharing the space and making sure that the struggling business community can survive. that's the part of the context i want to share. there's so much chinatown about the survival of their very small economy. please keep in mind, this isn't just this moment in time. chinatown has been struggling for quite some time. m.t.a. our infrastructure development in the area has led to some of those anxieties. particularly with central subway

construction, which is a fantastic long-term project and a great investment in that part of town. it really did create a lot of disruption for the local economy there. lot of the small businesses really suffered and we dragged on the construction. it's been years and years of accessibility issues for that community. i apologize somebody said earlier that we shouldn't use accessibility in the sense. i think the general anxiety from the business community, they've been cut off from people being able to visit chinatown easily over the last couple of years. it's not just the infrastructure, it's also during covid where we shut down and limited other access including parking garages and getting rid of park and ride. i think there's mute attitude of

factors that's causing anxiety for chinatown. it's really a small little place that we're trying to fit lot of shared interests. i lay that out little bit. i know there's a lot of this back and forth and really great advocacy on the part of the community that may not have always made it to the public forum that is our online meeting. director yekutiel, how -- i can tell you the merchants are still not happy with us. i think it's reflected in the results of the survey. survey responders poses in part,

which is pretty significant. i just highlight the fact that even the transit riders who responded to survey are unhappy about this at a higher rate than the other two. i want to say it's not just the drivers in general an -- what i have understood from the community, their greatest area of concern is very limited. i think some of the public commenters touch on this point. clay street going downtown in the p.m. hours. there's that block where motion tonight is asking for

essentially creating permanent .i wonder if we have to do that. this is a question to staff. are we in a situation where because of the timing of the emergency order, we have to take a decision right now? can we extend that block on clay just between stockton as an extended temporary condition so we can see how the recovery can go whether we really do need that transit lane going downtown during the p.m. peak and may be we could also see how central subway happens. when that's opening and whether or not that change the transit patterns. clay street is really the few blocks between -- it's really the core of anxiety. the other part that i heard the community ask for, do we have to

keep the 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. seem like very big chunk of time for them. seem like prayer to the pandemic, the hours of restrictions are generally 3:30 to 7:00. i like to propose that. >> director tumlin: let me see if i can take stab the. director lai, all of your initial comments we agree with. we're grateful to the work that you done helping to build our bridge with chinatown residents and merchants. chinatown is a special community. it's a place that we need pay extra careful attention to and to direct additional resources to just as we have tried to do as part of our equity strategy.

i certainly respect that this is a uniquely challenging time particularly for small merchants who thought that they were through the worst of it, six months ago. who have risked their entire life savings and the capital of their whole family in their small business. these merchants, their survival margin is tiny. we want to do everything that we can in order to make sure that we are supporting the economic recovery of all businesses in san francisco but particularly small businesses and particularly small businesses that are run by women and people of color. that said, how we plan this time in emergency transits it of our physical infrastructure determines how the mobility system will work in recovery.

creating these transit lanes now, just extending their duration now will help us to make sure that as downtown san francisco and chinatown recover, that it recovers in the back of successful, efficient reliable transit rather than recovering in automobile dependent way that fills up all that space. this is urgent because san francisco is growing. both our population and our jobs despite the interruption of covid, our population is growing. while driving a car is super convenient, i love driving, i know that when i drive a car, i take up 10 times as much roadway space as i do on a muni bus or bike or walking. now is actually exactly the right time for us to ensure that as the city does recover and more people come back to work, that we don't strangle our

economic recovery by having folks prioritize driving and by making transit slow and infrequent and unrelabel. --unreliable. i know that this project in particular is a hard tradeoff. that is why we've tried to work individual well merchants along the corridor. it's why we made all those confusing tradeoffs to maintain loading spaces to support small businesses. i know that this is a hard tradeoff for all of you as policymakers who are trying to balance deeply competing objectives. >> director lai: can you address the question whether or not we are running up against any kind of timing issue by continuing that block of clay as a

temporary? >> director tumlin: in terms of emergency order? i would refer to assistant city attorney who can speak to when the authority -- the emergency authority under which we enacted these measures. what is the expected date when we'll meet. >> thank you, director tumlin. this is deputy city attorney. i believe that the original temporary emergency lane were enacted to expire with the end of the mayor's emergency declaration or within 120 days of that date. the mayor's emergency declaration are still in effect. i can verify that. we are trying to move forward

