>> clerk: good afternoon. this meeting is held in hybrid format. with a meeting occurring in person at city hall room 400, broadcast live on sfgov tv and by calling (415)655-0001. access 2488 198 6389. before we begin, i like to remind all individuals attending the meeting in person today, all health and safety protocols and rules must be adhered to. this includes wear your musk over your mouth and noses while in city hall. we appreciate your cooperation and the interest of everyone's health and safety. please note that hand sanitizing stations are available and masks are available upon requests. we welcome the public's participation during public comment period. there will be an opportunity for general public comment during item 9 of the meeting.

there will be an opportunity to comment on each item on the agenda. each comment is limited to two minutes unless otherwise noted by the chair. public comment is permitted only on matters within jurisdiction of this meeting body. public comment will be taken in person and remotely. for each item the board will take public comment comments from those attending the meeting in person and then those attending the meeting remotely. phone number is (415)655-0001. access code, 2488 198 6389. when prompted dial star 3. pleases note city policies prohibit discriminatory and harassing conduct and will not be tolerated. we will now proceed with the roll call. item 2 roll call. [ roll call ]

one moment. one moment as we clear up the webex portion. director heminger? sorry for the interruption.

heminger present. [ roll call ] director yekutiel is expected to join us. you have a quorum. director hinze is attending the meeting remotely. directors are reminded they must appear on cameras throughout the meeting. because the director attending remotely, votes at this meeting will be taken by roll call. item 3, announcement of prohibition of sound and produce devices during the meeting. rings of cell phones are prohibited at this meeting. places on item 4, approval of minutes for the march 1st

regular meeting. >> chair borden: i ask members of the public to comment. are there any additions to the meeting minutes from the march 1st meeting. seeing none, we will open public comment. this time for members of the public to speak. press star 3 to join the speaker line or if you're in person to come up to the podium. are there any callers on the line? >> clerk: we have one hand. >> chair borden: mr. pilpel, are you there? >> clerk: one moment.

speaker, are you there? one moment please. >> caller: it's david pilpel. there was some confusion in the last few minutes. the phone number is different from previous meetings. there was no audio on the phone for the first two minutes or so. anyone who called in on the

designated phone number could not hear the introduction to the meeting. i don't know if you need to go back and start over or not, anyone who called in, didn't get that. finally, the web link on the web page for this meeting to sfgov sfgovtv.org/sfmta live is a deep link to the specific video from last week's special meeting on thursday. if that hasn't been fixed, perhaps somebody at sfgov tv can fix that. anyone who follows that web link on the page on the web page for this meeting is not going to end up in the right meeting.

if that's all understood, on the minutes, which i believe is the item that we're on, i actually don't have anything on the minutes. i think the minutes are fine. i looked at them, everyone is spelled correctly. it's a fair capturing of what happened. i appreciate board secretary silva. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. are there any additional callers on the line? >> clerk: we have no additional callers. >> chair borden: we'll close public comment. are there any issues that we need to be aware of based on some of the shortcomings of the phone number? >> thank you this is deputy city attorney. because the board has not taken any action yet, you can proceed. i would suggest that in the future we try to make sure that the audio line is also working at the same time as the video

stream. thank you. >> chair borden: directors is there a motion? please call the roll. >> clerk: on the motion to prove the minutes. [roll call vote] the minutes are approved. 6-0. >> chair borden: next agenda item. >> clerk: item 5, communications. item 6, introduction of new or unfinish business by board members. >> chair borden: board members are there any items unfinished business? all of women represented here were proud to go on her story

women month celebration. we had a cable car that was decorated with a special sign. we took a ride from mason down to powell street, came back over the hill and went down to beach street. it was wonderful to see so many amazing women and operators and others across sfmta. we only wish more people could have been there. it was such an amazing day. it was a wonderful show of support of women and sfmta. it never made me prouder to be part of this family. all of us women up here were at the event yesterday. it was a wonderful time to be together. i want to thank the agency for drawing attention to the women within sfmta.

>> vice chair eaken: i believe this is the inaugural women's history racial equity cable car ride. >> chair borden: with that, i don't know if any -- i will open up to public comment. this is an opportunity for members of the public to comment on the women's history month. i don't see anyone in the room. is there online who like to comment? >> clerk: members of public if you like to comment on this item, please press star 3 to enter the speaker line. we have no commenters. >> chair borden: next item. >> clerk: item 7 the director's

report. >> director tumlin: i want to congratulate our own director heminger chair of the board of approval new three count governance proposal. the new agreement confirms a standalone executive director for caltrain that is selected by the jpb board on its own. it completes repayment agreed to way back in 2008 for the caltrain right-of-way. all three member agencies include sam trams santa clara county v.t.a. and san francisco board of directors will need to approve memorandum of

understanding this september. this was a significant achievement in regional collaboration and it required lot of work on director heminger's park. thank you so much for all of your work. next up i want to acknowledge that thanks to a lot of work by our own budget staff our government community relations staff and particularly speaker pelosi and her office. the agency will receive an additional $115 million in federal relief under the american rescue plan, bringing our total federal relief to just over $1.3 billion. this amount of money, $115 million, is basically exactly the amount of money that we need to confidently hire as quickly as we possibly can accelerating towards fully restored muni service. giving us time to identify a new

source of revenue by fall of 2024 in order to sustain muni service and everything else that we do. what this amount of money does is it buys us exactly the right amount of time to we need to create a new stable sustainable operating revenue source for the agency. i could not be more relieved. it's almost precisely what we need in order to confidently restore all of our services, find a new sustainable path and if we fail identifying a path, it also gives us the opportunity for off ramps to shrink our services without having to face catastrophic layoffs. this is incredibly good news for us. speaking of transit, we are finally recovering from omicron which completely crushed muni service for several weeks.

mostly last month. services are stablizing ridership is way up. the week before last, we had 371,900 riders for the week. which is the second highest total we've had since the very beginning of the pandemic. ridership was way down during omicron. ridership is increasing at over 5% a week over week. this is extraordinarily good news. that said, we are still struggling to get back to where we were. that is for couple of reasons. one is during the worse part of the pandemic, we had almost no turnover or retirements. people stuck with the agency. we had a lot of staff who even though we were not hiring at all for about 18 months, stuck around with us which was great. now that covid is receding,

we're starting to see some catching up in that delayed retirement and -- just, delayed retirement. because of our low staffing, enjoying lot of internal promotions. what that means is that we're needing to hire and train up very quickly but omicron had a big impact on our january and february training classes. those classes were less than half of what we had expected. that means that our pace has been slow at training up new operators in order to be able to restore service. we're still on track to restart the ax, bx on april 16th. that new schedule adding all that new service will require some fairly minor frequency cuts to some existing lines which will basically encoding the

actual service that we've been delivering considering the significance some of our next runs. once the new training classes get started, we're hoping to start picking up the pace, service restoration again. we're projecting that our next round of service restoration will occur some time in july. if we do better than expected, we can start the two potentially as soon as june, i don't want to promise that given the challenges that we had filling classes as a result of omicron. finally, i want to note that while masks are being no longer required throughout much of the city, they are still required in this room. they will be required on transit vehicles and in our transit facilities at least through april 18th at which point in time we're expecting that the federal government will issue new guidance. we don't know what the guidance

will be. next up is vision zero. as many of you heard on march 2nd at the intersection of harrison and 22nd street, there was an eastbound electric scooter rider who collided with an sfmta track maintenance vehicle that was traveling northbound on harrison. the schooler rider succumbed to his injuries. the san francisco police department has issued preliminary investigation results that show that the sfmta employee was not at fault. the victim, however, was a teacher at mission preparatory school. the city's crises response team held three debriefing sessions at the school and staff to offer mental health support and support services have been provided to the next of kin. as always, our rapid response team immediately went out to investigate the intersection. the response team found that the markings were generally in good

condition and that the intersection staffed by school crossing guard during the morning and afternoon hours. there was a recommendation to daylight the southeast corner of the intersection which unlikely other corners have not already been daylight. we also had a fatality on march 4th. the victim parked their vehicle. the vehicle unfortunately, moved forward pinning the victim between two cars. there's no rapid response recommendation for that one. on march 5th and 39th avenue, there was a motorist one passenger that drove at a very high speed into a concrete wall. the driver died at the scene and the passenger remains in critical condition as of last week. there is a rapid response

recommendation to add two warning signs adjacent to the intersection. finally, i wanted to give you a brief update on our no right turn on red policy. as you know, we have put up no right turn on red restrictions throughout the tenderloin in late 2021. we've been collecting detailed data on the effectiveness. the early results are in and they are looking very promising. we're going to be issuing a detailed report later this month. at high level, what we're finding is that the changes significantly reduce number of vehicles encroaching on and blocking the crosswalk with no negative impacts observed. we'll be developing policy recommendations for future expansion, based upon these results. we will share with all of you later this spring.

next up, we are making progress on two vision zero projects including valencia street. just before covid, we were about to make some significant changes on valencia street with protected bikeways. as you know, during covid, we created the shared spaces program. valencia has taken the shared spaces program as well as many street closures for events and that threw a monkey wrench in our design. staff has gone back and evaluated different options for creating protected bike way on the street. we'll be presenting the results this spring. we have budgeted to complete the capital work this calendar year for finally creating a protected bike way. also, we are getting ready to

get moving on a lake merced boulevard quick build project that will cover the full two and a half miles lake merced boulevard from the border up to skyline. we'll be sharing draft design on an open house on april 7th. that will be cohosted with supervisor melgar. that will include bike ways, parallel neighbor ways and comprehensive pedestrian safety improvements. we'll look forward to hearing feedback. we will be developing a final design for implementation later this calendar year. i'm very excited by how quickly our teams are now moving on these challenging but critical vision zero projects. next update is on our residential parking permit program. beginning april 1st, we will be transitioning the famous san francisco residential parking permit blue stickers we're

getting rid of the stickers, we'll be transitioning towards virtual permits where all people need to do is register their license plate online and within 24 hours, they will automatically be enrolled in our residential parking permit program, no need to put a sticker on your vehicle. no risk of your permit being stolen. that happened with my permit more than twice. it will also -- hopefully allow us to increase the efficiency of enforcement of the residential parking permit program through license plate recognition technology. our parking control officers will cruise through the neighborhoods scanning license plates against the database of our holders. we'll be able to issue citations to those who are not registered. of course, all of our use of license plate recognition technology is in full compliance with the state and in particular

san francisco strict local legislation related to privacy. all images obtained through the license plate recognition system with the exception of those associated with the violation, are automatically purged after 14 calendar days. access to those images is limited only to authorized vendor support staff and certain sfmta employees for the purpose of citation, processing payment and review only. next up, we've got on central subway, i wanted to update you all that a request for proposal was issued on march 1st for commercial retail opportunities at the chinatown station. with a proposal meeting held yesterday on march 14th to address any questions from potential bidders. we are leasing out two interesting commercial retail spaces at the station. one for cafe coffee shop and one for a little dry goods store within the station itself.

finally, i want to invite all of you to join me this friday, march 18th, for the national day of recognition for transit drivers appreciation day. i'll be out there throughout the system all day long visiting our yards, riding buses all day, thanking our operators i would love for any and all of you to join me and for those who are taking transit on that day, please do. thank you muni operator. any of the hundred and hundreds of supportive transit workers behind the scenes who make transit work. particularly all those folks who made transit work throughout two years of pandemic. finally, reminder that you are all welcome to submit complaints but also commendations for any operator or m.t.a. personnel who goes above call of duty. you can do that through our website by using -- by searching

for sfmta muni feedback. you can do that on the sf311 app or by calling 311. you can also give us thumbs up on muni mobile's rate my ride function. that if do you this, we ask that you try to find the date, time, route, location and ideally vehicle number so we can properly identify the operator. vehicle number and time is usually good enough. the vehicle number is at the front of the vehicle in big block letters. easy to spot. our operators remember for years and years every time they receive commendation. they get called to the principal office. they are really delighted to get those commendations. that concludes my director's

report. >> chair borden: thank you. i don't see any names on the button on here. i will ask you first, for the license plate reader, if someone changes their license plate for that vehicle, will there be an easy way for them to up date that in the system? >> director tumlin: yes. it's all just simple database. >> chair borden: years ago, i didn't have a car and friend of mine was travel. she was like can can you wash my car. i said no car. her p.c.o. knew her license plate. in meeting in person-- in my net tickets all the time. she had a relationship with the p.c.o. i didn't know the whole thing i agreed to watch her car because i couldn't drive stick. how does that work?

>> residents will be able to update their license plate in our system. it's a live database that all the p.c.o.s will have access to. >> chair borden: great. they'll be able to place one for another. they won't be able to add? i'm saying they can only replace license plate. my only concern will be a system in which people add like five cars. >> the rules is the program hasn't changed. you can only transform permits under those circumstances. >> chair borden: the system, does it say what kind of vehicle. it will say the license plate and what type of vehicle? >> the system does know the make and model as well as the license plate number of the vehicle. the cameras are strictly -- they are photographing license plate. it's a somewhere small shot. it's not actually taking a photo

of the vehicle itself. >> chair borden: director hinze has a question. >> director hinze: i do. thank you for your report director tumlin. my one question for you, i know that the hiring process keeps you up at night. i wonder if there's anyone in the city can do to help you? how are we going about recruiting operators? are we enticing them to come to the agency as opposed to others?

[ indiscernible ] >> director tumlin: thank you for that question. this has been a topic of much work on my staff part as well as my personal part for the last couple of months. we're working closely with the city's department of human resources to create a variety of both incentive programs as well as streamlining efforts to help us. at the moment, i can't tell you what all those details are in part because we are also in labor negotiations right now. some of these issues are bargainable. i want to assure you that we're not the only people in city government that are facing this challenge. all agencies are working together to figure out how we confront the hiring challenge. we're also not the only city or transit agency in the country.

we're doing better than many other agencies in our ability to attract and retain skilled workers. >> director hinze: it will be good to see commendations. i'm wondering that fatality. [ indiscernible ] i know there's a lot of work going on with scooters these days. >> director tumlin: we are definitely interested in improving the safety performance of scooters on san francisco streets. particularly making sure that

people are not using scooters on sidewalks. director terron hosted a demonstration of some potential new technologies that would help to limit the ability for scooter riders to use scooters on sidewalks. two meetings ago, you approved additional penalties against scooter companies who allow their users to break the rules. we'll be happy to come back to this body whenever you request for an update on how we're doing. >> director hinze: thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. director cajina. >> director cajina: thank you so much for your report director tumlin. i did have a question about the collision on france and mission. i understand that particular intersection has been

highlighted as part of the scope of work for the geneva safety project. although there wasn't rapid response proposed for that current intersection, there may be something in the pipeline to make that intersection a lot safer as part of that project. i wanted to get more clarity on that particular piece. >> director tumlin: sure. i don't know if streets director tom mcguire is here to speak to that intersection part of the mission geneva work or if we need to come back? >> good afternoon. i would need to get back with the specific details of the design proposal at mission and france. it is included in the scope of the overall project which has been advertised and we hope to start construction along the entirety of mission street in inthe year.

>> director heminger: jeff, i wanted to ask you about masks. whether you given any thought to whether it makes sense for us to continue some sort of masking requirement after the federal rules expires, assuming they do. whether you consulted with your colleagues in the bay area. i know you've all been trying to move in lock step with each other so we don't confuse the public about what the rules are. >> director tumlin: we are according with all the regional general managers. we don't want there to be one set of mask rules at one property and another at another property. we're grateful that the federal government has set consistent rules for all of us. it's for that reason, we're in general agreement that we will simply follow what the health directors and federal government tell us to do. if the federal government drops

the mask mandates on prim 18th -- april 18th and the local health directors don't step in, we will likely drop the requirement region wide on transit. obviously people will be welcome to continue to voluntarily wear masks. what we're hearing from -- obviously there's a great deal of divided opinion about masks and their efficacy. masks and their relationship to individual liberties. what has driven our decision-making for the last two years during covid has really been the recommendations of particularly the san francisco county health department, department of public health. what we will do is follow whatever that direction is. >> director heminger: on its surface that sounds like a

reasonable approach. what i worry about is that there may be sort of a psychological barrier for some people about riding transit. i think the masking may help the medicine go down. i know that's not a public health directive. our body and jury job -- your job is to get people on muni. i worry that the absence of a mask mandate will be a barrier do doing that. i don't know how big of one. i would encourage you to introduce that subject into the discussion. i don't think it's a small point. >> director tumlin: i don't disagree. we have those discussions internally. our feeling, though, it's inappropriate to signal that riding public transit is in any way unsafe. hanging out at a bar and talking and drinking immediately adjacent to each other, that is

a questionable activity. throughout covid in every country around the world including countries that have far better contact tracing than we do, it has been demonstrated that public transit is one of the safest places you can be. we've accepted a mask mandate on transit as part of the psychological support for riders even as -- i think there's an agreement that health science doesn't support that. it will be a time for mask mandates go away on transit. >> director heminger: thank you. >> chair borden: i did have one follow-up question related to masks. whatever the policy that we have, will that be different for employees versus the public? i know for other businesses while the mask mandates fallen,

i didn't know whatever the policy is. is it uniform for internal and external. >> director tumlin: right now we're following the federal requirement. which sets the same policies for staff and passengers. right now it's interesting in that the federal requirement only applies to transit facilities. if you're working in any of our yards, you're required to wear a mask by federal policy. we'll follow the rules. >> chair borden: director lai? >> director lai: thank you. i think this might be in chronological order. i wanted to first ask maybe more of a comment. about the hiring process following up on director hinze's

question. i definitely understand your point about how we're not the only agency or only industry that's being challenged by hiring and bring on new folks. that clearly been one of our biggest bottlenecks to restore service in the city. as we know, we're a unique municipality in that lot of our stakeholders rely exclusively on public transit. we are one of the slowest downtowns to recover. maybe really hoping that we can work creatively and urgently in looking at other ways. i understand that you have contact negotiations. is there any other levers including legislatively that we should be pursuing? >> director tumlin: i can't provide details at this time.

both the department of human resources and the mayor's office have expressed some openness to continuing to create the case there for emergency authority to do more. we've also formed tiger team internally. which is basically all of our bureaucracy masters getting together to figure out to what degree within the existing rule structure can we be more efficient and get stuff done more quickly without have to change the rules. >> director lai: based on the current rate of retirement, are you anticipating that we might have to potentially shift back any of our planned service restorations? >> director tumlin: at this point, we think we're taking into account an accelerated rate of retirement as well as a

slower pace of hiring and training. all of these are none of them are fixed variables. we will continue to update you. we're trying to do our best in a time of unprecedented uncertainty. >> director lai: okay. on the retail space for the station, really exciting. it's a milestone step i think for the community that we're finally ready to add external operators. i'm hoping that we could really focus on advertising and promoting this opportunity in the community. i understand there's been some workshops and outreach. it will be great if we can continue to do more in that light. my last question as i was hoping that could on the commendations of the operators if you can highlight where folks can find

the vehicle number on trains cable cars and f line. where are those located. over the door may be? >> director tumlin: i know i'm not remembering exactly -- hopefully the transit director who i believe is online can fill me in. for both the trains and the buses and the f line, the numbers usually in big block letters at the front of the vehicle above where the operator is. in the train cars, it's also in the middle of the vehicle. if you look up and towards the front, you should be able to spot it. >> director lai: thank you. >> i did not know where it was on the cable car.

the operators can share that too. they'll be more than happy to help anybody submit a compliment. >> director tumlin: for all of our operators have a number on their sleeve. that's their cap i.d. number. if you really want to make sure that you get it right, write down that number. that go straight to the operator. those numbers are in seniority order as well. you can tell just how many years an operator has been working for the agency by the i.d. number on their sleeve. >> chair borden: thank you. director eaken. >> vice chair eaken: thank you for the report and reminder about the operator appreciation day this friday. can you let us know two questions, is there any more you can tell us what events are planned and find out more about this day and how they can get involved?

>> director tumlin: sure. i'm wondering around most of the facilities during the day. >> we feel one of the best ways we can show appreciation is by feeding people. we will be starting with breakfast burritos at our operating divisions as early as 4:00 a.m. we'll be providing lunch and dinner as well. we'll also have pretty strong management presence for shot outs and encouraging the public to either thank their operator, sending commendations and the like.

most of our operations are internal facing, focused on supporting the incredible staff that have been carrying us through this really hard time. >> vice chair eaken: another question is double checking that we're still on track for the van ness launch on april 1st and returning service to the newly improved red lanes and facility we've created? >> director tumlin: we are. i hope you will join me out there first thing in the morning. >> vice chair eaken: my last piece picking up on director heminger comment regarding masks. just curious if we have any survey day data who asked their riders this question about whether there will be more comfortable returning to transit if masking was retained. if we have upcoming sfmta surveys to get a better sense of our ridership or potential ridership and whether this is an issue that matters to them.

>> director tumlin: i'm not sure that there is any survey data. this is not the kind of topic that i would use a simple survey in order to investigate because it's one of these complex topics that speak to multiple subconscious factors. what we're trying to do is to weigh the different factors against closure. knowing that masks need to go away. again, having transit be the only place in society where you required to wear a mask, sends a very bad signal, particularly given the fact that transit is one of the safest places to be. has the highest rate of air filtration than any of us ever visited. there's no real public health reason that transit is lagging behind other spaces.

>> chair borden: with that, i don't see additional comments from directors. this is time for members of the public who like make a comment on the things brought up in the director's report. if you would like to make a comment and you're on the line press star 3 and if you're in person, you can head to the dias at the front of the room. seeing no one in person. i will see if there's anyone on the line for public comment. >> clerk: we have four speakers. >> caller: i hope you can hear me.

overall, good report. i'm looking forward to the new virtual parking permit system. we want to make it as easy as possible for people to use it, automate it. i am concerned about scooter safety on our streets. i believe that scooters need to be ridden on the street and never on the sidewalk. i do ask, though, that technology should not impede a person from walking a scooter along the sidewalk. as i often do from the middle of a block, i walk the scooter over to the intersection. we have to think about that. concerning the accident, i would hope that this would be handled in an impartial manner. the scooter driver should not automatically be blamed and the

sfmta driver should not automatically be exonerated because they work for the city. i ask if any investigation that are done be done impartially. i think the scooters are overall a good thing. we should not be using this to marginalized well behaved scooter users. i thought i would raise that for you. i hope we can get van ness opened on time and overall, i think we have a lot of good things going. eventually mask mandates will need to go away. thank you. >> chair borden: next caller on the line please. >> caller: this is david pilpel.

the deep linkfuls fixed on the website. thank you on that. there really is some weird static. can i take a moment and someone clear that up? >> chair borden: we can't hear. secretary silva is seeing what she can do. >> clerk: we do not hear static on our end. >> caller: okay. i will continue. on the r.p.p. transition, what about people with language or disability issues or no online access? perhaps you could direct the question to staff about how these concerns are addressed. on the human resources hiring issues, i would be more specific about it. i would request a written h.r. hiring plan with specific deliverables milestones and staff assignments. i would ask for a report back at this board regularly whether it's every meeting or every

month or every two months on where you are on hiring. i think that is absolutely one of the most critical things. just having some high level general comments from the director. i think it's inadequate. i would absolutely have a more specific ask on that today right now. this thursday, the board of supervisors government audit oversight committee is scheduled to hear the m.t.a.'s racial equity action plan. related to hiring, rather than having a huge racial equity staff and more plans and more discussions, i think as you're hiring to fill vacancies, have those new hires and promotions reflect the diversity in the city. you just do it. stop talking about it and do it. i will try review the joint

powers board caltrain governance improvement. thank you to director heminger. >> clerk: thank you your time is up. >> chair borden: thank you mr. pilpel. next speaker please. >> caller: thank you. on the telephone line, it sounds as if there's bathtub in the background on my end here. regarding private scooters, there's a proliferation of private scooters. they operate on the sidewalks and they are being brought on muni. there needs to be some guidelines for the placement of these scooters on vehicles themselves. also, regarding hiring, i concur with mr. pilpel.

a.c. transit had a staff memo detailing their effort for hiring. i agree that we are long on generalities and short on specifics regarding the hiring situation that we are currently facing. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. are there additional callers on the line? >> clerk: please take the next caller. >> caller: i definitely agree with director tumlin about the scooters on the sidewalks. what about the bicycles on the sidewalk? they also violate the law.