incrementally with all the things we've done through the emergency. have those authorized under normal authorization. i believe there was that 120 day cushion. >> director lai: thank you. i would say that in response to director tumlin, wise words there, i do agree it's time for us to take stock what's important for us to try to be thoughtful about how we plan to be prepared for whatever is coming next. i want to remind ourselves, we have also this obligation and the desire as an agency to really focus our attention on

our community of concern and aligning our decisions base the on equity. i want to make sure that as we are making sure that we're improving the system for all neighborhoods we're also not disproportionately essentially killing an entire neighborhood from their perspective. i want to make sure we're listening to that. given that we don't have an immediate deadline -- i would like to make a motion to -- we have to separate the items anyways. for california one, would like to propose that for really just for those blocks on clay between stockton. if we can keep that stretch for

another six months, i'm on board with taking action on everything else. i feel like there's still conversations to be had and may be some observations too. chair borden, i don't know if that was appropriate or not. i director hinze has her hand up. >> chair borden: we can make a motion any time. it doesn't end the discussion for us. you're making a motion around the item number --

>> director lai: number 12. accepting with the modification to continue the temporary nature of tetl on clay between kearney and stockton for another 6 months. >> we do have slightly complicated situation here where we drafted one piece of transportation code legislation for the three items because the publisher prefers that it's much less confusing for them. i would just ask staff you continue to talk and direct hinze ask her question for them to look through the legislation. i will dot same to determine if we need to amend the legislation

tonight or. it may be that we need to come back and indicate an intent tonight and we'll come back with new legislation at your next meeting. >> chair borden: that is to modify -- if we wanted to modify any of the items that's the reason we have to do that. >> chair borden: meeting of the san francisco municipal transportation board of directors. please call the roll. [ roll call ]

we are anticipating the attendance of director yekutiel. director hinze is not expected today. we just admitted director yekutiel. he's present. you have a forum. >> chair borden: next item. >> clerk: announcement of prohibition producing devices during the meeting. we have no announcement. item 4, approval of minutes for the december 21, 2021 regular meeting. members of the public who wish to make public comment on the minutes phone number to use is (888)808-6929 access code is 9961164. to address the board, dial 1, 0.

>> chair borden: are there any additions to the minutes? i will open up to public comment. this is time for members of the public to comment on the approval of the december 21st regular meeting minute. that will approving the actual text in the minutes. moderators, any callers on the line? first speaker. >> caller: i'm sorry. can you hear me? >> chair borden: are you calling about the minutes from the december 21, 2021 meeting? [ indiscernible ] >> chair borden: we go in numerical order.

next speaker. >> caller: this is david pilpel. happy new year. minor edits to the minutes starting on page 3 after i spoke the next speaker is listed michael spizner. on page 4, at the top, the comment of david alexander, it would read better david aleksander expressed concern over vocal minority opposition two slow lake street, rather

than opposition of. also on that same page under item 9 public comment, it's optional. i think two lines members of the public may address the board -- i'm not sure if those are needed in the minutes. they are appropriate in the agenda. not sure they are needed in the minutes. on page 5 after barry toronto, i believe the speaker was marcelo fonseca for those speakers that were taxi drivers, i assumed that the taxi staff can verify their names and spelling. many of them seem to be known people. on page 7, on my public comment,

it would read better to discuss transportation funding and anticipates opposition sales tax measure and other measures from those unhappy with the sfmta. same concept but changing one word. i think that's it on the minutes. i think the minutes are great and thank you for listening. >> chair borden: thank you mr. pilpel. are there any any additional callers? with that, we'll close public comment. is there a motion? >> so moved. >> seconded. >> chair borden: please call the roll. >> clerk: on the motion to approve the minutes. [roll call vote].