this has been a constant ongoing problem. you have to go after bicycles on the walk. this is a danger to people, especially seniors and disabled. you really have to go after them. that's my comment for now. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. are there any additional callers on the line? >> clerk: we have two additional callers. >> caller: good afternoon directors. i work with community living campaign. nonprofit here in the city that works with older adults and adults with disabilities. i really appreciate the thoughtful discussion, the director and the board members have had today about mask wear

on muni. i wanted to share my experience because i had the privilege of helping over 100 seniors and adults with disabilities use the chip card. i've been talking about muni during the pandemic. from my experience with these adults, these folks that i work with would be really reluctant to come back to muni. [ please stand by ]

>> -- so let's see what happens on april 1. thank you. >> thank you. moderator, are there any additional callers on the line? >> clerk: we have no additional callers on the line. >> with that, we will close public comment, and please call the next item. >> directors, that places you on item 8, citizens advisory

council report. >> thank you, directors. mike chen or michael chen, director of the c.a.c. for the sfmta. we have a few items we'd like to discuss. i'd like to remind the directors [indiscernible] that is item 11 on your agenda, and as a reminder, the c.a.c. supports the staff recommendation for option three. this option was preferred by the public and provided the most valid solution to preserve pedestrian and cyclist safety. we had a meeting in march, where we covered a bit about -- more about the budget. we did not get the materials in time to cover fines and fees. i believe that is this meeting, and so -- and we will see -- we did see another budget presentation at a special meeting this coming thursday so

the c.a.c. has a chance to see the budget before it goes back to the directors april 5 -- april 5, thank you. the -- some of the feedback that we got from the members in the last meeting that we are proposing in a resolution that is yet to pass is -- let's see...around two buckets. the first bucket is around delivering quality service, restoring service as quickly as possible under the constraints of hiring, expanding the emergency transit ridership lanes, business commuter programs, other vital programs, preserving service equity, and

the second bucket is prioritizing service model, really working to make sure that we significantly reduce the backlog on our maintenance, and lastly, implementing a service structure while considering the ability to pay, and that concludes the report. >> thank you for that report. so related to that, the last item that you brought up about state of good repair, had your -- had the c.a.c. weighed in, i can't remember, on the bond measure? in that, i addressed the bond issue. i don't know if they had anything to say about the priorities or the categories related to that. >> so to clarify, you mean the

again obligation bonds? >> yeah. i wonder if there were any specific areas that the c.a.c. thought the bond was covering well or if they wanted to see improvement or had recommendations on anything? >> my recollection is the c.a.c. supported the bond, and if there is room in the general operating budget, look to see if there's other things we can do about maintenance within the parameters of the budget and within staff recommendation. >> great. because you mentioned train control, but i don't think that would cover all of it. >> great. the bond does cover ads. if there's any money leftover -- >> there's never any money leftover. >> -- it's to prioritize

service as much as we can. >> thank you. director eaken? >> great. president chan, it's so great to see you. can you tell us a little bit more about the sfmta c.a.c.? >> sure. the members must be appointed by the supervisor, doesn't have to live in the district, but must be a san francisco resident, and the other 11 members are appointed by the mayor. >> and the c.a.c. is recommending approval of the staff recommendation of today, is that correct or was your point more nuanced? >> yes, that's correct, the

c.a.c. recommended passage of the item today. >> okay. thank you. >> thank you. director hinze? >> is staff considering your meeting with the primer, and if so, what is the [indiscernible] if you could give me a high level? >> i will try to answer -- i'm not sure if i fully heard the question, but i will try to answer. we were very fortunate to receive two presentations from staff so far. the february meeting was jonathan brewers, and the march meeting was -- last name von crow with passenger

relations. >> we have no resolutions to pass onto the directors yet. what i heard from the last meeting was a deep interest in new sources and new ridership programs, similar to what existed for s.f. state and university of san francisco. i think there's more about

rider fees will be heard, so i think commenting on that will be premature, and i think a lot of support for programs that have -- that create more efficiency and reliability with service. so with both increasing service hours and also the service hours that we have, delivering more service. >> okay. sorry if i put you on the spot there. thank you, chair. >> all right. >> okay. any other directors' questions? seeing none, we're going to move onto public comment. this is a time for members of the public to comment on things discussed by mr. chan or on the c.a.c. report. seeing no one lining up to speak or having any speaker

cards any moment, if you are listening on the phone, and you would like to make public comment, please press star, three. >> clerk: we have one caller on the line. >> please go ahead, caller. moderator, is the caller -- >> clerk: actually, we have no public comment. >> okay. thank you so much, mr. chan. >> thank you, directors. >> clerk: places you on item 9, public comment. >> this is time for members of the public to address sfmta members on items that are not on today's calendar. at this time, members may lineup at the dais if you'd like to speak and you're in the room. otherwise, if i don't see anyone lineup to the dais any time soon, for those of you on

the phone and you'd like to make general public comment, please press star, three. >> clerk: we have two callers on the line. >> first speaker, please. moderator, please unmute the first caller. . >> can you hear me now? >> yes, we can, mr. pillpel. >> okay. this is on general public comment. the operator should all be on the same page, with their operator numbers visible, with vehicle numbers visible. in the future, i think they

should be as reflective as possible both day and night. there's still scratchiness on the line, which is a huge distraction to making comments. any way, on the city attorney team, i hear that john kennedy has left the city attorney's office, and that robin wrightsis is back, under proposition f. it's good that robin is back, but with john kennedy retiring, that's more than 50 years of experience on the sfmta team, so i'm sure that miss cleveland knolls is hurting for

experience. i'm relating my comments yesterday about respect, and i'm still getting feedback on the line. >> clerk: 30 seconds. >> separate from the budget item today, i believe that m.t.a. should do fewer things and do them well. i think you're trying to go in too many directions at the same time. i would focus on the organization chart. i think there are too many reports directly to mr. tumlin. i would three and reassign virtually everybody else to those three groups with a small director's staff. >> thank you, mr. pillpel.

we're always impressed by your comments and your deep understanding of our city government. >> hello. this is herbert winer. in light of the covid epidemic, people standing shoulder to shoulder is a clear violation of spacing. now, this could have been remedied by the 2 clement line and the 3 jackson line being used because passengers are being concentrated on the 1 california line. now you have directives about masking, which is appropriate in light of the pandemic. also, the spacing, but when you

pack vehicles so densely, and also, this weekend, packing of the 1 california line was no exception. there are too many lines being packed to the gills, and you have to do something to remedy is because you're in violation of the federal directive. you could possibly be cited for this, so this is something we do have to really keep in mind. thank you very much. >> thank you. moderator, are there any additional callers on the line? >> again, chair border, alita dupree, she/her/hers. i was in the bay area this weekend and rode on several

systems. didn't ride muni. didn't really need to. i rode b.a.r.t., but maybe next time i'll ride muni when i'm in san francisco. b.a.r.t. goes mostly where i need to, but i ask you, as a political board, i ask that you respect me. i think that you generally do, but i don't sleep in san francisco, i was not born in san francisco, my driver's license is not in san francisco, and i'm a person who doesn't meet highly established definition, and i ride scooters. i ask that you not hold any of these things against me. i think as long as i pay my fare and follow the rules of conduct on muni, that should be enough. i hope that i would be able to come to meetings as i was

before and be able to speak respectfully, as i have before. i don't know any of you, and i haven't had the chance to meet any of you before, i have 50 years of experience on the new york city subway. i'm glad we're having hybrid meetings, and i will wear a mask all the time. i'm fine with that, i'm vaccinated, so i just ask that you will welcome me onto this system and into your meetings. thank you. >> thank you. moderator, are there additional callers on the line? >> hi.

good afternoon. barry toronto again. i wanted to play out a few issues, chair. why did you change the phone number for calling in? the number that was easy to memorize, and it's easily accessible to everybody, including people who have a landline, so you made it not cost effective for people who are using landlines. also, you're claiming ignorance over changing the phone number. [indiscernible] front of buses [indiscernible] you've got to do something about it. [indiscernible] it's really bad. you've got to get somebody to focus on it [indiscernible] and

to clear the spaces out so that people can pull in. it's bothering the people who use the transit lanes legally. [indiscernible]. >> clerk: 30 seconds. >> so i'd appreciate the demonstration and learn about the problems that you're having with the d.q. app. it's having some issues, and you can only go to the airport when the app tells you to. before, you had a choice that you could go to the airport any

time, and now, you can only go when the app tells you you can go. thank you very much. >> thank you. moderator, are there any additional callers on the line? >> operator: we have one more callers. >> yes. i think you should pat yourselves on the back for allowing us two minutes to speak while you're praising julie kirchbaum for keeping us on hold. last month, i asked questions, and still, no answers provided. when signs aren't in english about covid, that's dangerous. title 6 requires that you put warnings in all languages, and that includes english as a

primary language. also, the board has demonstrated its utter ignorance about riding muni. has tumlin ever tried to approach a driver to see the badge number on his or her sleeve? you can't see it. it's absurd. and the masking policy, if you rode muni, you'd see none of the employees wearing masks. i call 311 and report them every day, so i want to know what you're going to do about these issues. i want you to challenge them.

>> do you have anything else? >> i want the answers to this. >> this is not a question-and-answer session. staff will get back to you later. >> how will they get back to me? >> unfortunately, items are not agendized on the calendar, so we can't address that. next speaker, please. >> operator: there are no more callers. >> thank you. just a point of information. during the pandemic, we moved on-line to have our meetings remote, something that was unprecedented. being live and providing the opportunity for people to still participate remotely required different systems that made it easier for us to administer, so i hope that people recognize that we are making an effort to

go above and beyond by making on-line and in-person commenting available, which is unprecedented, so i hope they understand the amount of management that goes into one of these meetings. thank you. can you please call the next item? >> clerk: item 10 is conscent calendar. all matters lifted hereunder constitute a consent calendar, are considered to be routine by the san francisco municipal transportation agent board of directors and will be acted upon by a single vote. there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the board of

directors or the public so requests, in which event the matter shall be removed from the consent calendar and considered as a separate item. >> i understand that director lai would like to sever item 10.1. do any other directors have a desire to sever any other items? so we'll open up for public comment item 10.2 on the consent calendar, and after we're done with item 10.2, we will go onto 10.1. do we have any callers in the queue for 10.2?

>> clerk: i have two callers. >> okay. first caller, please go ahead. >> can you hear me now? >> yes, we can, mr. pillpel. >> you have to stop my time. it is entirely frustrating to make comments like this. i would ask somebody in the office to call in or somebody from home. it is unbelievably distracting to have to think and go through my notes with this noise in the background. this is not what a.b. 361 contemplated for a teleconference or a remote meeting. if you can reset my time, i will go back to my comments on 10.2. >> we will oblige you.

>> thank you. on 10.2, i would like to know if this is retroactive for fiscal 2021-22, even though it's three-quarters over. this ratifies a project or set of projects that has to do with state of good repair or otherwise assist in operations or capital efforts at m.t.a., specifically muni, with the lctop. the calendar item as described only talks about a project but doesn't include a dollar amount. it does include the free muni programs but does not include the dollar amounts. i just think that this program should be used for operations and maintenance for state of good repair rather than finding revenue in lieu of fares, which

could have been solicited from other sources, public, private, etc. i don't think this is a good use of the lctop. thanks. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> thank you again, chair borden. this is alita dupree again. i would maintain to you that there are people in the city and county of san francisco who have are disabilities as a result of military service. they're called service enacted veterans. now i don't live in san

francisco, but i have a reduced clipper® card because i have a forced disability retirement more than 50%. i don't know what this lctop things. kind of sounds like t-tops and that kind of thing. free muni can help people with disabilities, and i personally know people, both disabled veterans and nondisabled, that can use this help. i think we need to get people like this their reduced clipper® card. free muni will help a lot of

people. it doesn't help me, but i stand in solidarity with those who qualify. thank you very much. >> thank you. [please stand by]

>> clerk: the item 10.2 is approved 7-0. >> chair borden: please call 2.1. >> clerk: approving various routine parking and traffic modifications. >> director lai: specifically related to i believe it's 10.1, a-c and potentially f.

i'm just wondering these residential requests, what we think would mean in terms of the availability of parking for everyone else that potentially relies on street parking and does not have the luxury to access off street parking. >> thank you for the question. my colleague, cooper, is online. he manages the r.p.p. process for us. i will say, the process by which r.p.p. donees are -- zones are extended to individual buildings -- items a, b and c refer to residential apartment buildings around the terminal.

i will let ray talk about the process and how it takes into account the neighborhood parking conditions. >> thank you. one of the main issue here, we make modifications for residential parking permit area. that was a decision made by the state attorney general several years ago. that combined with -- we don't have data. we have not been able to fully consider the ramifications of whether or not building has parking or does not have parking when making modifications. >> director lai: thank you mr. cooper. i understand we can't discriminate and there's no way for sta of to track the

availability or private parking garages. my question here that i shared ahead of time is around the equity of the remaining off street parking spaces -- sorry, on street parking spaces and whether or not we have an understanding of the demographic that may be impacted by expanding residential r.p.p. programs. >> in this case, i don't think we have a demographic analysis. >> director lai: thank you. that's probably something that i'd be interested digging into in the future. what about the analysis between expansion of r.p.p. versus metered spaces around this part of town? >> let me start. to be clear, the item before you extends eligibility for residents. it doesn't change the parking rules on the street. in the case of the tehama

street, there's no parking in general. there are areas that seen great deal of development like the transbay area. we continue to do that in mission bay and other fast developing areas. put -- making buildings eligible for r.p.p. will not change our holistic approach to curb management. >> director lai: do we have a sense of revenue for the agency, what that looks like? instead of expanding the participation of the r.p.p. program, instead we look at conversion of certain areas to metered parking spaces. i believe we had an earlier

presentation that touched on this. may be several months ago. >> we started to do some creative response like installing meters that are free for permit holders which non-permit holders pay for. certainly that approach would generate more revenue for the agency. >> director lai: great. i would like to understand a little better the sort of parking demanding availability around the downtown area and what would like to propose a continuance for item a-c. >> chair borden: i'll be honest. i will agree with what director lai is talking about. i believe it's problematic that people are moving in high-rise buildings and paying multibillion dollars. i like the fact that we

decoupled parking from housing to make housing less affordable. i'm not sure that it's always affordable housing even without the parking space included. i think it's problematic that you can have someone have multiple cars and decide to have two garage and one on the street at the city's expense. it is worthwhile looking into that because those areas have a lot of workers who sometimes have to drive and park in that neighborhood. they cannot do so. there's a lot of delivery and loading. i think it's worthwhile looking at the street space and those newer neighborhoods so we don't recreate problems from the past. director hinze has a question. >> director hinze: i was going to second that motion and also second director lai's request

for equity and availability of parking. [ indiscernible ] >> chair borden: just to clarify the motion for items ab10.1, ab and c only? >> correct. >> chair borden: is there further discussion on continuance before eopen it up to public comment? at this time, this is for members of the public to comment. we are item 10.1. although the motion that was made related don'ting items ab and c. people can speak to the rest of the 10.1 items d-v.

i don't see anyone in this room at this time. we'll go to public comment online. >> clerk: we have two callers. >> caller: hello. >> chair borden: are you calling about 10.1? >> caller: yes. 10.1. >> chair borden: go ahead. >> caller: this is about what i heard. i don't understand what you meant more demographics. i understand in many high-rise

buildings, they have ability to pay parking. we have only one car. we have no designated area. [ indiscernible ] i i wanted to comment about this. >> chair borden: thank you. does that complete your comment? >> caller: this is david pilpel. on this item, i have no objection to any of the items. if you want to continue a-c. that's fine. my request is in the future on the environmental review

section, the second paragraph, the m.t.a. under authority delegated -- it's got the case number but it doesn't have the date stated on page 5 second paragraph or in the resolution on page 7. that is different from other calendar items which have both the planning department case number and the date of the determination. i would ask that in the future, doesn't have to be changed for today unless you want to direct it to be amended, staff include the date of the determination as well as the case number in the staff report and the resolution for anything that ceqa trigger. once again, there's no -- i'm thinking there's something whoever is the moderator, may be it's something that the moderators location. maybe the moderator needs to

mute eexcept for the caller except for the caller calling in. this is incredibly distracting. it's giving me a headache. >> chair borden: i know they're looking into the static situation. thank you for the suggestion on the ceqa notice information. are there additional callers? >> caller: hi. i'm very much concerned with t and v on 10.1. trying to talk through the static. it's difficult. i think it's premature to put back the parking in those areas. those are right turn lanes. i think you're making a mistake [ indiscernible ]

the problem is if you eliminate that, you're ecreate -- creating more congestion. i'm begging to sever out t and v for further exploration. you need to go down and look at the areas involved with a-c. i actually thank -- i want to let you know there are not lot people living in the building is rich. if you look around, there are no stores. they are just apartment buildings.

if apartment buildings don't really need meters. i think it's absurd to look at that, i understand the reasoning behind it. these are all new apartment buildings with very little parking because the planning code doesn't require enough parking in the buildings. thank you very much. >> chair borden: thank you. are there additional callers on the line? >> there are no more callers. >> chair borden: we'll close public comment then. i do think -- i do have a question for staff about why we're rescinding the towaways during rush hours on the t and v. >> good afternoon directors. items 10.1, t, u and v are

instances in the downtown where two lanes of traffic are turning across the crosswalk. definitely known to be a real pedestrian safety risk point. these are high injury corridors and they are in areas of high pedestrian density. we have just an example, the first of the location v, there was serious injury between vehicles and pedestrian in the four years between 2018 and today. we feel for those reasons, we're moving double right turns is warranted. >> chair borden: what would happen with that space? >> what would happen, the intersection would be -- [ indiscernible ] any space more than 20 feet back from the intersection would be restored to either parking or

living. >> chair borden: it will be set up that it wouldn't be easy for -- it -- [ indiscernible ] >> it would prevent two lines of traffic from turning. >> chair borden: are there any other questions or comments either on ab and c? i think part of the analysis and looking at items a, b and c is understanding b.m.r. units in the buildings how much does that represent of the neighborhood. i think that is worthwhile. those people would need to be in a different situation. >> vice chair eaken: just one question, director tumlin continues to remind us that full m.t.a. staff is over extended. at capacity. i wanted to hear staff reaction to director lai's request to do further equity and parking

analysis on 10.1, a, b and c. given all your priorities. >> we can do it for items a, b and c. the real question that i like to ask my staff to come back with, the process by which we legislate buildings being added to zones. perhaps that can be some change to that rather than doing more analysis. we can streamline that process. >> director tumlin: most likely i would have staff do is ignore this item for some number of months and come back to you with some of the changes to the r.p.p. program that we were talking about moving forward with before covid. that we back burner during

covid. thank you director eaken for acknowledging just how over burden and exhausted staff are right now. every one of these changes will result in tens to hundreds of hours of staff work. we respect the guidance from our policy perspective, it does come at a significant staff cost. >> chair borden: i guess the point to that, though, how do we get input early enough so it isn't extra work? the challenge is that the public and others push us to make greater decisions and to be more thoughtful. by the time we have a point to make a decision, if we do that, it's a lot more for staff. it's helpful to look at the process early enough so it doesn't add an extra layer of staff burden to things. especially when it comes to big policy changes. i think it's like really hard to

be in a situation where you trying to make decisions and be thoughtful. feeling like by doing so, you're making everyone's life more difficult. we don't want it to be a false choice. director yekutiel. >> director yekutiel: 33 tehama is affordable housing. i don't know if director lai if all three should be in the same bucket or you want to study one that's affordable housing? i think providing basically free on street parking for luxury units is one thing, whereas creating an r.p.p. program for a building that's low income and affordable housing is a different thing. from i just searched, two of the three are luxury or market rate

i guess. advertised as luxury actually. one 250 is affordable b.m.r. housing? >> director lai: i was noticing the same. i'm not familiar enough with the 250 development. my recollection, was that building is part of another market rate development where the parking is actually provided on the other part of the parcel to supply the b.m.r. development. i'm not familiar enough with that. i will rely on staff to educate us on what that dynamic is. >> director yekutiel: i guess the question is about further study, perhaps, some meeting in the middle will be the further study. it's a little more complex. >> director lai: i think my concern -- let me think through

this. i think my concern is just to understand what is the actual parking supply in the area and whether or not by making -- expanding these r.p.p. programs will inadvertently create other equity impacts. sure, i supposed if an analysis demonstrates that exclusion of those b.m.r. projects preserves their equity, that's fine. i'm not necessarily asking for information that isn't already available. i understand there was a baseline study done a number of years ago that we could tee off of. i'm fine with director tumlin's approach to defer these items until we are ready to discuss overall policy. whatever is the path. >> chair borden: i would say 250

is the b.m.r. building i rather leave that on the list. i'm more concerned about people and b.m.r. units who can't afford to pay for parking. for whatever reason they have cars because they need to commute to work and less concerned about the other buildings that are part of a bigger policy question that we might want to address. i guess, my question to you, would you consider severing 250 fremont? >> director yekutiel: yes. 250 is connected to the avery which is market rate. there's a separate b.m.r. building. >> chair borden: it's a different address? >> director yekutiel: it is. there's some connection between the two. it would meanwhile continuing a and c and establishing the r.p.p. for d.

>> i would like to review this. i would prefer that you continue all three. the california vehicle code speaks broadly about residents. you either give residents certain geographic area an opportunity for r.p.p. permits or you don't. distinguishing on any basis including affordability may have some legal issues. perhaps, staff and our office can work on the policy and legal issue and come back with a one set of recommendation if that's acceptable to director mcguire. >> chair borden: to that point, is there specific additional guidance that you need from us around what we're interested in no make this easier so you feel like you can answer the

question? >> what i heard is, the board would like to hear more about the demographic analysis and the potential equity impacts of the effect of adding these buildings and similar cases to the r.p.p. program on the supply and demand for parking. >> chair borden: i think more generally and the new construction high-rise building neighborhoods that are typically closer to the c3 more downtown district. >> perhaps we can bring back not just the discussion specific buildings but a general policy so we can solve this problem. >> chair borden: there's lot new buildings coming online. >> director tumlin: i'm assuming this means we'll need to defer

this item for at least six months given the magnitude of the additional analysis that will be necessary. are there unintended negative consequences of denying these permit zone expansions for the applicable buildings? >> right now, the impact will be felt by the applicants in these buildings. >> i think the impact and we the caller earlier today mention this. [ indiscernible ] of course the board has final say over all changes. which is fine. i want to talk about -- we're

working through the work that we do with the r.p.p. program. i think this is sort of -- in terms of issues we need to discuss and work through with the whole program. excited to talk more about that. >> chair borden: director tumlin, do you have anything else to add? directors this is your call. do we have a motion and a second to continue those items. we can take a vote on that at this time and decide. do we want further discussion and determine whether or not we want to hold off. we have a choice to choose to

support this today and continue it knowing it take six months. i guess the one question i would have, i know there's a process by which people apply to have the r.p.p. sometimes there's petition and whole thing. sometimes there's simply people take charge and view the process. any sort of color on how this came to past, probably would help any sort of color how this r.p.p. request came to pass. was there a lot of people reaching out to the department about it? was there a bunch of neighborhood group stuff? it will be helpful to understand the urgency because that also would make a difference in what we decide to do. >> in the last two years, we streamlined the process a little bit just to -- we streamlined

around buildings will be making changes on the street. for r.p.p. buildings very close to the blocks -- [ indiscernible ] there's nothing on the streets that's changing that we have to get consensus or get a 50% approval the way we do on unregulated blocks.

>> director tumlin: saw number of people can initiate the eapplication. we do a public hearing and bring it to you. it's not the 50% survey process that's needed to increase the physical scope of the regulated zone. >> chair borden: how close is the next r.p.p. to this? is it couple of blocks away? >> i believe this building, the building behind it has r.p.p. >> let me take a quick look. our rule is 500 feet of the regulated block of r.p.p. parking. some of these buildings are

right around the corner from r.p.p. related block. we have r.p.p. along -- [ indiscernible ] >> chair borden: i think just a color on whether or not what's happening there. >> director lai: just to clarify my motion is to remove 10.1a, b and c from the consent calendar. it is not my direction or request to defer the six months. it is director tumlin's decision and direction on staff management to do so. in my opinion, let's say 10.1b if staff does more behind the scenes, and comes back and decide that doesn't impact the upcoming policy discussion that we will have on the broader r.p.p. and should be advanced, i

feel like staff should be able to bring that back at the next hearing. i want to clarify there's additional information on clarification from city attorney comments. we should be able to bring that item back at the very least. >> chair borden: we already took off consent. your motion is to sever these three items to continue per the investigation about different treatment of the vehicles. >> director lai: i believe the action is actually removal from the consent item. >> chair borden: we already took it off consent. >> excuse me. you're now considering item 10.1. item 10.1 has items a-d.