the minutes are approved. >> chair borden: next item. >> clerk: item 5, communications. >> chair borden: we are in the middle of the omicron variant. which means that due to covid-19, health emergency with this meeting being held virtually with all members and staff and public, this meeting is teleconference. our note for this meeting on our web page, we asked the public to participate remotely by writing on the board or leaving a voice mail message. if you have done that, we have received these comments. we appreciate that. we continue to urge members of the public to reach out to us. you can write us at m.t.a. board at sfmta.com. if you attended the meetings or have not attended, you may be aware that technology is challenging. because we have multiple systems that connect with each other,

there can be a problem when we lose the phone line. we will stop and pause the meeting to make sure it's reestablished. we will make sure members of the public is available to participate in this meeting. we ask for your patience when such issues do arise. i i want to thank everybody who is behind the scenes to make this meeting happen. turn it over to secretary silva to make her comments. >> clerk: this meeting is televised by sfgov tv. for those watching the live stream, there's a time lag between the actual meeting and what members of the public are seeing on sfgov tv. if you're watching and you wish to comment on an item, please call the phone line when the item is called. for members of the public who wish to make comment, the phone number is (888)808-6929, access 9961164. to address the board, dial 1-0. make sure you're in a quiet location that you mute any tv or

computers streaming the meeting. you will have two minutes to provide public comment. i will announce a 30 second warning and when time is up. item 6, introduction of new or unfinished business by board members. the election of the sfmta board chair and vice chair pursuant to your rules of order. at this time, i like to ask for nominations for the position of the chair. >> chair borden: director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: i like to nominate chair borden to continue as chair. i think she deserves that privilege for all of the hours she has spent so gracefully presiding over the microsoft teams meeting. i will happily nominate her.

>> chair borden: i accept the nomination. any additional nominations? seeing none. we'll have to open up to public comment before we vote on it. for members of the pub, this is the opportunity to comment on item number 6. introduction of new or unfinished business by board members which is election of sfmta board chair and vice chair. if you like to make a comment, you may do so at this time. with that, we'll close public comment. can you please call the roll. >> clerk: on motion to elect gwyneth borden as chair. [roll call vote]

thank you. that motion passes. moving on to the election of the vice chair. >> i nominate amanda to continue as vice chair. >> chair borden: director heminger like to second? are there any other nominees for vice chair? this is time the members of the public to comment on item number 6 election of the vice chair for sfmta board of directors. if you like to make a comment, please 1, 0 to speak. are there any callers on the line? with that, we will close public

comment. secretary silva, please call the roll. >> clerk: on motion to elect amanda eakened as a vice chair. [roll call vote] thank you. that motion passes. congratulations. >> chair borden: thank you all, everyone for your vote of confidence for another year. hoping this year will be better than last year. hopefully we will all return to meeting in public. i'm also very excited about numerous projects that should be coming online this year. i'm excited for welcoming people back to muni and to enjoy all the new projects and activities that are going to make our city vibrant as we reopen and people return to office and omicron

become distant future. are there any other -- director eaken did you want to make any comments? i see that director yekutiel has his hand up. >> director yekutiel: i wanted to say how glad i am to 7 on that the board under your leadership. it's been an honor. it's been mentioned. we served in this capacity in a time of extreme crises. that is where true leadership is shown. i want to commend fiver other colleagues here in particular, chair borden. your steadfast, calm, leadership under these very high pressure times dealing with the once a

century agency. i will take any other public of commission in san francisco for team sfmta. we've consistently shown professionalism, hard working, contributions. i'm very proud. may be who aren't as proud, i am particularly proud to serve on under your leadership. thank you for continuing to want to serve. >> chair borden: thank you. director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: i want to elevate one principle which is the idea of continuous improvement i'm very excited to. we have tried to make some tweaks in terms of how we do business. hopefully make things flow smoothly this year. i want to really welcome additional thoughts, creative

input just in terms of how we can make the board meetings better for you. we're working for you and with you to make this thoughtful. >> chair borden: thank you. directors, are there any other new unfinished business by board members? seeing none, i will open up to public comment one more time. since there was comment on new unfinished business by board members. are there any callers on the line for new and unfinished business by board members? we will close public comment and next item. >> clerk: item 7, the director's report. >> chair borden: welcome back director tumlin.