>> chair borden: i thought we were severing those. >> i think your original vote was to sever 10.1 from the consent calendar. director's lai motion is to approve items 10.1 minus items a, b and c. you can direct that to be in the discussion of staff. >> chair borden: is that your understanding? [ indiscernible ] we can go ahead and call the roll then. >> clerk: on the motion to remove items a-c and approve the remaining items d-v. [roll call vote]

that motion passes 7-0. you should take a motion to approve as amended. >> motion to approve as amended. >> second. >> clerk: on the motion to approve as amended. [roll call vote] thank you, that motion passes 7-0. >> motion to approve 10.2. is that necessary? >> chair borden: that was the amended motion. we did that. we can go on to our next item. >> clerk: item 11. approving proposed parking and

traffic modification associated with the evans avenue quick-build project. items a-j on the agenda. >> good afternoon. i'm really happen to be here to introduce quick-bill item to you. we streamlined quick-build process over the last few years. for several procedural reasons, evans avenue does have to go before you today. i'm happy to be here and to talk about it today and have the opportunity to present. i think this particular project showcases lot of what's best about our quick-build program. evans avenue is one of the most complicated corridors in san francisco.

because this is a quick-build program it could be in the ground within months pending approval today. i'm happy to introduce allen robinson to walk you through the details. thank you. >> thank you. hello, chair borden and directors. it is here for both public hearing and for your approval today. most of our quick-build projects don't have to come back to you after you approve them for a planning process. which you did for this project

along with six other corridors in 2020. this one little special because it includes establishing brand new bike lanes what is currently bike routes rather than upgrading a striped bike lane to protected bike lanes. it also includes a couple of muni stop changes which you have to approve. the project area is the western most end of evans avenue from cesar chavez to napoleon street which is 1.7 miles. there are number of ongoing development projects under construction or recently opened ta includes a new sfpd facility as well as new southeast community center which is

expected to open on third street. there are two major sfpuc construction projects. one of which is actually -- has closed a portion of gerald avenue nearby. there's a lot going on here. this slide shows evans avenue as it is today. it has four lanes, two in each direction. parking along both sides of the street, there are sheros and outside lanes. it connects to third street. relatively high proportion of the traffic on this section of evans avenue are large vehicles including trucks, buses and

rvs. this part of evans avenue was identified for quick-build safety improvement project because it's on the city's vision zero network. where 75% of the traffic injuries occur. there were 81 injury collisions on this section of evans avenue reported between 2015 and 2020. this project supports vision zero. its goal is to reduce collisions to implement and measures that can be evaluated and potentially

adjusted or reversed within two years of them being implemented. pictured are the treatments that we'll use on this corridor. on the upper left is a road with one or more traffic lanes which reduces speed. a combination of high visibility crosswalk markings as well as advance limit lines, make cars stop for the crosswalk which makes crosswalks more visible.

over the last year, the project team has conducted outreach through a variety of methods to stakeholders. we began with other city departments that use the corridor including the p.u.c. and the administration of the navigation center. we met with community groups including the -- [ indiscernible ] we went door-to-door and spoke to people in the corridor and representatives of businesses. we tabled two public events. we held a virtual public meeting.

any design needed to keep traffic moving successfully while protecting people on foot and bikes from the large vehicles that use the street. the survey provided three potential options. the most favored one included a protected bike lane in one direction with parking. we based our final design on that option with some adjustments. the proposal reduces the travel lanes on evans from 4 to 2 and provides additional turn lanes at intersections where they are needed. provides a combination of bike lanes generally protected in the westbound direction and standard

bike lane in the eastbound direction. on some blocks, we are proposing to remove parking to accommodate the turn lanes and the bikeways. overall, the proposal will maintain the majority of the existing parking along the corridor. this slide shows two typical cross sections from the proposal that will be used in different locations. the top one shows the design for the blocks between the napoleon street and ranken street. if you go from left to right, there's the parking on the curb and south side or eastbound direction. we have a standard straight bike lanes and then one travel lane in each direction separated by a painted median which we provide flexibility for emergency

vehicles. on the north curb, westbound, you can see there's a floating parking lane and then a buffer with a post in it and a protected bike way along the curbside. that's our floating parking designs created by the survey. the second section on the bottom would be implemented between napoleon and marin. it actually proposes removing the parking on the north side of those blocks to allow turn lanes. in some ways mid block turn lanes where there's access that

helps people make those turns safely without blocking single through lane of traffic. or just longer turn lanes at major intersections like cesar chavez and napoleon which has the most traffic on the corridor. buffered bike lanes will be protected and buffered will be provide on the north side and south side of a buffered bike lane. finally, the project is proposing to relocate a couple of bus stops. basically the three stops that are currently between cesar chavez and napoleon proposing to relocate to marin street. these would improve operations with the road diet while make

sure nearby bus stops are still within two blocks. again, today, we are asking for an approval action, specifically regarding the bus stop relocations and the new bicycle lanes. since this is a quick-build project, it can be implement -- it will be implemented within a couple of months. it that is to follow paving. it will go in on the fresh pavement and be efficient to implement for much of the corridor. it should only take 2 to 4 weeks for our shops to construct once they get started. you'd be happy to answer any questions. >> chair borden: thank you you

can take a breath. you were nervous. take a deep breath. we have a few questions. director heminger? >> director heminger: thank you. it might be helpful if 2 go -- if you go back to slide 9. first general question, are parking protected bike lanes safer than buffered bike lanes? >> generally, yes.

we've done study on some of our other conversions and they improve safety and reduce speed. >> director heminger: why didn't we use that treatment for the whole corridor? why do you have a hybrid? >> there are a lot of competing needs on the street. technically, you could -- [ indiscernible ] you can put floating bike ways on both sides of the street. considering that we have a muni bus and so many large vehicles, it would constrain emergency access if a fire truck needs to get down the street. that is why we are proposing just one side with a floating parking and even with that, we're having to provide stripe

median to incorporate little more flexibility. >> director heminger: if it's emergency access, you will still be hindering access where we have the protected lanes? i guess my question really gets down to, if one treatment is safer than the other, why split the difference? we're going to have sort of one chance, may be not chance, one of the advantages of these quick builds we can learn from a mistake if we make it. it does strike me that we fairly consistently compromise at the expense of the new facility and at some point, want the new facility to have some priority over the rest of it. that's the whole point.

>> we do protected bike lanes wherever we can in the project. as quick-build, i don't think it's our last chance that evans -- at evans avenue. because of the closure on gerald through 226, there's not space to put floating parking in both directions. the amount of wirth in the middle of the road will not be sufficient. >> director heminger: why is it safe in the places that you have protected bike lanes for muni vehicles etcetera? you losing me on that point. >> the total lift of the road, you have floating parking on both sides, you end up with 20 feet between the edges of the parking lane. when you have rvs that are

wide, it becomes like 18 feet and you have heavy vehicles that are 10 feet wide and muni vehicles 10 feet wide passing each other on the 18 feet that's left. we didn't feel it was feasible >> director heminger: it's your strategy to provide as much parking protected lane mileage as you could? >> yes. >> director heminger: but not more? >> as much as we could. >> director heminger: you're balancing these other access users. i wonder if julie still on the line? we haven't had the person who's in charge of all those buses. i'd appreciate hearing from her directly about that trade-off. t.m.a. -- >> director tumlin: julie is not on the line. dimensions the bus and trucks is about the same. the issue parking protected bike ways takes up couple of feet

more space and there was couple more feet within evans street. >> director heminger: can't narrow down the lanes a little bit? >> director tumlin: unfortunatel y on a major truck route serving lot of industrial facilities from u.s. 101 and 280, we narrowed thing down as much as we could. this is a major truck route street in other parts of san francisco, we have quite a lot. this is one of those place where is the context really does matter. the volume of trucks serving the street getting in and out of san francisco's most important industrial district, we can't have trucks clipping each other's mirrors as they are driving. >> director heminger: we don't want trucks clipping the bicyclists either. >> chair borden: i would never ride my bike here. i go there all the time. it is a really -- it's all

trucks and there's been traffic -- construction has been going on for quite some time and traffic is always back up to evans and cesar chavez. i know that's a temporary condition. it's a really challenging street for regular people. >> director heminger: right now we have the sharrows? >> director tumlin: there's two lanes in both directions. we will bring that down to one lane plus mostly protected bike facilities where we can squeeze it in. this is one of the more complicated streets in san francisco. it is serving a thriving industrial district. >> director heminger: back to the question, what we got now, those sharrows that no one seem to like? >> director tumlin: what we have now is terrible. >> director heminger: we got parking protected over here. i guess what i worry about is

we're making it more attractive for bicycles and pedestrians. i don't know. whoever else is out there scooting. it's almost like a sucker punch. >> director tumlin: what we trying to do is the best we can within the existing geometry of the street. if things work, great. then that creates the case for investing further including doing things like moving it curbs to get that additional three feet in order to make it even better. until we're able to approve the case or set aside the capital money for complete reconstruction of the street, this was the best that we could do to create the highest quality and safest bike pedestrian experience while accommodating

the reality of major truck traffic and major emergency a vehicle needs for corridor. we will be able to do better. >> director heminger: generally speaking, i don't like the notion of contradicting the technical work that you all have done. it's usually exceptional. this one does cause me some pause. i know there are other directors who want to speak. i'll stop. thank you. >> chair borden: director hinze? >> director hinze: thank you. my questions are sort of similar to director heminger's. i'm in support of protecting. bike lanes where possible.

it did strike me reading the staff report, there's sort of a lot going on in this area. we did by nature of the protected bike lanes, did choose proposal with most parking spaces. if you could walk us through that that will be great. >> we conducted a series of observations with multiple days and weekday and weekends. documenting parking along the entire corridor and outside the corridor and how frequently

drivers came and left to understand better how parking was being used. that helped us more confidently recommend removing parking especially with the north end of the corridor which allows us to provide both protected bike lane on that stretch as well as turn lanes for basically the entire length there which we think will keep traffic moving as well as possible. >> director hinze: chair borden mentioned the temporary traffic condition that causes -- [ indiscernible ] there's quite bit of congestion. we received a video from

somebody in our communication which apparently was -- [ indiscernible ] could we speak to the congestion in the future? do we expect that to improve? >> we did hear concerns about congestion along the corridor especially director heminger mentioned that during the construction of the sfpd facility, they had close lane for utility work. that condition dis-- did cause lot of congestion.

it made things look much worse with the permanent road diet. we did -- we heard concerns about because of the detour from gerald street for that construction, we wanted to make sure that the road diet could accommodate that. we're confident that it will continue to function. >> director hinze: thank you. you're good. don't worry.

lastly, i would concur with director heminger when we know -- yesterday, it seems there were some possibilities in the future. i appreciate the staff doing this very complicated corridor.

>> chair borden: thank you. director yekutiel? >> director yekutiel: thank you. ellen, thank you for the presentation. much appreciated. i'm also very thankful that we get to look into this. i know your team worked hard on this project. thank you very much for presenting it to us. i have two questions. the first is why didn't we go to jennings or new indian basin park? i'm a newcomer to the bicycling movement. one of the things i really enjoyed in my recent forays and cycling, being able to go from destination to destination. i can't help but wonder, just few blocks farther south is a new park that the city is building, why didn't we continue this project to it? >> that is a great question. there is actually another quick-build at the east end of

evans avenue that went in last year. that was part of the bay view community base transportation plan. it it was one of those quick-build projects. this one was identified because it's part of the high injury network. the section of evans between those two is very different than this part of evans. it's much wider. it has a big concrete landscape median. it has existing bike lanes it has a better safety record, which is why this part was identify for the quick-build. there's definitely opportunity for more safety and connecting it to the quick-build project. the scope of this was based on the high injury network. >> director yekutiel: if i understand you correctly, good chunk of that part of evans is -- taken care of?

>> i believe so. >> the eastern end of evans was a quick-build done in the spring of 2021. there's a bit of evans in the middle. it could be a future quick-build. be very different design challenge. there could be a future connection. it does have existing bike lanes. >> director yekutiel: i'm thinking from the perspective may be trying to bring industry and tourism in this part of time. seems a bit unfortunate that we have two quick-build bike lane projects that are not connect. if that is something we're interested in doing, it would make the whole thing a lot more successful. >> director tumlin: this project is bridging the gap. this project is the gap. we have bike facilities from

evans. >> director yekutiel: what are they talking about this middle area? >> director tumlin: this stretch of evans is the gap in the bike lane network. this project will close the gap. our goal will be to continue to upgrade facilities on either side but this is the most important part of the project. >> director yekutiel: seems different from what they just said. >> i might not have been clear. there are existing bike lanes starting at third street. this is a section of evans that doesn't have any bicycles now. >> director yekutiel: the second question is also slide 9, i echo director heminger's concern. we're doing all this work, there seems to be lane of track where the bikes are not protected from cars. i wondered if we had studied

bringing both of the path to travel of the bikes in the parking protected lane? i imagined if i'm a cyclist, i'd rather bike next to another bike than bike next to an active car. remember, i told you in the beginning, i'm new. did you study that. why did you end up going choosing a design that did not incorporate that? >> we definitely looked into that. we heard a lot of support for protected bike ways. we want to look at the highest level of safety improvements that's possible. for the quick-build program have some limitations. we would need new bike signals, traffic signals, modifying the

traffic signals in a way our shop can't do themselves. we'd have to contract it out possibly more concrete changes with physically concrete cement to make it safe for cyclist to get across the intersection.

>> we worked a lot with folks at the navigation center. we've been doing planning and should be expanding their services soon. distributed materials to people living on the street as we found them. generally people's concerns were

safety, pedestrians, access to muni and bike safety seem to be high priority for people experiencing homelessness or living in their vehicles. it will be great to put in a traffic signal across to street to get the to the bus stop on the other side of the street there. we couldn't co-- do that in a matter of months. we are starting with this. >> director cajina: it's any understanding this is just an initial intervention for this particular corridor but there will be more interventions in the future and more opportunities for folks to engage in improving the safety, pedestrian safety issues on the corridor? >> director tumlin: that's right. the quick-build pross, the

building is essential to the engagement itself. it can be very challenging to engage with folks when they can't imagine what the change might look like. we did a lot of preparatory engagement in order to help shape this quick-build recommendation. once we actually implemented it t that's when we'll start hearing all kinds of interesting comments about what works and doesn't work. if we're finding things are not working, we can change them in realtime. >> i would add, this is the type of project we think is incredibly right for capital

grant money. getting the design right when we go after that $10 million grant is critical to the success of this big project. >> director cajina: my follow-up question, do we have point of contact or communication channel with the navigation center with the homeless community? if we do, what's the process that we're going to utilize to assess their input on how this is going, assuming we approve this today. >> we connected with the department of supportive housing. we talked with them about our plans during the planning process.

>> director cajina: are there tweaks we need to make with the project. i'm getting a better appreciation for that will be helpful. >> it usually take some time for people to get adjusted to the changes. we will not only up date folks within six months but also connect with president walton office on what he's hearing as well. it goes beyond just the

immediate folks who live at the avenue and travels through. >> director cajina: thank you. >> chair borden: director eaken. >> vice chair eaken: thank you. i want to say thank you to the staff. this is high injury network. this is what we talked about doing. this is 1.7 miles addressing the improvement. thank you for all your work. i want to make an observation, may be you all not seeing this. what i'm hearing you say the reason we can't do protected bike lanes is because of the presence of large commercial vehicles. the way i see it, the reason we have to do protected bike lanes is because the presence of large commercial vehicles. i would love to see you bringing us not 54% protected bike lanes

but 100% protected bike lanes on this corridor. director heminger said this several times. i will say it again, i want you to bring us real choice. not just up and down but may be modest, middle range and ambitious in terms of vision zero and safety. i think this board will vote for the safest option if you present it to us. i'm not wild about approving a project that's 54% safe. i would love to ask you what it will take for you to go back to the drawing board and bring us a 100% safe project if we're going to say we're addressing and improving 1.7 miles of high injury network, are we just approving 54% of 1.7 miles of high energy network. which will not get us to our

2024 goal of vision zero. i want to point out, this diagram that i see where we have a parked car unprotected bike lane and traffic, this is the design that killed seth rothstein. this is howard street design. she swerved into the lane and got hit by a truck and died. >> i appreciate those comments. i will point out couple of things. it's 100% from four lanes to two lanes. number one safety improvement that we can make is removing additional travel lanes on our high injury network. we are reducing number of travel

lanes by 50% for 100% of the corridor. second, i will go back to the point that director heminger made earlier around whether we're attracting people to this corridor. the biggest challenge at evans, there are no alternatives whether you're biking or taking transit or driving a heavy vehicle. i do believe this is a step in the right direction. we're under the gun in a little bit. it's being repaved. this is our chance to improve

safety now. i do understand the challenge. i feel like this is a particularly conflicted corridor which is how we ended up where we are. >> vice chair eaken: is it true for 46% of this roadway, there's no physical separation between someone riding a bike lane and a vehicle? there's only paint? >> yes. >> vice chair eaken: i understand that we cannot do parking protected bike lanes because there's a constraint there that makes sense. is there way we can put some physical separation between those traveling in a bike lane and vehicles for 100% of the roadway?

>> we can look at additional locations to place those but i don't know if we can get 100%. we can increase the amount of physical protections as possible. i don't think you can get 100% though. >> vice chair eaken: the reason for that is width constraint or emergency access needing to move vehicles out the way quickly in case of a fire truck or ambulance? >> i think it's both. the alternative -- the other challenge that we have on the corridor there are lot of people living in vehicles now. going out and removing all the parking where people are living in their vehicles, very challenging proposal for us to

make. >> vice chair eaken: we'll be removing parking on the 46% where we can't provide safety facilities now? >> we'll be removing another 50% of the parking on the street roughly. >> vice chair eaken: i think you're clear -- what would it take to go back to the drawing board to bring back a proposal that's safer? >> director tumlin: given timeline we're on, for meeting the deadline for the project, going back requires. we meet again with all the industrial users who need this parking for their industrial function. this is truck loading for all the industrial buildings in this

district. we would need to restart the engagement process with all of those users and with community to present a design that eliminates most of that truck loading and that would mean that we would miss the deadline for the pavement. one of the things i want to emphasize with quick-build, what we're doing is the best that we can within the constraints of right-of-way and low build. we will learn a great deal with quick-build. quick-build projects by definition has to change. the material doesn't last long. moving forward gives us a lot more information about potential future compromises as we better understand all the uses out there. if you ask staff to stop the

process and start over again from scratch, we will pave the street, put the four lanes back the way they were and come back to you probably in about 6 months to redo that striping. >> vice chair eaken: i thought the vision of the quick-build was that the deployment was part of it. we've had that conversation so we wouldn't have to reinitiate outreach. put out the treatment, we get a lot of feedback and iterate. >> director tumlin: we developed the staff recommendation as part of the pretty significant engagement process. we have worked stakeholders to this compromise.

there are a lot of their industrial workers get to work by bike. folks working in those warehouses, lot of them ride bikes to get to work. people east of third street that use evans, people are concerned about traffic and emergency concern. this proposed cross section tries to hold while pushing forward on bike station. putting this in place create the opportunity for additional compromises. not adopting this right now. it restripe the roadway with four traffic lanes causes us to restart the process that we spent lot of time on. which we can do if you're rejecting this entirely. it sets us back at least six

months. >> vice chair eaken: thank you chair. >> chair borden: perhaps, there's an opportunity in the motion that we direct staff about post-quick-build action. sounds like that -- if weapon wanted to make improvements it would require actual legislative action if you're talking about traffic utilization and other things. may be that is part of what we think about to add that what we suggest. director heminger and director hinze? >> director heminger: i apologize for double dipping here. an architect friend of mine said the secret to winning a design competition is to break the rules. i wonder here whether we need to break or at least bend our rule about what qualifies as quick-build and what is a slightly slower quick-build.

the conversation that i heard between you and director yekutiel suggested that some kind of facility might be really promising. you sort of pushed to the side because it didn't meet the criteria you have for minimal construction and so on and so forth. i wonder whether in this instance it makes sense to make an exception. i do believe you heard director eaken on this as well, that we've got -- there's to question that just about anything would probably improve the current condition. the f.d.a. when they approve drugs, it got to be safe and it's got to work. it doesn't have to work, it's

got to be safe. i'm concerned that with this particular proposal, we're not making it safe enough. once you go in and intervene, we sort of only issue -- i wonder, may be you can respond now or think about it for a bit -- whether or not some kind of slightly slower quick-build that would emit solutions like we heard on a contraflow. not have some of the significant tradeoffs that we're seeing in this one. >> chair borden: i think this goes back to the question i asked earlier. when can we provide input in the policy project? the urgency here is there are going to be paving the streets. that's we've been hearing from director tumlin. they're repaving the streets on a particular schedule. in the question goes back to,

when can we get involved in the process earlier enough when they're repaving the street, we can tell you the priority we think have to be met going forward. i think that's the problem. we often get to this place we have an urgency to act because of other constraints. i guess may be you can answer that question how we can be earlier in the process. >> director tumlin: let me answer the detailed question first, providing a two-way protective facility along evans requires redoing all the traffic signals which is expensive and time consuming which will put the project off to next year some type. we trying to create a dramatic improvement that meets deadline of a paving project. at the same time, listen to all of you, which you have spoken very loudly and clearly about,

which is dramatically the pace of the vision zero project and deliver them better. i want to emphasize is that you've directed -- we doubled our delivery of vision zero quick-build project last year. we've committed to doubling them again. in order for us to do that, i need to make the most efficient use of staff time. that is our greatest constraint in all of this work. one of the things, you need to trust the technical recommendation of staff that we're pushing this as pardon as we can. given your people guidance of more faster and better. at the same time, we continue to work with you at the higher level, the policy level about exactly what tradeoffs we need guidance from you all on in terms of how far can we push and how quickly can we go. i want to emphasize that if you

direct staff to redo this work, not only does it put it off six months, cancels the next vision zero project that's in the queue for staff. >> director hinze: i wondered for staff, i wonder about the roads without a physical barrier between the cars and bikes. i wonder could we -- is it possible for staff to put -- [ indiscernible ]

>> we struggled what we can put in a bike lane to keep cars out of it. they not supposed to be there. i think putting posts themselves in bike lane when there's parking next to it is probably not going to work well because vehicles will be driving over it so often to get to the parking, they would only last a week. there maybe other options in terms of slightly raised lums we can put in the buffer that would help keep cars out.

>> director hinze: okay. i'm just trying to help get through compromise here. it sounds like you wouldn't have to go do an outreach project again. >> that's correct. it's a design treatment decision that we could make. exactly what type of material we make on the street is a staff level decision we can make on the technical judgment. >> director hinze: okay.

in the other 36% of the roadway, that are in the short-term with this quick-build, we can maybe direct staff to signal retiming in more greater capital improvement.

>> i'mlines for -- time lines for paving is unpredictable. i can't tell you. it can be done tomorrow, it could be done in two and a half months. i can't tell you that exactly. it would take us couple of weeks to look at all the material and review them with engineers to make sure they are safe and feasible. >> director hinze: okay. i put that out there just for more discussion with my fellow colleagues. >> chair borden: that concludes your comment? >> director hinze: yes. >> chair borden: i'm going to open up for public comment. we are people here for this item specifically. >> director lai: very quickly,

what is the opportunity cost that we might be losing out on if we delayed this particular time period? overall cost is about $500,000. wondering what are we losing out on financially if we miss this window? >> i'm just trying to ballpark. i'm thinking on the order of -- at least $100,000 in terms of the striping that would go in and have to be ground out, we're saving money right now by not having to do that with the new paving. >> director lai: that's great. second question is in term of time frame, what were we

anticipating the overall evans avenue redesign to be taking place? how long are are we expecting this quick-build to be if effect for? is it a year or five years? >> director tumlin: the most effect ways for the board or directors -- it's basically by plan update that is getting under way shortly. it is that process, i hope will establish or overall city wide priorities both for sequencing as well as facility type as well as to what degree are we ready

to give up on one thing in order to get another thing. that is the process where we really want to engage the board of directors. >> director lai: that's next year? >> director tumlin: starting this year. it will be going on for a year. >> director lai: is there anything preventing us from executing on this first quick-build and then continuing to evaluate a second phase of of quick-build? >> director tumlin: that is part of the process. that's how the whole quick-build process is designed around. to do the best you can, given the time and resources available and then continue to iterate and then find money for concrete. >> chair borden: maybe you come up with quick-build projects and these are the top three priorities. may be that's what we need to do. come up with some things around parking policy around quick-build policy. just saying these are top values

and these are things we won't accept. may be that will help us moving forward. we don't want to be in the loop where you're bringing stuff to us we're like, there's bigger policy implications and go back to the drawing board. that's not the goal here. we all have the same goal in mind, just different for when we can have input on that process and seeing how it's executed. we're going to open up to public comment. if you're on the line ayou like to comment, you can press star 3 to get in the queue. we're starting with members of the public in the room. we have a number of people here for this item. >> clerk: i have few speaker cards.