>> director tumlin: thank you. as usual, we continue to get lot of work done over late december and early january. i got a lot to cover. i want to stop for a moment and acknowledge that yesterday was the holiday which we celebrate dr. martin luther king jr. in -- february is black history month. access to public francis has tran -- transithas been a key f. even if far back as 1863, here in san francisco senator brown -- charlotte brown sued the san

francisco omnibus railroad company multiple times from rejecting her. she ultimately won her case against their racist policies from refusing to serve black people. california had at least legally desegregated transit in the late 19th century. in an essay that was published after his death, martin luther king jr. described public transit as a genuine civil rights issue. it determines whether any community connect us to jobs and other issues. having equitable transit policies is crucial to achieving racial justice. here in san francisco, we haven't obtained that goal. we are commited to dis mantle systems that stood in the way of

racial equity. i want to bring up a detector who can give you update on the impacts of the omicron surge. >> good afternoon. as the region is experiencing a surge in covid cases, the sfmta has been experiencing a record number of staff who are staying home from work or who are quarantining. within the last 10 days, since january 8th, we've had 173 staff members test positive for covid, 72 of whom are transit operators. that number doesn't include staff that is either awaiting a test, staff who is quarantining because of a close contact or staff that is taking care of sick family members or covering

unexpected child care requirements. this is really hit us across the agency. we have 13 facilities right now which are meeting cal osha's definition of an outbreak. i know an outbreak is a very scary word. i think thank virus movies for that. it means three or more employees at the same work site and shift testing positive. even if those cases have obvious other sources of cause. we are providing testing options as well as enhanced masking and spacing at those locations. we're fortunate that our staff is vaccinated and because one of the things that osha is looking

at is if any of our cases are resulting in hospitalizations or fatalities which we've been blessed to not have experienced recently. more than anything, i want to take this time to thank the employees for getting vaccinated and for continuing to be calm, be supportive of one another to be compassionate with each other and with our riding public. we are monitoring staffing levels on a daily basis and managing service impacts. right now, we're seeing about 10 to 15% of our transit service is not going out and we're doing our best to spread those

impacts. twitter account is the best place to get live information. we're also using our realtime e-mail and text messaging. we strongly encourage the public to sign up for those features. appreciate everybody across the city who's sticking with us during this difficult time and expressing lot of gratitude for our department operations, staff and our human resources staff who are doing an unprecedented amount of contact tracing to keep everybody safe and support us through this difficult time. >> director tumlin: moving on. i want to talk about our efforts in celebrating lunar new year. the sfmta recognizes that the lunar new year is one of the most important tradition chinese holidays.

separated worldwide. this year lead up and throughout the month of february. sfmta is looking forward to supporting the mobility and security need of san francisco's api community. as we celebrate the year of the tiger. we're grateful to director lai who worked with us to develop an approach that addresses mobility and safety concerns raised by a.p.i. stakeholders. we are currently experiencing pretty significant service gaps system wide as a result of omicron. in order to minimize crowding and wait times on routes serving chinatown during this important time of the year, we will be providing supplemental service on the bay shore and on the 30 stockton between caltrain and north point. we expect this service increment will smooth out service gaps, rather than provide a lot of additional extra capacity.

we will be running the extra service from january 25th to february 6th to correspond with the preparations for and most of the celebrations around the lunar new year holiday. in addition to that, we will be opening the golden gateway garage on weekends on a pilot basis beginning on january 29th and we'll be running throughout month of january as a test. the opening of the garage was recommended to us by community stakeholders and provide convenient access to the farmers market as well as overflow parking for chinatown. sfmta understands the importance of visibility as part of addressing safety for the a.p.i. community. we found success in using our fair inspector deployment strategy pairing high incident lines with low incident lines. using this approach for the month of february will be focusing on both high and low incident lines to remain a.p.i.