>> caller: hello. i've been working with the coalition on homelessness for about four years now. i've done extensive outreach to people who live in their vehicles in the bayview. director cajina i appreciate your question about what happens to the people that are in their vehicles. by the way, i know there was a comment that the rvs are moving through traffic just like the trucks, perhaps and the cars. the rvs are parked. they are barely moving except they are street cleaning or something along those lines. it was sad to hear that m.t.a. staff only went to businesses to find out what they thought about changes. because so many people who live there. that's their place of a home. on evans and also the streets

that are crossing evans. lot of folks live in their vehicles there. interesting that h.s.h. weighed in regarding the navigation center. but the coalition on homelessness, i'm a volunteer, we have two other volunteers who are here, we're very much an advocacy organization. we definitely spoke to people who live in their vehicles in the bayview about anybody who's living right on evans, they won't be able to be there more. every board meeting pretty much, board members are asked to please approve more removal of parking spaces. it makes it far more difficult for people living in their vehicles to find a safe place to

be where they don't fear they will be towed. thank you. >> caller: hi. i'm a 22-year resident of san francisco and a small business owner. i don't want to repeat what was crust said. i can tell you that the folks on evans avenue who are living in their vehicles were not outreached to. they have no idea that they are going to be displaced. lot of them are pretty low functioning, kind of living on the edge. when we told them about today's hearing. some of them wanted to come. i'm not surprised they didn't make it coming to sit for three hours until it's your turn to speak. it's a luxury for people who have a lifestyle but it's

different from the lifestyle that they have. if they could be here, they would fill this room. i think that 11c, creating all this tow-away zones is traumatic for people who barely hanging on. you push them over the cliff. when you talked to the person from the citizen advisory council, he said they were talking about the bike lanes and it wasn't emphasized that all of these people will be evicted from their homes. ideally no one will be living in a vehicle at the home. that's the reality what we live in. they are constantly being shuttled from place to place. this is one of the few places where there's not lot of retail

business that they are interfering with. there's not a lot of kids park they are interfering with. i'm strongly opposed to kicking all these people out of their homes. thank you. thank you for your service. your job looks incredibly difficult. >> caller: hi, my name is melody. i'm disturbed that jeff has left the room. i've been a vehicle -- i was born in 1958, i sustained a traumatic brain injury in 1960. because there is no medical paper trail linking and leading from the early childhood brain

injury, i do not qualify for what i need. there is no way out for me. i'm living in a vehicle in the bayview. traumatic brain injury complicates my life beyond comprehension. appear fine, i am not fine. as a vehicle dweller, number 11 is devastating. in my estimation, this will remove at least 65 or more parking spaces that are currently could be used by vehicle doors. this is killing me slowly. i understand bike lanes, the lack of them kills bike people

quickly. this is killing me slowly. i have been coming to these meetings, sfmta, since 2008. again, i ask the board of the sfmta to please provide us with safe parking. i do not qualify for anything that's available. please help us. >> chair borden: are there any additional commenters in the room? we'll move to online comment. are there callers on the line? first speaker please. >> caller: this is david pilpel. i can barely hear you, it's incredibly frustrating.

i got my up to 11. >> does it sound bad on line still? >> caller: yes. i can generally hear those of you up on the dias. it's been difficult to hear people with the at public podium. whether it's ellen or public comment. it's incredibly choppy. let me comment on substance. can staff explain more about coordination with the p.u.c. on both the new digester project and headworks project. since gerald is closed, reducing capacity on evans will shift track to chavez, oakdale. other city projects in the area includes the new police operations building and the new p.u.c., headquarters at 2000

marin. i didn't see that referenced. the staff report does not address how construction of those projects and traffic from them would be affected here. i believe this did not go to a regular friday morning traffic engineering public hearing which it should have. it's a bad practice to bring projects directly here whether they are quick-build project or any other type. all of these traffic engineering changes should go to a friday morning hearing. the draft resolution certification line also has the wrong year. it says 2021 page 16 of the packet. certification line. the only one who catches these, big agencies, city attorneys, all kinds of eyes on this. why? i think ellen and the others are doing good work. i want to be clear about that. but are being pushed too hard and moving too quickly to get

all this work done for reasons i don't understand. may be armageddon is coming soon, we got to do this in the next two week. may be not. may be we should do them better. it's painfully clear, we can't have a hybrid board meeting where we can literally all hear each other whether or not we're agreeing or disagreeing, we can't literally hear each other. i know that the board put a good face forward here at the board meetings. this agency is deeply flawed. >> caller: thank you your time is up. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: good afternoon. i'm a community organizer at the san francisco bicycle coalition.

as an organization, we believe that traffic safety measures are necessary and needed on this corridor. when people on bikes and other forms of transportation trade the roads -- [ indiscernible ] we want to highlight the concerns we have today and concerns with the final design.

the project in general holds many conflicting transportation routes. we strongly recommend that sfmta provide a more clear, consistent approach that helps everyone using this space understand the merge. we recommend safety of outcome prior to the standard, 24 months. we are willing to work with the m.t.a. to alleviate the concerns. i want to say thank you to the board as well as the project team for your hard work on this. we appreciate you taking the time to support and listen our concerns.

>> caller: there's some significant disappointment around the bike infrastructure. this design is not acceptable. i remember after quick-build -- some of which had protective intersections. just safer designs overall. those streets -- [ indiscernible ] beyond the intersection design, knowing that buffered and nonbuffered bike lanes keep people on bikes is a huge disappointment. it's sfmta's job is to approve

each parking space is needed. i wanted to say it's heart breaking to hear the impact vehicle dwelling neighbors in evans. health and safety for all should be part of this plan. that's all. thank you. >> chair borden: are there additional callers on the line? there >> caller: hello, good afternoon again. i travel along evans a lot to serve people going to and from the evans post office and further east residents in the hunters point area. however, you making it one lane

in each direction will discourage me from taking calls. means another 5 to 10 minutes of travel time to get there. the traffic lights are poorly timed there. just to make sense, there's barely any cross traffic between night time hours to keep it turning red all the time. you have to sit there at that light. it's discriminatory increasing the travel times for residents who live in the hunters point area and those new developments over there by making it a lot harder for them to get taxi service or to get for themselves travel bikes and bus. also, it's not on --

[ indiscernible ] i'm very much concerned the impact on traffic, the congestion it will create and the impact it will have on the people who live east of third street. i understand you need to make it safer for bicyclists. first let's pave the street. it's the worst major street in it city in terms of quality of the pavement. that's an important to look at as well. at least look at the traffic timing. it is a major problem at night when there's no traffic and sitting there for up to two minutes it seems while you're waiting for the light to turn

green. you can look at redoing that intersection lights. thank you very much >> chair borden: thank you. >> caller: my concern about the project is everyone should benefit from it. it shouldn't only be the bicyclist it should be everybody. that's what this agency should be for. basically, my contention is everyone should benefit from it. people shouldn't be inconveniented by it. third parties should not be compromised. this agency is supposed to benefit everybody.

>> chair borden: thank you. next caller please. >> caller: we have no more callers. >> chair borden: public comment is closed. we have process in place when we're thinking about different parking changes. maybe you can talk about the outreach. there's one safe parking center. i don't know if it's still in existence in what we've done to help outreach to people and see if we can get spaces for them there. >> when we connected with some of the rv households along evans and the side streets of marin, we brought fact sheets about the project to them. we also connected with the department of homelessness and

supportive housing units. >> chair borden: anything else to add to that? >> it was mentioned by one of the employees, m.t.a. has been one of the key partners of h.s.h. and the development of the candlestick point. which creates space for 135 vehicles over 200 people. we've been supporting h.s.h. making sure the site is ready and accessible. that has been a key part of the city's provision of services to people who inhabit vehicles.

>> chair borden: is it operational now? >> it opened about a month ago. capacity is ramping up. >> chair borden: it will be possible for -- it will be great if people already in this community will be able to stay in this community. >> president walton and the mayor's office specifically asked us to make sure that people we encounter either through parking enforcement or public outreach in district 10 be prioritized. >> director lai: similar line of question, wondering if we have a clear inventory of how many residents or vehicles dollars do we have along that stretch of evans that we're proposing to institute a tow-away zone?

>> we have data from the parking observations we did. generally we're proposing removing parking is not where people were appeared to be living parked in vehicles, living vehicularly. the patterns of where people have to park along the corridor seem to change a lot based on construction conditions. all the construction going on and closely different parking lanes at different times. most of the parking proposed with this project on the north side of evans at the westin by cesar chavez, every time we've been out there for the other last few years has not been used.

>> chair borden: sorry, you can't do that. >> we can't account for all the factors what we reserved. we did -- our intention is not to displace anyone. based on observation, the parking changes we're proposing would not specifically affect -- [ indiscernible ] there's a question if we do floating parking. if people, especially in larger vehicles would want to park there or not and how that would work. i don't know if we had that come up on other projects where we've done floating parking.

>> director lai: did you say floating parking? >> yes, that's what we call it when we have protect you have bike lanes on the curb and parking outside the loading area further out in the street. >> director lai: i think you said that you been out there multiple times over the last couple of years. every time m.t.a. staff has been out there, you have not observed any vehicle on that stretch of evans? >> not specifically on this. that's not on the whole stretch of evans.

>> director lai: i did hear staff mention that you've been in coordination with h.s.h. or department most equipped to connect and assist people with services. have we heard from our counterparts. are they also in agreement in this particular stretch of where we're imposing the no parking zone? >> i don't think h.s.h. is in the details of the proposal. we worked with them on the concept. >> director lai: the challenge we're seeing this after a very long period of staff work and

engagement. unfortunately, we are hearing from people today. it's just not -- i'm hearing from inconsistencies in the feedback. i wish that we had perhaps, the department that is in charge of this provide some backup information as to whether or not one way or another, it's not really [ indiscernible ] , to be the arbiter of this. >> we'd be willing to do that.