and chinatown roots for the whole month of february including one california, 8 and 9 and the 45. the agency is also going to be celebrating the a.p.i. community. we're looking forward to participating in the chinese new year parade on february to 19th. we'll using this as an opportunity to connect with the community and answer questions the public may have about the central subway projects, muni service restoration and other needs. in addition to a role in supporting the parade's traffic and transit reroutes the sfmta is sponsoring public service announcement ads via all of our social channels. reminding people of the event and highlighting safety awareness. additionally, we will invite staff to ride in the parade which will be outfitted with

commemorative banners. finally, we want to appreciate that director lai has created a bilingual new year's greeting for all of our staff as well as for our ongoing guidance to make sure our initiative next month are proactive and culturally appropriate. thank you so much director, lai. next up we have an update from our chief people officer, kimberly ackerman on staffing. are you available? >> jeff, i'm going to cut in to give kim a quick intro. kim is going to be sharing with you i think, probably the biggest challenge our agency is facing as we think about all of our strategic goals and how we continue to meet the needs in

san francisco. the hiring challenges that we're facing range from things that are small and are controlled to the great resignation that we're seeing nationally and worldwide. at the end of the day, the way our customers feel it that they don't have the bus when they expected to or the line is longer at the customer service center or the parking control officer coming out to clear their driveway is taking longer. there's no part of our agency that is not being impacted by this. there are no easy fixes to these problems but, i'm so grateful that we have kim ackerman and a really innovative team that she

put together to support her on these challenges. her and i are meeting formally, twice a week and informally almost every day to move this work forward. we wanted to get it in front of the board so that you all are tracking this closely and you can also be kind of at the forefront of information as it evolves. >> thank you so much. good afternoon everyone. as julie mentioned, we really appreciate this opportunity to give you all a hiring update and talk about our challenges that we have. i want to talk about what those challenges are, vacancies, how covid has impacted all of us, how it impacted our attrition

rates, nationally what is happening in labor force and how it impacts us. also our internal challenges. we want to end talking about our hiring initiatives in terms of i heard mentioned at the beginning about continuous improvement. that's important to us and the hr division to really talk about what are we going to do moving forward and how can we make it better. i want to put it in context. this slide has lot of data information. we have 5999 active employees. that represents breakdown division by employees. 70% of our employees are

transient employees and 19% are street. we have the smaller breakdowns. other categories all of the similar departments and hr which represents 1% of total employee population. another really important metric is the very top the hr employee ratio. even two or three years when i first started and came here, our employee ratio was one hr person to 92 employees. we are making a lot of progress. debt ratio is 1 to 72. we're working to fill our hr depth. just future hiring, the number everyone wants to know is how many positions do we have to fill. currently there's 772 open

positions and 280 operator positions that we have to fill for this year. so far this year in terms of the beginning of the fiscal year, this is about six months, we hired 349 employees. what's interesting is, if you look at the box below that number, it talks about percentage internal promotions. we continued to promote employees internally significantly. you can see from 19-20 and 20-21, we're at 40% employee rate. which is fantastic. it shows high level commitment to our employee and provide a pathway for them. that's something we're proud of.

average tenure is 11.4 years. we have 772 positions to fill. of those, we have 503 are being processed of the requisition in hr. we have currently 409 that are currently in recruitment process. sorry, 503 that has been sent to hr to be processed. our vacancy rate is at 15%. that is one challenge for us. the next challenge it has to do with our operators. this slide i'm going to turn it over to julie to speak to you about our operator availability versus our is demand. >> the green line here, shows

what we estimate as needing for operators based on our current service expansion plan. the blue line is our hiring rate with promotions and retirement included in it. you can see that we are keeping those two lines very close together through march. there will be a period where we're staffing up to be able to add the additional service in june. then you'll see where the green line actually extends over the blue line. which is not what we want to see because that puts us back in a position of missing service. we are going to continue to monitor that. we're hoping that some of the short-term leave that has

relatedly to covid surges comes down. we will also do some optimizing of the june proposal. our goal is to continue to have those lines be as close as possible. i wish we could have the blue line increase faster. that's already assuming classes of 42 starting in february. which is not something that we have previously been able to deliver. we started our first large class in january. we hoped it will be 40 students. we were able to recruit 31. that immediately signaled to kim's team that we needed to revisit how we did our operator solicitation. we have a list that shows almost 200 people that have met all of the qualifications to join the

sfmta but people are not choosing to take the job at this time. we think the biggest issue has to do with the fact that the too much time has passed for when people indicated they wanted to do the work. we're changing how we create that list and we can talk about it little more in the question and answer period. it allow there to be a much shorter time when people try to join the m.t.a. and we're able to bring them on. we're hoping we can continue to keep up with the pace of the blue line and if we run into issues we'll continue to keep this board informed. >> thank you. next slide please. our second hiring challenge, it's been covid-19.

i think when you look down on this slide, you look at the numbers. we're actually pretty fortunate in that we are mostly all of our employees are vaccinated and i'm proud to say we have the highest vaccination record of any transit system. it's pretty amazing. even the number here, the 74 is fairly low. because it hasn't impacted us in other ways as well. that is really our team ability to pivot and react to covid because we have set number of staffing and hiring teams have been required to pull hr work. to pivot to respond to the city vaccination policy as well as all of the other things that we have implemented. we have hr teams that is involved calling close contacts

and calling positive. we've been inputting data in the system for employees in terms of vaccination data. we really had to be able to pivot and react to that. which i'm proud of. that does impact our ability to perform other hr duties as well. we've had employees through hr staff had to work a lot of weekends and late nights as well as other members, etcetera. another challenge for us has been in terms of separation rates. our attrition has challenged us. right now, you can see that this chart to the left, which shows the separation, there are four categories. there's a volunteer, involuntary, retirement and the death. the blue is shows fy 19-20. the gold color is 20 to-21. the pink color is 21-22.

our numbers are still low. we're still six months in. retirement last year, we had 169. which is little bit higher than previous years. we have e13% of our employees eligible for retirement. that really has something to do with our demographics. we have a higher age population, which is pretty common in transit who are eligible for retirement. that can impact our hiring challenges. two other areas that impacts our hiring challenges. is national workforce changes. everyone read about how the job market really changed due to covid. you have millennials, they're they are no looking for jobs for

life. they're looking for different recruitments. hay, we offer remote working jobs. that's what people are looking for. they can live in texas but have a job that may be centered in california or out of sister -- somewhere else even in boston. it's really important in terms of national workforce. we had lot of internal challenges. again, i like that julie said there's some minor things. one is the civil service hiring process. does it support the speed and volume required for a transit system. that's been a challenge for us. we're looking for ways that we can talk about continuous improvement and things that we can do and still work within the

civil service process. to be a efficient hiring agency as well as to be able to respond in a quicker way. those are things we're continuing to do this year. julie mentioned with the transit operators that we have worked to see how we can really scrutinize that process, make it more efficient, speed it up as well as to be able to get those applicants when we need them. not a year ago -- couple of other things that i want to mention, we had about 13 months where we didn't have exams because of covid. the city has also transitioned to smart recruiters. that helped our recruitment for three months. we have about 15 or 16 months that impacted our hiring and exams and ability to do so.

couple of things that i want to mention high level, we have increased our hr staffing to be able to support transit. we've gone from eight now. as i mentioned, we've looked at our operator hiring process.

we will continue opivot to make sure we can respond to the agency's need. we will do that in many ways. we are continuing to have a recruiters on our staff. we want to build and expand on our apprenticeship program for our trade position. that's the area where we're really vulnerable. not only have we seen the reduction in applications for those positions and candidates on the list. there's a challenge for us in terms of the number of employees

who actually are retiring age age may potentially retire. it's really important that we invest and commit in this apprenticeship program. it's a way to build talent within those positions. we'll continue to look at other ways. we appreciate the support for incentives and expansion of hiring bonuses for particular positions. we look at where those incentive programs may be helpful in terms of recruitment for other difficult hard to fill positions. we will continue to do things which we said we will do like reviewing our qualifications,

making sure that we're reducing barriers for applicants. we are ensuring promotional opportunities. we'll continue to increase our outreach at job fairs and work with hr for continuous recruitment as well. that is it for my update. i appreciate this opportunity. we appreciate the opportunity to continue to be better and to move forward. >> director tumlin: we're not yet done. unless you want to pause for questions. >> chair borden: i think we'll pause. directors, do you have questions? i know i have a few. one, people stay on the list for a long time. how long people on the list. when we come back to them, do we find out where they went?