>> director lai: to my original question about understanding the inventory of how many people who may actually be displaced, may be it's zero, may be it's 100. that's just understand whether or not the already deployed vehicle center, the safe parking site, whether or not that capacity could handle folks who might need a new place to park.

we should take immediate aggressive action as much as possible to address the high injury corridor issue and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. it is giving me pause. depending on how rest of the dialogue goes, i may not be ready to move forward on this today. >> director cajina: i very much share director lai's concern. i don't think that we're in position to do quality outreach and engagement for a population

that is really challenging to connect with. it is so important to engage trusted advisors and work with them to ensure we're understanding the real impact of the decisions we're making. it's really important for us -- there's a time sensitive knee jerk to this with the repaving that's happening. this does give me pause. i would feel uncomfortable voting on this. understanding that there's still questions around what the real impact is going to be about the

decision. even though it's quick-build. even though it's temporary and we're analyzing. six months is a long time for somebody that relies on the space for their livelihood where this is their home. i don't feel comfortable voting on this today. >> chair borden: i do have a question for staff. what is the window in which you need a decision from us to still take advantage of the street project? >> more or less now. may be the next meeting possibly. we don't have much time. the street is deemed repaved. >> chair borden: it's already under construction? >> they want to add little bit -- >> for number of rv households

when we traveled during our site visits, there are rv households in certain spots of the project area. mostly on the side street. we noted there was a sufficient space on the side street such asma rin, such as quint and phelps where reviews can't be parked we wanted to make enough space along evans for them to park if necessary. it's not a condensed rv area. >> chair borden: thank you for that clarification. director hinze? >> director hinze: i wanted to give you one more chance to kind

of describe in detail, your outreach to h.s.h. [ indiscernible ] >> when we were doing our outreach, we connected with the department of homelessness and supportive housing. they have different department units within it. we engaged a navigation center because they use the 19 polk. we wanted to gauge their relationship to evans avenue. we talked to our colleagues and parking management. they also interfaced with rv

households. had the conversation about the time restrictions and how that relates to rv households. we got the expertise from our colleague. they connected us with another unit in the department of homelessness and supportive housing. they instructed us how to approach rv households to talk about about the project. >> director hinze: did you make reasonable attempts to try to get to them? >> in our best staff opinion, we did. we provided the materials and we went to the rvs along the corridors and side street. with our colleague who often interfaces with the department

of homelessness and supportive housing on these issues. we believe so. we'll continue to do so. >> chair borden: that concludes your question director hinze? >> director hinze: yes. decade director yekutiel? >> director yekutiel: the city has gone through a lot of work to open up the sanctions parking space that has tripled the capacity and only 30% full. the city has done this for this very reason. if, perhaps, we can advise or ask staff. i know you been in conversation with president walton and the

mayor's office. your conversation with the folks on evans, make sure there's sanction base. there is an area where people are able to go. i know it's not perfect. i read reports about it. to me this is not a concern. i'm wondering what the chair is think being movement on this project. >> chair borden: somebody have to make a motion. i think that director eaken has a motion she's going to put forth to see if there can be support for it. >> vice chair eaken: great. it's been a really robust discussion. i want to thank my colleagues for all your diligence. i want to make a motion to approve with two conditions or

two additional pieces of information. one is that the board would direct staff to use the quick-build project and process to iterate towards a goal of of 100% safe protected bike lane design. that's a very clear direction and guide from the board. the second will be that the board direct staff to use the quick-build implementation itself as an opportunity to continue and expand outreach to key stakeholders, particularly those vehicularly housed. >> second. >> second. >> chair borden: i like to add something to that. i know there's a new parking thing. i know we can't guarantee that people get located there. i imagine what the straight paving process. people will have to move temporarily during that process. there's some sort of movement that will have to happen.

you assured us there are spots on the street there. part two of her motion, let's make sure we educate people that may be they want to find -- when they have to move, they can move to a place where they can move that will be permanent. it wouldn't be an issue that they'll have to move again. if we can educate people in that process, if you move from this spot, that spot will not become available anyway. >> director lai: i'm not familiar with how the entry system works with rv dwellers

versus unhoused. do we have to go through a coordinated industry system to access the safe parking site? [ indiscernible ] >> director lai: pretty much any shelter in the city, my understanding there's a coordinated industry system with a pretty complicated algorithm for who gets placed where. >> i don't know if it's the same entry system there's a system that department of homelessness and supportive housing runs. some other systems, there's not tremendous resources.

>> director lai: i do know this isn't a fair question to ask staff. i'm hoping you might be able to provide some color as to why we have vacancies availability at the safe parking sites? i hear what director yekutiel is saying. [ laughter ] i personally also feel that having safe parking sites are really excellent direction and good option for some of our understand housed population. i don't have enough understanding or option.

my question is really -- i feel like i don't have the information now to understand whether or not the people who may or may not be displaced can be accommodated. i'm looking for guarantees through this motion that we will not actually execute on these tows or instituting curb changes unless we are certain we will not be displacing people from the evans stretch. >> board direct staff to use quick-build an opportunity to expand outreach to key stakeholders, particularly those vehicle housed. >> director lai: i think i'm

looking for something more certainty. >> chair borden: are you sure they are not towed and aren't given proper information? they have to move anyway because you're repaving the streets. where they can move to to stay, what's going to change is not affected on those streets. that's a lot to put in a motion. [ laughter ] i think that's what we want. >> director lai: also, i appreciate that some of may be what i want out of the guarantee is even under m.t.a. jurisdiction. >> chair borden: we can make sure people are educated where they can go based upon the fact that streets will be changing. everyone has to move when they

repave the streets. that's the part we can control. the second part, we strongly urge, however we can make sure that people that first ride priority for people in this area to move to candlestick, is somehow -- i know we can't legislate it, part of the priority -- [ indiscernible ] >> director tumlin: none of this we can control. we are not paving the streets. what i'm understanding the intent very clearly. what we can do is use all of our powers to the greatest extent practical, reach out to the individuals who are living on the streets to make sure they know the alternative. we know that this is a fairly large district where there's basically only three kinds of people parking. there's workforce of the

industrial district and there's the trucks making deliveries. there are folks who are living on the streets. given the hours of operation of the industrial facilities, there are ample opportunities for folks to find alternative locations if they do not want to enter a city facility. we can partner with h.s.h. to make sure folks know what services are available to them. that is not something we have control over. we have a strong partnership with those other agencies from on creating the vehicle triage centers. >> director lai: i think the portion of the motion they have concerns over is 11c. the tow-away part.

is it possible for us to say that m.t.a. will not institute that change unless we have made our best faith effort to provide work with our sister agencies to provide alternatives. i don't know how to phrase this. i want to make sure that we are providing anyone who we may be displacing, a viable option to relocate their vehicle. >> director tumlin: i want to clarify, it's the construction project itself that is causing the displacement. where we out in the stripes back is a question about whether somebody who's vehicularly housed come back to the same space. i want to emphasize, there's an abundant of parking spaces in the immediate vicinity.

i don't know people workshop --who are living in their homes that might be reconfigured as a result of our striping. >> director tumlin: we're not controlling individual behavior. >> director lai: that's fine. my motion was to provide the alternative option. i'm not saying -- the curb change would be pending upon their acceptance. >> director tumlin: what i want clarification on, after we stripe and there is a protected bike way that is created, if

somebody parks blocking the protected bike way and refuses to move, we do want the ability to move that vehicle out of the way. >> director lai: that's right. i was hoping that the action -- outreach action would take place before you finish the striping while we're doing the paving. i understand striping work only take 2 to 4 weeks. i was hoping that we could provide people with alternative locations before that striping occurs. >> director lai, i think the issue here is that regardless of

your action tonight, the paving project will be undertaken by a different city agency. any outreach done by the city, whatever agency have to be done fire that separate project. you do not have jurisdiction over. i think the issue here with your resolution you are addressing a project that will be done after the paving project. it's the order of operation that i director tumlin is concerned about. it south be associated with your motion because if the sister agencies are not able to conduct that outreach or if they don't

it to your satisfaction, that will leave this motion in limbo. you can only direct your staff to do the maximum outreach that they can do. i wouldn't want this motion to be contingent on the actions of another agency that you don't or your staff doesn't control. >> director lai: thank you. i think i understood that. i was hoping the language around that will be sufficient. i think in this case, may be i should ask it in a different manner. may be it's -- thinking through what is in our control? if we have someone in the order of operations that you're referring to, can we set up some sort of -- i'm sure we have existing outreach line -- can we create a space if someone feels they have been displaced as a

result of the striping we would prioritize connecting them with relocation or services or something like that. i want to make sure we're not leaving people hanging. >> chair borden: is this something your team would be involved in? [ indiscernible ] >> i haven't led outreach. i can hear the level of outreach has been done. what i'm also hearing is that, the thing that we're trying to solve, really are not within our control. i think the staff, what they are saying, we can connect with those groups that you're talking about and do everything in our power to make sure they understand there's a place for

them to go. that's the best we can do. this is a really tough discussion. we don't want to feel like we're displacing somebody. i think reaching out to those groups that we mentioned, doing our best -- i can relate very much what you're talking about. i've been working on a situation for two years around our friends facility with the homeless. it's taking us two years to move those people into a safer place. it's a real challenge. we worked with h.s.h. and many groups. they are following the process that they should and they are conducting the outreach and engagement that they should. it's just the challenge before you is not one that we have control over. it's just an observation.

>> director cajina: do you see value in creating a working group or a group of folks that are engaged throughout the process so that the truth of the matter is, we're not trusted advisors when it homes to the homeless community. we can't play that role. even if we wanted to engage folks in resources, we're not going to do the best job at it. we're not trusted in that manner. it's not our purview. there are folks that are in the city. there's a coalition on homelessness and director lai referring to different groups. it's unrealistic challenge to

guide our staff to house folks. i see a value in creating a working group of folks who are currently residing on evans to director lai's point if there's a list of folks that exist that are current residents, i know that changes from time to time. that's fluid. again, site visits alone aren't something that will help us understand, fully comprehend who is living there and who is not. that's not what we're built to do. this is not our skill set. is there a value in creating a working group for the folks currently reside there? is there a value in engaging and directing staff to work in deep collaboration with the coalition on homelessness and other groups in the city that other

departments in the city that lead these efforts so that they are the ones that are entrusted to -- they are the trusted folks in the community. they are the ones that can actually -- [ indiscernible ] i like osei that second piece of the motion that director eaken strengthen. this is a quick build project. there's going to be changes along the way. it seem like worthwhile effort and work stream to ensure that we're engaging a population that will be affected by the decisions that we make on this

specific corridor. may be this is the way to do it. >> two things come to mind. i've been taking very copious notes. i remember a few years ago that we had really didn't feel we were pooling the small business community. we developed a small business working group and we meet with them on a bimonthly basis. they have a voice at the table. the more i was thinking about this from outreach standpoint, may be it's forming a working group which i've done this before. where we make sure they know about all of these projects that are coming out and try to build a relationship and work with them closely. this being one of those. we also have these issues along our facilities. staff will learn more what we're

able to and not able to do. we'll be able to work with them closely on projects coming up in the future. then be able to come back to you earlier to let you know what may be some of those consequences could be based upon the decisions we're asking you to make. it's what i'm hearing for the past hour. it's a very difficult situation. i think if we could partner with some of these groups on a regular basis, this could help us develop a deeper relationship so we can have more dialogue. >> chair borden: i think that would be valuable. this come up when people want oversize vehicle bans. we could have a better dialogue and relationship with the community, it will be very helpful. >> we have to remember sometimes when staff going out that they can do the best they can but they are some guidelines they have to follow. these situations can get very volatile. you need to have the right people that deal with this.

>> director tumlin: we can take a separate direction to staff that we continue to strengthen our relationship with h.s.h. h.s.h. should really be the lead for any working group dealing with these issues. we should continue to strengthen our relationship with the processes that they have already established so we can rely on them to help us that involve people who are using the street right-of-way as their home. >> chair borden: if we could have h.s.h. come tell us what actions they can do. that would help a lot. >> i think that's the thing you're struggling with that could have tipped it over. >> director tumlin: i will take that as separate direction. we will come to you with h.s.h.

i think that's an excellent suggestion. it's something we have not really spoken much about to all of you. >> director lai: i appreciate what jeff just said. i think ongoing working group is what i'm looking for. the second condition, not sure how you're framing this, the second amendment,ly try -- i will try to reframe. amending director eaken's second amendment as board direct staff

to use the quick build a as an opportunity to expand outreach to key stakeholders and use best efforts to work with. [ please stand by ]

>> if you accept that motion, then the second or -- i guess i just want to ask, do you feel we have options to maximize options for vehicle you literally -- for

vehicular house populations? >> we do know that there is abundant capacity on the cross streets, as well as capacity of the triage center in the bayview. i think my current interpretation of that language would be to direct folks to those alternate sites. >> i have to admit, i am completely lost. i know i was the second one. i know we should build the bike lane. i understand all this other stuff, but i want to move forward on the bike project. i don't want all this other stuff to hold us back, given what we have talked about. >> what they are trying to do is get a motion that will get everyone involved. that is what we are working on right now.

that is where we are at. everyone is on the page -- it is a better process in the future, including taking care of these people. >> are you going to accept the motion? >> it feels like it is going well beyond the scope of the project. is a citywide issue. what i had drafted was making sure they understand the projects, understand the process and understand their options. i guess i would look to you. does this feel like this is outside of the scope to talk about the sfmta broadly working on maximizing options? did you mean to say in the vicinity of the project, for example? i don't understand the scope of your amendments.

>> my interpretation of this phrasing is i expect m.t.a. to work with our sister agencies to come up with those options. i'm not saying that it is on m.t.a.'s soldiers -- shoulders to come up with this. if they come back and say, you know, we are the appropriate agency to address this into -- dress this issue, and we are encouraging them and doing our best to make efforts to support them coming up with maximize solutions, i would be okay with that. >> to support their efforts to maximize options. >> that is great. >> perhaps what we should -- for the folks that we are referring to, they are the ones who would be directly impacted by this project. is that correct? perhaps that is the definition we need to add so it is not so broad. >> there you go.