do they go to another city agency. >> great question. we started that list probably couple of years ago. we thought we had 700 candidates on it. what end up happening, the staff reached out to those candidates. they do it if via phone or mail to find out their interest. often times what we find out is that they're not responding because the time lapsed. they are no longer interested. other really important thing, they lost their credentials. they had learners permit. now it's lapsed. now they're not interested. we do our best to try to find out detail so we can use that information to help us in the future moving forward. sometimes we don't get responses either. >> chair borden: do we know how

long on average people are contacted? for some it's a few years. it depends how long the list is and how large the list are. with our operator list, we had one time, 700 candidates. it depends on how large they are. >> chair borden: it will be helpful to know for the 700 candidates, the first person on the list, did they get contacted the next day? i wanted to find out what that might be. if not, we should keep track of that. other two questions, you mentioned in involuntary. i wasn't sure what that meant? involuntary separations? >> thank you for asking. voluntary -- involuntary would be anybody who wish to leave through a disciplinary termination or something. >> chair borden: it's not a

forced retirement situation typically. [ indiscernible ] i see director lai and heminger have questions. >> director lai: thank you. thank you for giving this update. certainly been asking and wondering how we're doing with our hiring. lot of our agency bottlenecks essentially stem from our operator and staffing resource challenges in general. could you go over, again, measuring from last year? you were successful filling quite a few hundred positions. what was our gap or our deficit last year? i want to understand how well we did last year in terms of hiring overall? >> you asking for how many we filled and how many vacancies we had? i don't have last year's data in front of me.

if anything, i would say the vacancies from similar. number of positions we hired for last year was fairly low. we'll be on pace this year for the year before that. last year we were embroiled in covid. we didn't have the list. we didn't have any exams for 13 months. we had positions on budget hold. last year was really tough. >> director lai: obviously, i think from all accounts in hiring market right now, it's quite competitive and it's difficult to actually hire generally across sectors now. is 15% vacancy, how far away

would you consider being comfortable range of vacancy? >> it's not for us to be in single digit. that would be ideal. we have a long way to go. when you look at the 15%, it's a lot. that's a lot of positions for us. i think one of the things, too, promotions are great. it means we have to hire twice. if i have a position to fill and six people in hr who received promotions. now i have to go through the hiring process to back fill their positions too. that's something that we have to keep in mind too. it does kind of overlap or unpack in terms of our ability to be able to really impact that

vacancy number immediately. >> director lai: i think i heard it mentioned in your presentation, i know that director mentioned that also in our last operator training, we were able to get to 30 that we had actually could have trained additional operators. this is going to become like a compounded issue if we don't hire sufficiently now for the next couple of months. we're con trained in terms of bringing back additional service like restoring services in the entire agency. i heard you mention changing some of our practices with the list and that's fantastic. in your opinion, is there other things this we should be doing like attract more -- what else can we do to make sure that we're filling every single seat that's available in our training classes? >> great question. thank you.

what we're doing now is getting ready the examination for the operators. what we're doing, we posted another opening for our operators. we're sending those applicants a questionnaire and they would have to respond to. that's going to be -- that gives us the ability to be able to react quickly. we don't have to wait on the exam or the scores. we'll go by those particular questions and how they responded. that's going to help us in terms of filling the class quicker. we know that we lose a few in the class. one of the things that julie and i have been discussing, we're going to overfill. let's say we need 42, if we can get 46, we're going to hire all 46. we know that we're going to lose some. that's important to make sure seats are filled. our goal is to be able to get

more than the number even if it's plus 4 or 5. >> director lai: that's great. shooting for higher is appreciated in this situation. could you talk a little bit about our diversity goals in your hiring. i know we have full racial equity lens. for your purposes. i would like an understanding how we're doing with our gender and ethnic diversity on our hiring. how we'll focus on nap we discussed previously before, there's still quite a strong gender and ethnic lack of diversity across our job types. particularly in operators,

there's a huge gender gap even in our engineers team. could you talk about that. how did we do last year? are we moving closer to our goals? >> one of the things that would be beneficial too is to have -- [ indiscernible ] i no our officers -- i will say generally, one of the things we're doing is working really hard with orei to make sure we're achieving our objectives. in terms increasing our diversity and not because of ethnicity but in terms of gender, which is really important. there are many classifications where you don't have that diversity. i can't say it's one thing, it's multiple things. one thing that the team is working hard is look at the

m. q.s. do we have positions that factor some people out when we know they will be qualified? that sounds pretty easy but it's a tedious process. we are working on that. which i think is really helpful. the other thing that i mentioned in the presentation, which is going to help us is our outreach efforts. we have hired an outreach coordinator which is going to work with the orei. i would say that yes, we definitely have some things in place that we'll move forward to help improve that. i think that's extremely

important. >> director lai: thank you so much. i want to make one last comment. i'm quite concerned about our hiring where we stand in general. i'm sure rest of my colleagues here are also because primarily, i feel like often, our dialogue and response that we get on the service side of the conversation, we don't have enough operators. not just operators but staff and engineers to support our restoration. seems like, staff telling us it's not a money problem that we can't bring back service. it is about staffing. this is the one of the upstream core issues that we have. i feel like we need to be attacking it with a longer urgency. if the constrain in the hr

analyst like we don't have enough in the department to do this work, that seems to being like problem number one that we need to address. it's a little bit concerning to me that we're still seeing the expectation in terms of demand for staffing versus what we're projecting to have in 2022. i apologize i'm taking way too much time. i like to have more robust conversation around this. i wanted to put that out there. thank you. >> chair borden: i would agree. we should make this a separate item next time and not under the director's report.

>> director heminger: thank you. i wanted to first follow-up on the point that director lai just made. kim, you mentioned the pilot that we had approved in terms of an incentive structure to get people on board. it was a small specialized class. have we learned enough from that to know if we need to apply incentive approach or bonuses, etcetera, more broadly in the agency? >> thank you for asking that. we have one recently that we've offered a bonus and incentive to. it is a small classification group that we're working with. i think more importantly, what we do know is that other transit systems are using incentives, bonuses, hiring bonuses, for operator positions to incentivize employees to look at

their organization. i think that's really an important point. i think the other thing is, no incentive is going to work unless you can market it effectively. the other thing we're doing is to rebrand our presence in terms of improvement standpoint on our website. that will be important and we'll be able to communicate that. >> director heminger: that's a very important point you made. one other downside of having two dozen transit operators, which means we got lot of competition when we're trying to hire our folks. when we do come back, it will be helpful for you to show us what some of the other agencies are doing. i'm sure they are facing similar challenges. it's a regional job pool. i think that will be good to see. the other question i think is lot more focused. you mentioned, kim, 74 staff are

out of compliance with the vaccination policy. what has happened to them? >> great question. those employees who are not in compliance or they haven't been compliance or reasonable accommodation is denied, they are on administrative a pay as they go through their due process. depending on what union they have, they have to a hearing. they going through that due process. once due process is concluded, they are sent release letters. >> director heminger: can you give us a sense where those 74 folks are in that process? the deadline as i recall, few months ago. >> november 1. we have about 40 or 45 that are right now actively in the grievance process. they are definitely going

through those steps. >> director heminger: thank you very much. >> chair borden: there any other questions by directors? if not, we're going to open up to public comment. this is the time for members of the public who are on the line, we are in the middle of director's report. that's the item that we're on right now. we'll take a pause because ms. ackerman gave quite a lengthy report on our hiring. we'll take public comment on all the things that mentioned by julie and jeff and ms. ackerman in the director's report. we'll take a second public comment to address those items. if you're on the line and you like to comment what you just heard, please press 1, 0. are there any callers on the line?

is there an issue with the line by chance? >> clerk: it does appear muted. caroline, can you try to unmute yourself by pressing star 5 please? we do not hear david at this time. i see that you raised your hand. please try star 6. >> caller: this is david pilpel.

>> chair borden: can you hear us? mr. pilpel, can you hear us? seems like there's a problem. he cannot hear us >> clerk: i apologize, i suggest we take a quick recess. >> caller: can you hear me now? >> there's a problem about the phone line now if you're on the line. >> clerk: i suggest taking a quick recess to rebridge the phone line. >> chair borden: we'll take a 5 minute recess. it's 2:01.

>> i am so happy. african-americans in the military from the revolutionary war to the present, even though they have not had the basic civil rights in america. they don't know their history. in the military the most

sacrifice as anyone in this country to be willing to lay down your blood and fight. i believe that all african-americans have served because they love this country and the hope that the citizens. >> welcome to the first -- let me take my mask off. so you guys can see who we're talking about. my name is aaron. i'm the executive director of